Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Plan to Market Today for that Sale Tomorrow!
By Cory Andrichuk

What is your marketing plan for 2010?  Do you have a plan?  Have you written it yet?   From my experience, ( 11years of business development with two major cruise lines in North America, as well as growing up in a family based travel agency) I can say with  certainty that many travel professionals struggle to complete a comprehensive marketing plan.  Many do not take the time to thoroughly think things through before acting and, instead, plunge into their business and take unnecessary chances.  Are you the exception and have a marketing plan, or do you pride yourself on being a doer instead of a thinker..?   In business today, you need to be both… a thinker with a strategic action plan. 

Why do you need a marketing plan?  Because 80% of businesses fail without one! Travel entrepreneurs don’t PLAN to fail… they fail to PLAN.  A marketing plan forces you to think about your idea in detail.  It allows you to recognize risks and oversights, identify new opportunities, test assumptions, identify cash needs, raise funds, develop business strategies, provide benchmarks to measure progress and performance, show you where you need help or more information, research your competition, and increase your confidence in your idea.  In short, a marketing plan is a blue-print for action and success! 

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of looking at marketing as a luxury or the kind of cost that you can cut at the first sign of a sales slump or the current business cycle the travel industry is experiencing.  Marketing is an investment in your future business.  No matter how successful you are, how experienced, and how many customers you currently have, you always have to be marketing...  Slow sales and slumping sales are marketing problems.  Loss of market share is a marketing problem.  If you want to increase your sales and profits and market share, increase and improve your marketing efforts.

  Here are some tips to help you with your marketing plan:

1. Take the time this November and December to plan for your 2010 marketing.  Set aside one day a week to work on it. Take ownership of your business and FOCUS on what YOU want to market to, how, and why.  Take the time to focus on what worked and didn’t work in 2009.  Ask yourself these questions:

Who am I?  You are selling your unique self, so it’s important to define exactly what it is you are offering your customers.

Where are my customers coming from and why?  Why are my customers choosing me over the competition?

Where am I going financially?

How am I going to get there?

2.  Assemble your resources by starting in your own backyard.  Resources like your own HOST, or travel industry trade associations like NACTA and others, and CLIA all have a plethora of resources available to help you plan your year ahead of you.  Research these resources and then, download the tools that will work for you.  Membership does have its privileges! 

 3. Once you have taken care of YOUR business with YOUR own 2010 marketing plan and have taken the time to map out YOUR year ahead, then and only then, should you talk to YOUR preferred suppliers and incorporate them into YOUR plans.  Remember, you are in business for YOU…. not the cruise lines or any other travel suppliers.  YOUR preferred business partners (travel suppliers) come second to YOUR business and marketing plans.  You definitely need preferred business partners, but only if, and when, they fit into YOUR plans. 

Contact your reps, DSM, BDM, account executive before December 31 and write out your 2010 marketing plan together – a win/win!  Ask them where they need help?  What tools do they have to grow your business together?   Ask them about groups and specific dates that they have on sale with concessions and or amenities that can work to your advantage.  Bottom line – reach out and call them as the phone works both way… take them for coffee/ lunch and help them help you!

 4. Take responsibility for your business and your investment into your future.  You owe it to yourself, your board of directors sitting at your kitchen table and the people you do business with to look and present yourself as a professional.  Start to see yourself as a travel entrepreneur with a mission, a vision, and a marketing plan.

 We all want more success in our businesses don’t we?  More sales, more balance with family, more happiness, and more time to travel.  However you define success in your business, it might be safe to say you want more of it in 2010… growth! If you want to grow and achieve your goals and become the travel entrepreneur you’ve always dreamed of becoming… you simply need to...  Plan to market today for that sale tomorrow!

* Use me as a resource.  Sign up for a free 30 minute coaching session with me.   I can help you start your plan, refine your plan, or set your plan in motion.