Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 127 - Lead Generation Analysis for Travel Advisors
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's day 127 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. Welcome back for all of you coming back every day or some days. I know not everybody can make it every single day. And for anyone who just found it, welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. This is one episode daily dropped. So if you'd like to subscribe, just hit the button, follow along. You will get notifications every single morning, 6 a.m. Central Standard Time. My name is Rachel Kay and I'm the host of the podcast. I'm a travel agency owner and I also have ElevateWithRachelKay.com. If you need help understanding how to run your business because you went from working corporate jobs or whatever other types of jobs and you've always worked for someone else, ElevateWithRachelKay.com has so many different resources, courses. All that fun stuff. And since it's Travel Advisor Appreciation Month, we have 20 % off all courses except the Success Circle because it's just really hard to get. That's a subscription one and it's hard to get the coupons to actually work. All other courses 20 % off using the promo code yaytas, that is Y-A-Y-T-A-S. Through the month of May. Okay, today's episode is lead generation analysis. Why would a travel advisor even care to do lead generation analysis? It's important. And you don't need to like ... I know if you have been listening to a of these episodes, you're like, ⁓ my gosh, there's so much to track, so much to do. Yes and no. If you develop the habits, which we've talked about in past episodes, over time, it's like a five to 10 minute thing for each thing that you're tracking every single week. And then once a month, maybe a few hours to sit and think, what do need to do? This should be part of the monthly review. We've been kind of doing a little bit of the series, like the past few episodes, regarding understanding the monthly review and what you need to be doing. It can also be assessed on a quarterly or annual basis. I like the monthly review, not the weekly review, because you don't have enough data yet. Yes, collect the info weekly and just write it down in a notebook and then look at it once a month to see what the patterns are. All right, so if you do it on a monthly basis, it allows you to see emerging trends as well. So if you are marketing, your lead generation is coming from multiple sources in your marketing strategy, you can kind of see what emerging trends are for your ICA. ⁓ and be able to pivot faster than waiting around for a travel advisor like me to be like, this is where you need to be posting by my course. So you can make the decisions and you can start to pivot or you can see simply what needs to maintain. You can also see like, ⁓ probably should pull back on this marketing strategy because it's not really aligning with my ICA over the past several months, which will also save you time and maybe money. Okay, why? Why do we do this? Don't worry, I have a bunch of bullet points. ⁓ nope, I have six. I was like, only five. Number one, to understand the cost effectiveness. Like I just said, your time is your money. If you are toiling away at lead generation on a platform or specific type of marketing strategy and it's not working and you are actually doing it consistently, that's costing you your time that may be invested more wisely elsewhere to bring in revenue in your business. So how much time is being spent on your lead generation through different platforms? And we're gonna have more episodes about all this, but lead generation strategies can include your email newsletter, ⁓ excuse me, the lead magnet, social media, ⁓ asking clients for referrals, all that kind of stuff. How much time are you spending on that? Paid advertisements as lead generation. Are you spending money on paid advertisements? Are you spending money on business cards to drop off everywhere? Are you posting, even if you're doing local stuff, are you having to buy meals or drinks while you're doing these networking events? Based on that, for each lead generation source that you are choosing to do in your business, is each individual one actually cost effective? For example, let's say you decide to market on Snapchat, and you're like, I'm going all in on Snapchat. My ICA is there. I don't know why I chose Snapchat. I always do the most random stuff where I'm like, I have no idea. But just as an example, it seems kind of I feel like it could be lucrative for somebody, but for me I would never even consider Chap ... ChapSnap. ChapSnap. All right, now I'm going to make a new knockoff app of Snapchat and call it ChapSnap. Okay, anyway, it would seem weird for me with my ICA to be like, Snapchat's the way to go. I'm going all in on this. I don't even know how that would work because honestly I haven't used that app in a decade and it creeped me out because I remember... I don't know if it's like this anymore but I remember... Like, it was back when I had my cleaning business and all these maintenance guys and like we did a lot of summer cleanings for student housing. And the property management guys, they'd always be like, ⁓ we found your profile. Like, I get notifications like, ⁓ snap. And I'm like, no, they're married or they're gross. No, I don't know what's going on here. It seems like a very sus app. So I was like, delete. This is not as cool as I thought it would be. Anyway. ⁓ But say you decide Snapchat is where your ICA is and where you're get all your business and you spend hours and hours every week creating snaps and you're like I'm not getting any business. That is not a cost-effective marketing strategy or lead generation strategy. Conversely, maybe you write a blog and it takes you like 15 minutes to write the content and you can knock out like a month's worth of blog posts in maybe an hour and a half max after like revisions and adding the images and stuff and scheduling it all out and your blog brings in five to six new leads every single month and then with your conversion rate, which we will get into that a little bit in future episodes, your conversion rate being, let's say, 60%, five leads a month, that's gonna be three new clients every single month for about 90 minutes a week, or 90 minutes a month of work. So that's a very cost-effective strategy in that case. Okay, number two, stronger understanding of your sales funnel. If you know which strategy has the best ROI, So step number one, we