Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 109 - What strategies do TAs need to develop for their business?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Hi, it's day 109 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast and how the hell does a travel advisor strategize for their business? That's what today's episode is about. I'm your host, Rachel K. I'm holding the microphone because I don't know why. I think it's because I like to swivel my chair. Who knows? No more mic stand. And I got to edit this because it's a corded mic so it makes a lot of sound, like weird sounds. So we touched on in episodes in the past And in the success circle implicitly on developing strategies, that's literally what the success circle is, is like teaching you over 52 weeks, so many different concepts as a business owner and travel agency owner, but also like, duh, you got to build the strategy and no, you can't build it in six weeks and no, it can't be like super easily taught. you, it's just. Everyone's a little bit different. It's got to be custom to you, your values, your business model, blah, blah, blah, blah. I say that like every episode, like don't think because one person's like, this is how I do it. And this is exactly what's going to work for you because that worked for me. Like you don't know their socioeconomic status. You don't know who they were around to get that success. You don't know how long they've been doing it. You don't know how they came to that conclusion that it works. You don't know who their ICA is. So. let's learn how to strategize on our own, right? Okay. So the following episodes are going to be expanding on each one of these. And some of these I've done episodes on like a little more thorough in the past. ⁓ But I will do episodes for each one of these moving forward. So number one is niche specialization. This is an excellent way to develop strategy in your business. And I have a course on Elevate with Rachel K.com called Sweet Spot to Success. It was created a year or so ago at the time of recording. like back in 25, it was like launched. And it goes much deeper in that course. And so I'm to talk about this a little bit in this episode and I'm going to go further in. Then simply like just do destination weddings. That's a lot of money you can make or just do romance travel because you had a honeymoon once or just do adventure travel. Like you need to go deeper into your niche specialization. If you are highly specialized in your niche, you know exactly what products essentially like tours, cruise lines, resorts align with your specialization, how they align with the people that you want to work with, your business values, your company values, and you don't have to have all the freaking noise out there that's like, well, you should book this now because it's trending. Like, shut up. I got what I want. Like a car dealership that wants to make a franchise deal with Honda will stay Honda until further notice, but they will specialize in selling Honda. They may expand to Honda and like Mazda. don't know why, but maybe they do, but they make that deal and This is an example in the beginning of the sweet spot to success course. Like you can be a buy here, pay here that just takes whatever junk comes your way and be like, okay, whatever, take it, sell it. You could make a lot of money or you could be like more specialized. Another example that I use in that course is ⁓ McDonald's doesn't serve filet mignon because they don't cater to people who want filet mignon for lunch. Conversely, a Michelin star restaurant doesn't have Mac sauce. because they don't cater to people who want to go through a drive-through for their lunch. You should be doing the exact same thing with your travel agency, okay? Again, it's not just I do destination weddings or I do romance travel or I do adventure travel. goes so much deeper than that. And we'll talk about it in more in depth tomorrow. Today, we're just going to go over all the different strategies that you need to be considering to build your travel business. ⁓ Your online presence, your digital marketing. So I'm a big fan of both digital and in-person marketing. But these are all so tied together too, because if you specialize in destination weddings and it's 2026 at the time of recording this episode, the likelihood of you getting like really high value clients aligned with you in a Facebook group are like much slimmer than going where younger people are. Like they're not, I mean, they might be on Facebook groups, but that's not the first play that. place that they search and if you show up the first place that they search and they don't have to resort to Facebook groups. But what I'm saying is like, I don't personally know anyone under the age of 35 who is like super active and using Facebook for research unless it's a last resort. So why would you be posting there? Why aren't you posting the first place they would go? Right? So your online presence tied to your niche specialization, are you going to be doing social media marketing? Does your ICA in your niche respond to like podcasting, blogs, landing pages, lead magnets, what types of lead magnets? You can create