Travel Masters Podcast
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Travel Masters Podcast
Maximizing Engagement in Travel Marketing Beyond Social Media
Ready to elevate your travel business to new heights? Learn effective marketing strategies from Morris Sims and special guest Tim Fitzpatrick in this episode of the Travel Masters podcast. We promise you'll walk away with actionable insights on how to diversify your marketing channels beyond the limitations of social media. Discover the power of creating hyper-focused content tailored to specific travel niches and how you can repurpose this content across multiple platforms to maximize your reach and engagement.
Curious about achieving a balanced lifestyle that includes regular travel while still growing your business? Tim Fitzpatrick shares his expertise on effective email marketing strategies, emphasizing the use of lead magnets to grow your email list and nurture relationships through consistent, value-driven communication. Learn why having a structured marketing plan and iterating it every 90 days is crucial for sustained success. Tune in and take the first step towards mastering travel marketing and achieving the business lifestyle of your dreams!
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy.
Speaker 1:I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business. On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you, our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say?
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Travel Masters podcast. Let's rejoin Morris and his guest Tim Fitzgerald as they continue their conversation from last week.
Speaker 1:Let's get into maybe a little bit of the tactics here. Yeah, what do I do? Coming into this business, brand new, and you think, wow, all I've got to do is put some social media posts out there on Facebook, instagram, linkedin and all the other multitude of social media. I'm going to do all my marketing on social media. That's all I can make it work from there. Yeah, what do?
Speaker 2:you think, yeah, gosh, there's a lot we could actually break down here. There's nothing wrong with social media, there's great opportunities there. But I think the thing that's important to remember about social media is that it is a rented marketing channel. You don't own it, so nothing wrong with renting. Just know that you don't want to be 100% relying on it because, let's say, you got a Facebook business or you got a Facebook group. Well, like they could shut your group down. If that's where all your business is coming from, that's a problem, right, a problem right. But so I think social can be great, and especially if we start to, as we get more tactical here.
Speaker 2:Think about if I specialize in trips to Iceland or, you know, ocean cruises. That's the type of content that I post on Facebook or Instagram or whatever channel I'm on. That I post on Facebook or Instagram or whatever channel I'm on, it's not about all these various vacations, it's very specific, right, and your content is hyper, hyper focused. If I'm not interested in going on an ocean cruise, it's not going to capture my attention at that point in time, but if I am dang sure it will, right, and so all of that. It makes it much easier for you to determine like what, what kind of content do I need to post? Well, if you're helping people go to iceland and that's where you specialize, then you know exactly what you need to do so, tim, talk to me, talk to me about the content of those posts.
Speaker 1:So I've seen a lot that are like we've got a deal for you, you can get here, we're going to give you this kind of discount. Yada, yada yada. It looks like a dead gum billboard. Is that really what?
Speaker 2:you want to do. I think it's more value-based content that's informational-based. There may be times where you get, you have more of a direct call to action, but I think it's more content about like, what do people who are traveling to Iceland want to know? Right, frankly, you could even go further up the buyer's journey. Maybe I want to travel, but Iceland isn't even on my radar, right? That's content that you look at and say, well, here are the reasons why you might want to go to Iceland. Right, and you talk about very specific. You talk about specific attractions or experiences there that somebody doesn't even know exist. And then, once they read about it, they're like, damn, I want to go to Iceland.
Speaker 1:Or maybe it's five things you need to do before you travel internationally.
Speaker 2:Could be that it could be top five must-have. Experiences in Iceland Right, that's why you're the marketing guy.
Speaker 1:And experiences in Iceland, right, yeah, um that's why you're the marketing guy and I'm not. Yes, you can get.
Speaker 2:You can even go deeper than that, right, and talk about I don't know cities in Iceland, but specific cities to visit, um things to do when you're in those cities, um, I mean, the list goes on and on. There's no shortage of content once you determine what you're going to specialize in and that's the type of content that you create. Taking a step back, even that content you can create as blog content. That content you can create as blog content. And then it's the blog content that you're promoting on social, and then you're driving people back to the blog content. So you know your content. The content that you can create can help drive various marketing channels. It can drive some of your website content. It can drive your social content. It can drive some of your website content. It can drive your social content. It can drive some of your email content. So it's not like you're just doing this once and just using it in one place. You can use it all over.
Speaker 1:Well, that was the other thing I was going to ask you about. Is you know, is that those social media posts? Is that enough? It sounds like there are other things you need to be involved in.
Speaker 2:No, I think you're going to need more than that, but I mean, it depends. It depends on how much business you want to do and how much traffic you start to drive through. That you know. But so I'll give you another example. I was actually talking to a prospective client a few weeks ago that's a real estate agent, and they had started a Facebook group about this specific area and relocating to this specific area.
Speaker 2:There, you go and they had generated a ton of almost all of her business for the first, like three years, came from that Facebook group. Wow, you know. So there's, you know you could, you could start a Facebook group about traveling to Iceland. I mean, you know, I mean there's.
