Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Creative Marketing Tips for Travel Advisors from Sheila Butler
Unlock the secrets to elevating your travel advisory business with Sheila Butler from Butler Marketing Group on the Travel Masters podcast. Journey with us as Sheila reveals her extraordinary transition from a classically trained vocalist to mastering marketing at Disney, proving that passion and expertise can lead to incredible opportunities. Sheila shares her insights on the importance of defining your brand and target audience, especially within the expansive world of travel, and explains why specialization, like focusing on Disney vacations, can be a game-changer for travel advisors.
Ever wondered how to maintain a niche without closing doors to other possibilities? We tackle this head-on, discussing the power of targeting specific clients while keeping a welcoming approach to new opportunities. Sheila highlights the role of loyalty programs in enhancing customer satisfaction and provides practical tips for travel advisors to maximize these benefits. Discover how aligning personal interests with business goals and utilizing email marketing can transform your client engagement strategy and bring your travel business to new heights.
Venture into the innovative realm of niche group travel as we explore unique opportunities such as tulip-focused trips and wine-themed adventures. Sheila offers creative marketing strategies, from A-B testing to tailoring content for optimal audience engagement. With her contact details readily available, Sheila invites listeners for a complimentary consultation to uncover fresh marketing avenues. Don't miss this chance to connect with a marketing expert who can help you carve out a successful path in the travel industry.
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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. 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.
Speaker 1: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? Marketing is one of those things that, frankly, a lot of people just think they're really great at marketing without any background in it or any education with it or any experience with it. It's just like, oh yeah, I'm a great marketing person, I do social media well, there's a lot more to it than that. We've got a lady with us today. Sheila Butler's here from Butler Marketing Group, and I'm telling you what this young lady has got the experience and the knowledge and the skills to be a lot of help for us today on our show and even maybe post the show. There's no telling. Sheila, thank you so much for being here on the Travel Masters podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a great time. I can feel it in my bones. Tell me, sheila, how did you get involved with this marketing thing? Is this something that you've been doing for well, 25 years or more? Tell us real briefly about how you got into this and why it's important to you.
Speaker 2:You know what? It was an unexpected path. I will say I have an undergrad in music and business, slash arts administration, from one of the best music schools in the country and when I graduated, you got to tell me which one.
Speaker 1:Now you can't just throw that out there.
Speaker 2:Indiana.
Speaker 1:University Ooh, nice Okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm a classically trained vocalist and I thought I would be working for some sort of nonprofit arts organization and I, as luck would have it, fate would have it, I got my dream job at Disney straight out of college and so I found myself working in entertainment at Disney stage, managing guest performances, cheerleaders, orchestras, marching bands, you name it.
Speaker 2:I had 200 clowns from a clown convention in the parade one day at an international accordion band, Like you name it. I hosted it. And then I worked on about 60 special events for Disney and as I was doing the event work I was jobbing myself out every summer to another part of Disney Entertainment to grow my network and experience. So I worked in talent booking for a summer. I helped start the character face casting department at Disney, did all these really cool things. But I was really fascinated over time by how Disney brands their theme parks and creates a point of difference from a marketing perspective and then leverages special events to create the sort of the Disney magic to bring all that to life. And so I convinced a marketing department called Special Events Development in marketing to bring me on for a project, and then I never left marketing.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's great. We could talk Disney for the next hour just by itself. So I'll try not to go there too deep, but it's amazing. Working with travel advisors as I do, there's a lot to being able to help somebody figure out those parks. So that's one of the key things that I find some of our great travel agents do. Even though Disney doesn't necessarily pay a huge commission percentage, it still requires some real expertise on their part, and once they do and they become known for it, they can have a pretty solid business, even if they focus only on Disney. So it works out pretty well. But there's so much to it, isn't there?
