Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 265: The Campaign Review: Getting Your Travel Marketing Ready for What's Ahead
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K with elevate with Rachel K.com. I am a travel agency owner, just like you, and I'm here to help build a business that builds you up. my gosh, 265 days in. I think I've got I'm not gonna remember that for the next episode. I think I got it. I think I got the intro landed. I should have more of a script, I guess. if you want to know how I can help you, head over to elevate with rachelk.com, or you can just stick around to this podcast, subscribe aroundy to it, and get daily episodes to build your travel agency. Today is day 265, the campaign review. Getting your marketing ready for what's ahead. What's ahead, Rachel? Well, day 265 is nearing the end of September, which means we're getting ready for the fourth quarter of the year, which means wave season is coming upon us. Wave season, engagement season, a big push for majority of travel advisors to get a lot of their bookings in is coming. Let's prepare ourselves now. So If you didn't listen to yesterday, go ahead and listen to it after this one. Because it's all about auditing your calendar capacity for the upcoming wave season season. Today, let's make your let's make sure your marketing is actually aligned with what is coming. A full campaign review for the months ahead. Ba ba ba. Why is a campaign review different from a content calendar check? Great question. A content calendar check asks, what am I posting this week? Do I have my posts scheduled out? A campaign review asks the bigger question: Does everything I have planned for the next several months actually build towards specific business goals? Or is it just a stream of rando individual posts with no larger shape? So this connects back to episode hundred twenty-eight. Where we talk about the marketing push. If you're in the success circle, there is a full week about the marketing push. But that's a campaign review where you decide in advance when you'll be running general study content and when you're gonna be running a genuine time-bound push. And it is all dependent on your niche. Your ideal client avatar and the s life cycle, like the sales cycle for your ideal client avatar. So, if you're brand new to the industry, the travel industry, this might be something you need to get used to. However, it works a lot like retail. You know the retail sales. There's always a winter escapes getaway sale. Pretty much anywhere that's not like Iceland or Northern Europe. Maybe, but there's ski vacations. But there's some kind of winter escape sale. And that's gonna run winter time. And then there's gonna be a spring sale. And then there's gonna be like kick off your summer sale. And then there's gonna be the end of summer sale. And then there's going to be the Black Friday sale and then there's gonna be the holiday promotions. It's about every other month. Pretty much all most niches will have some sort of sale in their sales cycle. They're gonna have something like that going on. They may call it different things, but if you specialize in a certain brand, you'll pick up that they run a they run a sale typically right around Labor Day. They run another sale typically, well, as early as mid-October, but sometimes right around Thanksgiving. Another one right around Christmas, another one right around mid-January, then mid-March, then kick off the summer, Memorial Day type stuff. Like there's a reason they have these sales. And if you're like, well, I'm not really sure what sales are coming up, that's okay too. You can create your own promotions in a way. You can strategize your own individual promotions, things that you want to promote. Okay. So If you are familiar with the sales cycle of the brands that you prefer to work with, you're gonna be able to plan this a little bit better. If you're brand new, listen up. So there are going to be like typical wave season deadlines. And if you don't have wave season deadlines, guess what? Like I said, you can create them yourself. If you want to book 15 trips Between let's say January and the first quarter of the year, January to April 1st. You want 15 trips deposited, whatever your niche is, that is your own deadline. And you can say, hey, there's only so many spots left, da-da-da-da-da, throughout your content strategy. if you hold group space, there's gonna be trip deposit dates and final payment dates to get the last few spots filled. That can be a part of your promotions as well. Or it could be a brand new offer that you are going to be rolling out. For each one of these things, ask yourself Does my current content and my outreach plan actually support what I'm trying to do here? with real lead time before it or did I just now think about marketing it? Oof. So campaigns that get built with real lead time. This is what we do in the success circle. We do the annual marketing strategy, quarterly content strategy, and each quarter break it down month by month. Anyway, campaigns that get built with the real lead time, which is like the tease, the official announcement, and then the follow-through structure that we talked about back in day 223 of the podcast, consistently outperforms campaigns thrown together in the final week. Because they benefit from the repeated exposure we talked about on day 213 of the podcast. You're like, what do you mean we talked about all this? You're probably just gonna have to rebinge this entire podcast over the weekend. Quick note we talked about repeated exposure on day 213, and I believe in