Good marketing requires frequency. Clients must hear your message over and over not only to remember it but to respond to it. Your challenge is to build an association between your name and the concept of travel – when a client thinks of you, they think of “that travel person”. More importantly, however, when the client thinks of travel, they think of you! To develop an association of that magnitude, client needs to hear your message not only frequently, but from a variety of sources. The client that sees an advertisement in a local newspaper might consider your services if he happens to be in need of them immediately. If that same client then sees a press release from your office, the message gets a bit closer to home. If your word of mouth efforts then delivers to that client a recommendation or referral from an acquaintance to use your services, you are far more likely to get his business.

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Effective marketing drives sales. Period. But to be effective over the long term, marketing cannot be haphazard or random. Planning a marketing strategy with a calendar in front of you will ensure firstly that you are incorporating a variety of marketing efforts into your plan and secondly that you are doing so in synch with your clients’ own planning.

Sit down with an annual calendar and mark these holidays and calendar events:  the beginning of Summer Vacation, Father’s Day, Canada Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and any other holidays or remembrances where the people of your community might have days off from work or might travel. Now, back up three months (less if you have to) and consider initiating marketing efforts directed at those holiday opportunities. Clients with children are planning their summer vacations right now. Suggest a quick “get out of town” as a surprise Father’s Day trip for dad. What is the family doing for New Year’s this year?

Next, calendar the frequency of your most important client communications. When is your next newsletter going out? By when can you generate your next press release? When would be a good time to seek a speaking engagement? When is your next advertising campaign? Use your calendar to ensure that you have sufficient frequency and venues to stay top of mind and that your content for each is relevant to the seasonality.

Planning your marketing against a calendar is smart. If the first half of this year might have passed by with things left undone in your marketing plan, renew your commitment to getting your message across in a timely and frequent fashion. Nothing succeeds like planning to succeed.

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Work from a Written Plan – Put your marketing plan in writing. Last year, this column worked through a  basic marketing plan to assist agents in articulating and recording a marketing plan. Those columns are still available for your use. When you put a plan in writing, you will better understand it and be better prepared to execute all of the tactics to which you have committed. Further, you will have a document to hold yourself accountable. Along with your Marketing Calendar a written plan is an indispensible tool in effective marketing. You will re-visit the plan throughout the year, make changes and in some instances completely revise aspects. But the very act of putting your plan into writing is an invaluable exercise.

Market in Campaigns – Market consistently and with an adequate frequency to have an impact. Marketing is a commitment. Yet, it is easy to let a day go by, and then a week, and then two weeks, with no marketing activity. Sporadic burst of marketing activity will lack the consistency to imprint your brand in the minds of your clients and potential clients. You have to create an association in their minds – when they think of “travel”, they think of you. To create an association that strong, you must market with sufficient frequency to continually stay in front of your clients. In addition, your marketing plan must include a variety of media in order to hit your clients from a number of different angles. Ideally, over the course of a year, clients will see your company in display ads, in news articles, at an event in your community, will hear you speak, will see you networking, will hear other consumers and clients talking about you. Getting your message out in this manner, without spreading either yourself or your finances too thin takes planning…which takes us back to the first point…put it in writing!

Tomorrow – Be an expert and love what you do.

Beyond the written marketing plan, however, every travel agent needs a marketing calendar. Many agents take that first step of writing down their marketing plan and then fail to execute for lack of a solid action plan. Having a plan is not enough, it is important to put your plans into action. Without some mechanism for holding yourself accountable, days pass, then weeks and months without execution. Certainly there will be some sporadic activity and a few happy clients will leave on their travels, but there will be no drive to excel, no energy to fuel growth.

All of this is summed up in the old business saying of “Plan your work and work your plan”. Simple enough and true. The good news is that it is never too late to begin anew. It does not have to be January 1 to launch into a new marketing plan. If you want to push your travel planning practice to new levels, begin with the important first step of resolving to get your marketing plan on paper and then to putting it into action.

Tomorrow- No Mission

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It is time to begin to tie your Marketing Plan back into your overall business plan – to make sure that it is realistic with regard to your budgets and overall capabilities.  You want to make certain that your goals are measurable and achievable.  Along with your Marketing Calendar, you can then ensure that your goals are time specific and feasible.

If you already have a year or more of travel consulting history behind you, the financial elements such as annual sales revenue, expenses and anticipated profit may well be established.  However, it is important to now work your marketing plans into those goals. Your marketing plan, though it may increase some of your expenses, will also increase your revenues. Again, this is where your marketing calendar is so important.  Use it as a way of tracking your anticipated progress and review it often.  If you are not hitting your marks, both with regard to planned marketing and to your revenue goals, you can quickly adjust.

