The Power of New Ideas
How would you win a best design competition at the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival?
Would you show up with the usual round balloon with a different color scheme? Or would you brainstorm a brilliant unique design that evokes their imagination and resonates with balloon festival spirit?
Would you have that Wow factor that draws the most interest and awe? It’s a relatable instance of how important ideas are to lift awareness, make impact, start engagement, power up promotions, and how much customers might value your brand and travel packages more.
And when these ideas hit travel consumer’s impulse button, you can expect a big lift in leads and sales. Because travel aspirations are all about images and ideas.
Build Unique Ideas to Power Your Small Travel Business
Envisioning something truly unique isn’t easy of course. Even the most creative marketers/brand designers need that quiet, relaxed time to allow the full potential of their imagination to be activated.
If you take idea generation seriously, you might ride your BIG IDEA high above your competitors. Because an idea grabs and diverts the attention of audiences away from them to you. With it, you create a new context or category that makes competitor’s brands irrelevant.
Great ideas differentiate your brand and elevate your tours above the competition. Great ideas bring great wins. And often, big ideas might just guide your marketing to improvement.
Powerful unique ideas can be copyrighted and trademark protected which is very important. After all, thousands of competing agencies can use Generative AI to copy your website, packages, messaging, and value proposition — everything. Then you become truly invisible.
Travelers seek transformation and I think business owners do too. We all want to get to that vision of satisfaction that moved us to start a business. Great ideas consistently raise your tour company or travel agency’s brand awareness and value in a high quality way so you do realize your business dream.
Floating in a Windless Sea
Marketing is all about new ideas because old ideas decay in value. New, unique, novel, and glorious imaginations inspire travelers, position products and brands in exciting new ways, and cleverly get customers to follow us and forget the competition.
Great Ideas put Wind in our Sales.
New Ideas that Answer the Customer’s “WHY?”
Creative marketing ideas sell the sizzle, but also answer the customer’s question of “why?” Why is your product more significant and how would they avoid risk/loss from switching brands? There is tremendous untapped power in persuading travelers to switch.
But What is an Idea in Marketing Anyway?
An idea is a creative concept that positions your brand better to a better audience to delight and persuade these travelers to try your services/products and switch to your brand.
And ideas shape the content and branded presentation of each of these listed here:
What is This BIG IDEA Anyway?
- a fresh perspective or angle that changes their view on their pain points and preferences
- useful and grounded in strategic insights about the targeted audience and competitor brand assumptions
- a brand positioning adjustment that increases awareness, unique value, and attractiveness
- a crafted, compelling narrative, slogan, or a call to action that might move travelers to switch
- a message that impacts who the travel consumer will respect and be influenced by
- a message that elevates their self-esteem, validating them, awakening them to something special, and supporting their idealized self-image
- an image or word that triggers a strong action-inducing emotion in travelers
- something that makes their own life story more interesting and compelling to themselves
- something the consumer market can enthusiastically jump on which is then shared by travelers to each other
- a message or event that helps get your company’s value proposition across super clear
Examples of Great Ideas in Travel Marketing
There’s no limit of course, but here are a few starters I came up with:
- a VR tour of the Tuscany region in Italy highlighting a variety of attractions and experiences (wineries, restaurants, road trips, archeological and museum tour, sunset walking tour, hot air balloon rides, and a class on authentic pasta making).
- safe, comfortable, off-the-grid eco-tours that for deep, real-life immersion in pristine nature with experts who know how natural ecosystems are impacted by climate change
- influencer collaborations that showcase their authentic input on your type of tours which makes them eager to promote them
- a collaboration with local businesses in your tour destinations to highlight them and their businesses to whet travelers’ appetites to see them
- destination guides written for active seniors and custom-designed with the words and images they prefer
- entertaining short Tik Tok videos to highlight your most in demand tour destinations
- Tik Tok video of an immersive tour experience with real actual tour goers
- Tik Tok video of top ten tips to maximize their tour in (e.g., Tuscany, Italy)
- short YouTube video of a day cruise (e.g., Phi Phi Islands adventure day trip)
- social media posting contest (e.g., why do you love New Zealand?)
- a blog to introduce some powerful unique technology/apps to maximize their international vacation
- a Facebook post with pictures with quotes from kids on how they enjoyed the adventure trip to (e.g., Yellowstone Park, Yosemite Park, San Diego)
- customer photo contest with best hi res photos from their tour trips for use in your ad campaigns
- blog on best smooth jazz boat cruises and waterfront park concerts
- branded “Your EPIC Trip” excursion highlight videos (e.g, African great migration safari, New Zealand nature, Iceland for hot springs lovers, How Italians enjoy food and wine, Mayan spirits adventure, Mysteries of the Incan Gods, Lake Como lifestyles, Luxury yachting in Monaco).
The big idea is part of great travel content to build your tour agency/company brand image, bring traffic to your tour booking pages, increase tour bookings, and grow your travel business.
Focusing and Capturing the Value Your Idea Generates
You might be wondering how you can capture all of the value you’ll generate via so many creative ideas?
Beside capturing contact info, you’ll want to ensure all of your great promotional ideas lead back to your website to a topical page(s) where you can capture full value for Google rankings. And this lasting topical page will permanently capture all of the value you generate through any channel via your promotional efforts. It may act as a key page or pillar page for your Google traffic strategy and it will no doubt be linked to frequently by bloggers, influencers, and travelers, as it becomes an evergreen asset.
These are a few keys to great marketing ideas, and it’s your marketing team’s task to find the best and apply them masterfully.
Any idea that’s powerful enough to make travelers change their minds or switch their brand preference, is a breakthrough moment in a business’s journey. Some CEOs/entrepreneurs hope and pray for it, rather than diving in and finding that key differentiator that wins the battleground.
What do you think will be the most creative idea that will lift your company’s fortunes for 2024/2025?
See my post on travel management software and travel marketing strategy, two keys to better sales results.