By Hank Schrader, Visit Dream Destinations, LLC and member of The Travel Institute’s Professional Educators Program.
A common problem for travel advisors is the need to raise awareness about their services and why potential clients need to use them for professional help. While there are many ways to increase awareness, small agencies with limited staff and resources need to make sound choices to reach potential clients and maximize their impact.
Our two-person agency has found the perfect answer that works for us – publish a weekly or bi-weekly blog and send it out using RSS feed to our subscribers. We believe these five ideas will help increase client awareness and result in higher sales levels and increased profitability.
First, a quick lesson about demand generation and lead generation (common marketing tactics). Demand generation is building relationships with your customers or potential clients. Lead generation is a purchase tactic to help customers navigate the sales funnel. We think blogging combines these two tactics and can result in amazing results at very low costs.
Think about it this way – we all buy products and services because they solve problems. We buy because a service makes our life easier, and we want the right person to help us. We have found blogging makes the case for us and helps us stand out in the competitive field of travel sales far better than direct advertising.
It is always good to provide a little proof – on average 200 + visit our website daily, and 95% read one of our blogs. We do not do any other advertising. The blogs start by building relationships (demand generation) and often result in high-value sales in our specialty luxury river cruises (lead generation).
We know you can do the same. Here are our tips:
1. Blog regularly because clients will read your information, especially if it comes out at the same time each week (we have several clients who email on blog day and tell us not to bother responding until the next day!). We use a free service (MailChimp) and an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) as our distribution method. About 40% + of our audience opens each blog, which is very high in the travel industry. We are reaching our target audience regularly and effectively.
2. Your blog must be placed on your website because it creates a new page for each blog (higher SEO rankings).
3. Write in a friendly manner, like you are talking, but include enough great content to make your readers realize you are a subject matter expert. Use white space to make it easy to read. Writing a meaningful blog is easier than you think – I have heard wonderful verbal presentations from other agents who are afraid to write a blog, and, if they just use that same enthusiasm and knowledge, it will help make the blog successful
4. Your pictures are also key. Even if you can’t provide specific pictures of the item you are writing about, you must end the blog with your picture and credentials.
5. Don’t be afraid to express an opinion, but back it up with facts if possible and clearly state it is an opinion.
BONUS: While we have several blogs on the first page of Google, we didn’t get there instantly nor will you. With over 100 blogs published, we have three pages on our website organized by topics so clients can easily find an answer to a question or topic. Persistence pays off!
Compared to other advertising methods, the usual lifespan of a blog is two years – far better than other methods. Our advice – start blogging and make more money!
