Using Valentine’s Day To Sell More Travel. Here’s How…
For many of us, February is a brutal month. Winter has been around too long. And the first warm day of spring still seems far off on the horizon. But February also means Valentine’s Day — a romantic “holiday” that drives a lot of consumer spending.
How much spending? Well…
…According to the National Retail Federation, estimated consumer spending on Valentine’s Day related product and merchandise reached…wait for it…$19.6 billion in 2018.
That’s a lot of chocolate and roses!
But it doesn’t have to be just about flowers, cards, and candy. Valentine’s Day is about appreciation, connecting, reflecting and sharing experiences… what better than mixing in a bit of travel.
Start a conversation and deliver value to your clients
You are presented with a dozen opportunities like this a year to promote with context and easily start a conversation and deliver value to your clients. But here’s the problem, often times advisors struggle to have the compelling content available to help easily start a conversation.
In many of our past newsletters, we’ve talked about the ease and simplicity of training. This month we move past training and start sharing with you how to get the most out of the TravPRO platform. THIS IS NOT a training platform, this is a SALES platform that happens to start smartly with training. The big payoff is everything that we do to support YOU after the training is complete. It’s called Sales Enablement and we won’t go too deep now, but rest assured it is designed to remove the friction from your day to day, while helping start more conversations and close more bookings.
We are going to show you how easy it is to share compelling content and start a conversation. Here’s how!
More weekend trips in 2019 – Romantic weekend away
Let’s start with this — according to Booking.com, 53% of travelers have said they plan to make more weekend trips in 2019. Ok, so a key trend is weekend trips. Using that info, you can reach out to your clients with suggestions for a romantic weekend away.
For our weekend away, we are going to focus on the city of angels, Los Angeles. Start by heading over to the Discover Los Angeles platform on the TravPRO site. Once you get there let’s say you want to focus your client(s) with information about the luxury side of the destination. Within the platform, there’s a beautiful 17-page Luxury Guide that will be the perfect introduction and way to initiate a conversation. See the image below.
Notice the buttons at the bottom of the image. Click on email button, and you get an email with a subject line filled in (that can be adjusted) and a link to the luxury guide. See below.
Now, you could just send this link off to a client. But we suggest a bit of customization. Take a look at the email we put together.
Notice we adjusted the subject line to make it more relevant and compelling to open. We also crafted an email that is light and engaging to our clients.
How long did it take to craft this – maybe a few minutes and just like that you are connecting with your clients, providing them with quality content and reaching out in a real and genuine way. Notice the little touch about how you remember your clients like to be around water. Always a good thing.
They may not go for this vacation…but there may be something down the road they are interested in. Either way, you are on their radar and are breaking through the noise and starting a conversation.
While email is still one of the most effective ways you can engage with your clients, we have also built in social selling for advisors to use. A recent TravelMarket study found that nearly 90% of advisors surveyed indicated social media is very/somewhat important to their marketing plans. And yet…
Many of the advisors we talk to struggle with finding and sharing quality and compelling content on a regular basis. We have solved that issue.
Using TravPRO you get maps, videos, infographics, and photos all available to you to use and share with just a couple clicks.
Discover Los Angeles Luxury Guide
Let’s go back to the Discover Los Angeles Luxury Guide — notice at the bottom there are also two share buttons. With just a click you can be posting on Twitter and Facebook and connecting with prospects beyond your database. Think about that.
Let us show you one more example of another destination. This one is for Thailand. This is a wedding planning season, making it a perfect time to use Valentine’s Day and romance as a way to connect with those looking for a destination wedding. And Thailand is certainly a unique and special place for a wedding.
You can try and capture all there is to do and see in words, or you can use the video shown above. The image above is an example of an awesome video specifically created to get wedding couples thinking about a wedding in Thailand.
To use it, start by heading over to our Amazing Thailand product. Once you get to this video, you can easily save it to your computer just by clicking on the three dots on the bottom right side of the screen. See them?
From there you can share with clients and via social channels (Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn). And by putting out content like this on a regular basis over time you become known as the expert to that destination.
The steps we just went through, takes literally minutes to do. And the cost to you? Only your time. And it’s one of the best investments you could ever make.
Summing It All Up
Buying periods like Valentine’s Day provide a huge opportunity for you to reach out and connect with current clients and prospects with travel ideas. And as seasoned travel advisor and marketer, you can use these periods to get in front of prospects with ideas and compelling content that will get people to stop and think. Moreover, it’s a great way to keep your personal brand top of mind so when they are ready to go, you get the business.
And by using the TravPRO platform, starting a conversation and closing more business has never been easier.
Let us know your success stories using TravPRO…we would LOVE to hear them!