Speaker 2:It's. It's overwhelming, right, it's overwhelming If you're trying to plan your first Disney trip, or second or third right on your own, which is why they need folks that that you are helping build their businesses right and train them, because you really do need a good, trained travel agent to help you navigate everything right. There are a lot of choices, a lot of price points and how do you, how do you like not only just how do you get your money's worth, but like what's what's meaningful to you, right? Which is why, if I'm a travel agent, I'm thinking about it from a marketing standpoint. Right, I'm running my own travel agency.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking about what target audiences do I want to focus on? Do I want to focus on families with young kids? Do I want to focus on empty nesters, et cetera? What do I want to be known for as my brand? And then, what are the types of vacations that I really want to differentiate my business versus someone else's, right? Do I want to be a Disney expert? Do I want to be a cruise expert? Do I want to be an expert in Asia pack trips, right? You, you never know. But all these different things, it's funny how, you're right, People feel like they know marketing because it's it's in a lot of different places, right, but knowing it and having the best practices to implement in your business, I think, are very different things.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do too, and you mentioned a couple of things there that I want to follow up on for sure. But one of the other things that used to drive me nuts is the people that thought sales and marketing were two of the same thing, that those were synonyms and they're definitely two separate operations altogether. That those were synonyms and they're definitely two separate operations altogether, but we're talking about marketing from a travel agent standpoint. You mentioned all the different things that you could be doing as a travel agent. Talk to me about niching down to a specific area Sheila. Is that good, bad and different?
Speaker 2:What do you think? I think it depends honestly upon what your business objectives are. Right? So when I think about building on a marketing strategy, I start with the business objectives and goals in mind. Right so, are you trying to drive X amount in sales? Are you a brand new business? Where are you in your life cycle? Right so you kind of start with that, because marketing is to achieve your business goals. Right so you start with the business objectives, Then you think about your marketing objectives and then your communication objectives. Right so what do I want to achieve in my marketing? Your objectives, what I want to achieve in what I communicate, and then building marketing strategies and communication strategies around those. Right so, it's layer after layer after layer.
Speaker 2:So when I think about, wow, do I want to focus on certain aspects of travel? Yeah, probably. Like you can either go very broad, be a generalist or be more of a specialist in a couple different things. And then, what audiences do you want to serve? Does what you want to focus on really align with the people that you most want to work with?
Speaker 2:One of the elements within my business is all around branding and thinking through. You know what's my core identity? What are the four things that I want to be known for as my business. I call those sort of the core identity or the brand pillars, right, and those are the things you would explain over and over again. This is why I'm the best travel agent for you. My target audience is because I know these things really really well. These four things and here's my point of difference, which is like the creme de la creme top of the sort of branding differentiation is out of everybody else. This is what makes me special as a travel agent. So you think through all those different messages and I think that the answer about whether or not your specialty from a travel agent standpoint, or if you're very broad, really goes back to again, kind of like what are you trying to achieve as?
Speaker 2:as a travel agent because there's no wrong answer. Right necessarily in general, but what's right for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. I like to tell folks that there are riches in the niches. If you will, for sure, but you don't let that limit you either. I mean, my niche may be travel advisors, but if somebody that runs an excavating company comes into my door and says would you help me, I'm not going to turn them down and say, no, you got to find somebody else. I only work with travel agents.
Speaker 2:Right, right, exactly. Well, that's where it's target audience. This is who I'm trying to target, so that you know I'm speaking to you, right, but that doesn't mean that other people may not find your message intriguing and come to you and by all means. It's just. This is the target, but there's probably a bigger radius of people, right yeah?
Speaker 1:and if that excavating company comes in, I'm going to work with them. Because if I have a store and it's open and I focus on let's call it a travel agency and I focus on Disney, just because somebody comes in and says I want to go to the Netherlands, doesn't mean I'm going to say no. It's like somebody walks in and wants to buy an alligator. Sheila, I'm going to sell them a freaking alligator, you know, whatever it takes and however we can go, but there may be some specific, specific, identified groups or areas where that's where I want to spend my time and my resources. That's where I'm going to spend my money to do my marketing to. Is that ideal group right?
Speaker 2:And it's probably where your passion lies, right? I mean, what gets you out of bed in the morning?
Speaker 1:And that's the most important question that we all have to answer yeah, absolutely yes, and why are we doing whatever it is we're doing?
Speaker 2:Right, right, when you could be doing something else, right, you know, one element that I do think is is really intriguing from a travel standpoint, as a differentiator, is really understanding various loyalty programs, right? So how can you bring more value and value I use it loosely to your clients? And that could be understanding the various loyalty programs for airlines, for rental cars, for hotels, for cruises, etc. Etc. And really understanding aligning your client needs and desires and finding the most for them, and the most may be value per dollar spent. It could be special experiences above and beyond. It could take many different forms, but there's a ton of value to be extracted out of loyalty programs and at the end of the day, you're going to pay for a hotel. Do you want to pay for Hilton? Do you want to pay for Marriott? Do you want to pay for IHG? Do you want to pay for Hyatt or Choice?