just went over, write them all down, what you're doing for your lead generation strategy. Have an idea of how much time you're spending and how many leads are generated typically on a monthly basis from each strategy, okay? Step number two, not step number two, point number two, you'll have a stronger understanding of your sales funnel because you'll have those numbers, like I just mentioned the blog post. and you understand how your ICA funnels from just finding you randomly out in the world to wanting to work with you. And then therefore, you'll know which of your strategies will have the best return on investment. It helps to clarify your sales revenue and growth for future forecasting. So imagine if you will, it sounded like the Twilight Zone, a scene. where you are spending 90 minutes a month on four blog posts and it closes three trips per month, what if you doubled your output, so now you're sitting at three hours a month, that could be a minimum of six trips. So it helps you understand if I continue doing this lead generation strategy, maybe put more time or effort into it. then I can 2X, 3X, 5X, 10X my overall sales revenue. And I can confidently know if I do this consistently every single month, I'm gonna get three bookings. The average revenue is whatever per trip. It'll just make it five grand. So I know that 90 minutes is gonna bring in 5,000 in sales, and we'll just pretend it's 10 % across the board. Not 5,000, sorry, 15,000 in sales. 10 % across the board, I'm bringing in about $1,500 a month. If I into the future, I can see that. Now, if you wanted to double it, then you're like, okay, well that will turn into roughly $3,000 a month. Or you're like, oh, inflation's increasing. I don't really need much more than $1,500 a month from this lead generation. But if I just do... enough to get eight or seven consultations instead of five, then that's gonna get me one extra booking on average, and that'll be an extra 500 bucks a month. So it really helps you understand future forecasting. When I was doing heavy, heavy, heavy marketing for destination weddings, I think I started back in 2020, and when I went out on my own. but I was testing multiple platforms and I found TikTok was the one for me. It was the one that worked for me. I had the Facebook group, I had Instagram, I had Pinterest, I had blogs, I had TikTok. TikTok was where they all were coming from. They were all telling me I found this one TikTok of yours, da da da da. So I knew that was the best ROI, so I knew I should be creating primarily my content in TikTok and then occasionally I'd cross post to Pinterest and Instagram. just to kind of like bring it in, like literally for me, zero leads came in from Instagram or Pinterest. Probably because I wasn't aesthetic enough. ⁓ Okay, but that helped me clarify and then I knew if I'm posting every single day instead of every other day or twice a day, whatever, then I would get. X additional number of leads and I knew my closing rate and so I knew I could get so much more business and then my average wedding group booking revenue plus the package if the package was commissionable plus the fee and all that fun stuff whatever travel insurance whatever then I knew if I get one more client this is going to equal X amount of revenue additional Okay, point number three, you get further client insight on what truly resonates with them. If you're lead generation, again, back to my TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest example, my ICA ⁓ didn't really trust what looked pretty in the sense of who to trust to help them with their wedding. They wanted to make sure it was like on theme with them. But most of my clients were like really laid back in terms of how much decor they wanted. They weren't that concerned. I didn't have the ones that were like, I did have a couple that were like, I want tons of flowers and I want to put it all, all flowers in the budget. ⁓ But they were more looking for, it's scary planning a wedding in another country. And they just wanted someone that demonstrated knowledge of how to do it. and a good idea of what properties are easier to work with than others. So that's when I started my weird potato filter, potato on a plate filter of best and worst destination wedding resorts on TikTok. And that really brought in a lot of business. Like they thought the potato on a plate face was hilarious. They were like, this is educational. and you don't care about being in a perfect studio and having the pretty content, you're just like, here's what it's like, it's gonna suck dick to get married at this resort and here's why. Don't recommend it. Or, this is one of my favorite properties and here's why. And so they would have that knowledge and then they could go research on their own and they would know whether or not reviews were truly trustworthy. A lot of reviews might be incentivized or... They're just really angry people. ⁓ And then they would just start kind of looking around. And then they'd book a call with me, because they were like, you're telling us stuff that no other travel advisor is advertising for Destination Weddings. I was like, because I don't have brand loyalty. I have. Is this company decent right now? Also, if you do Destination Weddings, please understand that wedding teams completely change. They'll all completely walk out. Probably in my experience every two or three-ish years randomly at different properties. So understand that. It's not necessarily about the people on the team. Sometimes the management changes. I mean, if you work and travel, know BDMs change around constantly too. Okay, that was a bit of a tangent. Let's get back to focusing on the lead generation analysis. Number four, find and shift your focus to high converting and high quality prospects. If you understand your best sources for lead generation, you can shift your focus to the high converting, high quality prospects. Basically the TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest or Instagram method I was testing for my different platforms. Eventually, the highest converting and the highest quality prospects that I had were as TikTok. And like I said, I had a Facebook group, but they were not aligned with me in any capacity. If they did, schedule a call. TikTok was number one, and then ⁓ referral partnerships with other small business owners was probably number two for me. Okay, lead generation analysis, point five. Save your energy by learning what doesn't work for you. Why are you spending all your time and money