Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 128 - TAs NEED to double-down on the best lead sources!
Transcript
- Rachel K: It is day 128 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. Thanks for stopping by. If you're brand new, hit the subscribe button. You will get notifications every day that we have a new episode dropping. Well, at least this first year. 365 episodes from day 128. Those of you who come pretty much every day, really appreciate it. My name is Rachel K. If you don't know me, travel agency owner. I also have elevatewithrachelk.com that helps travel advisors build a business that builds you up. That's my tagline. Okay, today's episode is doubling down on your best lead sources. So yesterday we talked about lead generation analysis and why you should consider adding it to your monthly review. It shouldn't take too long if you are at least noting the data on a weekly basis. So now we're gonna double down on the best lead sources. I have no idea what your best lead sources are. This is your business, not mine. So what is your top lead source? Examples, in case you're like, I don't even know what a lead source is. Go back to yesterday. Stop right now. Go back to yesterday, listen to it. Brief breakdown though. Social media accounts can be lead generation sources. Lead magnets, email newsletter, referrals from clients or... ⁓ Networking partnerships, your website, blog, networking events, paid ads are all examples of lead generation sources. What is your top lead source? Can you answer that question off the top of your head? You probably need to sit down and do this if you can't. Okay, take that first lead source and again, write this down. You're like, what? I just wanna listen. Okay, just think about this. What is your current cost in terms of time and money on this lead source? Are you able to maintain that consistency? Say you go to a new platform for you and you're like, I think my ICA's moved over here, I'm gonna start doing stuff over on this platform. And I know I talk a lot about social media, but this can be in person or social. The platform is just... a place to be, okay? Just think of that in your mind. you're like excited about it, you find it's easy to do, so your first month you're like, I'm so pumped about this, and you get all these awesome high quality leads, and you're like, I'm gonna make so much money, and I'm gonna be able to live my dreams, and all this fun stuff. Can you maintain that consistency though? Let's do that. Can you maintain or increase that consistency? So how would you increase your volume? Let's talk about it based on... Hmm. a few examples. So if your website is your top lead generation source, clearly you need more blogs and you need to figure out a way to backlink your website to in other places. Now backlinking if you don't know, you can do it on your social platforms. You can also networking partnerships, leverage your networking partnerships and be featured on their blog and they can backlink. your website on their blog and you can do the same for them. Paid ads, obviously you're going to increase your spending. If it's working, you might increase your spend. If it's referrals, you could, if you haven't already, and we talked about this, I think in the 110 days, there's too many episodes, there's too much content, send me an email and be like, I don't know how to do this. info at elevatewithrachelk.com. All right, incentivize referral program. If you just have been asking for referrals and clients love you and they're like, this is great. What if you also are like, hey, I can incentivize you for more referrals with this special program? You could do the same posts, like the same posting consistency on your social media platforms or in your email newsletter. And this is more specific to... social media, maybe practice more engagement in your niche community. So I'm not gonna do adventure travels in each niche. I like to do different niches, side note, that I have no desire to sell because I feel like everyone just goes, or maybe it's me, everyone just goes instantly to romance travel. as examples and like it's a very popular niche to get into as a new advisor. So I like to, but wait there's more. You don't have to just do weddings and honeymoons. Okay, I'm gonna use romance travel in this example though. More engagement in your niche community. So what that would mean is on like social media platforms, platforms? You can go to other businesses or people planning their honeymoon or their destination weddings that are sharing their content and experience and interact with them. Follow them if you like the content. Don't sneakily slide into DMs like a creepy weird dude. Comment. on their stuff, engage with them a few times, share their stuff on your platform. The algorithms are favoring when you are engaging more because you're building the community online rather than just being like me me me, me me me me me, me me me me, you wanna be beaker? too much fun on this, it's fine. All right, so once you have an idea of what you're gonna do, those are just some ideas on how to, what are we doing here? Double down, there we go, that's the phrase. I don't know what's wrong with my brain right now. Those are some ideas on how you can double down on your top lead source. Once you have an idea, do not drop everything and be like, I must implement this tonight. unless you're just feeling really creative and want to get started on it. But don't worry about starting it tonight or today, whatever. Set a deadline to add the new habit based on your top lead source and how often you're going to put this new habit in. So all of these examples. Like I said in yesterday's episode, if it takes you 15 to 20 minutes to produce a blog post and you want to double down, that's going to be 20 minutes per blog post extra. So if you want eight blog posts instead of four in a month, that's an extra 160 minutes. So like maybe two hours total or I can't math. Why are you, that's not right. Is it right? It's not