One way top travel advisors stand out from the crowd is to develop a niche area of practice. Though we hear the advice to specialize,  the concept of niche marketing is often misunderstood. Niche marketing is a way of helping you focus on locating new clients, not a set of restrictions on your business offerings. Niche marketing is not necessarily about gearing your entire business to a particular type of travel but rather about segmenting your marketing efforts to focus on particular groups of people.  Many travel consultants avoid it as a concept out of fear of having to turn away business outside the chosen niche or being too closely identified with the niche. Properly executed, however, niche marketing is a terrific way of locating and marketing to a group of potential clients in a highly effective and cost-efficient manner. Read the rest of this entry »

There is absolutely no doubt that a failure to plan is one of the biggest mistakes many business people make.  Without a solid business plan, even the best travel consultant can fail to act consistently in any given aspect of their practice. Planning is truly essential.

But so is action.

I see far too many travel professionals planning their lives away, getting ready to act, and then… not acting! The problem can induce a near-paralytic state. Too many times we over-plan and over-perfect, and in the process lose valuable opportunities to others who are quicker to act.   Read the rest of this entry »

Every travel agency seeks visibility in its marketplace. Through advertising, niche marketing, and solid networking, agency owners work to raise the profile of their travel practice above the crowd so the public immediately associates the agency’s brand with the word “travel.” Creating an association strong enough to be top of mind anytime someone thinks of “travel” is no small feat but, especially on a community level, it is achievable. No doubt, in your own community, there is at least one travel agency with more than its proportionate percentage of “mindshare” – people immediately think of that agency when they think of their next cruise or vacation. Read the rest of this entry »

Most travel agents who have been in the business for any period of time can tell stories of clients who, in some manner, disappointed the agent in the relationship. The client who took the agent’s hard work and booked direct, or the client who could not be found when the final payment was due. The client who goes to the airport without their documents and blames the agent. The client who won’t return phone calls. The client who is upset that the agent cannot find a trip to Hawaii for 7 nights for $499. The client who discovers a cruise $50 cheaper on the internet and is unhappy. In almost every instance, however, the real root of the problem can be found in the failure of the agent to properly train the client and set expectations. Client training is more than just a technique to prevent problems, however. Properly training clients sets the stage for the buying process to occur in the context of a relationship. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend many of my columns speaking to the importance of positioning and differentiation – setting your travel practice apart from the crowd. From the emails and comments I received, however, it’s clear that it’s not always easy to really BE different.  Where do the ideas arise that will energize your travel practice in such a way that travelers will choose you over another agency or booking on their own?

The most important thing is to lead with your personality. You are the one thing that is truly unique about your travel practice.  You are the one thing not duplicated online, in your office, or at another agency. You are the human element with which people want to engage. Learn to infuse your creative thinking with your own personality. Read the rest of this entry »

There are times when the business of travel planning can be a bit overwhelming. There are bills to pay, meetings to attend, and marketing that needs to be done. Clients are calling with completely unreasonable requests, and that hotel still has not paid the commission on a trip completed in June. Your desk is covered in paper.

The drawbacks to disorganization are all too familiar to me. I’m not a detail person, and my inability to work methodically shows. I clean my offices in flurries of activity and almost always uncover some important detail that was due to be completed yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of us have encountered the “do-it-yourselfer” who researches and books everything themselves online. Estimates are that as high as 61% of some demographic groups at least research travel online Read the rest of this entry »

The single most important thing that you can do for your client relationships is to make your clients feel special. Most of the service suppliers that your clients come into contact with every day do nothing to make them seem special – it is business as usual. That is why the exceptional service provider gets noticed. Think of the way in which certain exclusive hotel chains have built stories around themselves by doing no more than communicating the name of its guest to all of its personnel and then making sure the bellmen, the maids, and the service staff all address the client by name. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumer advocates often lodge the complaint that advertising is coercive and monopolistic, dictating public perceptions and buying habits. According to this theory, the public buys what they are told to buy, the product most advertised, rather than the product that is the best for their needs. Certainly, companies with the resources to put into advertising have a distinct advantage. Regardless of the actual merits of the argument, the perception it creates makes it more difficult to form a relationship with clients based on trust. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the chief complaints consumers have about advertising is it is often inappropriate – either wrongly targeted or misdirected. Often, travel agents will blanket their client lists with advertising that betrays a lack of concern for the needs or concerns of the individual client. For example, not everyone is a fan of cruising. Repeated advertisements for a cruise vacation directed at the wrong client will cause the client to doubt the sincerity of the travel agent. If the travel counselor is truly about the service and not the product, if a travel planner’s practice is really client-centric, then the needs and preferences of the client come first and a stream of wrongly directed advertisements will callous the relationship. Read the rest of this entry »

