Whether it’s for tourists or locals, water sport and activity businesses have some serious competition when it comes to attracting customers. With so many choices for potential guests, it’s important for water-based tour and activity operators to find new ways to grab attention.
One strategy that has been gaining popularity in the water-based tour and activity industry is offering guests free photos and videos of their experience. Operators that provide adventures like scuba diving, whitewater rafting, boat tours, surf lessons, and deep sea fishing expeditions can all benefit from this powerful approach.
With that in mind, let’s dive into some deep waters to learn why offering free photo and video memories to your guests is one business tactic not to be ignored. After all, it can only increase your chances of attracting more customers than your closest competitors.
There are several reasons why offering free photo and video memories to your customers can help grow your water sports and activity business. Let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why this is the case.
When you share free photo and video memories with your guests, you’re almost guaranteed to increase the customer satisfaction of everyone who invested in your tour or activity. This is important, because a happy customer is more likely to refer your business to friends and family.
In addition, these photos and videos are fantastic visuals to get your business into the hearts and minds of these potential new customers.
Your guests can share the photo memories your business offers
We all know people love to share their amazing experiences with friends and family, and oftentimes even complete strangers. There of course is no better way to do this than through the power of beautiful photos and videos.
In today’s digital age, sharing photos and videos with the largest possible audience has never been easier. Consider the increased exposure for your water-based tour or activity, when satisfied clients share photos of themselves loving your experience through email, SMS text, and social media.
Do customers really like it when someone tries to sell them photos? Especially right after they have completed a water-based tour or activity.
For many people this situation is incredibly awkward. These valued guests have to do their best to politely refuse, while at the same time feeling pressured to make a purchase. Talk about a bad last impression for your business.
Imagine instead guests knowing in advance, they’re going to receive free photo and video memories from your experience. What a comfort for them to be truly relaxed and fully immersed in your water-based tour or activity.
The added bonus is that it lets you consider increasing the booking cost of your water-based tour or activity. This is because free photos and videos can instead be included as part of a package that your business offers.
Now that you better understand why offering free photos and videos to your guests can help grow your business, let’s take a look at how to fully optimize this strategy. Below are three incredibly effective ways to market your water-based tour and activity and grow your business.
If you want more repeat bookings or referrals you need to stay engaged with your past customers. One of the best ways to do this is with remarketing emails. The catch is that these emails need to contain photos of the recipient enjoying your water-based tour or activity.
The first email you send to past customers should be a thank you with the free photos and videos. It is best to send this 24 to 48-hours after your guest has participated in your tour or activity. Not only will the guest be delighted with the free photos or videos, but their customer satisfaction will increase.
After that, it's a good strategy to send follow-up remarketing emails to past guests with their photos on the anniversary of their visit, and their birthday. You may also want to send these remarketing emails just prior to the start of your busy season.
This allows you to capture repeat bookings from past customers happy to be reminded of their wonderful memories. You could also include a call-to-action that encourages your past guests to share their photos with family and friends, which will help create more awareness for your business.
Social media is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness and referrals for your water-based sport or activity business. That’s why it’s a great tactic to let past guests receiving their free photos to share them on social media to help promote your business.
It is also possible to brand these photos with your company logo and provide a link to your website for anyone interested in sharing them on social media. This type of social media sharing from satisfied customers will dramatically increase the visibility of your business on social media. Best of all this exposure will come from a customer who is referring your water-based activity or tour to a wide-network of people.
Allowing your past customers to share their free guest photos on social media, will help increase quality traffic to your website from potential customers truly interested in your business. The more quality traffic to your website, the more bookings for your tour and activity business.
Last but not least, when sharing free photos and videos with guests of their experience, you can request they leave a positive review for your business on a popular review website. You can also request they include one of the photos you provided as part of their review.
Getting positive reviews is critical for your tour or activity business to be successful. This is why sharing amazing photo memories within your guests is so important, as it motivates them to leave a good review. If that positive review can feature an amazing photo of your past guest having a great time, even better.
You now know that giving away photos and videos to guests can grow your water sport or activity business, but one question still remains. How can I do all this in the most efficient and easiest way possible? That’s a completely reasonable question, and the answer is Fotaflo.
Fotaflo is the premier photo delivery and marketing platform for the water-based and activity industry. Everything mentioned in this blog can be easily and efficiently be achieved through our highly effective automated software.
Fotaflo loves water sports, tours and activities so much, we're offering up to US$500 in savings on a first year subscription for all water-based tour and activity operators.
This offer will be available until 1 March 2023, so don’t wait to take advantage of this opportunity.
If you’re interested in learning more about this special offer, and how Fotaflo can help your water sport and activity business, book your free demo today!