Putting the Wind in Your Sales

Is your travel company floundering a little as 2024 progresses? It seems travelers have pulled back spending a little of late however, Expedia’s CEO believes the upcoming holiday travel season should be better.

Maybe this is the time to rejig your ship, pop up the sails and set a new, powerful course for growth in demand and leads?

I think few business leaders really look at what is the wind in their sales. It’s actually talented staff — the people who are intimately dedicated to your company’s success. Without their enthusiasm, innovation, energy, and dedication, your ship goes nowhere.

The Challenge of Human Talent

Generally, but not always, when company owners, marketing managers and CEO’s contact me, they’re struggling with visibility, traffic and leads. That’s the surface issues, but deeper in, it might be they lack talent. That’s talent to create conversations with customers, position the brand colorfully yet seriously, and make it one that they can brag about using.

And of course, you are well aware of the challenge in travel marketing. It’s personal, where color, flair, authenticity, relatability, and more make your packages relevant. And then there’s other things to overcome too.

As an example, my former client Delta Hotels, were already receiving a million visitors per year. Within a year, I ramped them up to 2.5 million visits per year, thus changing their views about free web leads. It was the volume, the readiness of travelers needing to book, and being so omnipresent in the search results, that the brand was getting serious exposure — better than the major hotels.

However, with new messaging in the search link descriptions, hotel bookers saw new immediate reasons to consider the hotel, whose prices were about 100% higher than the competition. The business class room prices were a big stopping point. While not perfect, my effort did draw the traffic so that Delta could present its brand promise and deals. Later, Marriott bought Delta Hotels. It still is a great hotel chain.

Dedication, Enthusiasm & Joy for Pleasant Sailing

When you hire a marketing agency, there’s no guarantee they have the drive, interest, industry-talent, dedication, and open-ended outlook to add value, and make it a certain victory or an enjoyable journey.

This is why the in-house trend grew. The advantage of inhouse wasn’t about forcing staff to put 8 hours in. Instead it was about nurturing their expertise, skills and more. In small businesses, key talent carry a lot of weight. That might include the software developer, marketing manager, content creator, or CEO wearing many hats. That gets us into the matter of versatility and how their growth can be nurtured.

The value of versatile inhouse talent is in how they understand the brand, the product, the customer market, and how to support the whole team.

A sports analogy might help. Just look at top athletes and the special passion they have. One super talented player might lift the whole team. They’re often the key to the team’s entire success (e.g., Shohei Otani of the LA Dodgers, as both a top pitcher and hitter, or Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the best on offense and defense). They’re almost always strongly supported by management and their immense developed talent shows improvement is part of who they are.

Talented people can be developed into great travel marketers, but it’s only worth it if the individual has the burning desire to be number one and to be immersed in the joy of travel. Take a good look at your talent’s personal website to see if they actually do have that burning desire. Just because they’ve traveled means nothing.

Talent worth investing in is one with excitement, optimism, ambition and purpose.

When you combine skilled talent with assets, resources, time, funding, and then get involved in active promotion yourself, the sales results will happen. If your brand sucks, then you should hire a brand consultant to study the problem, because if your brand is awful, it’s going to be tough.

You Actually Can Compete with Big Brands

After all, you’re attempting to do the impossible — compete and win vs big brands. Their branding power is sticky, their technology is superb, their customer insight is strong, and they present few weaknesses for you to exploit. And that’s why talent is necessary. Your talent’s imagination finds ways to connect with customers and get the edge.

Overcoming the magnetism of customers to top travel brands is a significant challenge. You’ll need to hit pain points, communicate expertly, and of course reach your target audience. Have you mastered these to-do’s?

Let’s Talk about the Ways Your Company Can Out Compete Big Travel Companies

Here’s some recruiting/selection/managing criteria to help Power up your Marketing:

Capture and develop your travel writer talent: Yes, acquiring and developing marketing talent with skills in reaching and impacting travelers (Content quality and elite level SEO are essential).
Capture a great Search engine optimizer: you can beat big companies on long tail keyword searches (e.g., multiday tours of Tuscany Italy for seniors) and present authentic, real world immersion with real people including your travel content creator.
Capture talent with marketing audit and strategy skills: You can never have enough insight and ability to contribute to your marketing strategy (See my 8 in 1 marketing audit).
Capture and develop creative content creators: whether via stories or travel videos, painting a compelling journey from right now to after they return so they’re fully immersed from beginning to end. (It might be better to outsource video design/creation so you have a professional quality product to share and use in campaigns.
Capture key niches: identify them precisely then strategize timely, creative content campaigns to dominate audience perceptions and desirability of a destination (build out your own special branded experience for a destination, thus taking control of the destination in consumer’s minds). Many destinations don’t sell themselves well anymore because they try to everything to everyone, thus you can “own the destination” online with your stylish alternative view.
Building brand: your content creator/copywriter creates a brand of their own, one that makes your business brand even more irresistible and personally relevant. Find one who wants to create a personal brand, almost like your own travel influencer, and resonates with your brand, as one who embodies your brand.
Capture hearts and emotions: touch on traveler’s pain points with stories, insights, authentic photos, experiences, from your travel writer who makes destinations a truly compelling adventure. Work with them to capture the spirit and joy of travel, because you are selling the joy of travel.
Capture a social media enthusiast: who will spread the enthusiasm, splendor, and value of your brand and your vacation experiences to your targeted destinations. They will start conversations and pull readers into your generated events, stories, and perspectives.
Support your talent and ask them to improve: evaluate their work with an eye to make it much more effective. Your talent need feedback, and a willingness to help them improve themselves, grow, and achieve market leading results.

I’m sure you have your preferred product packages and destinations. Yet, great marketing talent imbued with the travel spirit can help you sell the most profitable locations too. Why cancel your access to a massive lucrative audience when all you need are the people to develop the winning plan to make the best of the world your oyster?

There is talent out there from a travel branding expert, graphic designer, analytics consultant, to creative video designer to help you take a big bite out of the big travel pie. Get the best help exactly where it counts!

Think Big with Big Picture Thinking!

At this point, winning against big companies is all theory and bravado. However, if you hire well, and picture yourself and staff as travel geniuses, you’ll become exactly that. It’s the power of visualization.

Think deeply about the need to be excellent, ever-improving, and well supported.

I hope you’re inspired by this vision. Reach me at 416 998 6246.

Title illustration courtesy of Wannapik Studio.