How Visa Travel Agents Can Use Press Releases to Gain Trust

The visa and immigration industry often faces scams, fraudulent activities, doubts, and other regulatory complexities. Such an industry must understand that trust is a currency it cannot afford to be without, as it will aid in its efficiency and effectiveness. 

A professional and quality way for this industry and visa travel agents to build such trust is through press releases. Press Releases are strategic tools used to communicate, build confidence, establish a strong reputation, and enhance one’s credibility. They serve as social proof that visa travel agents use to reinforce their legitimacy and ease clients’ scepticism. 

How Press Releases Build Trust for Visa Travel Agents

Visa Travel Agents understand the importance of transparency in the visa consultancy industry and recognise how much trust is a currency, not only to ease clients’ concerns but also as an essential component for sustainable growth and effective reputation management.

This high value for trust makes Press Releases a go-to and strategic tool, as it aids in building a reputation for visa travel agents by ensuring the following:

Showcasing professionalism

Press Releases offers visa consultants a medium to showcase their professional expertise in the visa application process by presenting legal proof as a licensed consultancy, highlighting essential milestones, success stories of visa applications, and industry certifications.

Demonstrating transparency

Press releases give agencies a voice, helping to demystify agencies and revealing the human behind the scenes. Agencies achieve this by sharing policy updates, commenting on visa application processes and new immigration policies. For example, an agency could issue a press release about the ideal processing duration of a visa. This proactive communication shows that the agency is organised and transparent. 

Offering third-party validation

Due to the cautious nature of the visa industry, clients often seek additional confirmation from independent media sources, such as Business Day or Punch, to endorse them. Press Releases that appear on such reputable media platforms enjoy third-party endorsements of the agency’s credibility and solidity.

Differentiating genuine agents from scammers

Scammers often operate in the shadows and lack the structure and integrity to issue a soon-to-be widely read press release. This visibility alone serves as a key factor in distinguishing genuine agents from scammers. For instance, an agency could organise a live session with a representative from a foreign school to talk about student and study visas, which demonstrates that they are active and authentic, allowing a cautious client to make informed decisions. 

What Should a Visa Travel Agent Include in a Press Release?

Press releases are composed by Public relations professionals, journalists, or in-house PR personnel who follow and understand the best practices to achieve their strategic objectives best. To achieve this, a Press release must contain the following key elements:

Official business details and certifications

Agencies should ensure that their business details are up-to-date and included in every press release issued on behalf of the brand. It must consist of their registered names, license numbers and other affiliations. 

Case studies or success rates

Data doesn’t lie, and they build confidence. Press releases should include facts around the success rate of visa applications, especially across popular destinations. An agency can even include a well-developed case study of how their agency was responsible for a certain percentage of a particular visa type in a country or region.

Testimonials or client quotes

Apart from data, another tool that builds credibility is client testimonials from visa consultancy success stories. They help to humanise visa agencies, elicit emotional credibility, and also pluralise visa client engagement. 

Updates on services, awards, or partnerships

To ensure informativeness, the press release must contain updates on the agency’s services, such as new international partnerships, expanded service offerings (e.g., visa interview coaching), recent awards or recognitions, which demonstrate growth and enhance the agency’s reputation.

Press Releases can also utilise the following formatting tips to ensure a professional structure: the addition of an internal or client’s quote, inclusion of contact information, ensuring newsworthiness, using numbers, milestones, and active words. 

Real-World Examples: When and Why to Send Press Releases

Press Releases are not to be released with anyhowness because of their strategic newsworthy status. Here are some of these scenarios that warrant when and why Press Releases are issued:

• Launching a new branch: One key element of a press release is to report on what is new and timely. A new branch of a visa agency is a worthy report to issue in a press release to establish its identity and demonstrate its development.
  
• Visa application milestones: Milestones sharing is a press release strategy that serves as proof to build emotional credibility with clients. Visa agents should then include significant milestones in their press releases to build a reputation for themselves as trusted visa travel agents.
  
• Strategic partnerships with embassies or institutions: Press releases can include the announcement of strategic partnerships, as they are newsworthy events, especially those involving partnerships with embassies, which serve as proof of credibility. 

• Thought leadership on policy changes or immigration news: Client loves those who know their onions, and the best place to show this industry knowledge for it to hold authority is through a Press Release to answer questions or inform the clients.
  

A real-life instance that illustrates this is when the Nation Newspaper shared a release on Visa Application Centres (VAC Global) announcing the opening of new offices in Lagos and Abuja.

VAC also shared the following: a milestone of processing more than 225,000 UK visas for Nigerians, an easy application process, and announced a partnership with UK Visas and Immigration.

Where to Distribute Press Releases for Maximum Impact:

Apart from writing a strong press release, agencies must also consider the channel through which they distribute it. The choice of channel should align with the type of visa agent’s branding, whether personal, local, or international.

• National and local newspapers: This channel distributes press releases nationwide, reaching both print and digital audiences for a broad reach; however, national papers can limit the cross-country reach for diaspora communities.
  
• Immigration-focused blogs or platforms: These are media platforms, websites, blogs, or social pages that specially cover immigration press news, visa processes, work permits, relocation news, and migration trends. Despite this, they can have a narrow audience.
  
• Online press release distributors, such as Pressdia, are digital platforms that ensure PR distribution for visa travel agents, brands, and businesses to news outlets (both print & online), search engines, and journalists, thereby releasing the information to the public. Like Pressdia, a press release distributor ensures your releases reach diverse audiences, both local and international. They also take the pressure off brands by providing their releases to reach desired outlets.
  