chap-snapping? are you doing that? It's not working. Why are you spending all this money on Facebook ads? It's not working. Stop it. Here's another example. What if you get paid to be listed on a website that connects potential clients with ⁓ your services? You get zero leads from that. Don't spend more money on that. Duh. Same thing with your ... other lead generation strategies. Okay, last one. I'm gonna go quickly towards the end. Okay, stop wasting money on lead generation investments that don't work for you. That was just redundant. I apologize, my notes are crazy. Okay, so how do you do a lead generation analysis? Well, I hope you aren't driving. You're gonna have to re-listen to this episode. First of all, ⁓ Go join the Success Circle program we have. This is like week 18 or 19. We have the workbooks done for you. You gotta wait 19 weeks to get it. But secondly, listen to this episode a second time if you need to and write this down. So number one is you wanna break down by source as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Social media. and each individual platform, don't just put social media and have like 50 different platforms you're marketing on. Your email newsletter if you have one. Referrals, either client referrals or networking partnerships that you have developed. Your website, SEO slash AEO is one. ⁓ Just having your website, unless you really, really focus on the search engine and ask engine optimization for the page, like your blog and stuff, it's not gonna help a whole lot if you just have a website. Why did I throw my pen? It's fine. Networking events is another lead generation strategy. Paid ads, whatever it is you have, break it down. And same thing for social media with paid ads. and networking events. You want to have this all separated. So every social platform, your newsletter, if you have a lead magnet, that's a separate one from your newsletter, right? Client referrals is one. Partnership referrals is another one. Website is one. Networking events. If you're member of different organizations, then list those out individually. Paid ads, each individual place that you are paying for ads. If it's like a local directory, that's one. If it's a website listing, that's another one. If it's Google Ads, that's another one. Facebook ads or whatever meta ads, that's another one. They're all separate them out. Step number one. Number two, from each source, now that you have them all listed out, and you're like, why am I trying to generate leads from everywhere in the world? I got like 50 different lead generation sources. Hopefully you don't have that. Hopefully you have a maximum of five, three is a decent number. But whatever, it's whatever. What is your conversion to consultation rate? Like from the moment they, and we have this in future episodes, the math on it. So how many of those leads that you've generated converted to consultations, then from there converted to bookings, from consultation to bookings, and the quality of clients acquired? So like I said, I would get lead generation from, Like Facebook, because I had the Facebook group. And sometimes people would refer me on Facebook. Mentions can be another lead generation strategy, like anywhere in social media. But that's like client referral. ⁓ and I just wasn't getting good quality clients. The few that did sign up to work with me, I was like, I'm never getting another client from Facebook again. This was not the best idea, it's okay. I mean, some of them were really good, but they were better quality for some reason over on TikTok for me. So you wanna assess the quality of clients acquired. per each source. Number three, identify the best sources. Why are they the top sources for you? Is it because they are high quality? Is it because they are higher revenue for you? It doesn't have to be just that, ⁓ I make so much money, because sometimes you can get a client that is like, ⁓ I want this million dollar trip. but maybe they aren't high quality or they drain your time, like they're very suffocating to your energy maybe? I don't know. But why is it your top source? Your personal why. So revenue can be your personal why. The ease of serving that client can be a personal why. Whatever your personal why is. Number four, identify underperforming sources and why they aren't working. Why would they not be working? ⁓ Maybe you aren't being consistent enough. Like you need to sit and think, maybe I'm not reaching out to my past clients asking for referrals, if that's one of your underperforming sources. Maybe I've never asked. Maybe you're like, well I have a social media account, but I post once a month. Well that's not gonna help you. Maybe you post more often on that account before you abandon it. Because it could be a you problem. It could be a market problem It could meaning not you problem. It could be the emerging trends we've discussed Maybe that platform is no longer tied to your ICA so much. They're not they're kind of abandoning that platform themselves So once you figure out why it's underperforming Decide if you're going to fix abandon or give more time to it And you'll, you can fix it by posting more. You can give it more time if you realize you just signed up like three weeks ago and you're like, this doesn't work, calm down. We did episodes on habits way back a few days ago. Give it a month at a minimum, if not an entire quarter. ⁓ And then abandon it. That's gonna have to take your critical thinking skills. And we did an episode, I think it was, Day 125, so two days ago, red flags. So that should help you discern like, oh, I should probably shut this down. OK, so by doing the lead generation analysis, this can tremendously help you understand whether your marketing and content strategy is actually working, needs adjustment, and it's all based on your own return on investment. Not using vanity metrics, like followers are going viral. These metrics can be strongly correlated. They are not the causation. Going viral and having thousands upon thousands of followers doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna bring in abundant business. ⁓ But it is strongly correlated. But don't just rely on those things. Like focus on your lead generation sources and a full analysis of that. That was day 127. I really had a goal of under 20 minutes, but I went on a tangent about chapsnatting, so it is what it is. Thank you for tuning in today because this is radio in my world. I'm too old for podcasts. Thanks for listening. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.