I am new here, I’m opening Japan travel tips + accommodation reservation webservice (in English) for people travelling Japan. Since we’re small company and have no fundraising, I’d like to spend less money and be efficient on marketing.
Since the profit comes from hotel booking, I’d spend money to targeted mail marketing rather than PPC or SEO - a way to contact potentially frequent travellers and to pay to deals (reservations), not to clicks.
-Does anybody have different idea?
-If you agree on targeted mail marketing, which service do you recommend?
-Where can I refer to the basics on what you have to be careful in mail marketing e.g. you should avoid which expression, this is spam, etc?
Email marketing is less effective in the travel sector. For travel sites you should consider things like video creation and submit to video engines like youtube. You should also set-up an account at Tripadvisor as there are a lot of business/leisure travellers there. Simply answer questions on the forums and write about the places your site features.
tuksdrr, that’s very helpful. e-mail marketing is less effective because for travel sites you expect smaller margins than the other? I’ll open an account to tripadvisor, dopplr, glider, etc.
Register with most of the traveling sites and create a blog and write all the things you perform. There are more sites which drives traffic to your site. Also SEO plays a major role to bring hits to your site.
Create a monthly newsletter for your sites users. Maybe provide a lot of facts about Japan and some areas that may interest travelers. Start a couple different blogs that mention your site relatively often. It seems like you have a great idea going on here, and I plan on visiting Japan next year so keep me posted!