a whole digital marketing strategy based on your niche and based on your ideal client avatar. Please do not base your social media marketing or online presence on what you think, like what you would want because you are not your ideal client. And if you are your ideal client, you're gonna have some problems because you're just catering to yourself, okay? ⁓ but with the right online presence, ⁓ you're going to be attracting anyone from anywhere in the United States or country that you reside in, which is fabulous, especially if you are not in a major metropolitan area and it's harder for you to get those travel clients. And when I started my travel agency, I was in BFE, B-F-E like middle of nowhere. had to get a cell phone extended tower thingy just to make phone calls from my house like middle of nowhere. But I knew I had to do social media, build that presence to get my destination wedding couples because the socioeconomic status of those around me, the overall demographics, they were not aligned with what I wanted to offer in any capacity. So I was like, all right, I gotta go to social media. So social media. is super important, especially if you know your ICA is nowhere in your vicinity. relationships and partnerships. These can be suppliers. These can be complimentary local businesses. I did a whole episode on that. If you do adventure travel, a complimentary business partner could be like a company that offers rock climbing or scuba diving, something like that, like in your area. Skydiving. You could partner together. It builds a high-value, ⁓ my gosh, back it up. It builds a high-value referral network if you have like complimentary local businesses and word of mouth advertising is the most trusted advertising, not hiring someone to spam all over social media pretending to be your client, but actual referrals from real clients is what is amazing. And I've done so many episodes on this in the past. I could do another one if you want. I'm probably not going to do another one. There's enough. I don't need to be super redundant. There's 365 episodes. There's going to be a little redundancy. Another strategy is your service and CRM. It's your personal touches. did a whole episode on this versus automated workflows. ⁓ This is a good strategy to develop and constantly revise, maintain, so on and so forth. Let me look at the time. I have another meeting here in like five minutes. but it's good to have a strategy on how you serve your clients, how your CRM operates for your clients. It helps you reinforce any boundaries that you may have and you can strictly outline everything. So that will protect you if there are any issues in the future. And your CRM, ⁓ don't, I mean, I know a lot of advisors like to do CRMs because they are functional for them and that is super important. How functional is your CRM for your client as well? So if it's kind of clunky, you might need to upgrade your CRM and have a good strategy for that. I, I'm not gonna, no, I'm not gonna talk about that. I don't wanna like bash certain CRMs on this podcast, but I do know that some are much clunkier and outdated than others. And it's like, ugh, brother, what am I doing with this stuff? So I have switched and I would like to switch to something more updated from there. However, I don't want to put the burden on all my sub agents to be like, no, here's a whole new thing. You get to learn again. So I'm just sticking with what I got for now. Okay, other marketing strategies. ⁓ Networking, I've talked about. I'm a big fan of networking. In-person, having your ⁓ elevator pitch ready to go if anyone's like, so what do do for a living at a boring party? Like better topics of conversation, please. Your email newsletter is another marketing strategy. If you diversify your marketing, and where you show up and I'm not saying be on every single platform. I am saying like build those personal relationships like I mentioned in the service aspect. Do some networking. Do no more than three social media platforms. No more than three. I'm not saying exactly three, just no more than three. And when you scale enough to where you can hire people to do everything for you, then do more. Great. when you're by yourself. No more than three, please, is my recommendation. You do you. But if you diversify where you show up, then you have a higher likelihood of repeat referral business, ⁓ good new clients that are aligned with your ideal client avatar. So those are five different strategies you can develop for your travel business as a travel advisor. And they, if you haven't been paying attention, they all kind of work with each other. And that's like why I said, the success circle, the travel agency in your podcast is all about like developing all of these very thoroughly, very thoroughly. Why am I so nasally? It's fine. Okay. Thank you for tuning in today. Share this with a friend, colleague, preferably a travel advisor, not just some random person. They don't need to see this mess. Let's share or hear it. Share this with someone who is feeling kind of lost, like what they need to kind of focus on as a basics. when developing their business. And have a great day. I will see you later. Bye.