A satisfied customer is always the key to success for any brand.
Whether promoting a destination, attraction or hospitality business, satisfied visitors or customers can become spokespeople for your brand in both the real and digital world.
This is a great opportunity for travel brands to connect with new potential audiences on the back of their ambassadors' word-of-mouth marketing.
UGC as a category refers to content generated by your customers, visitors or individuals not affiliated with your brand.
Content can be a photo, a blog post, a review, or a video shared on social networks.
A common factor for the most effective user-generated content is that it is a digital asset and therefore can be reused and shared with a large audience.
Effective UGC helps to build customer loyalty as you allow and encourage your visitors to have a voice in your brand's marketing direction. Through social proof (the trust generated from unbiased and unbranded content), UGC has the power to influence and impact new audiences more than traditional advertising.
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People tend to put a lot of trust in the opinions of their friends, family (or even strangers) especially if this is documented by powerful imagery or visual content shared directly or indirectly with them.
With new technologies and social networks, your tourists or locals can generate spontaneous virtual word-of-mouth, which can be harnessed by your marketing teams through a UGC platform.
A good travel marketing strategy must therefore consider encouraging and involving past visitors, and capitalising on shared user-generated content as a way to gain trust and visibility.
The outer Hebrides: a successful example
We at SnapSea really care about our clients' success. That’s why we built a Visual Marketing Platform to help travel and tourism brands acquire the rights to and effectively use the best content from social media.
Acquire commercial use rights to stunning visuals, manage and organise all your organisation's visual assets and share content that converts on all your marketing channels.
We truly believe there has always been a strong link between travel and visuals, and the advent of social media and Instagram has made sharing photographs an even more important part indicator of a place's success.
Sign-up today for a 20-minute personalised demo to see how SnapSea could elevate your travel brand.
Watch a 3-minute introduction to SnapSea - the user-generated content platform for destinations.