Speaker 2:But the, the, the the important thing is the marketing channels that you use. They need to resonate with you. They need to, they need to be get you in front of your ideal client. But they also need to resonate with you, cause if you don't, if you don't like them, you're not going to do, you're not, you're going to hate it, right, and you're not going to do them consistently. So I don't think there's any one size fits all. Like you know, paint by numbers. This is exactly what you need to do to grow your business. We need to look at these fundamentals that we're talking about right Our who are our target? Who's our target market? Who are the ideal clients that we're going to work with? How are we going to niche? And then we can start to pick and choose what vehicles are going to make the most sense for us, that are going to get us in front of those clients that we want to work with.
Speaker 1:If my ideal client is someone who is retired, married, got grandkids and loves to travel and wants to take their grandkids on trips with them, ie they're really looking forward to going back to Disney World. Yeah, Now, if that's kind of one of my ideal clients, then one of my marketing arms probably is going to be doing events at senior living Right Retirement communities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like there's plenty of you know whatever over 55, over 60, over 65 communities. You could do events there. You could do direct mail to specific communities, like that. You could advertise in local publications that go directly to those communities. Yeah, there's all kinds of things you could do but you gotta decide where first right.
Speaker 1:You gotta decide who. Who, I guess, really who is your ideal client?
Speaker 2:first, yeah, once, because once you know who your ideal clients are okay, to go to a travel analogy here, but this is what I call it, and I call it an ideal client GPS it is a list of all the places you can go to get in front of your ideal clients. Once you know who your ideal clients are, then you can actually create that list. And that list is it's always going to be growing, it's evolving over time, but it gives you a place that you can market that's going to be hyper-targeted to your ideal clients. You're not throwing a net out in the middle of the ocean hoping you're going to catch a fish. You know that when you go to market to places on this list that I'm catching trout and I'm going to the local trout pond, I'm putting a line out and I'm only going to catch trout. So it's a much more targeted, much more specific way to market, which means it's going to be much more effective over the long term. And so if I determine my ideal clients, are these specific types of people? So if I determine my ideal clients are these specific types of people, then I can start to look at creating that list. And creating that list, gosh Morris, we could talk about this just for a single episode, so I'll try and keep this short and sweet.
Speaker 2:But with the advent of AI, you know, and tools like ChatGPT, creating this list is much simpler than it used to be. You know, the data is at our fingertips, right? You know? You can go into ChatGPT and say you know, hey, I'm a travel agent specializing in XYZ. I've identified that my ideal clients are these types of people.
Speaker 2:What are some of the websites they might frequent? What are some of the social media groups they might be involved in? You know you want to look at email lists, podcasts they listen to. You know blogs they read. Youtube channels they watch Offline, you know, are there specific types of events or communities that they might live in? Are there associations that they belong to, organizations that they're involved with? That's what you put in chat GPT and guess what it's going to spit out a list, and then you can put all those things on a Google Doc or a Word Doc and then you can start to dig a little bit deeper. Is this one going to make sense? Start to do some Google searches for similar terms and see what comes up. That's your initial list.
Speaker 1:But as you get deeper, more things will come to the surface that you can put to the list. That's a need. I hadn't thought of that one. That's really cool. Great way to use AI. Personally my fault, my failing I haven't reached out and used AI very much at all In fact, not at all. I guess I'm getting too old for that stuff, tim, but I need to do. That's a great place for me to stick my feet in the water and try some AI and see what I can come up with. Thank you very much. Hey, maybe taking us down another track here for just a few minutes. Talk to me about email marketing. Everywhere I look, they tell me that my email list is worth more than anything in my business.
Speaker 2:You absolutely need to do email marketing period Like got to do it. When you look at, it's inexpensive, right? It's not overly complex and, despite what anybody says, we're still checking our email all the time and it is a great way to nurture and stay in front of people, and that's the potential prospects, past clients, right? Like I said, you just helped that client to their trip in Iceland. Now, hey, maybe they're going to want to go back in another two or three years, but a lot of people go on vacation every year, you know, or multiple times a year, depending on who your ideal clients are. And if they are, you want to continue to stay in front of them, and email is a very good way to do that.
Speaker 1:It's. One of my dreams is to be in a position where I can take a week or so and travel every quarter of the year, every quarter. First quarter, we're going to go do this Second quarter. That's one of my biggest things and it just makes sense that I want to stay in touch with everybody out there, because there are other folks out there that want to travel just like I do in those kinds of ways and those kinds of places. And email marketing just I don't know, I haven't been real successful at it until recently and I'm working on making it even better. The lead magnets that you use to try and attract folks boy howdy, when you get out there and you get the right one, it can mean all the difference in the world. Our email list, which we just started over from the very beginning a couple of months ago, is now reaching out to be 300 people. Yeah, and it's a very, very simple little lead magnet that we're using to get people to share their email address with us, get people to share their email address with us.
Speaker 1:But at least another thing real quick, tim, you don't want to do this all by yourself, just with a list of emails on Excel.
