The travel industry is today a somewhat over-saturated marketed, and you really need to stand out from the crowd to get ahead. Particularly in an age when people are travelling abroad and taking advantage of cheap flights and overseas package deals, caravan parks in the UK must work harder than ever to promote themselves and secure their slice of the proverbial pie. Here we take a look five online marketing techniques that you can use to boost the promotion of your caravan park and achieve more bookings.
1. Develop an online brand persona – The web can seem incredibly cold and impersonal at times, so take special care to create a warm family-friendly brand that people can relate to. Apart from giving visitors an impression of the kind of welcome that will await them if they book into your caravan park, having a well crafted brand will distinguish you from the scores of other holiday sites out there.
2. Optimise your website – Your website should be optimised for both people and the search engines. Fortunately, today this mostly involves the same things –
- Producing high quality content
- Making your website easy to navigate and use
- Having relevant keywords in the natural flow of your web content
- Offering visitors information that is useful and of value
3. Exploit the potential of social media – Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made it easy for even small caravan parks to promote themselves cost-effectively. Social media can be used to build a brand following and is the modern form of ‘word of mouth’. In the run up to the holiday season, tell your followers what you’re doing to prepare, and give them inspiration regarding things to do in the local area.
4. Blog, blog, and blog again – Your blog should form an essential part of your caravan park’s online marketing strategy. Blog frequently and regularly – 1-2 times a week should do the trick. This serves two main purposes. Firstly it will lead Google and the other search engines to perceive your website as one which is active and which has plenty of fresh content which may be of use or interest to its readers. Secondly, it will attract additional traffic to your website, and may in turn result in additional bookings. If you’re stuck for ideas for new blog posts, here are a few ideas:
- Blog posts which focus on a specific attraction to visit in the local area
- Spotlights on key members of staff and what their roles involve
- General holiday-base articles, such as ‘Five essentials to pack for your holiday’, or ‘how to have a stress-free family holiday’.
5. Invest in PPC ads – Pay per click (PPC) ads can be a worthwhile investment, particularly since you only pay for an ad when someone clicks through to your website. To maximise their effectiveness, ensure that your ads lead through to well-written landing pages which lead people to further explore your caravan park as an option for their holiday.
Hopefully you’ll find that some of these techniques help you to promote your caravan park and actively bring you new customers. Of course with all those extra customers it’s even more important that you make sure that your caravan park insurance covers you for all possible risks. Get in touch with Park Insurance to discuss all your caravan park insurance needs.