Travelalerts.ca - how creating an online travel magazine will help build their brand

For those who love to travel, looking for the best deal can be extremely frustrating with all the travel operators, airlines and hotels on the internet. With the prevalence of group deals and hundreds of tour operators, there is stiff competition to  grab the consumers' attention. With sites like TravelAlerts, consumers can comparison shop and look for the best rates and cheapest deals in one location. 

TravelAlerts.ca is what you call a travel affiliate site, where they aggregate the deals by their travel partners and deliver it by email or listing it on their site. Although they are riding on the coattails of the Daily Deals and group buying sites, their business model does not revolve around group buying. 

Trends in the travel industry

Travel has always been an extremely competitive; however, TravelAlerts have largely succeeded because of their focus on Canadian travel deals. Now that the Canadian daily deals space is getting crowded, they need to build a stronger brand and adjust their lead generation strategy to take advantage of new consumer trends in the travel industry.
Some trends that are being seen are: 

• Consumers do not respond to highly discounted deals anymore. They are looking for great value. 
  
• Travel is becoming more social. 
  
• Mobile technology is becoming more prevalent, with tourists looking for local reviews and apps to search for great places to visit or eat. 
  
• Social media is hugely prevalent in helping tourists make decisions to where they should go and visit. 
  

Due to the high cost of PPC advertising for travel, it makes sense to focus on SEO and content marketing as a way to build value and their brand at the same time.  One of the best tactics to do that is to create frequent content in the form of an online magazine.  This not only grabs the attention of search engines but also engages prospects...

Here are some more reasons why creating an online magazine can help TravelAlerts: 

• Cost of reaching multiple audiences is low - they can expand their reach through multiple niches topics with great content. Google has improved their search algorithm resulting in niche sites being given more visibility. 
  
• Building credibility - By creating valuable travel content that helps readers have a better vacation is something that people will come back to over and over. This helps build TravelAlert's brand and credibility.
  
• Prospects are more receptive to marketing messages - In creating an online magazine, you have many opportunities to build a member database, from online contests, promotions, surveys and even email newsletter. The variety of interactions increases and so does their revenue opportunities. 
  

How can they do it? Some quick tips in creating an online magazine...

Creating a magazine isn't just about making a new website and posting content on a regular basis. You have to do your planning and understand that it meets the needs of your readers while achieving your marketing goals. Here is a list of things you need to do in order to set up a magazine. 
 
1. Do your research
 
Research your competition and potential topics on what you will write about. Understand your readers and get answers to these questions: 

• What would potential readers look for? Develop an audience persona so you know who you're targeting. 
  
• What are they having problems with that you can solve through the magazine?
  
• What are the most commonly searched keywords or keyphrases that are related to travel? Are you able to create content revolving around them? 

Once you have enough research information, you can use the data for your content plan. 
 
2. Create a content plan 

Like a business plan, a content plan allows you to focus your content towards achieving your marketing goals. Your content plan components will include: 

• Content Format - Understand the format your content will be in - i.e. videos, articles, pictures etc. 
  
• Content Type and Distribution - Decide the primary platform you will post your content on - social media, video channel, website, podcast etc..
  
• Content Acquisition - Know where you will source your content. Who will be producing it, and what kind of tone do you want it at.  This means knowing what type of content you want to post on your site, such as news, deep features, interviews or videos.  
  
• Content Scheduling - Create an editorial calendar and list how frequently will you be posting with the topics you want to post.  Once you have an understanding of the type of content you want, list how often you want to post each type of content. For example, news could be more frequent than a feature, and you could have an interview at least once/month. 
  
• Reader Engagement Metrics - Understand what will define the success of your magazine. Is it traffic, number of leads converted, number of comments left, or the number of shares through the social media icons per article. Whatever, it is, make sure the that you have the means to track your success. All engagements between the reader and your magazine should lead the reader forward to either purchase now or purchase later. 
  

Although print magazines may be dying, the online versions are not...By creating one, not only will you be able to achieve your  marketing goals from:

• Lead generation
  
• Brand awareness and reader engagement
  
• Lead nurturing
  

Creating an online magazine is more than just producing a few articles and posting it. You need to that the content you create is focused and relevant for the specific audience you want to attract. Like a marketing campaign, content is used for a purpose, to either get sales or make your prospect perform an action that you can convert to a sale in the future. 

Doing anything else is a waste of time.

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