Why Travel Businesses Should Pay Special Attention To Pinterest

Especially during the Coronavirus

Today I want to talk about traveling. What is traveling? Travel destinations, hotels, airlines, travel bloggers and other people who make money through you?

Partly, yes.

But those same people are also the people who serve us. People who create an amazing experience for us. People who work when we take a break.

Travel gave us all a lot of insights. Different cultures, perspectives, languages and philosophies but more than that, it gives us a feeling that has gotten very rare in our modern world … FREEDOM.

This is why I want to give back in a way that I am able to.

This post is about why ALL travel businesses should pay special attention to Pinterest Marketing, especially during the Coronavirus. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a hotel, a travel destinations, or a travel blogger, this post is for all kinds of travel businesses.

People can’t travel right now but they can prepare for travel and they do it right now while YOU are still procrastinating.

This is how you can prepare for the day after tomorrow.

1. Pinterest’s Development or Why It’s Interesting For You

While Instagram and Facebook continue to be travel brand priorities and you perhaps already plan on creating some embarrassing videos on Tik Tok in 2020, everybody forgets about Pinterest marketing.

What a pity, because Pinterest is far more than a place for DIY and home décor ideas. When used properly, Pinterest marketing can drive traffic more easily, a LOT faster than other social media channels and can give way more ROI.

Most people, and perhaps you’re one of them, think that Pinterest is only for moms and even though you could create a very effective marketing strategy around wives influencing their husbands, the popularity of Pinterest amongst men also rises. This year men were already amongst 40% of all new signups.

But why exactly Pinterest for the travel niche?

Instead of blindly using what everyone else uses, you should consider what a particular platform is for. Pinterest is a platform for planning and visualizing.

And guess what?

The most popular Pinterest category is travel. People use it to research more about their holiday places, to dream and of course to fully plan and map out their trips for the year. What do you think people do right now and where do they hang out for that?

Pinterest’s most popular topics are related to the hospitality and the travel industry in general. Not only that, how many travellers who search on Pinterest, do you think purchase something after seeing travel content from brands?

It’s a whopping 76%!

Besides the audience for you brands like hotels, airlines and travel destinations, ALL the travel bloggers aka the people who also create content for you brands, are on Pinterest because it’s the perfect platform for blogging.

Now you might be thinking “Okay, but why does that play a role for me?”.

Well, imagine a travel blogger has a reach of 1 million monthly viewers (which is quite easy to reach as a travel blogger), what do you think will happen if you are pinning your content to the group board of this travel blogger?

Exactly! You’re getting access to the reach of 1 million monthly viewers.

What do you think will happen if you are pinning to more than one group board and more than one travel blogger with a high reach?

What are you wasting your time with if you’re still not on Pinterest? Oh, I forgot! Perhaps with the declining reach of Instagram.

And if you’re a travel blogger and not on Pinterest, you’re also missing out on a lot because you have the same audience as hotels and other travel brands have.

Travel bloggers, hotels, travel destinations, or any other travel brand, I’m talking to all of you: Pinterest is the perfect platform for you to collaborate and you should definitely use this opportunity!

2. Pinterest Is NOT A Social Media Platform

That is why everyone, including you, is confused by Pinterest. It is a visual search engine with some social media features. Now the shocking truth: Whereas Social Media platforms like Instagram concentrate more on followers, Pinterest is not as concerned with the follower count as it is with how much value pins provide to the Pinterest users.

Sounds familiar? Yes, you’re right. It’s just like Google.

Pinterest is so serious about it that they even have a powerful deep learning AI when it comes to the visual search.

But how does Pinterest marketing actually work?

When users are on Pinterest, they’re actively seeking answers, whether it’s “Beautiful Places” or “Best hotels in NYC”. This is useful because you as travel brands can make yourself more discoverable by optimizing your pins for keywords.

Yep, just as you can do with Google.

For example, as a hotel owner in Paris, you could search for something like “Hotels in Paris”. Not only will you see other suggested search terms in the search bar, but you will also be shown popular topics relating to the query, such as “best”, “affordable”, and “luxury”.

With this knowledge, you can craft content related to these queries and thus even better optimize the name of your Pinterest image. For example, the file name with“hotels-in-paris.jpg” instead of “DSC123007.jpg”, the pin description with target keywords and of course with the target keywords on the pin image itself (don’t forget about the visual search AI).