Speaker 2:Right, they all have very different loyalty programs. They're not as transparent on the hotel side as the airline mile programs and really seeing, like, what do I get for a mile? How many miles do I need and how many? How much do I have to fly to have that many miles to get that right? And then you throw the whole credit card game on top of it, which is which is a good thing, right? Just again, sort of get more out of the dollars that you're going to spend anyway. But if I were a travel advisor or travel agent, I would be learning as much as I can, at least in one of the segments. If I want to know cruise inside and out and that's going to be part of my core identity and brain pillar, and I'm targeting people who really like to cruise then bet your bottom dollar you're going to be a much better travel agent and a much better guide for them and drive-free businesses. You really really understand those cruise loyalty programs in and out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's crazy how different they are. And then you get to the point where I am, where I've got, you know, tens of thousands of miles over here and I've got tens of thousands of miles over there and I really want to take them all and fly on American Airlines. So, figuring out how to do all that I don't even know if you can, but that's one of my challenges coming up here personally is how do I get all those things together so that I can utilize them to buy an airplane ticket in my case? Is there a way to do those kind of things once I know something about those loyalty programs?
Speaker 2:I think that, well, you can't bundle across brands, which is why, at the end of the day, I think, after looking at different loyalty programs and deciding which brand do I really think identifies with how I travel and my interests, and which one probably can I achieve the higher loyalty tiers and again have more benefits, more value to me, right, the faster, right.
Speaker 2:If I don't think I'm going to travel as much, then it may not matter. It can just be a slow crawl to the next set of points or miles or whatever that you need to redeem for a free something, a free seat, a free night. But if I'm traveling a lot, I'm probably going to pick an airline that's a hub city near me, right, that goes to where I want to go and you want to fly that airline always, always, always right. If it's a hotel chain that I want to pick, the hotel chain that has the most properties, based upon how I like to travel and my economy travel. Do I like a set of luxury? Do I like more of the boutique hotels? Do I travel to really common cities or unusual cities? Do I travel internationally a lot? All these different things. But I would say invest, pick one or two and really start to double down on that again so that you can get more and more value at the loyalty programs. It's all there.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things that I think most well, I'll put it this way most of what I consider the really good travel agents, travel advisors, do is that they communicate via email. They have an email marketing system, an email list that they market to, and what a great topic for a newsletter or just an email. Hey, let's talk loyalty programs and provide the top four things you need to know about your loyalty program. Whatever it is like, pick a hotel group and an airline and stick with it. When I was in the corporate world, it was Marriott and American. My secretary knew don't book Morris on anything except American and by George. Don't ever put him anywhere except in a Marriott hotel.
Speaker 2:Exactly right.
Speaker 1:You want to be consistent and those kinds of things you could put into a newsletter as an agent and add value to your clients, which is what you want to do in a newsletter anyway, right?
Speaker 2:Right, right, so, but let's talk about email, right. Let's talk about if you're trying to engage your client base. Email is a good way, right. You always want to be capturing new names of prospects for future clients, right. Whenever you interact with them, an email is a great way to do that. However, if you're looking for other ways to find clients and engage them because think about it, how many emails do you get in a day, in a week, in a month, and, oh, holy cow, it's about to be the holiday deluge of emails Can you just think about how many more you're going to get, right?
Speaker 2:Just sift through the stuff you actually want to read, right. And so what I would say is, if I had a travel practice, I would be thinking of really, really creative ways to get my message out there in unexpected ways, and one of those ways and another passion of mine is around partnerships other passion of mine is around partnerships, so, thinking about partnering with, maybe, a wine shop that's in the area, right. And so, if I think I want to focus on international travel, potentially, or empty nesters, or you know, people who have more of a disposable income to travel, they're looking for really unique experiences. Maybe partnering with a wine shop to where they're hosting a wine tasting and I can come in and I can talk about the region that these wines are coming from and all the different ways that someone could travel they're really passionate about that to learn more about it and experience it right and savor it. Then that might be a really, really interesting way of growing my travel business and finding new clients.
Speaker 1:And there are people out there doing just exactly that, so successfully, and other folks that are going oh, I don't want to, let's try it. Give it a try and see what happens.
Speaker 1:You know, you can try a lot of things once right, do it more than once, but give it a try. I've got a client that's all involved with tulips right now and she's got a group that she's putting together to go to when are tulips. Is that Denmark, maybe? I don't know. She told me and I forgot, but she's putting a group together to go see where the tulip bulbs come from and when they all bloom and do all the things that tulips do. What an interesting group that I would never, ever, ever, have thought of right.
