Helping Your Travel Agency Thrive
This year’s travel season is a little challenging, but we know it’s going to pick up as the economy strengthens and the tariff issues weaken. There are opportunities for your travel agency to prosper, expand and improve customer loyalty.
From staying top of mind, to reaching new audiences, to improving engagement on your website and social channels, we can make your agency a more important part of your customers lives.
There are endless reasons why you can’t and as well, why you should, so it comes back to faith in yourself and seriousness about your business, that you can take steps forward. It doesn’t have to be immaculate, just a pleasant confidence that your travel company is about to not only survive the tech/economic threat ahead, but actually thrive past it. It’s a marketing project that becomes affordable when you create a strategy and execute each part of the project intelligently.
Let’s quickly review which is of these issues might be your biggest holdback, because it’s the one that might prevent you from meeting me and getting this project launched.
Problems Matched with Solutions!
- We’re Too Busy – No Time for Managing a Marketing Effort
Running a travel agency involves juggling numerous tasks—planning itineraries and financial transactions, managing client relationships, and resolving travel issues and the common result is — Marketing often falls to the bottom of the priority list.
Solution: Visualize yourself spending less time with work but earning more money. Free up time, perhaps on the weekend, to review travel management software products and new marketing strategies. Don’t judge, just absorb the trends and value.
- Limited Resources
You feel you don’t have the budget or expertise to develop a cohesive strategy beginning with content and SEO and social media promotion.
Solution: Consider all the travel startups which don’t have the talent or finances/resources either, but they did something about it. They just did it! You learn as you go. Review your finances to discover money you could use, or consider finding funding to launch a better marketing effort to bring new leads and revenue before you launch any other improvement project. You might consider business reorganization to capture what’s necessary for your company’s future.
- Unclear Differentiation
You can’t quite articulate what makes your company unique and valuable and can’t see any opportunity to make marketing work for you.
Solution: You can differentiate, and it’s marketers job to get that accomplished. Hire a branding consultant or ask a digital travel marketer to study your company’s strengths, such as personalized service, insider business connections, supplier relations, or niche travel expertise. We’ll come up with the true differentiating points that move travel consumers.
- Fear of Failure and Loss of Confidence
You’re uncertain whether anyone can make digital marketing will pay off given the complexity and competition. You might think it will result in client loss, weak new leads, and more work that doesn’t pay off.
Solution: Research, plan and run new software on the side as a trial to test it out, and try new digital marketing campaigns in multiple new marketing channels to test the quality of new customer leads. You’ll learn which is extremely wise and valuable
- Lack of Confidence in Marketing Skills
Many agency owners are travel experts and business people, not web or social media marketers. You might be feeling unsure or overwhelmed by the challenges of marketing strategies.
Solution: Get the assistance of a digital travel marketing specialist and try a test campaign project, working with that person to learn, understand, and implement (manage) a full marketing effort, including the marketing software and analytics systems needed to master it. It’s all a learning experience, and you’ll find it an enjoyable one if you hire the right assistant.
- Misconception About Organic Growth
Some believe that “word of mouth” or client referrals should be enough to grow their business, and that online marketing isn’t effective or is too expensive to invest in.
Solution: Review of your competitors and their advertising and content marketing campaigns. This proves they’re all finding it worthwhile. Have a digital marketing audit performed with an accent on a competitive comparison. Most consumers use digital word of mouth and you want to give them a good reason to talk and share about your trips.
- Overreliance on Status Quo or Past Success
Many experienced travel agency owners may rest on the laurels of their reputation, sales successes, customer loyalty, and assume that these will continue to exist. In fact, the travel industry is changing and it’s critically important to note the trends and reposition your company to adapt.
Solution: Hire a travel business consultant and review travel market forecasts, demographic trends, destination and experience trends, and build out new trips to new audiences you might reach.
When the Market is Rolling in, Ride that Wave!
The essence of your marketing is to reach travelers wherever they are and help them live the pre-trip planning experience as an adventure. After all, the mind travels first. Most agencies lose leads and suffer high bounce rates because visitors don’t get the vibes they must have before committing to a booking or even a phone call.
- a thorough study of your travel sector, your value proposition and market opportunity
- comprehensive review of your website and digital marketing and promotional assets
- review of your content strategy, assets, SEO, and social media engagement
- review of your marketing analytics solution and marketing performance
- a proposal for impactful content marketing and SEO traffic building
- a new plan and strategy for your visitor’s content journey and personalized experience on your travel website
- helping you optimize your visitor’s path to travel fulfillment
- helping you improve your PPC advertising and email campaigns (impact, copywriting, strategy)
- help you explore new markets with a strategy to capture specific ideal regions and traveler profiles
- purposeful, strategically powerful blogging built to dominate your niche/markets
- performance reports with actionable recommendations
It’s high-reach, and more persistent, high-visibility marketing that builds more leads and lasting relationships with your ideal customers. Let’s get started.
Contact Gord at: 416 998 6246 to discuss a free review of your marketing opportunity. Money won’t be an issue.