The result is that pins get seen by more than just direct followers. By a LOT more if you do that and a few other things well. On top of that, people will share your pins.

You ask now why this sharing feature is so important?

I’ll tell you why. Sharing is crucial for virality and luckily Pinterest is based on this sharing feature. People who see and share your content seed out the content you create for you!

With just about 500 relevant Pinterest followers, you could have your content become one of the most repinned in your niche. Of course, if you have a smart content creation strategy which we, by the way, also teach in our Pinterest Viral Domination course.

Not only is this great for your reach, but as each pin can link back to your website (not like each post in Instagram), one extremely successful pin can generate hundreds of clicks a day, for months and months.

Imagine such a traffic generator!

3. Pinterest Users Are Planners AND Buyers

And Pinterest users are not only planners, they are also buyers! People use Pinterest to plan their entire trip from zero. Can you imagine that more than two times more travellers prefer Pinterest to top online travel agencies?

And what do you think people do right now, during the Coronavirus, on a platform for dreams and inspiration?

Pinterest makes it so easy for you as a travel brand to get new customers that they even have developed traveler personas to help you better understand the behaviors of all different traveler types.

If that’s not enough, Pinterest users are also people who spend money. 87% of pinners have made a purchase because of something they saw on Pinterest. That includes booking accommodations since Pinterest also has bookable Pins.

Not only that, but almost half of the over 300 million Pinterest users also have a household income of over $100k. This means a lot of money to spend, which 93% of these over 300 million people even use Pinterest to plan for.

I know, I know. It hurts when you remember the budget and time that you invested in your 2,000 followers on Instagram which aren’t even willing to spend their money on you because most of them are bots. But don’t despair. It’s not too late to make your Pinterest marketing great again!

4. Why The Pinterest Bio Is A Lead Gold Mine

And on top of all that, the Pinterest bio is a lead Gold Mine.

Why you ask?

In Pinterest, users follow accounts that have content they’re interested in. This is perfect for travel brands for a few reasons. For one, you can more easily attract your target audience by only creating boards on topics these people would be interested in, such as travel destinations and beautiful hotel views and so on.

Remember the importance of keywords? This also goes for board names, not only for pin descriptions.

And you can use your Pinterest account already as a funnel because you can use your bio strategically. Before pinners follow you, they’ll often look at an entire profile. This includes the bio, which can have a link to a lead magnet for capturing the viewer’s email.

So, instead of linking directly to your homepage, you might offer a free packing list or local city guide that pinners receive after they’ve subscribed to your email list.

5. How To Dominate Pinterest

Now some ideas for you to dominate Pinterest. When the Four Seasons decided to use Pinterest, their daily average visitors increased up to 1,000% and the daily average clicks to their website increased up to 1,700%. Now they have 1,6 million monthly viewers.

How?

Instead of limiting themselves to property photos or promotions, as everybody does, they chose to create a lifestyle, including travel, fashion, and food. For this method, it doesn’t matter if you’re a hotel or any other travel brand.

With Pinterest, you can always create a whole lifestyle around traveling and the best part is that you don’t have to ask for permission to repin the content from others like it is with the user-generated content on Instagram.

And besides that, simple tweaks in the way you create your pins can lead to big changes. While gorgeous images and text overlays are important, the wording is crucial, too.

Are you focused on spreading your brand name or engaging the users? Doesn’t “Best Hotel In Kuala Lumpur For Your Honeymoon” sound more engaging and interesting to you than “[Hotel Name] in Kuala Lumpur”?

If not, then you should use Pinterest for yourself to understand what makes you engage or just ask me.

A clear advantage of Pinterest is the intention of its users and the ability to have content found by strategically using keywords. This can be your unfair advantage over other brands.

You wonder how?

For example, the travel personas which I mentioned earlier. Pinterest even provides you with top keywords to help target each travel persona.

If you use Pinterest properly, it has the potential to send more traffic your way than Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok combined!

Let’s recap: Your whole target audience is on Pinterest and wants to throw money at you the first second after the Coronavirus is over but you don’t want it.

So I want to ask you — why?

NOW is the perfect time to build your brand on Pinterest to be ready for the rush after the Coronavirus but you’re sitting around and … doing what?