Speaker 1:That's a point of difference she's got a garden shop of what do you call it? A florist not a florist, but a gardening place and there's they specialize in tulips. So she goes there and does an event and from that event captures people on their email who want to talk about tulips. Oh, by the way, I've got a group that's going to the Netherlands to look at tulips. You ought to go and she's getting some great results from that. So it's amazing the events and the kind of niches that you could look for out there where you could do some group travel. Wine is certainly one. I know several agencies and agents who are very focused on wine and on wine travel, but they're still very focused on wine. The fact is it's a wonderful thing. There are other groups and other specialties that you might want to look at for creating groups to go places and, frankly, group travel is a heck of a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Right. It's really thinking about your business from a very objective lens, aligning your passion points and the people that you want to work with with what their needs are and then serving them in really unique and different ways that create a white space for you versus your competition.
Speaker 1:And you know it's amazing. It doesn't have to be that difficult. I was speaking with one of my clients this morning and she does this newsletter and when I got a handle on it I got to look at it. Sheila, it's got to be 10 screens long. You're going to be scrolling forever to get to the bottom line of this thing. Now, in the professional world of marketing, maybe we might look at it and say, oh my God, that's way too long. Nobody's going to read it. But hey, she's getting two or three people to call her every time she sends one out.
Speaker 2:Then that's meaningful, then it's resonating with our audience.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. All I did was I said don't change a word of the content, just split it in half and send it out twice. You'll get twice as many responses. Yep, and you know those kinds of little things you can do. That doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be gorgeous, just has to be consistent. Out there a lot.
Speaker 2:So you know, take that idea. Take that idea about splitting the list in half, right? So one of the things that I did when I worked at BankOne, slash JPMorgan Chase was a lot of test and learn and optimize. So if she has this large email list, right, split it in half or in thirds. Make sure that sort of equal distribution of your target audiences in each so it's not weighted Like if you've got two different target audiences. Make sure it's like an even batch of the audiences, right? Yeah, Try sending it out at a different time of day on the same day.
Speaker 2:Try sending it out on a different day of the week and see if you can figure out how to get a lift in your response because of the change in the time of day. Don't change anything else, Don't change the content. Just try something different and see if you can learn into that. And if you get a lift, try getting a bigger lift and then, if you don't, then you probably are sustained. Right? But now you upped your game. You didn't do anything different on the content side. You're just being smarter about your marketing approach.
Speaker 1:Is that what they call an A-B test? Yeah, yeah, so you're trying one thing and trying to. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So the A-B test could be just like when you send it or the day of the week. But it could also be change the headline and nothing else, change the image and nothing else. Right, you start to learn what works. You just can't change more than one thing. Or then you can't read it. How do you know what?
Speaker 1:works. That's right. And then that's what I was suggesting to her was that she take this big long email and cut that in half and send the first half out of it to everybody on the first day of the month and the other one on the 15th day of the month, or something like that. But what you're suggesting is even more important. Let's look at the group that we're sending it to, and how can we best attack not attack is not a good word how can we best attract that group to interact with me on that email, which is a wonderful idea, sheila?
Speaker 1:Thank you, yep, travel advisor today and and you got in there and you're you're doing your discovery to find out what they do and how they do it. What's the, what's the top thing you might, you know? Think about talking to them about first, right off the bat what's, what do you think is most important to them? That you know they've got all these things they need to do. But this one thing I think everybody needs to really focus in on at some point in time. Anything strike you, anything come to mind.
Speaker 2:It can be so different, right, it depends upon where they are. If they are a brand new company, right, and they just need the nuts and bolts and they're just trying to grow their business, I may focus on, I think, growth marketing over performance marketing. So and I define them as performance marketing I just want to like grow gangbusters, just like this. Right, I think about growth marketing as a little bit slower, a little bit more thoughtful, but it's profitable growth, right. I may start there.
Speaker 2:If it's a business and they're in more of that sort of steady state mode, I may be thinking how can I really create step change, growth in your business? That may be going back and looking at your branding and your marketing messaging and seeing it's not the activities of what you're doing, but it's how you're positioning yourself for your audience to really attract, you know, more engaged customers, people who will spend more on trips, travel more frequently, right, like, is there something there around the branding and the messaging that we could work on? And in other instances, it may be just seeing they don't really have a real marketing plan that ties to objectives. Are they really crystal clear on a business plan and what their marketing and communication objectives are their strategies and do they have a written plan, or are they just kind of doing stuff because they've just always done it this way, right, and there's no real method to the madness, right? So I think that's the thing is that it's a very, very individualized approach that I take from my boutique marketing business, because everyone's different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Everybody's different. Everybody needs something different. There's no way around it. But I think you really hit on a key point there that we probably it's my fault we should have started with this. And that's the whole idea of having a marketing plan and knowing what you're going to do tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that, so that you're not trying to make it up every every morning when you get up and say, gee, what am I going to do today about marketing? Right now? You got it planned out.
