Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 232: The 2x Rule and Why Past Travel Clients Are Worth Double
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency New Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping travel advisors just like you become the CEO. And before I put my headphones on, I just want you to take a look see if you're watching this on YouTube. This Lily Munster hair is all natural. Decades of stress have created this beautiful silvery white streak. Alright. Anyway. Time to flatten it all out with my headphones. Today is day 232. Thank you for coming back as always. And new subscribers, yep. 232 episodes of this podcast. You're welcome. Not really, because it's a lot of information. Though, mmm, some of my biggest fans have told me that they just like put this podcast on while they're cleaning their house on Saturdays. So. At least I'm giving keeping you company. If you are spending most of your marketing energy chasing brand new leads while your past clients sit quietly in an old email thread, we are gonna talk about considering reordering those priorities, okay? And this is very common if you specialize in any kind of group travel, specifically destination weddings. It can be more difficult to get those wedding guests to come back and book another trip with you. And so many people don't even think about it. they're more focused on maybe working with the bride and groom again, maybe some of their family members. But if you have a wedding guest list, like a room block that has, I don't know, my average is probably around 75 guests, that's 75 opportunities for another trip. If you're like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? I'm talking about the client's long-term gross profit. The more trips the same person books, the less it the less, the less it costs you to maintain that client relationship because you don't have to spend time or money on excessive marketing, right? And therefore Your ROI will be better. I'm not saying don't chase new leads at all. Don't even like you always want to be building your business, right? Just consider this. And if you're like, well, how do I figure this out? I have a whole-free tool that shows you how much it actually costs you to acquire a new client, how much a client who books two or more trips over the lifetime relationship with you is actually worth. And it also has you can compare and contrast groups versus FITs if you're like, I don't even know what to niche into. And it also helps you set your goals based on your dream revenue for the year. And you can put in your dream say your dream revenue is like, I want one million dollars next year and I'm a brand new travel advisor. Not in booking sales, not in booking value, in commissions. And then you're like, this is the average booking value of the trip I like to offer. This is the average commission I should be getting. And it will show you how many trips you need to book annually and monthly. So that way you can make a better decision. Because if it's something that has a really low commission and payout, you might end up and it costs quite a bit of time to acquire those new clients because you are a new travel advisor. that's a lot of work. You're gonna get burnt out really fast, A. And B, you might realize maybe this brand or product or whatever that I offer isn't a realistic one to hit my revenue goals. And maybe I should pivot into something else that offers a better ROI for me. There's a big long rant. It's called Know Your Numbers. I'll put the link to sign up in the episode notes. Anyway, every past client can be worth roughly double the value of a single new client, possibly more, because again, you do not have to spend more time and money to recapture them. It can be as simple as like keeping your email newsletter up to date. But they help you. And your business in two completely separate ways. First, they're probably gonna want to take another trip themselves. A past client is by definition someone who already trusts you, already knows how you work, and already had a good enough experience to be a real prospect for the next trip. Second, they can send you someone else's trip through word-of-mouth referrals. If you are a service-based business owner, which guess what? Every travel advisor is. Technically, word of mouth is the best way to grow your business. because it's gonna give you repeats of your ideal clients without you having to expend a ton of effort. You're just doing a good job, you know? So treat every single past client as two potential opportunities. And this is why I'm calling this episode the two X rule. Every person you work with that books a trip with you, follow the two X rule. Not one closed transaction. Your entire approach to nurturing that relationship Totally changes like the welcome home email, how you structure your newsletter, maybe some of your social media content can speak to those past clients. So just so you know, and I've said this I don't know how many times, but let's say it again in case this is the first time you've been here. Referrals from someone's real network are consistently the most trusted form of marketing that exists. And yes. It is gorilla marketing and yes, I'm a huge advocate for it. Back when I had my cleaning business, I built pretty much all my business. I started with Thumbtack and then I did referrals. And I was eventually referral only. And like I think in two years, it went from thirty five dollars a week to a hundred thousand dollars a month. And I was getting clients that were worth billions just because their friends and family that I didn't know were their friends and family trusted me and had already hired me. So this can happen in your travel agency as well. I don't know how likely you're just gonna get a rando billionaire as a client, but it's happened to me a few times, so who knows? Word of mouth marketing is, like I said, the most trusted. It's more trusted than any ads, more trusted than any influencer, more trusted than a glowing review, five-star review from a stranger. Because we well, if you don't know this, by the way, for the longest time any business owner could pay for reviews. And so if you're ever looking at any small business and all they have is hundreds or thousands of five-star reviews only. They have been psychotically monitoring slash probably paying for those reviews instead of getting real honest reviews. Just so you know. Because my gosh, I got a story about that, but we're not gonna talk about that right