right. I don't think it's right. But if it's like a 15 minute, yeah, it'd be about an extra hour a month. Total hour, hour and a half. And so this is a small baby steps habit. Maybe you don't wanna double your time for the blog. Maybe you just wanna do two extra posts when you do four a month. That's an extra 30 to 40 minutes a month. That's like 10 minutes a week, people. I'm not telling you to overwhelm yourself. ⁓ Paid ads, look at your budget. Increase it by 10 % and see what happens. If you're like, oh, my knee's a little tight, I don't know, I'm scared, just do 10%, just do 20%. Incentivize referral program, what is wrong with my voice today, my mouth. Incentivize referral program, that can be a quick email. You could write out the template and then email each individual client that typically refers you, copy and paste that information, send it on, right? More engagement in your niche community. Come on, I know you's doom scrolling. Why don't you take some of that hours of doom scrolling? We do, all of us are doing every week, no matter how hard we try not to. And set aside 15 to 30 minutes of that doom scrolling, actively engaging in your niche community. So that's the new habit. You can still do your doomy scrolly. You can still... have your referrals. Like it's just as simple. It shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes unless you really want to go in on the engaging online. Shouldn't take you more than like 15 minutes a couple of days a week max. Now you also, based on the lead generation information you already have, the conversion rates, so on and so forth, estimate the increase in leads, and identify any resources you might need to increase. Like if you are doing additional blog posts, like time is the resource you need, right? That's the main resource. You might want to invest in some sort of AI to help you revise the posts, but if you already got something that's working, maybe don't fix it. Maybe you need to invest in AI to help you come up with more ideas. But in our example yesterday, five blog posts for our imaginary TA was bringing in three bookings a month. And it, four blog posts a month was bringing in five leads and three bookings a month. There we go. This is all from memory, folks. So if you want... to double down and do eight blog posts if this is the scenario that you're in. Therefore, you can estimate 10 leads coming in and six bookings. So that's how you estimate the increase in leads and then you need to identify the resources needed. You're gonna need double the amount of time to produce the blog. You may need to consider investing in Some kind of AI service to help you organize your blog post a little bit better Maybe not maybe you're a really good writer who cares Okay, so that's your best lead source your top top. You're gonna have a number two Hopefully you aren't just like like I said, please don't post once a month on a Facebook business page and be like Why is no one booking with me because no one knows who you are? That's why. Okay, so your second best lead generation source. Let's talk about optimizing it. What is optimization? We're not gonna invest in all this new technology on your second best lead generation source. We're not gonna hire a social media manager for it. It is your second best lead generation source. Let's calm down a little bit. That's not the optimization I'm talking about. It could be as simple as one additional piece of content or one additional phone call or one additional meeting per week. And if it's your second best source and if it involves like networking events, maybe make an effort to talk to three new people at networking events. even if they might suck, who cares? You're putting yourself out there to three additional people one extra day a week. So let's say you're part of, there's so many different small business organizations, so I don't wanna be specific about it, but let's say you're part of, ⁓ one small business organization. And they have different chapters based, like they've got the general organization for all small business owners in your area. But then they also have chapters based on like women in business or men in business or moms in business. You know, that happens. ⁓ different cultures and business, whatever that may be. And right now you're only going to the main chapter one, maybe pick another split sub-chapter or whatever that fits you and attend that meeting. And at both meetings make an effort to get to know three new people. Like actually get their card or their phone number or like... Email them, like, while you're standing there, we all have our phones on us. Sometimes I don't take my phone with me places, but whip out your phone, be like, hey, what's your best email? Let's set up a lunch date and add it to your calendar and then put their email in and say, I just invited you to this meeting. Three extra times, twice a week, that's six extra people. And that's optimizing those meetings. because you're actually putting more effort into networking. Okay, more opportunities. And a friendly reminder as we close out this episode that ⁓ running a small business is an experiment. There are theories that work. There are some laws like science that work. ⁓ But those are like very, very general concepts in business and marketing and finance management. And you are not general. You are very much a variable in this experiment. So please understand that your business is an experiment. Monitor and track the data like you're an eight-year-old doing your science fair project after three months come to the conclusion does my Hypothesis test correct or incorrect and what can I do to change it? So just think about it like a science fair project and do it with joy do it with this is helping me grow personally and professionally and So many opportunities are available and lessons are available Okay, that is day 128 in a nutshell. Thank you again for stopping by and listening and we will be back tomorrow. Tomorrow's gonna be a good episode. Better subscribe. Bye.