Adventure Central

Leanin' Forward

I heard someone say recently that people who seek new experiences and challenges are "leaning forward in life". We clearly see that with our tour operator customers, folks who have made a business out of taking people out on the water, into the wilderness or simply on more contemplative, soulful journeys. These outfitters and guides decided at some point that their passion was leading people on unique and memorable journeys--whether a 1/2 day raft trip down the Snake River in Wyoming, a vineyard tour of Umbria or skiing in the Chilean Andes.

These are special folks, these adventure guides, whose purpose it is to open our eyes to new worlds, ideas, cultures and frontiers. They "get it" and want us to as well, and for them it IS all about leaning forward in life versus the alternative--it is who they are. We salute them this holiday weekend, the unofficial start to the North American summer. We know they'll busy over the next few days doing what they do best. We hope you're out there leanin' right along with them!

Dick Schulte

Marketing Your Adventures to the Masses

How to Sell More in 2008 – March Edition

What’s the ultimate objective for your business? Of course, you want to have fun, but few would argue with the desire to sell more seats on more trips. Last month, we showed you how to use the Adventure Central system to maximize your activities for search engines and get more prospects to your site and your activity listings throughout Adventure Central’s distribution network. This month’s tip will build on that to show you how to use the Adventure Central system to maximize conversion of those prospects into online sales.

The Hook: Landing/Results Pages

Critical Elements: Activity Title, Marketing Description, Thumbnail Photo, Search Categories

The first step in converting prospects to customers is getting them interested in your activities – typically called “the hook”. We enable distribution partners to link to our landing and results pages that leverage these elements. Remember that your activities appear on landing pages for every Search Category you associate them with - you can select up to 3 relevant activity types and themes/interests so use them! Also be sure to select the most specific destination available (ie Arkansas River vs North America). By doing so, your activity will show up not only on the Arkansas River page, but also Colorado, United States and so on.

Some partners - like Orbitz for example - will take your activity data and publish it into their own systems, using it to integrate more tightly into their sites with other surrounding content and products. Either way, they’ll use what you provide as guidance, so you know the first impression of your activities will be in synch. This is your elevator pitch – be sure to let prospects know what makes this activity unique and thread in a few pertinent details that are keyword-rich. Be sure to keep it brief – your goal is to hook a potential customer and get them interested in reading more details about your activity.

Good Marketing Description:

Near White Salmon, WA and Hood River, OR. Torrents of glacier runoff can make the excitement almost non-stop. You’ll be paddling air during Corkscrew Falls. Class V Husum Falls is optional. This is whitewater rafting that you cannot afford to miss.

Needs some work:
1/2 day of guided four wheel drive tour. Vehicle capacity is 6 persons. Location of tour will be determined by the weather and time of season.

Why?

These details are pertinent after a prospect decides they’re interested, but doesn’t do enough to explain why someone would want to do this activity in the first place. Unlike the first example, it also misses out on keyword-rich search engine content.

The Line: Activity Details Pages
Critical Elements: Long Description, Details Photo and Location Info, Itinerary, Gear List, etc
We enable distribution partners to link directly to activity details pages and many do. This is your hard sell – you’ve gotten their interest and now it’s time to get them to book. Make sure you communicate all relevant information that a customer needs when deciding to book your trip. Use bulleted lists and formatted sub-headings to help break up long sections of text. Our system allows you to populate the Long Description with up to 3000 characters of text but don't think you have to use all of them. You'll need more space to describe a 2-week safari in Africa than a 2-hour bike-ride, for example.

Good Long Description:

Location:                       Makena Landing
Check-in:                       7:00am
Ages:                             5 and up

Our Signature Trip! This south Maui kayak and snorkel eco-adventure is No Ka Oi! Enjoy the calm and clear waters of Turtle Town where you will encounter an abundance of green sea turtles, occasional dolphin sightings, and dozens of species of vibrant tropical fish. Experience snorkeling at Skylight Cave where you can free dive through caves, tunnels, and volcanic arches. Explore the historic Pu’uolai coastline, snorkeling among spectacular coral reefs and geological formations that attract hundreds of species of marine life. Midway through this adventure, you will land on one of Maui’s beautiful beaches with vistas of three islands where we will serve you a delicious picnic lunch. The multiple snorkel sites we will kayak to include a variety of unique features such as:

• Snorkeling through underwater arches
• Free Diving through tunnels and caves
• Five Caves / Skylight Cave
• Manta and Eagle Ray sightings
• Octopus and Eel
• Dolphin sightings
• Whale watching when in season
• Black Sand Beach
• Movie Star homes
• Snorkeling that is superior to Molokini
• Lunch, snacks, fresh Hawaiian fruits and beverages included

Needs some work:

The trip will involve visiting some of the Oasis located in the Western desert in Egypt.

