How to Empower Your Digital Marketing Team

Empower Your Creative Content Team

The travel agency CEO, DMO manager, or tour business owner is the key source of business success.

Your understanding, strategy and decisions determine what your creative team believes, does and will achieve. I’m not the ultimate expert on travel business success, but I still want to give you a pep talk! And I want to present some ideas and concepts that are important to reflect on.

These make up the basis of a solid, reliable relationship with creative producers — your creative marketing team.

You’re the empowering hero of your business. And your team’s marketing performance will mirror you exactly. If you wisely and calmly build a plan/strategy to empower all contributors to your content marketing effort, you’re going to do well.

Your own empowerment determines the outcome with them.

Successful travel business owners discover that online, their company, brand and value proposition is built by the creative team, from the branding strategist to the copywriter to the graphic designer. Your team absorbs your positive outlook, courage, confidence and determination to take chances and succeed. In turn, your travel content created will reflect that.

It May be You Who is the Driver of Great Content

Yes, content is what drives impact, interest and engagement with your customer prospects. Without great content that’s well-strategized, promoted and supported, reach and sales will falter. Instead, competitors will captivate them with their content.

It’s your business, and only you can decide on the content marketing team who will build the fantastic travel content that will drive your brand, leads and sales. From SEO strategy to production to execution and engagement, you’re the Superhero who brings out these amazing skills and drives. Your good nature, confidence, vision, and respect for your team is your best business asset.

Choices and Decisions

Will you only need one versatile talent who will orchestrate, empower and contribute too? That’s ambitious but could be doable for a small company. Or maybe an outsourced team of travel writers, videographers and designers, who will plug into your tour company website and social pages? That’s costly, risky and someone has to keep them synchronized and motivated.

At some point, someone has to orient and motivate these content producers to create the ideal content experience for your targeted audience. And there’s the need to produce content that’s a cut above the rest. It’s content that has to impact, engage and move visitors to see your brand is the only one they will ever want — the one that gives them the ultimate tour experience.

Fortunately, I think we can simplify the task.

This post is for SMB tour business owners who need to build a content marketing and digital advertising team to promote a winning brand and generate more bookings and rebookings.

The owner’s outlook is key:

Traditional Business View: “Our creative content team has all they need; bread, water and a comfy confinement.“

New Business View: “We do everything flexibly to nourish, fund, support and bring out the full intelligence and creative powers our team possesses.”

Bringing Your Travel Content Team Together

The plan/strategy of getting everyone on board is the same as how one person would plan, educate and orient themselves. It’s just communicated additional times for each of your unique team of content producers.

And you could say our strategy of managing our human assets is just as important as the content itself. Missing gaps, confusion, low-quality content, and weak persuasion mean failure is a real possibility.

Let’s look at some interesting ideas and tactics for empowering a powerful content team you want to invest in, and who will be happy to do their best work for you.

Filling Your Mind with Solutions

Isn’t it odd that we have to see the trees first before we see the forest? And then we can back away for the executive big picture.

Maybe it’s more productive and natural to answer all marketing and product matters individually first, and think about them deeply before any attempt to fulfill a prioritized list of to-do’s? Because your solution isn’t a sequence. Each decision affects all the others. It’s a clustered, right-brained process. The items below make up a good cluster of items to attend to first.

In my experience with 5 digital marketing agencies, I witnessed why some succeeded and others failed or fizzled out. The owner’s priorities were off. They didn’t do the things they needed to do. There was politics and short-sightedness. In some cases, they were driven by old management schemes. They wouldn’t adapt, flex, or try a marketing first-business model.

One client of mine had a great start. We worked unbelievably well to create new business. Yet, he wanted to rely on “walk in traffic” instead of actively pursuing the kinds of lucrative clients we could ideally support. These were in industries we had strengths in, which we cared about, and where we could all deliver market-leading results.

Finding your ideal clients is as important as finding your ideal creative team. The two must match.

As an example, there are numerous tour categories in many countries you can include in your packages. But is it better to focus on ones that your own creative team can excel in? Is it better to pursue wins in the niches you can star in? The Pareto 80/20 rule suggests that most of your profit will come from your best niches. Is it true for you?

There is nothing more valuable than a confident business owner who knows his/her brand, is transparent, communicative, empowering, enabling, gets the creative plan in place, and supports every part of execution.

Getting the Big Picture Clear First

After writing out your explanation of each of these tasks below, your big-picture view will come into focus. Because certain things do come first and some are very important. Knowing your brand and being able to explain it explicitly in detail is vitally important. Because your tour company brand drives everything from top to bottom.

Your brand is the thing customers buy, not a product or service. They can get a product or service from competitors probably at a lower price. Your brand communicates laser clear why customers should buy from you. This way, your creative team can give you exactly what you need. Maybe. Of course, you’re a manager and they make mistakes, or they’re limited in some way. You investigate and remedy.

Tasks in the Empowerment Plan:

the brand vision is key because it’s the focus for content, ads, and your sales team. The brand communicates the irresistible, most significant value the customer can and wants to receive.
bringing the brand to life is the central purpose of the content and you’ll need to articulate how that’s going to happen — in your creative plan, which will not be left to your graphic designer. It comes out of your digital marketing plan and business plan.
brainstorm content themes and topics that will best support your travel brand
identify 3 brand values that best represent your travel product/service (e.g., trust, generosity, enjoyment)
identify the words, images, concepts, and content experiences that represent your actual travel products
assemble a creative process to bring out powerful, profitable results
establish the marketing budget needed to win and use your funds wisely
identify key roles and talent required
establish performance required to meet brand and sales goals
establish what resources/tools are needed for each contributor
establish what will drive their creative empowerment and how you’ll educate, inform, orient and motivate your talent
build your creative production plan — who, what, why, how
knowing and committing to what actually motivates your creative team of videographers, writers, and designers
how you will communicate value and encouragement to them and what will you offer to get your goals achieved?
how will your team collaborate under the central idea of your unique brand?

You’re a smart business person. Once you see what needs to be done, the above list will be instinctive to you. Through the process and practice, it will gradually become second nature to you on to empower each person on your growing team. Because, now you’re committed the value of it. Go with your positive intuition and instincts.

You’re starting small, but having a solid starting point means you’re building on strength, balance and to get unlimited performance. You get the performance you create.

Each talent (travel writers, videographers, photographers, SEO strategist, social media strategist, PPC managers, email specialist, and PR pro) knows what to do. You’ll never understand their expertise, and you’re paying them for the outcomes not role-playing or overcoming doubt. They must deliver.

You’re not a Boss, You’re an Empowerer!

After you’ve become aware of the complicated pieces, you’re able to relax and move back to the big picture view — because you’re the empowering your team to work the strategy flexibly but most importantly, intelligently as a focused unit. No need for micromanagement any more, because they understand the plan.

It’s a simple formula for success: Hire great talent, inform them in their role and purpose, pay them well, and empower them to work together to produce their best.

Hire a travel content strategist who can weave this advantage and many more into your content to give your brand the market leader.

Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 to discuss your tour business and how to grow.

* header banner graphic courtesy of wannapik.com/