Social proof is the concept that people will change their behaviour according to what other people do, say, or think.
In the travel industry, smart marketers use this psychological principle to their advantage to influence purchasing behaviour. Travellers love to read customer reviews, see endorsements, and seek reassurance from others before they book.
In this blog post, we take a look at examples of how to use social proof in your emails and website in travel marketing. These eleven inventive ideas use the experiences and actions of others to influence your customers’ behaviour and secure more bookings.
Customer reviews
The universal popularity of TripAdvisor shows just how important other customers’ genuine opinions are when someone is planning a trip. People often turn to customer reviews for a trusted and unbiased viewpoint on what they’re about to book.
You can easily integrate customer reviews into your email designs with our Drag & Drop Editor or use PureTargeting to automatically send email requests for reviews to previous bookers.
Certification
Travel is a heavily regulated market and membership of governing bodies and organisations goes a long way to reassure the customer and improve your brand’s credibility.
If you’re an accredited member of a trade association, promote your affiliation throughout your site and your email marketing. Flashing their seal of approval will assure your customer that your brand is a wise and trusted choice.
Crowdsourced bestsellers
Inspire customers by showing them your most popular destinations, hotels, or packages alongside snippets of real comments from other travellers.
Our PureTargeting software lets you identify and display crowdsourced suggestions throughout your site and email communications to highlight which are your bestsellers.
User ratings
In a similar vein to customer reviews, user ratings provide a handy insight into the genuine experiences of others.
The advantage of ratings is that they provide an immediate snapshot and can easily be incorporated into emails and product pages, which are often just quickly scanned.
Ratings also provide a useful tool for customers to use to compare destinations, resorts and hotels against each other.
Social media endorsement
People tend to judge popularity as an indication of quality, so showing off a large number of fans on social media reinforces this.
As well as the aggregate number giving your customers confidence, when you actively encourage people to ‘like’ your brand on Facebook their likes are seen by friends and family. In this way it acts as a personal endorsement.
This is type of peer-to-peer marketing means people connected to your customers are far more likely to consider the brand themselves. You can then increase email subscribers from social media by inviting them to sign up to your email program using our PurePromotions tool.
Celebrity endorsement
It’s not just friends and family that influence us. Well respected figures in the public eye can also endorse behaviours and actions.
If your brand is lucky enough to have clients who are celebrities then talk to them about promoting their endorsement.
Otherwise, simply share when a star flies to a destination you offer or books a room in one of your resorts. Their association can attract new potential customers to your brand.
Personal recommendations
You can easily make personal recommendations by using customer insight tools such as PureIntelligence to identify what customers who share similar profiles also bought or liked.
Our software shows you trends and patterns in customer behaviour and then enables you to publish personal recommendations on email or your website, tailored to the profile of each individual customers to cross or upsell products and services.
Live availability updates
A little sense of urgency goes a long way to getting people to commit. Airlines frequently use the power of the crowd to update their customers about availability.
By telling customers just how few seats they have left, you can create a fear of missing out that compels them to book. And if you use our technology you’ll be able to display pop-ups and send targeted automated messages with availability updates to prompt customers to book.
Live viewing updates
Similar to the live availability updates, viewing alerts let you show your customer just how many others are browsing the same product at the same time.
Using a solution like PureTargeting it’s easy to reassure potential customers that what they’re looking at is popular and reinforce that they need to book before it sells out.
Travel blogs
Brands such a Virgin are increasingly combining blogging and social proof as way of attracting customers.
By promoting the exploits and recommendations of seasoned travellers they attract interest in destinations, visitor attractions, and resorts with a trusted viewpoint and an easy online read.
If you’re looking to use blogs then research and reach out to travel bloggers to see if you can tempt them into reviewing your products.
Social sharing and sign-ups
According to Facebook 52% of users state that shared photos inspire them to make travel plans.
If you want to inspire others then consider sharing images further by integrating your social media feeds into your website content or emails. Our PureTargeting technology allows you to easily feature these updates and provide a little extra inspiration to make others book.
Takeaway
These are just eleven of the possibilities of how you can use social proof to attract people to your travel brand.
If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration about how you can use this powerful psychological phenomenon then speak to us about our eCommerce software. It offers travel marketers smart ways to build credibility, offer reassurance, and influence bookings using the power of the crowd.
Find out more about our eCommerce solution and start using social proof to increase sales.