How Can Cruise Brands Reach New Audience Groups on Social Media?

If you’re a cruise brand, then social media has no shortage of healthy opportunities to get your business’ name out there. And with it rising in popularity in recent years, there’s maybe no better way for you to show off your ships, destinations and special offers with it.

Factor in its ability to create a real community of users and strengthen your customer service with, and it’s one seriously powerful tool to have in your marketing kit.

Along with this article, we’ve funnelled some fresh research into a new cruise trends report which touches on how you can use cruise social media to your brand’s advantage. Let’s take a look…

Why cruise brands should invest in social media

We’ll start with unpacking a few things about the power of social media. As a source of information – and inspiration – it’s easily accessible for users, and easy for brands to show the best they have to offer. Whether it’s imagery, on-board video content, user-generated content (in the form of user reviews and feedback), there is plenty a brand can do to show off its products.

Through this, brands can build a genuine community that lets them converse with customers in a genuine, authentic way – something that is increasingly attractive to users, regardless of sector these days.

But it’s through things like paid media and other kinds of digital marketing where social media really shines for cruise brands. The data that social media provides gives businesses a boatload of info on their users, including demographics, interests and online behaviour. With this data to hand, brands can create a range of varied, highly tailored ads that can be deployed to users in the places they’re most likely to be found.

Cruise trends: our recent findings

Building on our previous research in the cruise industry, we recently did another deep dive to see what 2024 has brought us so far when it comes to trends. Here’s a sneak preview of some of what we found…

A decrease in organic search terms

So far, there were some pretty big downswings in terms of certain cruise keywords, including ‘cruise holiday’ and ‘all inclusive cruise holidays’ – which suggests that cruise audiences simply aren’t using search to find their voyages abroad right now.

An increase in solo cruise interest

We also saw January spiking in searches for solo cruises, something that’s been increasing year-on-year. Heading over to social media showed us there were plenty of stats confirming this, with several solo-related hashtags proving popular on a range of channels.

How to use these findings for your marketing strategy

You can use these findings to your advantage across your marketing strategy, even if the first finding is a bit of a grim outlook.

Like we said earlier, social media marketing is a super effective way of targeting audiences, whether broad or specific. If you aren’t using organic or paid social right now, then we’d say that now would be the time to do so, fine tuning your activity to cater to related interests and hobbies.

We’ll show you how to do this below…

How to reach new audience groups on social media

Of course, there’s no tried-and-true method that can be applied to all audience groups. The target audience for cruises most definitely varies. Every demographic has their own different interests, preferred channels and wants out of a cruise holiday.

Whoever you’re looking to target, try giving these tactics a go…

Older couples

Who we’re calling ‘older couples’ tend to flock to X/Twitter and Facebook. For this reason, content should be easy to read, with an emphasis on the visual side of things.

As for topics, we’d recommend highlighting amenities and activities that are on board, so think dining, the entertainment onboard and spa & wellness centres. When posting about destinations, get their attention through beautiful imagery and interesting facts. Travel tips, like itineraries, health advice and safety tips, also go down a treat too.

As for themes, centre things around ticking things off a bucket list: think those once-in-a-life dream destinations and activities that they never thought they’d have a chance to do.

Millennial families

Younger families will make Facebook and Instagram their port of call, though Pinterest could well be a place of interest if they’re looking for inspiration.

The content itself will be kid friendly, with plenty of images of families and children having fun on cruises. Focus on videos for the most effective reach and engagement, and be sure to base them around things to do with kids and families in specific locations, with hashtags like #travellingwithkids and #kidfriendlyactivities to match.

And if you’re stuck for ideas, there are no shortage of family content creators or ‘mummy bloggers’ out there. Seek them out to get an idea of what appeals to them and what kind of content they’re creating.

Millennial & Gen Z groups of friends

As the younger segments of cruise travellers, millennials and Gen Z prefer to get their content on Instagram and TikTok. So short-form stuff like videos and reels, usually with a travel trend focus (#eurosummer, for instance) are the kinds of posts they’ll gravitate towards.

They’ll also love travel advice, particularly for places to eat (think of the food pics they’ll create for you) and content like ‘what I packed for a 7-day cruise’ or ‘what I wore on a cruise to [location]’. The more you can inspire them, the better.  

Solo travellers

Last but not least, the solo traveller. There’s no particular age group they can be assigned to put it seems they again favour TikTok & Instagram. So videos and reels should be used on these channels, respectively, paired with hashtags like #solotravel, #nomadlife and #femalesolotravel.

Again, advice videos centred around places to eat, things to do and ‘must visit’ spots will be the focus, while content like ‘what I packed in my backpack’ offer up actionable insights that the solo traveller will appreciate.

On that note, with more and more young people using Instagram and especially TikTok as a search engine, the time is now to make searchable content in the same vein. Create valuable content that teaches something the solo sailor can use on their travels.

Don’t be afraid to use influencer marketing either. It’s huge right now, and can reap some serious benefits your brand’s way. Take a look at what travel creators are doing and think about making it part of your social media strategy.

Using paid social media targeting

Paid social, where a business pays for an advertisement to be shown to a target audience, is a great way to reach new people with an interest in cruise holidays. And there are all sorts of different formats you can use to capture their attention, including images, video, native ads (where your ad appears on the audience’s feed in a way that looks organic) and through influencers.

They’re great at quickly generating engagement, can easily target specific audiences and are a proven way of driving leads. Plus, they can be used across a variety of different channels.

Of course, you’ll need to do some forward planning to maximise their effectiveness. So before you go handing over money to get your name out there, consider the following:

• Set goals and campaign objectives: Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads or do something else?
• Know your audience: This ensures your ads will appear in front of people who’ll engage with you.
• Set audience targeting: Every social media platform has different targeting options, so you can target users based on things like interests, age and location.
• Set your budget: The amount of money you allocate to paid social has no real limit, but you’ll want to factor in the channels you use, their competitiveness and the length of your campaign. Our advice: start small and scale up or down as needed.
• Create the ads: On-brand colours and copy will catch their attention, while a compelling CTA will encourage users to click through.
• Measure them: Perhaps the most important aspect of paid social. Once you know how well your ads are doing, you can increase or decrease the amount of budget you put towards paid social.

Download our 2024 cruise industry trends report

Want to read about the findings we mentioned earlier in more detail, along with plenty of other insights to help you out with?

Enter your details below to download our cruise trends report:

Need a steer with your brand? From content to creative, social media to branding, the experts at BANC can shape the way you want to look, speak, and interact with your customers. Head to the homepage or get in touch with us at 0345 459 0558.