Why?

This doesn’t give a prospect enough information to decide whether the activity is right for them. Adding key highlights of the itinerary threaded with content-rich keywords will be more successful in getting people to take the next step, as well as provide more relevant content for search engines.

The Sinker: Check Availability and Booking Pages
Critical Elements: Dates, Times, Rates and Cancellation/Payment Policies
Once a prospect decides they’re interested, it’s time to reinforce their decision with all the pertinent details. Besides making sure you have relevant dates, times and rates loaded, it’s important to ensure that your cancellation and payment policies are friendly and easy to understand.

Example Cancellation Policy:
Cancellations 48 hours or more before departure:
Payments on reservations cancelled more than 48 hours before the departure date will be refunded less a 20% cancellation fee.  (The 20% cancellation fee is based on the total value of the reservation.)

Cancellations within 48 hours of the departure:
Reservations cancelled within 48 hours of the departure date are NON-REFUNDABLE.

So how do your activities stack up? If you think it's time for a refresher, updating your activities is easy with the Activity Wizard, which enables you to provide all the above elements in 4 simple steps. Be sure to remember that online users will be reviewing your activity listings from all over the world and may or may not know anything about what you do or what's so great about it. Ask your customers what they like about your activities and services and incorporate that into your descriptions and you'll be selling more before you know it.

Search Engine Optimization Primer

How to Sell More in 2008 - February Edition
Everyone knows search engines are key to driving qualified travelers to your site, but not everyone knows how to get the top of the listings. I hate to admit it, but there is no magic answer to consistently achieving high search engine rankings - but there are a variety of resources to help educate you on what search engines care about and how to make your site not only user-friendly, but search-engine-friendly as well. Here's a quick primer on how to get started with search engine optimization, as well as a few sites to visit regularly for more tips and tricks.

Getting Started

Step 1: Research relevant keywords

Do you know what language your customers and prospects use when looking for your activities? Be sure to include relevant locations and destinations as well as types of activities you offer. Remember, travelers use 4 - 6 keywords on average when searching for things to do and you may be more successful with high rankings for phrases like "Colorado skiing" than "Colorado" or "skiing" alone.

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

More on How to Choose Keywords

Step 2: “Tag” your keywords

Once you've determined the most relevant keywords for your customers and prospects, the next step is to thread them into key HTML tags on your site - especially PAGE TITLE and META tags. Be sure that tags on key pages are unique and best reflect the content on each page.

More on How to Use HTML Meta Tags

Step 3: Create relevant content

For your website:

Your website should describe what your company does and it should pertain to the keywords you already have tagged for your site.  The keywords should be threaded throughout your site to ensure relevance to the tags you've created.  Be sure to use a variety of keywords throughout your content so you rank higher on several different terms, not just one.

You'll also want to analyze your keyword density to make sure you aren't using desired keywords too little or too much.

Another great way to drive traffic to your site is by doing "top" lists. Not only does it create more relevant search engine content, but customers love lists, whether they are of myths about adventure travel or the top 10 reasons why customers should take a trip with you. 

No matter what kind of list you have on your website, customers will be drawn to it.

For your activity listings:

For any activity you want to sell online, it's very important to describe it well for both customers and search engines. Adventure Central Connect and Adventure Central Office provide you with tools to manage your activity content as effectively as possible. Critical fields include Activity Name, Descriptions and Search Categories.

We recommend that your activity name and descriptions be as detailed and relevant as possible to the keywords you have selected for your site.  For example, the activity name "Bike Rental Day Rate" may be entirely accurate, but does nothing to describe where the biking activity takes place or what makes it so unique. "Colorado Extreme Bike Rental" is more likely to rank higher and will draw more qualified visitors.

Clicking on the image to the left, you'll see an example of detailed descriptions for a fictitious activity, "Costa Rican Bird Watching". Notice that both descriptions use not only general birdwatching terminology, but also specific regions and types of birds that are likely to be encountered along the way.

