Lead Generation for the Destination Marketer
April 18, 2018
A savvy marketer such as yourself already knows that lead generation is the process of attracting new visitors through brand awareness while collecting their information for future marketing efforts—but you may not know why, how, or what you should be doing to properly tap into its potential.
What’s Your Goal?
The first thing to ask yourself is: Why do I want leads? Any campaign that delivers high-quality leads (people who have indicated an interest in your destination) can give you the ability to inspire a potential visitor to take the next steps and book their trip.
Establish a goal for your lead generation campaign. Do you want to gauge awareness about your destination? Do you want another way to distribute your visitors guide? Do you want to continuously reach out with emails or an eNewsletter? Whatever your goal is, make sure you structure your campaign around achieving it. If all of your effort is only focused on the generation of leads, you’re missing out on all of your conversion opportunities. When someone shows interest in your destination, don’t just leave them hanging, provide them with the inspiration they are looking for to plan their next trip.
If all of your effort is only focused on the generation of leads, you’re missing out on all of your conversion opportunities.
Ideally, your campaign will be an integrated piece of an overall marketing effort, focused on driving conversion. Your lead generation efforts would utilize components that spark interest in a potential visitor because of a specific call-to-action that is served to them at the right time. From there, they complete a conversion activity that collects their information such as a request for a visitors guide or a sweepstakes entry. Other efforts like Search Engine Marketing or Display Ads will create awareness or drive clicks to your site, but lead generation focuses on collecting information for future marketing efforts.
Diverse Marketing is Smart Marketing
Smart marketers should create a diverse campaign, utilizing both digital and print efforts to reach different types of travelers. Options like printed and digital inserts can provide a familiar feel, as they are inserted into magazines and newspapers, encouraging readers to learn more about your destination by going to a campaign-specific URL. This URL can drive readers to a page that collects their information so you can reach out to them at a future time with more information, a special deal, or an eNewsletter. This encourages potential visitors to initiate the relationship with you, making it more organic and natural for them to keep in touch.
Facebook is an ideal platform that offers strong targeting options.
A digital lead generation campaign can create more engagement, faster lead turnaround, and faster fulfillment, which is especially helpful if you are promoting an event. Facebook is an ideal platform that offers strong targeting options so you can deliver visually-stimulating, focused ads in user’s newsfeeds that are likely to convert. Furthermore, Facebook has options so that when they click on the ad, they are taken to a pre-populated form that collects their information with very little effort, making it user-friendly and efficient.
Level Up Your Efforts
Sweepstakes and special offers contribute to successful lead generation and our experience has shown that offering an incentive increases the number of leads your campaign receives. A sweepstakes package or special offer should promote a specific experience and be relatable to the audience. If your demographic is luxury-seeking Baby Boomers, don’t include a family pack of tickets to the local theme park. Make sure your package is desirable and appropriate to the visitors you are trying to attract. Don’t forget that as of October 2017 all forms, including those used for lead generation, need to be secure to avoid users receiving a warning pop-up that could deter participation in your campaign.