that episode I mentioned the rule of seven, which is like a standard rule in marketing. You have to show up seven times with the Exact same message at a minimum before someone's gonna be like, Rachel's a travel agent. Okay, got it. But with the advent of social media and short form video content, because social media has been around. I mean, it really, if you want to think about it, like maybe five-06, YouTube started, Facebook was kind of a thing back then, and then I think seven, eight, if you didn't have a college email address you could join Facebook. I don't remember, that was a long time ago. But social media has been around for a long time. However, it's become shorter and shorter attention spans. I do anticipate it getting into longer form content. That is neither here nor there. Anyway, with the advent of social media and the popularity of social media, and particularly social media marketing, you need to show up saying the exact same thing more than seven times, and it is okay to repeat yourself. Okay? So if you just need to do like the same concept. let me think if you want to sell honeymoons at I'm trying to think of a place. I don't want to say atelier, but and I say it atelier. I don't care. I'm French. I'm French. No, I'm not at all, but I'm pretending to be Franche. Let's say you've decided gosh, I don't to go there. I'm trying to think of a specific resort for honeymooners. Let's say you've decided that you want to push Excellence Playa Muhetas for honeymooners. And you want these people booking honeymoons with excellence ply muhetas. And you want maybe twenty honeymoons booked during wave season, your content strategy better not be talking about another resort. It better not be talking about a completely different country. It's gonna be all about excellence playa muhetas, honeymoons, the honeymoon package, why you would book club level for your honeymoon instead of a regular suite, what suites are best for a honeymoon and why. You could talk about the two-story rooftop terrace suite with a plunge pool, and you could be like, This is more for couples who like da-da-da. Me personally, I don't like the two-story rooftop terrace suites. with the plunge pool. They're meh to me. But You could talk about here's why you'd want a private plunge pool suite for your honeymoon and why you want the club level. And in the honeymoon package, you get this romantic dinner on the beach. Here's how you schedule it upon check-in, and just like talk, talk, talk about excellence, playa, mujeres. And then say, I'm a specialist with this, I'm here to help you every few videos, because they're gonna go wanna bend your content because they're like, this is good stuff. And when they watch three videos in a row where that's all you're talking about. Then you could say, by the way, I can book this for you. I can manage this for you. You can talk about the private round trip transfers that are included with a minimum three-night stay. You can talk about how to get the honeymoon package for free based on the room category and the, I think it's a five-night minimum. That's like spit and then you repeat all of that over and over and over again. That's like a month's worth of content that's gonna get people excited about excellence playa muhetes. Demonstrate your knowledge and your value without being like, I'm specialized in excellence resorts, or like I'm listed as one of their preferred agents. You don't have to say all of that. You are demonstrating that with your knowledge and your advice. And especially if you can take room categories and be like, this is why you want the two-story rooftop terrace suite. This is why you want the private plunge pool suite. This is why you want beachfront, because different people like different rooms. Like I said, I don't care for the two-story rooftop suite. I would be curious. If I were planting a honeymoon and be like, hmm, that looks cool, but what else is there? And if I go to your profile and swipe to the next video and you're like, this is the private plunge pool suite. It's guaranteed ground floor, it's guaranteed privacy on both sides, and look how big this pool is. And that's when I would be like, this person knows me. And then I'd be like, what else about this place? And I would probably book a consultation with that travel agent. That was a big long rambling. But that's why you want to repeat yourself in your content. Don't be afraid to do that. All right. When you're doing your content audit, you want to list your campaign-worthy moments coming up over the next quarter on one side and your actual scheduled current content on the other. Look for the gaps. If I and I see this a lot with it a lot of travel advisors. You could be talking about the most random stuff in your content. And it has nothing to do with what you actually want to sell. And you might mention a resort or cruise line here and there, but you aren't actively saying, hey, if you want to do this, da da da da. You're just like kind of shy about it. But find that content gap. Is there a big deposit deadline? For like group space you've held, but you have nothing planned to market around it? Are you just like, well that's gonna be a bust? Or is there a new offery rolling out in two or three weeks and there's no teaser content? This is far easier for you to catch now with a full campaign review than a week before or in the middle of your campaign time frame and being like, I don't have anything, and now I have to pivot again and confuse the algorithm further. So if you ran any campaigns in the last few months, you can also review it didn't work as