Video marketing is one of the best way to promote a travel brand or destination. Whether you’re a hotel, vacation rental, city, or adventure park your goal is to showcase your unique features and attract visitors. Video marketing can be an effective tool to achieve this goal, but it requires careful planning and execution. In this article, we’ll share our top 10 tips and tricks to help you create compelling videos that promote destinations.
1. Define your target audience
Before you start creating videos, it’s important to define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests and preferences? What is the target demographic? What kind of content do they enjoy watching? By answering these questions, you can tailor your videos to your audience and make sure that they resonate with them. If you are targeting luxury travelers who are looking for a high-end experience then your videos should showcase the hotel’s luxurious amenities, such as spa treatments, fine dining, and personalized service. If you’re promoting a budget-friendly vacation rental, your target audience might be budget-conscious travelers who are looking for affordable accommodation. In this case, your videos should highlight the rental’s value, proximity to landmarks, and amenities.
2. Show them, don’t just tell them
When it comes to destination promotion, visuals are key. Your videos should showcase the destination’s beauty and uniqueness in a compelling way. Rather than simply talking about the destination’s features, show them in action. Use high-quality footage to capture the destination’s scenery, attractions, and activities. Show visitors enjoying themselves and having fun. Use music, sound effects, and narration to enhance the experience. For example, if you’re promoting a city, you might use drone footage to capture the skyline and landmarks. You might also show visitors exploring the city’s neighborhoods, trying local cuisine, and attending cultural events. By showcasing the city’s unique features you can inspire viewers to plan their own visit.
3. Tell a compelling story
To make your videos memorable, tell a story. Rather than simply showcasing the destination’s features, create a narrative that engages viewers and makes them feel emotionally connected to the destination. This could involve highlighting the destination’s history, culture, or local traditions. It could also involve telling the story of a visitor’s experience, from arrival to departure. Create a day in the life type video and the viewer will understand what to expense when they visit. If you’re promoting a beach resort, you might tell the story of a family’s vacation from start to finish. Show them arriving at the resort, playing on the beach, enjoying the resort’s amenities, and bonding as a family. If your location caters primarily to couples your video could show how couples can experience a romantic vacation at your property. This would appeal to anyone seeking a romantic getaway. By creating a narrative that resonates with viewers, you can inspire them to plan their own beach vacation and take action.
4. Use social media to amplify your videos
Once you’ve created your videos, use social media to amplify their reach. Share them on your social media channels and anywhere else you can. Use hashtags to make your videos discoverable, and encourage viewers to share them with their own followers. Consider partnering with influencers or bloggers who can help promote your videos to their own audiences. Use giveaways and other promotions to encourage people to share the videos on their social media profiles. Don’t forget to add the video to your website homepage to increase the conversion rate of your website.
5. Use paid advertising channels to boost your campaign
Once you’ve exhausted your organic reach on social media, it’s time to consider paid options. You’ve taken the effort to produce great video content. Now you should have the budget allocated to boost it out beyond your typical audience. Some of the best social media platforms for video marketing include TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube Ads. One great piece of video content can be used as your primary ad creative for 6-months or more.
6. Take advantage of your city or county tourism agency
Most cities or counties have a tourism board which is tasked with promoting the destination as a whole. Even though they are not typically going to favor one business over another, if your content is good they will promote it. By sending your video assets to the local tourism board you can get an extra boost in your marketing campaign. In many cases these tourism boards have big social media followings so this can be substantial. If you own a business such as an adventure park which does not have any direct competitors, they might even help pay your advertising campaign.
7. Hire local talent for your video production
By hiring local talent you can save money and get the community involved in the process. People love to see their friends and family on video advertisements and campaigns, and will happily promote the video for you. This can give your video marketing campaign a great extra boost that you wouldn’t get otherwise. Plus, if it’s a paid gig the money for talent stays in the community which is a huge benefit to everyone.
8. Create buzz by running your video as a TV commercial
In most cases the majority of your viewing audience will be on the internet, more specially social media. With that being said, by allocating a small portion of your budget for Television, you can create a new level of buzz around your project. We have seen it time and time again that people see TV ads as special or more important than internet. By promoting your destination marketing video with local talent as a TV ad you can create a feeding frenzy of excitement around your brand. Surprisingly this is more affordable than you would think. Local TV ads that just run in your target demographic can be very inexpensive. There’s also service like OTT TV spots that run on internet based television that are another great option.
9. Repurpose your content for multiple social media platforms
Creating a 1-2 minute promotional video can give you dozens of clips for social media marketing. By repurposing your video into shorter social media clips you can make your advertising budget stretch further. If your original video production is filmed in 1920 x 1080 you can have a video editor cut that down into shorter videos for social. Making dozens of short 10-20 second clips can give you weeks of great social media content for Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and even YouTube shorts.
10. Cross promote with other local business
Cross promoting with other local business can help your budget stretch further and help you with promotion. For example, if you are a hotel you could partner with a local zip line adventure company. This partnership can make your videos much more interesting and compelling to the traveler because it combines recreation, not just lodging. By combining lodging with recreation the video will be more exciting and cost less to produce. Once the video is completed both you and the partner can promote the video saving you both advertising dollars.
Final thoughts on video marketing for destinations and travel brand.
Promoting destinations through video marketing can be a powerful way to attract visitors and showcase their unique features. By defining your target audience, showing rather than telling, telling a story, and using social media to amplify your videos, you can create compelling videos that inspire viewers to plan their own visits. Cross promotion, paid advertising, and local talent can all give your video marketing campaigns the boost it needs. With these tips and tricks, you’ll be well on your way to creating successful destination promotion videos. If you’d like to learn more about video marketing for your travel brand or destination than reach out to Morrisey Productions.