Speaker 2:You know when you're going to do what pieces of a marketing plan and a lot of people think you know, oh, I should do email because that's what people do. Okay, well, what are you trying to achieve with the email, right? Do you know your KPIs, your key performance indicators? Do you have metrics? Do you know how many? How many opens do you want for all the emails that you send? How many people do you want to open? How many people do you want to click through from the open rate? How many consultations do you want to book? How many total sales do you want to drive? You know? Are you measuring these activities right? You got to start somewhere, but without a plan, you're just setting your time and energy and money on fire.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you know it's, it's just doesn't work, but you know, you know it just doesn't work.
Speaker 2:It can by happenstance, but it could work so much better.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It could be so much better if we just put a little effort and a little time into it to do some planning ahead of time. And then is there an outline for that marketing plan in your head, Sheila. What would that look like? We talk about marketing plans. I think I know what I'm talking about. You definitely know what you're talking about, but we may be on two totally separate pages here. What do you look at when you think about a marketing plan?
Speaker 2:What's the big Roman numeral level outline for that? Yep, so big chunks. What are my owned channels? What are the channels that I have total control over? That's probably my website. That's my email. It may be if I send text messages because I have permission to do so, right? What are my earned channels? That's the next category. Earned are anytime I get mentions in a publication or the newspaper, or I'm on a travel show. It could be social media.
Speaker 2:So you know, pick all of the channels right that you want to play in that's relevant for where you need to reach your audience. And then there's paid channels, and paid channels are you know? Am I going to invest in direct mail? Am I going to invest in some paid media? Am I going to invest in direct mail? Am I going to invest in some paid media? Am I going to invest in some paid search? Right, all those different things.
Speaker 2:And then you think about what are the types of things that I want to be communicating to people? Again, going back to that sort of what do I want to be known for from a brand messaging standpoint, and thinking about maybe four things you want to be known for. One could be destination. Another one could be the type of travel. Another one could be the audience that you want to primarily attract and then think about, on a monthly and then a quarterly and annual basis, what you want to say in those three different types of marketing channels, right? So owned, earned and paid, about those four different things you want to talk about and organize that out, map it out, and it doesn't have to be super fancy. It could be on a calendar, it could be in an Excel spreadsheet, right? Or there are services you can pay and if you want to spend more. But it doesn't have to be fancy, but just start to map it out. By the way, it's okay if it's not right. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
Speaker 1:Just start by starting Production over perfection Every time, every time. Oh, sheila, that is so good and so wonderfully helpful for everybody on this podcast. Thank you very, very much. You've been a wonderful guest and a wonderful help. Thank you very much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it is my pleasure. Thank you very much for being here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it is my pleasure. Thank you so much. Oh, you're more than welcome. And for everybody else out there, create your marketing plan this week. Get your marketing plan put together. Michael Gerber told us we have to spend some time working on our business as well as in our business. So carve out some time on your calendar and sit back and think about what am I going to do for marketing for 2025?.
Speaker 2:Exactly Now is the time right. So and I'm happy if folks reached out to me I'm happy to provide a 20 minute consultation on if there's something that's free for them, you know, if there's something that I could provide for their business to help them really focus in on how do you align your business objectives with a marketing strategy, or if they need help on branding or messaging, I'm happy to just see if there are ways that I can service them from a business standpoint.
Speaker 1:Well, that's so good of you. Thank you, sheila, absolutely. How do we get in touch with you, though? I'm sorry I forgot to ask that. How do we find you most easily? I don't know, my grammar is falling apart today, I don't know why. How do we find you, sheila?
Speaker 2:So they can go to Butler B-U-T-L-E-R. M as in marketing G as in groupcom, so ButlerMGcom, or email me at Sheila at ButlerMGcom.
Speaker 1:Oh, outstanding, very good, aren't you guys? Send Sheila, say that 10 times. Send Sheila an email and talk to her for 20 minutes for free, and you might find that there are several hundred million thousands of things that you can do that you may not have even thought of yet. So until next time, I'm Morris Sims and I look forward to seeing you again here on the Travel Masters podcast. Thanks for listening.