• LinkedIn, website press pages, and newsletters: The brand’s LinkedIn page, website, and newsletter can be used to issue press releases for personal agent branding or thought leadership positioning. Via this means, clients put a face to agencies and stay informed about timely updates and developments within the immigration industry. 

Leveraging Media Mentions in Your Marketing

A well-crafted press release not only helps visa travel agents build their reputation but also enables them to repurpose media mentions across their social media pages and digital platforms. This leveraging of media mentions will ensure that agencies own their releases in-house and help reach as many audiences as possible through their preferred media. 

Here are some of the ways agencies can leverage their media mentions:

• Add “As Featured In” logos to your website: Visa service providers who have published press releases can curate them on a segmented angle on their website as an “As Featured In” section, which will contain all the press releases the company has issued.
  
• Create LinkedIn or Instagram posts. The agency can create LinkedIn and Instagram posts from a press release and extend them to their social media audience. LinkedIn and Instagram are also beneficial for visa agent branding, as they position them as leaders in attraction and thought leadership. 

• Include media mentions in brochures, ads, and pitches: Print and e-brochures, ads, and pitches also contain media mentions. It helps the agency communicate its legitimacy by showing where the media has mentioned it. Additionally, it ensures the agency presents itself consistently across all touchpoints.

• Use in follow-up emails with leads: Since most visa consultancy leads require proof beyond a reasonable doubt before committing, incorporating media mentions into follow-up emails can expedite their decision-making process.
  

Common Mistakes Visa Travel Agents Make with Press Releases

When creating press releases, visa travel agents should ensure they avoid mistakes that could compromise the release’s objective. Here are some of the common mistakes visa travel agents should avoid:

• Making the release overly promotional: A press release must not sound or strike as a pure promotional piece. Although it might serve as one, it must not be overly so in order not to spook the client. And it is said that the less promotional piece is the one that converts. 
  
• Lack of news value: A press release must be newsworthy; it must contain what the audience of a visa agency wants to read about. It may be about a milestone, a new occurrence within the agency, or a new policy.
  
• Skipping proofreading or formatting: While issuing a PR, the agents must proofread to avoid errors and ensure the document is well-formatted to achieve a clear structure.
  
• Sending press releases to irrelevant media contacts: Agencies should use press releases as strategic tools and send them to reputable media outlets, not to irrelevant ones.

Agencies can also ensure that press releases include clear headlines, the 5W and H (Who, What, When, Where, and Why), supporting quotes, and confirmed contacts. 

How Press Releases Improve Your SEO and Online Reputation

Press releases are not just another random news report. They are tools with strategic importance for both offline and digital channels. They provide visa agencies with digital footprints for search engines to index and rank them during searches. 

Press releases on credible digital media outlets, like TechCabal and Business Day, can directly improve SEO and online reputation in the following ways:

• Improve search engine ranking through backlinks: When published on reputable sites, such as BusinessDay, TechCabal, or Nairametrics, clients use links from those press releases to access the agency’s website. These types of links are called backlinks. Search engines, while crawling the internet, use these as signals of trust, which help your site rank higher in search results.
  
• Increase branded search traffic: Search traffic has proven to be the most effective way to garner search traffic compared to cold traffic. It is because well-distributed press releases increase agency visibility, leading potential clients to search for the brand organically.
  
• Build a strong Google footprint: Press releases that rank on Google News and other media sites contain content that gains visibility on the first page of search results, thereby establishing credibility and pushing down irrelevant results.
  
• Enhance credibility for new prospects: When potential clients conduct their research on your business, press coverage serves as third-party validation, giving credibility to your brand.

To ensure basic SEO tips for formatting press releases, agencies should include keywords, descriptive headlines and subheadings, links to the website or booking link, the agency’s full name and contact details.

Combining Press Releases with Other Trust-Building Strategies

Despite the strategic nature of press releases, they are even more effective when combined with other trust-building strategies to establish long-term trust and credibility. 

Here’s how visa travel agents can merge with their press releases and build long-term trust:

• Collecting authentic reviews: Agencies should encourage clients to leave reviews on relevant platforms and use them as part of a press release to establish emotional credibility.

• Sharing video testimonials: Video adds emotion, authenticity, increases reach, and enhances clickability. Visa agents should follow up and team up with the client after a successful application, and create video testimonials about their visa consultancy success stories and the application process.
  
• Blogging about visa changes and FAQs: Aside from press releases, agencies should have an exhaustive FAQ that answers the most frequently asked questions of clients, and an active blog that discusses current news and trends in the visa industry.
  
• Hosting Q&A sessions online: Combining Q&A sessions, press conferences, and press releases is a best practice in public relations for visa travel consultants, as it helps them control their narrative, answer direct client questions, and ease scepticism.
  

The use of these additional trust-building strategies, combined with press releases, contributes to long-term reputation building and reinforces the holistic approach to trust building. By repurposing and infusing a cohesive and consistent strategy across all channels, it can contribute to the overall image of the consultancy agency. 

Conclusion  

Press releases, when executed correctly and consistently through credible media outlets, showcase professionalism, demonstrate transparency, offer third-party validation, and differentiate genuine agents from scammers, which helps increase trust in immigration consultants, builds a reputation, and allows clients to see them as trusted visa experts.

Suppose you are a player in this industry in need of press release services. In that case, it is best to utilise a one-stop platform like Pressdia, which can help ensure you have a well-written press release and distribute it effectively across your desired channels, both locally and internationally.