In our last article, we discussed how many consumers perceive advertising as manipulative and less than authentic. Another common complaint is that advertising imposes itself on the individual in an unwanted manner – it interrupts the flow of information or entertainment to gain mindshare. Thus, a commercial appears at the climax of the television show, or the banner ad covers up what you are trying to read. Indeed, much of the advertising to which we are exposed each day is unsolicited and unwanted. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers have a love/hate relationship with advertising. Some advertising is highly regarded, memorized and repeated, passed along virally. Other ads are the subject of scorn and vilification usually reserved for weapons of mass destruction. It is a worthwhile exercise to examine consumer attitudes toward advertising and to discover exactly what about it people find objectionable. Buried there is a lesson we can take back to our own marketing campaigns to ensure that it will be heard and trusted rather than frowned upon. Read the rest of this entry »

We have devoted this series to Guerrilla Marketing and to the type of tactics that require very little capital but lots of initiative and work. Let’s finish off with a few ways to spend your small marketing budget on tools that will help you more effectively market for many months to come.  Specifically, look to all of your “Points of Contact” – those areas where clients come into contact with your brand, and polish them just a bit.  An occasional upgrade to your points of contact is a necessary part of keeping your business personality fresh and smart-looking.

Friday’s guerrilla marketing tactics for $150: Read the rest of this entry »

“Guerrilla Marketing” is all about being smart with your marketing budget by using a lot of elbow grease to make each dollar go farther. If $150 is what you have to work with, you will want to find marketing venues that are tightly focused around your target demographic and then put in the requisite face-time with the prospective clients. The combination of a little bit of money and a whole lot of personality and physical effort will pay off for the travel agent willing to go the extra mile. Read the rest of this entry »

“Guerrilla Marketing”, is all about achieving the maximum marketing bang for the buck. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but it needs to be creative. Today we are going to seek out three new tactics to tap into  groups of consumers and to spend our money in as leveraged a way possible: Read the rest of this entry »

This week, TRO SMITH is paying homage to Jay Conrad Levinson’s “Guerrilla Marketing“, a manual for street-level marketing focused on achieving the maximum impact for the least capital expenditure. With the slim margins of travel consulting, guerilla marketing is particularly well suited for many travel agents. With that said, however, here is a warning about letting your marketing become a “shoestring noose.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many years ago, Jay Conrad Levinson coined the phrase “Guerrilla Marketing” to reference marketing tactics that business people could execute with a minimal expenditure of capital. Since that time, more than 1,000,000 copies of his book have been sold. The success of Guerrilla Marketing is in its mandate to develop a marketing mindset, to continually look for the marketing opportunity at every turn and to keep the necessity of marketing top of mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the bad news: you have more competition than you think.  Here’s the good news – you  can effectively compete. In fact, competition keeps us sharp and aware of the environment in which we operate.  Keep in mind that carrying the proper attitude about your competition is important.  Properly trained, your clients will adopt many aspects of your own attitude about travel and other distribution channels.  If your attitude is positive and healthy, chance are your clients’ will be as well.

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Many travel professionals will openly confess that marketing is not their forte. After all, a large percentage of travel agents, if not the overwhelming majority, very rightly entered the industry not because they love marketing but because they love travel.  Many have a very limited background or formal training in marketing, but manage to conduct a reasonably viable business out of a capacity to communicate their enthusiasm for travel and for being of service to others. That said, however,  travel professionals have the need to be serious about marketing.  The stakes are high – involved is not only your own business, but I dare say the future of the entire travel agency distribution channel. Read the rest of this entry »

From earliest childhood, we are taught to listen to stories. We develop a real, active interest in the lead character of a tale. No doubt some people tell stories better than others. But the one story you should spend time writing and polishing is your own. Why are you in travel? What do you do? How do you do it? Have you ever had a really special moment traveling? What was it? Is that why you are a travel professionals? Did you travel with your parents? Why do you think people should travel? How have you spent the past 11 Covid-19 months? What has the past time period meant to you, to your clients? Finally, does your personal profile, which I assure you your clients read, tell your story well? Is it filled with political clap-trap? It is fine, if that it the story you have to tell, but your story is your agency’s story as well. Read the rest of this entry »

As a travel planner, no doubt you are very aware  of all the “shoulds”: you should develop a marketing plan, you should email clients on a regular basis, you should have a newsletter… there are a lot of “shoulds.” In fact, coming up with a list of things to do is easy. Accomplishing the list is a bit tougher. As you continue to build your travel practice, one of the nicest things you can do for yourself is to consciously remove the obstacles  you can identify that prevent you from acting on and accomplishing your plans. Read the rest of this entry »