2.4.2 Goals
The following goals are pursued with social media:
2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA CONCEPT OF LCC S.4
Target group:
- SME in Germany and worldwide
- Business travellers
- Decision-makers (new customers)
- Travel managers (new customers)
- Travellers themselves (information and customer loyalty)
- Potential co-workers, school graduates, job applicants
2.4.3 AUTHOR
Who should post in social networks?
- Headquarters
- Agencies: travel agents, marketing managers, trainees
- Customers: review & recommendation of travel agency performance, travel reports, holiday photos/videos
- Agency / editors
- Headquarters
- Agencies: key accountants, travel agents
- Customers: review & recommendation of travel agency performance
- Agency / editors
2.4.4 CONTENT PLANNING
To help you getting started with social media and provide you with ideas for postings, we prepare a content plan for the whole year and sample posts.
2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA CONCEPT OF LCC S.3
2.4.2 GOALS
The following goals are pursued with social media:
- Perception as the most important travel agency chain
- Underlining our USP (consulting, quality, international network, etc.)
- Articles as templates/ideas to be shared by travel agencies
- Platforms for cooperation partners and promotions
- LCC is the worldwide largest virtual travel agency network
- Virtualise LCC network, i.e. LCC should be present in virtual contexts in the future
- Create brand awareness among end customers/travel agencies, present USP
Target group:
- End customers and new customers (Leisure and Corporate)
- Promote your own LCC agency and products
- Customer loyalty
- New customer acquisition
- Sell travels
- Show/underline that you belong to a network
- New sales/consulting channel (FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.)
- Compliant with corporate design, key visuals, campaign motifs, logo
Target group:
- Existing LCC customers
- New customers from the target market
- Quality travels
- New customer acquisition
- Be found on the Internet as the most important travel agency for business travels for SME
- Information (editorial concept)
Target group:
- SME in Germany and worldwide
- Business travellers
- Decision-makers (new customers)
- Travel managers (new customers)
- Travellers themselves (information and customer loyalty)
- New customer acquisition
- Customer loyalty
- Information (editorial concept)
- Recruiting qualified staff for your own agency
2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA CONCEPT OF LCC S.2
Demographic data:
Age: 35-55 Gender: 80% male – 20% female
Role within the Company: Decision-makers, Travel managers, Booking persons, Travellers
Type of Company: SME
Turnover: 90% < 1 million
Income of decision-makers or travel managers: Net income > 2,800 EUR
Willingness to spend: Higher
Level of education: University degree, A levels
Services:
- Offer / travel plan
- Booking / OBE
- Travel information
- Travel cost optimisation
- MIS reporting
- Stopover
- 24/7 service
Type of travel:
- Flight
- Hotel
- Train
- Rental car
2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA CONCEPT OF LCC S.1
2.4 TARGET GROUPS AND GOALS
Demographic data:
Age: 25-45
Family Status: Couples, Family, Singles, Friends
Interests:
- Travels
- Golf
- Water sports
- Winter sports
- Spa
- Culture
- Shopping
- Adventure trips
Type of travel:
- Package tours
- Pilgrimage journeys
- Cultural tours
- Individual tours
- Single tours
- Cruises
- City tours
- Luxury travels
2.3 ONLINE VISIBILITY AND FACEBOOK REVIEWS
The social media landscape is fragmented. In addition to big players, there are many platforms for different target groups with different focus and functions as well as for a large variety of niches, user groups and interests.
Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube or even blogs as well as all other possible channels are not covered by this guideline and the recommendations made by headquarters. The primary goal is to prepare travel agencies for their first steps in the most important platforms Facebook and XING/LinkedIn. The use of other channels can then be addressed in the next step.
2.3 ONLINE VISIBILITY AND FACEBOOK REVIEWS
For travel agencies, local visibility and findability on the Internet is particularly important. Headquarters consider it very important that travel agencies are visible on a local scale. For this reason, you should maintain and always keep up-to-date the presence and location of your travel agency on review portals, such as Yelp, and information about it on Google My Business, Yellow Pages, etc., in addition to the profiles on Facebook and XING/LinkedIn. Reacting to reviews is important. More information to the significance of online findability can be found in the SEO manual.
User reviews of companies and company pages on Facebook influence how other people perceive a company, and they are important for ranking and findability of the page within Facebook. But these reviews do not only play a role within Facebook. Reviews from within Facebook are also shown on Google, for Facebook search results and together with Google’s information about a company.
Integration of reviews in Google search results and, thus, linking to Facebook are other reasons for locally active companies, such as travel agencies, to use Facebook.
2.2 WHAT CHANNELS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES? S.2
Facebook has about 1.8 billion monthly active users (as of September 2016, source: Facebook: Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2016 Results), 28 millions of them from Germany (as of February 2016, source: allfacebook.de: Official Facebook user numbers for Germany). And the numbers of users increase each year.
This means, Facebook is the largest social network, and the most relevant for Leisure target groups.
Benefits for travel agencies:
- Reach within the target group
- Direct dialogue with (potential) customers is possible
- New customer groups can be found, name recognition can be increased
- More touch points with customers
- Customer loyalty & customer Service
- Improving image and reputation
Social media use is not restricted to Leisure customers. It is also important for B2B and business travels. The most important networks in this regard are XING (for the DACH area, i.e. Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and LinkedIn (international). You can also create company profiles in addition to personal profiles.
Benefits for travel agencies:
- Presence in the business travel field, planning of business travels
- Addressing those responsible for business travels
- Networking
- Staying in touch with business contacts
- Recruiting staff
2.1 SUPPORT BY LCC HEADQUARTERS
2.1 SUPPORT BY LCC HEADQUARTERS
Being present on the Internet and in social media channels is very important for travel agencies but can also be a challenge. You are not alone with this task. Our headquarters support you in all your activities. We offer you the following assistance:
The present manual provides you with operative guidelines for the most important social media channels. It includes important information, notes, tips and tricks so that you and your travel agency can get ready for the social web.
LCC Headquarters prepare an annual content pool including postings that can be used by the travel agencies. This content can be found in myLCC here.
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LCC Headquarters provide the travel agencies with a variety of panorama pictures for download that can be used in social media. Since this is only a (limited) selection, travel agencies may and should also use their own images, of course.
To support you with your first steps in the social media world or to deepen you knowledge we offer you several tutorials that you can watch at your own time.
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Instant Messaging
Social media marketing on business Networks LinkedIn
