Travel is a sector that will never fall short when it comes to creativity. Right from the real-life picturesque views to animations that touch hearts and stories that make people want to pack their bags and create one of their own- creative travel ads have come a long way.
Considering there are always experiences just waiting to be explored, it’s not that tough to take a unique approach. Convincing travelers to book the next flight is even easier if you do it with the right strategies.
With this blog, let’s cover what it takes to let the creativity in your travel ads do the talking.
The Role of Creative Travel Ads
So the question is, why make your travel ads creative? We can do it with simple ones, right? Well.. not anymore.
Traveling, although fun, does take up a large part of someone’s time and money. Apart from impulsive travelers, people start planning for their next trip well in advance. They want the most of their experience, and if you can promise that through your ads, you’ve got yourself a deal.
Here’s what a travel ad needs to do.
- Inspire wanderlust, urging people to explore their desire to travel.
- Tap into their emotions and transport them to a better time and place.
- Convey real experiences that travelers can hope to expect.
- Convey how your brand can get them to find this exceptional experience.
- Make your brand stick at the top of their minds.
While this might look like a lot at once, it’s not. Whether you’re advertising an airline, a tour company, a booking site, a hotel, or a place, you need to step up your game in all aspects to match your competitors.
Steps to Craft a Compelling Campaign
Understand the Traveler
You’re probably not going to target everyone with your ads. It’s not possible either. Moreover, generic travel ads won’t do anything for your business. To create a good foundation for travel advertising, you need to identify and understand the travelers you’re going to focus on first.
To narrow down the audience for your creative travel ads, focus on the following.
- Demographics: What age groups, income level, gender, and relationship status do you serve?
- Geographics: Where are you looking to attract tourists from? Is it a specific country, state, city, or local area?
- Psychographics: What does your target audience picture when they think about traveling? Their hobbies, interests, lifestyle, personality traits, etc.
- Behavioral: How do these potential travelers behave online? The pages they follow, the searches they do, and the websites they visit.
The Traveler’s Consumer Journey
Another thing that you can do to understand your travel audience is to get to know their journey. What stage are they on as a consumer?
They’re probably dreaming of it, but are they considering it? Have they moved to the planning stage yet? Bookings come next, followed by last-minute preparations. Finally, when they’re on their trip exploring. That’s not it. There’s still the stage where they are back from the trip and giving their feedback.
Throughout these stages, there are multiple places where you can swoop in based on the kind of service you provide.
Your Goals and Advertising Channels
Amongst everything, let’s not forget your own goals. What is it that you want to achieve through travel ad campaigns? Your goals can change based on a variety of factors. For instance, during peak travel and holiday seasons, you might want to focus on generating leads and gaining conversions. But once it’s over, the focus might shift to brand awareness and driving consideration.
Make these goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) to get a better direction for your creative travel ads.
Next up is deciding your advertising channels. Think of the platforms where your audience is the most present and active. Based on this, you can decide between PPC advertising, social media advertising, or emails.
This can also be paired up with your goals to create better campaigns. For example, for leads and conversions, PPC advertising works better. But for awareness campaigns, social media platforms could be better.
Draft a Story
Do you know what it is that gives creative travel ads a voice? It’s the stories that portray the what-could-be’s. They hook viewers in, make them relate, find themselves imagining the scenario, and make them care. Think of it as the limbs of the story that make the tour & travel ads move forward. At the end of the day, they play a huge role in helping people make the decision.
So, now that you know why stories are so important, it’s time to draft one for your own creative travel ad. Here’s how you can do it:
- Get clear on the message you want to highlight.
- Develop your plot around the message. Prepare your characters to act out the beginning, middle, and end.
- Make characters relatable and experiences achievable. Don’t stretch it too far.
- Use localized metaphors and languages to keep it personalized.
Highlight all the aspects that can make your story sell.
Focus on the visual elements
For travelers, visuals are the lenses into experiences. They make you see what traveling to a new place could actually look like. Your creative travel ads need to have visuals that not only captivate the viewers but also complement the story you just created. Combined, you need to serve a remarkable visual narrative.
Here’s what you can do to get your visual elements just right:
- Use high-resolution images that perfectly capture the destination, accommodation, or experience.
- Experiment with different perspectives for better shots.
- Showcase major and underrated places to attract a large part of the travelers.
- Show the journey of real people and how your business was of help to them.
It’s no secret that visuals sell in the travel industry. So, make sure you craft visuals that ignite wanderlust among the viewers.
Measure and Update
Your creativity can cost you if you don’t measure the results of your campaigns. With travel ads, there can be times when you unknowingly hurt the sentiments of a cultural group or fail to resonate with your audience. This calls for quick action, which can only be achieved if you regularly measure the performance of your campaign.
Optimize and update it accordingly, take precautionary measures, and utilize the data for future campaigns. See what elements perform better and what needs to be changed. Move your budget to strategies and elements that have performed better, and learn from your previous analytics.
Creative Travel Ad Examples to Take Inspiration From
OutHorse your Emails by Iceland
You’re on vacation but can’t disconnect from work life? Iceland has the perfect solution- you can now outsource your emails to Icelandic horses. The ad film portrays travelers being frustrated with receiving emails throughout their trip. And cut to our heroes; you can see the horses replying back with gibberish emails.
This creative travel and tour ad is a perfect example of how wittiness and humor can be used to attract tourists.
Click to Holiday by Cathay Pacific
Flights, hotels. spas, and other experiences- Cathay Pacific provides everything in one place. In their latest ad film, you can see our soon-to-be traveler scrolling through destinations in her room. She clicks on one, and the walls break, taking her on one journey to another.
Through this ad, the booking site displays how they can be the director behind your perfect vacation. Your entire holiday can come together in just one click.
Train Story by VIA Rail
VIA Rails has slowly been introducing its new trains into service. Inspired by the Pixar universe, Train Story is a touching ad film portraying a little girl playing with her miniature train set. Halfway through it, she unboxes a new train. The climax builds, all her toys are intrigued, and she adds the new train to her tracks. Neither gets replaced, and both run together.
This campaign successfully strengthens the emotional connection between the brand and its audience by adhering to nostalgia and fond memories.
Conclusion
And there you have it! The perfect recipe for crafting a creative travel advertisement. We know that it might seem a bit complex at first, but remember that you don’t have to do it all in one day. Take your time to understand the travel market and plan appropriately. The good news is that you don’t need to have a big budget or hire professionals; just your phone will suffice.
The travel market offers plenty of opportunities for creativity. You can tap into new emotions, places, and experiences yet to be discovered and present them through compelling visual narratives. It’s all about showing your viewers what they’re missing out on and what their trip can look like.
