When you work as a travel agent, your success is dependent on getting new customers. After all, one customer can only take so many vacations a year. Although there may be some challenges, there are some great methods to help you grow your customer base.
It's important that you're active on social media, and this means across all of the different platforms. Consider the type of audience that you want to cater to. Certain demographics may be more likely to be on Facebook, Instagram, or even LinkedIn. Be sure that you're on at least two social media platforms actively so that people know who you are. It will also make it easier to promote various services or trips once you have a strong following.
When you're on social media, you can post, ask people to share posts, run contests, and even take advantage of paid advertising.
If you find that social media is taking up too much time, there are a few things to help you:
Establish a posting schedule
Take photos of your travels so you always have things to share
Follow other travel accounts to get ideas
Hire a social media manager
Use social media scheduling apps to automate your posts
When you're more active, it will make it easier to get the following that you desire. It's also important to establish a few key hashtags, especially if you're going to be on Instagram. Some hashtags should be focused on you as a business and the others should be on the specific details you're posting about.
It's also important that social media posts aren't always promotional. Instead of always trying to sell people a vacation package, provide tips. Talk to people about what they need to know when packing for a trip, what countries need visas, and so forth. When you provide great tips, people will follow you and share your posts. Then, the next time they're ready to book a vacation, they'll be more inclined to rely on you as their travel agent.
Email continues to be one of the best marketing tools that you can use, with the U.S. Spending over $350 million on email advertising in 2019 alone. As you develop a mailing list from past customers, contests that you run, and even a lead generation form on your website, you can have quite the audience to advertise to.
There are some great email marketing tools that will let you establish a professional template. You can schedule the emails to go out to your audience often.
Share such things as:
Travel tips
Destination photos
Upcoming specials
A well-written email with photos and videos can be a great way to get people's attention. You want people to read the emails that they get from you, too, which is even more reason to spend a few extra minutes creating an incredible header. If the header doesn't catch them, your email will end up in the 'Deleted' folder. A/B testing can also help you to establish what will work best with your audience.
One of the most powerful tools that you have in order to reach potential customers is a beautiful website. As a travel agent, you may have a specialty — the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, or somewhere else. Be sure that you showcase photos from these areas on your website as a way to get people excited about the possibilities.
You can achieve several marketing goals when you have a comprehensive website in place.
While you may be using social media and email marketing as a way for people to get to know who you are, they'll be using your website to do their own research. Be sure that you define the different services that you offer so they know how they can benefit from you as a travel agent.
You don't need to share prices as those are going to vary throughout the year anyway. Instead, talk about what modes of travel you work with, the various credentials that you have, and more.
When you provide details, it makes people feel more confident that they can benefit from what you have to offer.
Landing pages can help you convert more customers because of being specific about what it is that you offer. You can have as many landing pages as you want because these aren't going to be visible on your main menu. Instead, people will land on these pages because they were directed from social media or an email.
You may want to have a landing page for every exotic locale that you can send people to. You may also want to create landing pages for specific specials that you are offering, tours that you are booking, and more. Additionally, adding videos to your landing page can increase conversions by up to 86 percent.
When people visit a landing page that offers specific information based on what they were promised when they clicked over, it can establish trust and give them confidence that you are going to give them exactly what they need.
Good landing pages also have strong calls to action so that people know exactly what they need to do next in order to move forward.
Establish a newsletter where you will share travel tips, upcoming specials, and more. Generate leads on your website by having a form where people can enter their email addresses. This way, you're constantly growing your mailing list so that it can help you with your email marketing.
Many of the marketing tools work together with one another. You can be as successful as you desire, but it's going to require some effort, too.
Once you put these methods into practice, you will start to see more customers reaching out to you for the travel services that you can offer. It is also critical that you establish a full marketing plan so that you don't forget about creating new content on a regular basis. Consistency is key when you want to reach new customers regularly.