The Search Categories you pick for your activities are used by our system to create landing pages.  Landing pages are important because they not only narrow down the search results for your users, but they also serve as important entry pages for search engines.  Our system allows you to specify up to 3 activity types and themes, so be sure to use them as long as they are relevant to your activities and corresponding keywords.

By specifying destination, activity type and theme categories for our Costa Rican Bird Watching adventure, for example, we've created 8 additional landing pages that can be ranked by search engines. Be sure to include the categories as keywords in your descriptions to achieve higher rankings.

Remember to preview your activity through your Adventure Web links and make sure it looks good!

Step 4: Build inbound links

Unfortunately, having great keywords and content on your site is not enough! Search engines also consider how popular your site is - measured by how many sites link to it. The pages we host link to your site, so that helps. You can see what other sites are linking to you by doing a quick Google search for: “link: www.yoursite.com”. Also know that it is better to be linked to from one popular site like Microsoft or Wikipedia rather than a bunch of sites that don't create traffic like a family web page.  Simple tips like joining the Better Business Bureau or submitting your site to a paid directory can help.

101 Link Building Tips

Step 5: Avoid search engine obstacles

Many search engines, including Google, use a crawler to navigate your website. It's important to know that crawlers can't navigate complex coding - things like forms and frames can trip up a search engine crawler, preventing content behind them from getting listed. So if you're going to use them, always remember to provide alternative HTML links to your content, either in the pages directly or in your Sitemap.

Search Engines and Frames

Step 6: Submit and verify
There are many ways to have your site submitted to search engines but it is important that you do it manually rather than through an automated system.  By doing it manually you can limit your submissions to the top search engine sites like Google, Yahoo! and MSN and you can make sure your site isn't being over submitted which has penalties.  It can take up to a month or more before your web page appears, but there are ways to speed up the process including creating XML sitemaps. 

Submission Tips

More on XML Sitemaps

Step 7: Rinse and repeat
Always remember that you are never finished with search engine optimization - because search engines change their algorithms to improve the relevancy of their results, your competitors make changes, customer behaviors change, etc. You must continuously measure your results, learn what's working and what's not, and refine your approach. In addition to reviewing your web usage logs with tools like WebTrends or Google Analytics, you can submit your information to sites like SiteTrafficStats to see how many people go to your site, how frequently they return, and what keywords they type in to find your website.  It's an easy way to see what people are doing to get to your site and it helps you find additional ways to optimize your site for search engines and customers.

Feel free to share your insights and ideas on search engine optimization - what's worked, what hasn't, what tools you find useful, etc by commenting on this post. Happy SEO'ing!

Additional Resources

Search Engine Optimization: Step by Step

SearchEngineWatch.com

SEOChat.com

SiteTrafficStats.com

SEO Today

Search Engine Guide

Distribution: Maximize your Online Shelf Space

How to Sell More in 2008 - January Edition
Think about the most recent purchase you made online – how many sites did you visit? How many choices did you review? According to PhocusWright, more than 3 out of 4 travelers will begin their planning process at search engines. And a study this month from comScore indicates that travelers make 12 travel related searches and visit a whopping 22 websites before they make a decision, with a majority of these searches using generic terms rather than company/brand specific terms. That’s why major travel brands make sure their inventory is included on as many sites as possible. Do you want a 1/22 chance that a potential customer will notice you? Or do you want a 22/22 chance? If travelers visit multiple sites and see your brand on several of them, they’re much more likely to buy it! Through distribution services like Adventure Central’s, you maximize your shelf space and likelihood of getting your activities in front of as many qualified customers as possible.

Why does it matter – and more importantly – why does it matter right now?

The mainstream travel industry has never been more ready and more interested in the unique activities that each of you provide. That was confirmed in October 2007 at PhocusWright’s Online Travel Conference. Dozens of speakers and hundreds of attendees gathered to discuss online travel trends shaping the way each of our businesses will grow in the future - and time and time again - the focus came back to adventure and experiential travel. Adventure Central’s CEO, Dick Schulte, had the opportunity to present at PhocusWright as well. See what he had to say.

 

How to Distribute Your Activities

If you're not sure how to distribute your activities in Adventure Central Office, download and review this quick tip.
Download how_to_distribute_activities_in_adventure_office_v2.doc  (Microsoft Word format)