well. This you want to apply your tracking discipline. We talked about that in past episodes. But did your pieces perform as kind of as you expected? Or far better than you expected? Or you're in the sub-100 view jail? Like me, feel free to go follow me. I think I actually at the time of filming this, I'm ninety percent certain now my social media accounts are brand new, and I'm pretty sure that the reason why I'm like stuck my content sucks, A. And I'm getting better at it. But B My phone is like six years old, so I have a new phone coming in. I did get a new microphone, but it sounds like Garbaggio. And I was like, ugh. But it could be my phone again. It could be that my phone is just that old. It just sounds like it sounds like this. It's like way in your face and it's like, whoa. anyway, that was a random tangent. Little update and elevate with Rachel K. Worlds. But is everything performing as you expected? And a campaign review isn't about planning forward. It's about honestly incorporating what you've learned from your last round of marketing so that you're not repeating a specific messaging approach. It could be like you're slumped like this and well, you don't see me if you're listening to this on Spotify, but you don't have you've got like fifteen chins and you're looking down at the camera and it's like there's a pot belly like no one's gonna take you seriously. If your content looks like that. let's see, what else? It could be your content's all over the place. Like one day you're talking about one destination and the next post is information about a completely destin completely different destination. Not everybody likes to go all over the place. So now you're confusing your audience a little bit. And that's okay if you're like, I'm just trying to figure out my niche and getting used to posting. But it's not okay if you're like, I know exactly what my niche is, but you're just all over the place. It could be maybe you don't trim, and there's a lot of pauses, ums, uhs. There's a lot of different things in your content. And like I've said in the past, review it as though it's not you. Like, objectively. Like take yourself out of it and just pretend this is a total stranger. Because if you're anything like me, you're gonna be like, I did it! Okay. And you wanna wait a few weeks, a month, right? Let that content like get out there. But then if you look back a week or three weeks later at what you originally posted and you're like, my numbers aren't exactly where I want them to be, and you watch your own content, even if it's not face-to-camera content, you might see things like, brother, why did I do that? That is tacky. Or like your captions are off. And y just look at it objectively. And then when you are starting your next campaign, you can take that same exact message that flopped and redo it if it's the same thing that you're promoting. Okay? Whew, but you aren't repeating exactly what underperformed. All right, recap. List every upcoming campaign-worthy moment for the next few months. Do you even have a campaign? Hmm. Honestly check whether your current content plan supports the campaign. Deposit deadlines. The deadlines you're going to be accepting consultations for this type of trip. if it's like a very, very specific niche down thing. Like if it's like a specific handful of sailings in the Mediterranean, you know people don't really want to go to the Mediterranean in January. It's why? Why would you want to do that? So, there's kind of a time limit there if you're niching and cruising. Same with weddings. Like back when I was heavily promoting destination weddings, one of the brands that I partnered with was AMR. Which, if you're a brand new travel agent, you'll be like, what the heck's that? Welcome. Welcome to the club. I've been in it for a minute. But They're Beyond Memorable. It's HIC now. Their Beyond Memorable package was you had to have your wedding day secured at least 12 months in advance. I believe it's still the same case for the Beyond Memorable program or wedding package. And I knew if I wanted spring 22 weddings, I had to start promoting that stuff in the fall and winter of 2020. So if HIC's on your radar for destination weddings and you want to promote that Beyond Memorable. Package, you've got to be 15-18 months ahead of the game to make sure that your content is out there, it's speaking to the right people, they can book their consultation, sign up with you, and they can get that beyond memorable program. Instead of talking about the Beyond Memorable program and then they get upset because their wedding's only six months out. Anyway. So, does your current content plan actually support what your goal is with real lead time? Build in what you learned from your last campaign's actual results, not just what you assume would work. Trust me. If you are not following me, I posted some terrible content when I first started because I haven't been doing social media marketing for two years now. And I was like, this will be easy to get back in the game. And I was like, I post all the stuff I thought I was doing so good. And then I watched my own content. I was like, I wish I could delete this, but I'm not gonna. It's just out there for the world to see. So do all that in your spare time. I don't know. This weekend. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about actually adding promotions that you want to your content calendar and your work calendar so they don't just live as good intentions. You're like work calendar. Right. Yep, that's what we're doing. Have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.