Speaker 2:You really want to use a system to do this, don't you? Yeah, you want to use a system. You know you don't want to just throw people on there. These are people that should be on there because you've had conversations with them, right? Or they've opted in. You mentioned the lead magnet, right? A lead magnet, to keep things simple, is just it's something that you are offering people that is of value to them in exchange for their name and their email address, right, right, you know if I'm again, if I'm a travel agent specializing in Iceland. You know top 10 places in Iceland that most people never visit Bingo.
Speaker 1:You know, and they, and then at the end of it, it's just it know, Rialto, Marketing, Travel, Masters Learning Community and an email address or something. It's not a big, huge five places you want to go when you go to Iceland and, by the way, we're the people that send you there and you need to call us. It's not an advertisement, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's not an advertisement. It is something of value, it's valuable information for them, but then there's no reason you shouldn't have a call to action on there, right? You know, do you want help? You know traveling, planning your trip to Iceland? Schedule a consultation here, right On that sheet. You might have and that's the beauty of email marketing when they opt into that you know 10 overlooked places you must see. When you go to Iceland, they're gonna get a sequence of emails over a period of time that's gonna continue to help them, support them, and that's where you have those calls to action as well. Right, and hey, we specialize in creating, you know, fantastic Icelandic experiences. If you're ready to plan yours, schedule a consultation, right.
Speaker 1:And you're nurturing that relationship and building that trust with each email that they receive and they take the time to actually look at. So it just makes such good sense to me. Now we've talked about a number of different things, tim. Is this like a smorgasbord? You go into the cafeteria and you pick you know this one and that one and the other, and next time you go in you choose this one, that one, the other. Do you kind of have to have a menu that you use all the time, like McDonald's? That's not a good analogy, I'm sorry, tim.
Speaker 2:No, it's okay. So and you're asking like from a marketing tactic perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a plan, don't? We need a plan for this thing so that we do the same thing, because we're not going to evaluate a marketing effort after a week or two.
Speaker 2:Yes. So with marketing planning one, keep it simple, do not overcomplicate it, don't try to bite off eight different things when you don't have enough time Like. You're much better off focusing on fewer tactics and going deeper, but you also need to give it time. As humans, we are wired for short-term gratification. That is a horrible way to be from a marketing standpoint, because you're just going to be jumping from one thing to the next. I did that but it didn't work, you know, and it's like I did that for a week, I did that for a month. That is not long enough.
Speaker 2:I like to look at planning in 90-day sprints. 90 days is long enough to start to take action and start seeing what's happening, and then you can iterate your plan for the next 90 days. That's not to say that in 90 days you're going to know for sure whether it's working or not, but 90 days is long enough to take action right, test something, measure it and learn from it, and then you can adjust what you're doing and keep moving forward. But you know, but depending on the marketing, minimum six to 12 months to really start seeing traction. You may get some leads here and there, but you got to be committed.
Speaker 2:You cannot do it for a month or two months and then just give up yeah, yeah, right that makes perfect sense to me, you may know in in a month, two months, three months, whether, like just based on the action you've taken, you're like this is going nowhere, right?
Speaker 1:or I hate it. I hate doing this. This is terrible.
Speaker 2:I don't want to do this anymore, right and that's okay, you're, you own the business, you can make that decision, but it's, it's that, it's those actions that we're taking. We learn from that, yeah, and then we can make much better, much better decisions. When we take action, we're measuring it and then we can learn from that and and make you know database to see, database decisions right as to what's going to make the most sense to move forward. But we got to give it time. Too many people just give up before they've given it the opportunity to work and or they haven't tested it enough, right. They're like I did this for a month and then they stopped Rather than going.
Speaker 2:I did this for a month. What happened? Did we get any traction, you know? And what worked, what didn't? Because just because something didn't work at all doesn't mean that it won't work. It could just mean that your approach was totally off, your message was off, you weren't getting in front of the right market. There's all kinds of things that can happen, that can impact that. But you got to give it time. So, planning, keep it simple 90-day sprints, wash, rinse, repeat.
Speaker 1:Makes sense to me, tim. It really does. It really does. Thank you so much. You've given us some great stuff to think about and some great ideas, some tactics, and the bottom line is you got to have a plan. You got to stick to it for a period of time before giving us some great stuff to think about and some great ideas, some tactics. The bottom line is you got to have a plan. You got to stick to it for a period of time before you start saying it works or it doesn't work. You can't make that judgment on the short run, the short term. You've got to give it time to be able to truly make that judgment as to whether or not your marketing activities are working for you.
Speaker 1:Those are some wonderful things, tim. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. We're going to have you back again on Travel Masters and we've got some things coming up in the future in December that definitely want you to be a part of as well. So thank you very much, my friend. I so appreciate you being here with us on Travel Masters today. Thank you, it's been a pleasure, morris, I appreciate it. Have a wonderful week For everybody else out there. Y'all go out, find somebody new to talk, to Go out there, do some personal observation marketing and find some new people that need to know about you and your business. And until next time, I'm Morris Sims for Travel Masters and the Travel Masters Learning Community. Have a great week.