Top 3 content marketing trends you should embrace

In today’s digital world, everyone is a publisher and anyone can publish content in text, image, and video formats.

Extraordinarily crafted content shared across the right channels evokes emotions and creates an emotional connection between travellers and your destination. As a marketer, the content you share should bring your destination brand to life by dazzling travellers’ senses and touching their hearts. Your content should be able to communicate to potential travellers the experiences they can expect to receive once they arrive at your destination.

Here are three content marketing trends to consider while crafting your marketing strategy

1. Shift towards niche content

Travel with experiences at its core was one of 2018’s major travel trends but 2019 will take it even further, says Booking.com. People travel for enlightening experiences and inspirational activities rather than to tick off a holiday off their to-do list.

Just as people are unique, so are their needs and their dream vacations. They consume different content and respond to different type of messages. This idea drives DMOs to segment their potential travellers in various personas, map their customer journey and finally create and deliver relevant content and experiences to match their needs. There are destinations that successfully match people inclined to craft and arts to matching activities available at their destination. For example, wine connoisseurs are being offered unique wine routes and coffee lovers are being offered city tours with an extra special touch, coffee tasting.

The way you attract visitors looking for unique experiences is by putting your visitors’ experience at the heart of your content. It’s all about genuine storytelling and using descriptive language, describing vividly a unique experience that your visitors can relate to and drives them to take action.

2. Learn to speak the language of your audiences

What’s the feeling you get when you travel to another country and locals greet you in your native language? That’s the feeling you need to give your potential visitors get when they start engaging with your destination online. Your content marketing strategy should include customized and translated content for each market you are trying to target. Articles, tips and tricks as well as tours and guides available on your website and apps should be available in more than your native language. Do not forget to include emerging markets such as Asia and Africa. For example, did you know that Chinese tourists almost doubled their travels to Europe in the first half of 2018, compared with the same period in 2017?

Moreover, try to build a community around each region you are targeting. You can do this by creating social media content in different languages and responding to comments in your user’s preferred language.

3. Collaborate with micro-influencers and nano-influencers

Influencers gained popularity as they provided a more authentic and relatable voice as opposed to celebrity endorsements. An important factor in the selection of influencers was their number of followers. However, now we’re seeing a shift from choosing influencers with a huge following to choosing to collaborate with influencers with a smaller, more targeted audience.

People are looking to connect with real, like-minded people and this is happening on social media. Micro and nano influencers are considered by their followers experts in a specific field, therefore they tend to have a higher engagement rate than influencers with a large follower base. The more passionate about a specific topic the influencers are and the more active their followers are, the more effective your collaboration will be.

In destination marketing success rests on positive word of mouth and advocacy about the tourism experience. Micro-influencers can help you ensure that the right people are hearing the right stories.

Key takeaways:

Personalize your content to match experiences travellers are already passionate about.
Translate content in the languages your potential travellers are speaking.
Choose the right advocate for your destination. Ensure they’re as passionate as you are about travelling.
Create content that evokes emotions and creates an emotional connection between travellers and your destination.