now because I'm not gonna throw shade on any vendors I work with. Anyway. So, Nielsen studies. if you're old enough, you might remember what is it called? The Nielsen Guide or something. Like back in the eighties, nineties, maybe early two thousands, but I specifically remember late eighties, early nineties. Nielsen ratings for like television shows and ads and stuff. you could sign up as a family to have your this Nielsen ratings box, whatever, hooked up to your TV. My family didn't do it. I just remember hearing about it a lot. And I'm trying to remember if anyone I knew family did it. But anyway, it would just monitor and track what you were doing. So anyway They do a lot of research on marketing and they've repeatedly found that a large majority of consumers say they trust recommendations from people they personally know well above any other form of advertising. And think about if you needed someone to clean your house, which is a service-based business, would you just go for the fanciest ad, fanciest ad? Or would you call someone that you knew in your network that had a housekeeper? And say, hey, who do you have? How do they work? What's their rates? Do you like them? Do you trust them? Obviously they do because they've hired them. Same for like plumbers and roofers and any other service based business. Attorneys, CPAs. Like I don't know how many times I've referred Tom Carpenter to travel advisors. Cause I'm just like, he's a travel attorney. He at least understands travel terms for terms and conditions, you know? versus a standard contract attorney may not have all those nuances with regards to the seller of travel laws. He's not constantly dancing around on TikTok and Instagram. I mean, he might have some valuable information. I have never seen his content myself. I heard about him from word of mouth. That's word of mouth and getting referrals from people they know, like people that your clients know referring you. That's an enormous advantage sitting inside your existing client list. And it's essentially free. There's no ad spend. There's no content batching. Just genuine relationships doing the work. Yes, you will have to spend some time. Ooh. Talking to your clients. So, back to guerrilla marketing. What is guerrilla marketing? It's kinda like guerrilla warfare. you aren't doing what everyone else is doing. Word of mouth costs you almost nothing beyond the relationship maintenance itself. And it converts better than almost anything you could pay for. I love me some gorilla marketing. Most travel advisors treat a completed trip as the finish line. Some of them are like, okay, well they're in my newsletter, but they aren't really nurturing these clients. Some of them are really good at it. The invoice is paid, the trip happened, the welcome home email, the attention moves entirely away to the next new lead. But the actual highest leverage moment in your business often happens after the trip, in the follow-up, the ongoing relationship, the door left open for both their next trip and their next referral. So I do send a welcome home email. And especially for like any of my group hosts. I don't just send a welcome home email, but I send them an email asking to like do a phone call to go over the good, the bad, and the ugly and really talk to them. And having done a lot of destination weddings, I tell them like we can set this up once we get the photo gallery from the photographer. And sometimes that's like a week after the wedding or after they get back, and sometimes that's several months. It just kind of depends. And I let them know if it's Like a US-based photographer, chances are they're gonna get something within a few days or a week. If it's the resort photography team, you're looking at two, three months on average. In case you want to do destination weddings or you're doing them and someone asks, How long until I get my photos, destination wedding expert? And they booked with the resorts photography team? It's about eight to twelve weeks. Anyway. So this is all connecting Back to like the systems that we've talked about before in previous episodes, the warm outreach touch points that we talked about, not just the canned happy birthday or happy anniversary emails. but it ties back to that, it ties back to the story bank that we've built, and it ties back to personal check-ins. If you are applying the 2x rule, it simply means being intentional. Every time you're building your marketing calendar or your outreach list. Past clients should be the first place you look, not an afterthought that you've exhausted your newly ideas. Like after, like, and it's really hard sidebar when you're in the destination wedding industry. Because not many of the guests are gonna be like, Well, I want a destination wedding, but sometimes they will. And sometimes they want other group things. So If you niche down into destination weddings, you can start with destination weddings, but you can also, because you'll have done enough group travel, add to the niche any other type of group travel. And I've had a few different destination weddings where in the middle of it, people are like, my birthday's this week. And I'm like, Yeah, I got it noted. And they're like, No, I wanna go somewhere else for my milestone birthday, and I have some friends, and okay, well, let's set up a little small group. And then I get like Two groups for one? Are you kidding me? And then people come back and they're like, can we do a family reunion? Absolutely you can. And it's all about nurturing your existing clients. If you're trying to figure out what to do, don't forget. You don't want to be guessing. Like how much is a referral actually worth? You do not want to be guessing. And the know your numbers guide. For travel advisors is built to help with it, which is why I've mentioned it twice in this episode. Cause I'm like, it's free. Just go download it. It walks you through figuring out figuring out all the numbers. Not a rumor. Not a rumor you heard someone out somewhere else from a BDM that's trying to get people to book their travel, being like, this is the latest place everyone needs to book. Please don't fall for that. Know your numbers first. So that way you can see in real terms just how valuable your past client relationships truly are. Now, tomorrow we're going to get specific with this and talk more about personal touches that actually keep your clients coming back, not just staying passively on your list. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you tomorrow.