Get the basics right

When you click on Publish, your tour goes out immediately and becomes available through the VoiceMap apps and voicemap.me.

If you chose a compelling title, striking cover image, and made sure your first three locations and featured location captivate users who preview the tour, you'll likely start making sales soon. The difference between our best-selling and worst-selling tours isn't always the quality of the content. That often comes down to what you do next to promote and sell your tour.

We outline a few basics in the next part of our documentation. It's easy to get most of them right and doing so can make all the difference to your tour's success.

Start with ratings and reviews

The first essential step is getting ratings and reviews for your tour. When potential listeners see that others have enjoyed the experience, it helps overcome any hesitations they might have about purchasing your tour.

You get ten free voucher credits when you create a tour and an additional ten once the tour is published to help distribute your tour. Use these free vouchers to give friends and family access to your tour and ask them to review it. You can also share vouchers with existing audiences through social media, mailing lists, or podcasts.

Create voucher codes at voicemap.me/dashboard/vouchers. For detailed guidance, see our documentation on how to create voucher codes.

Promote through your own networks

Even if you rely on VoiceMap for discovery, you'll need to convince people to spend money as well as precious leisure time on it – sometimes in competition with other VoiceMap tours in the same city. This is where your existing network becomes invaluable.

Use your website, social media channels, personal connections, colleagues, and existing networks to promote your tour. These audiences are often already in your tour's destination, familiar with and trust your work and the exact demographic you had in mind when creating the tour.

To make sharing your tour easier, create short URLs and QR codes that you can use across different channels and situations.

Short URL

Start by creating a short URL for your tour using your tour's distribution tab in Mapmaker. This makes sharing easier in person or through social media.

QR codes

QR codes are a useful way of promoting your VoiceMap tours because they link the physical and digital. Learn how to access and download QR codes here. You can share these with partners, colleagues, or businesses along your route or use them to promote your tour in person.

Promote through social media

Social media is one of the most powerful promotional tools – users who discover your tour through social platforms are often more likely to purchase than those from other channels. Social media makes your tour feel personal and trustworthy, providing valuable social proof that's especially important for audio tour apps.

We provide detailed recommendations and examples for promoting on your own platforms and share guidelines for sending us videos to promote your tour on VoiceMap's accounts.

Create print materials

Print materials help you reach potential customers who are already exploring your tour area, catching them at the perfect moment when they're actively looking for things to do.

We can create A4 posters or DL flyers using your tour description information. These materials work well in tourist information centers, hotel lobbies, cafés, museums, and other businesses along your route. View our poster/flyer templates and contact us to request custom materials for your tour.

Optimize your website

Your website gives you complete control over how your tour is presented and discovered, plus search engines can drive consistent, long-term traffic to your tour without ongoing effort.

If you have your own website, make your tour easy to discover through Google search. We've optimized your tour page for search, but links to your tour from other websites are crucial for rankings. Follow our effective linking strategies guide to improve your search visibility.

Expand through reseller networks

Reseller networks help you reach travelers who might never have discovered VoiceMap otherwise, expanding your potential audience beyond your own promotional efforts.

List your tour with resellers like Viator and TripAdvisor to reach wider audiences. We can handle this process for you. Learn more about selling through our reseller networks.

Set up affiliate partnerships

Affiliate partners can promote your tour to their audiences in exchange for a commission, creating additional promotional channels without upfront costs to you.

We're always looking for great affiliate partners. Share suggestions for potential affiliates in your city by emailing [email protected], and we'll reach out to them.

You can read more about our affiliate program in our Publishers' Forum.

Join the publisher community

Connect with other publishers through our Publishers' Forum. It's an excellent place to share ideas, ask for advice, and learn about new features from fellow creators who understand the unique challenges and opportunities of audio tour publishing.