Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 229: How a travel advisor can get seen beyond the feed
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in Year Podcast. In a year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping you become the CEO travel advisor. If you have questions about how I can help you, head to elevate with Rachel K.com. Today is day 229. let's talk about Social media gets most of the attention and marketing conversations, but it's far from like the only place that potential clients discover you. So we're gonna look beyond the feed. I feel like I needed to be like beyond the veil. I have no production team. That's just why I just film this in my office. okay. Vendor partnerships. I'm a huge fan of this. Photographers, if you've if you are a student of mine, you have probably heard me say multiple times photographers and travel advisors should be besties all the time. Anyway, professionals who regularly interact with people planning travel adjacent events like honeymoons or destination weddings are a natural and ongoing referral source. This connects directly back to warm outreach we've discussed a few months ago. And this connects back to networking. so vendor partnerships is one way that you can go beyond the social feed. Community involvement, sponsoring any kind of local event, charity event, speaking at like a community group. Even if you're in like a book club, I've known travel advisors make bank off of selling to their book club. Partnering with local businesses can put your name in front of people who may never encounter you online at all. And also, I'm gonna say all this because social's great and all. It's nice. If your ICA doesn't live anywhere near you, it is an absolute must. I lived in the middle of freaking nowhere, Missouri. Ain't nobody there's gonna even God, they were afraid to get a passport out there. They were like, Florida's the only place I need to go, herk. Also, I only have five dollars. Like they didn't have the money, they didn't have the desire. It was not a place to be. So I had to do social media marketing to get the people I wanted to work with. it was bad out there. It was gosh. And I lived near a tourist spot. And so when I'd try to network with local businesses, they'd be like, What what do you mean people would travel outside here? This is the best place in the world. I'm like, no, it's a tourist trap with a bunch of meth heads. Congrats. And very c corrupt everything everywhere. Anyway, but If you live in a place like that, yes, you need to do social media marketing because those are not your people, and you should probably move as quickly as possible. I also think, and I've had discussions with some of the agents I w mentor, and this has been something we've been talking about. Gosh, it's already Gonna be August when this airs, but this is something we've been talking about since the end of last year because of AI and AI improving its content and people using it to just create complete avatars and personalities. Like people want to work with actual human beings. so why not focus on building your local partnerships? So I'm a big fan of this episode, is what I'm saying. And I think you should consider this to expand your possibilities beyond the social feed, because I have a sneaking suspicion you're just gonna be stuck using AI and AI AI avatars just to get anyone's attention, but then everyone's gonna revolt. This is like five years away. I think there's gonna be a huge divide from people being okay with AI doing everything and entertaining them and people who are like, no, I prefer human interaction. Anyway, so you can sponsor local events. Like I said, the community involvement, that's another option. Print and physical materials, a well-designed business card, which I got rid of business cards. I was like, I'm gonna get a business card. And now I'm like, shoot, I need to get a bit I need to get business cards. So a well-designed business card, a small printed guide left at like a partner business, or like a mailer, you could do that, targeted to a local list. These feel super old fashioned and old school in the digital first industry, but that's why they stand out. I've been getting more and more often like door knockers. Now, I don't think a travel advisor should do that, but I get so many door knockers and they have a nice little card in their hand and they're like, hey, I noticed da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I'm like, Okay, great, thanks. And I take their card. So that's Becoming a thing again in other service-based industries. Why are you not considering this more people-first, people, person-to-person interaction yourself? Then there's the old podcaster Rooney, meaning a guest in a podcast, or like media features, like getting quoted in local publications. Or like a travel article. I know you can apply to speak at Asta if you want to, but that's not really gonna help you. That's just gonna be like, I did this. but you could speak at other events, maybe local to you. That puts you in front of an entirely different, often more engaged because you're in-person audience than just your own following on social. so speaking opportunities can be like B and I type business groups. You if you are in romance travel, you could offer to do something. I know the last bridal expo I did, they did like a fashion show. But you could offer something and one time I spoke on how to determine where to have your honeymoon. This was I think back in twenty or twenty-one. I don't remember. But I did a little speaking thing and I didn't even have a slideshow. I just went up there. Maybe I did. I don't remember. I remember it was a different part of the expo. But there was like thirty couples that sat down. I was like, here's how you determine where you want to have your honeymoon. And I did like the top five honeymoon destinations and who they're better for and what properties to look for and then they could work with me. Like you could do that at a wedding expo. you could do like workplace luncheon learns on travel planning if you know the business owner, especially if you're like trying to get maybe that company to book all their travel with you. But all of those position you as the expert in the room, full of all of your ideal clients, without any algorithm deciding whether they get to see you or not. They make the choice, they sit down, they sit through it. Then there's the referral and affiliate relationships. So you can do this with any of the professionals or any of your regular clients that are repeaters. And this is beyond the informal warm outreach, but a structured referral program, a specific incentive for like your past clients or partners who send you business. That creates visibility that spreads through trust. Which tends to convert far better than any cold advertising. Any paid ads? No. Word-of-mouth referrals and advertising is the best thing for a service-based business. Period. Now, if you're new to social media, relying on that one channel is a very fragile strategy. And I think that it's important to do to really understand that specific social media platform instead of just trying to post to like 17 places at once. Like hone in on where your ideal client is. but Over time platforms lose relevance. Like I went, I I did gosh, I did like two YouTube videos like eight years ago. I was like, this is not my thing back then. And this is not where my ICA is. And I had Pinterest and I had I think I tried a Facebook group, but I was like, my ICA isn't on Facebook. They're 28, not 58. No offense, sorry. But like I remember when I would get my clients, they'd be You get a private Facebook group for your wedding. And they'd be like, We don't want that. We don't use Facebook. so I went all in on TikTok. And then the whole thing in 2025 didn't work for me. And I knew very quickly my ICA was no longer also going to be there. So I paused everything and I was like, Do I even want to do weddings anymore? Big life change. anyway. Platforms lose relevance. Your reach can shift overnight for reasons outside of your control. algorithms can change, rules can change, and it's frustrating. I've known travel advisors get completely banned from anything on meta because a meta AI bot determined they were like a federal criminal or something that's like, don't you think they'd be arrested, dumb bots? But visibility, if you do different channels, the easiest way is have a social channel and focus on building personal relationships, even if it's not like in person. So if you have to seek on social media vendor partnerships or via Google search and like ask them, can we do a phone call? How can we partner together? Tell me more about your business, how can I help you? Like, you can do that. Okay. And you that way you have multiple channels is what I'm saying. If you go different avenues, it doesn't have to be different social platforms. It can be like interacting with different humans face to face. So we're gonna pull all of this together tomorrow. And there's four categories and there's eight ways that you can reach new clients. That's tomorrow. Today is day two twenty-nine of the travel agency in a year podcast. There's my theme song. Have a great day. Bye.