How To Get Media Mentions For Your Travel Brand

Media mentions are a great way to improve awareness around your travel brand, or alternatively, to create a bit of hype around a new product that you are now offering.

But before you start firing off your product information to journalists in the area, consider how you are going to approach this. If you don't put some thought into how you do it, you risk not receiving a response or being turned down.

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How To Get Media Mentions

It starts with a strategy. Like all things marketing and PR related, success is largely dependent on the time, effort, and planning you put into it.

Which Publications Should You Approach?

To narrow down the options concerning who to approach, you could start by taking a look at your local community. Identify which of the media partners would be a suitable option to get a mention from.

If your product or brand has a reach beyond what is local, then you will need to analyze your audience a little closer.

As a travel brand, this will include travelers naturally. But after that who are they?

Are they 18 to 35-year-olds in search of adventure, or 40 to 60 something and interested in luxury travel? Is your focus on group tours or solo travelers, or perhaps you are a travel agent who sells accommodation and flights?

Once you have an audience profile, you need to figure out where they hang out online. Which websites do they subscribe to or regularly read, and where do they go to seek travel information?

It is these sites and publications that you need to feature on. Of course, they should be related to your niche to ensure relevancy too.

Nurture A Relationship

Now that you have an idea of where to look, we can move onto how to get media mentions.

In the ideal situation, you first want to build a relationship with the target publications. While it is not always possible to do it this way, you stand a better chance of getting media coverage for your travel brand if you know someone on the inside.

If you don’t, you had better have a mind-blowing proposition to put forward! Publications / writers / reporters / journalists receive any given number of pitches per day, and it is simply not possible to write them all.

While going in without an existing relationship can make it a little bit harder, it is by no means impossible. With a killer proposition and tactful approach, it’s not a case of how to get media mentions, more of a when.

Build Some Rapport

To lay the groundwork and establish some familiarity, find out where the writer posts online. The easiest way to do this is usually to find their professional profiles on social media.

Follow them and regularly engage in productive commentary on their posts so that your brand name becomes recognizable. Add thoughtful feedback and let them know what you think of their articles.

For those that respond, continue building rapport over time. If you continually show that you are a thought leader, you will soon be in a position to suggest a publication feature.

Work On Your Content Strategy

When approaching publications for a feature, make sure that you have some great ideas ready to share with them. They will notice a fresh and interesting take on a subject over run of the mill content that they see regularly.

For ideas, look at what is currently trending in the travel industry. Draw inspiration from this and put together a great piece of content that aligns your media mention goals with the highly relevant and interesting topic.

As an example, you could pen a piece on solo female travel in Cambodia if your travel agency has just opened up a new flight route to the country. Or if you lead tour groups in South America you might put together an article on an unusual festival held in one of your destinations.

Create Infographics

If you are in a position to curate some relevant and interesting statistics, then an infographic has great potential for being shared and getting mentions in the media.

Their ability to simplify seemingly complex concepts makes them a popular choice to reflect information that is of interest to a particular audience.

Organize A Fam Trip

While travel agents might be the first thing to pop into mind when Fam trips are mentioned, media partners often go on them too.

So as an alternate approach when considering how to get media mentions for your travel brand, you might consider inviting the relevant publications for an on-site educational. This way the writer / photographer / journalist / publisher will have the opportunity to experience your offering first hand.

Fam trips by design are reciprocal. In exchange for a complimentary experience, your travel brand will receive a feature or write up in the publication that the media person represents.

HARO Is Your Friend

Help A Reporter Out, better known as HARO is an online platform that pairs journalists with news sources.

As an overview, journalists put together a list of the content topics they are interested in writing about. Sources receive emails on a daily basis with the topic list, and if any are relevant, they respond with a short pitch.

There are rules and regulations which encourage everyone to play fair on the platform, and it is not just limited to news. HARO features success stories for brands as well as products on their website too.

Best Pitch Practices

We have put together a few best practices that will apply to pretty much any scenario when pitching for a media feature:

• When reaching out, at first keep your pitch short and provide enough insight into your proposal to pique interest without losing them to a lengthy spiel.
• Learn to tell an interesting story – capturing the media person’s attention will rely on this.
• Create the sense that the publisher will benefit from mentioning your travel brand. If there is perceived value for them and not only you, your job pitching will be much easier.
• Attend events in your industry niche where you will have the chance to meet media people, and be seen and heard.

To end off on the subject of how to get media mentions for your travel brand, we will leave you with this.

Getting your brand featured in the media can drive great results for your travel business. After all, mentions signify popularity and authority.

With your name being spoken by various publishers in the travel sphere, you will raise brand awareness and generate sales conversions for your business.