You can develop your marketing budget with overall projections that you then fill in with details.  Fortunately, you set out this year to market utilizing methods that required more effort than financial resources, so you may discover that this year’s budget has not changed markedly over last year’s. The important point here is that you must, however, support your sales goals.  Each effort in your marketing plan has TWO financial impacts – one as an expense and one on your incoming revenue.  For each undertaking in your marketing plan, calculate both – what will it “cost” and what revenues should result.  In this way, you will keep each marketing expenditure in the context of an investment…not merely an expense. If your marketing plan calls for placing advertisements in a local newsletter, then commit to a suitable duration and effort and indicate your anticipated revenue from the effort. If you decided on the development of a niche market for your travel practice, spend time considering the financial impact of that commitment. Review every commitment you have made over the course of the last few weeks and assign a financial number to it and specifically designate how it supports your revenue efforts.  Indicate your expectations by tying the expense into the acquisition of business.  In this manner you will hold your plan and its performance accountable.

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We have spent the last four to five weeks gathering together the various components of our action plan. Now there are a couple of final steps.  This week we will talk about  the importance of  putting your plan in writing, and we will speak to the importance of continually revising your plan.  But before that: The Sermon.

Business plans are important. Organization is essential. Clarity of expression and correctly assessing markets: priceless.

But not a one of these is worth anything without ACTION. Be sure to write an Action Plan (how and when) along with your Marketing Plan (what to do). Too many times we over-plan and over-perfect and in the process lose valuable opportunities to others who are quicker to act.

Advice like this can be easily misunderstood. Certain essentials have to be in place prior to marketing. Don’t throw out your business plans and your careful research. But also do not let those things become excuses for not moving quickly and decisively. In fact, one of the key failings of many businesses is to believe they are executing a plan simply because they have one. It is not enough to have a plan: you must act on it!

The solution is simple: make your Marketing Calendar a key component of every your plan. Force the plan onto your marketing calendar. If during planning you have to re-calendar once, do it reluctantly. If you have to do it twice, get serious – refuse to re-calendar a third time. Do not let the process of planning defeat your plans.

Act decisively, act intelligently, but for goodness sake ACT!  Or don’t.  It will be up to no one but yourself. In the final analysis, it is as simple, and difficult, as that.

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Yesterday, we laid out the broad parameters of a Marketing Calendar by noting the major holidays and travel seasons and planning to market well ahead of those dates.  Now however, we need to specifically calendar other aspects of our 2009 Marketing Plan. In doing so you will have definitive benchmarks against which to measure your marketing progress.

To begin, let’s recall our strategic objectives that we set forth early in our Marketing Plan:

• To grow a client base by 15 new, FIT clients;
• To enhance the professionalism of the practice – retaining  existing clients and acquiring new ones;
• To increase profitability by 20% by increasing  revenue and watching expenses;
• To create a niche market for the practice, thereby enhancing  expertise and  unique selling points

To appropriately realize each of these objectives, we should calendar some goals: 4 new FIT clients each quarter, enhanced marketing collateral by December 15, 2008, a niche marketing plan by end of year, and an increase in revenues of 20% each quarter.  We can, and will, re-visit our calendar often in the year to make revisions for circumstances as they arise. 

Next, set goals for each of your Distribution Channels:

• Advertising
• Public Speaking
• Writing Opportunities
• Press Releases
• Group Leader Program
• Cross Marketing
• Networking
• Newsletters

In each category, support the other aspects of your marketing calendar.  Advertise to promote your seasonal and holiday calendar.  Look for speaking opportunities that are appropriate to the seasons.  Match cross marketing opportunities with travel seasons. How many newsletters will you have out the door by April 30, 2009?

Next week we will talk about properly memorializing our 2009 plan.

Exercise:  Finish up your marketing calendar using the guidelines above. When you finish, you will have a great outline for putting your 2009 Marketing Plan into a more formal, written document.

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Every travel consultant is very much aware of the seasonality of the travel business. In the winter people head south and in the summer they head to Europe and in the fall they seek out New England, except for the real bargain hunters who decide to cruise during hurricane season. A time and a season for everything, right?

Actually, that is exactly right. We can improve on our marketing by being a bit more scientific in our examination of the calendar. Smart travel consultants who pro-actively market know they have to stay ahead of the calendar. They are constantly looking “down the road” to see what holidays and destinations are around the corner. Spring coming up? Let’s promote some early cruises during January and February. Valentine’s Day in February? Let’s make some calls to some husbands in January. Spring Break this year? Let’s promote Mexico to some families.

Too often, we rely on last minute urgency prompting us to market too late or too little. By rigorously using a Marketing Calendar travel consultants can better stay on top of their Marketing Plan. A Marketing Calendar, noting when to market and on what destinations to focus, will enable you to be better prepared and to market more efficiently. Set up a Marketing Calendar and revisit it each week, making notations of what marketing you did and how effective it was. Make adjustments as you read about new destinations, economic conditions or other factors influencing the market. Next year, you will have a terrific written record to assist you with formulating a new Marketing Calendar for each season.

Exercise – set aside time this weekend to sit down and begin to work on a marketing calendar, plotting when to market particular programs. Over the next few articles we will add new categories of information to your marketing calendar.  Let’s begin with seasons and  special holidays.  For example, with Valentine’s day occuring in February, you should begin marketing packages for the date in early January.  Likewise, how will you market to clients this year with birthdays and anniversaries?  When will you be marketing summer vacations, fall foilage and ski vacations?  Tomorrow we will look back over the past four weeks to see how we have progressed and will gather our thoughts for properly organizing and calendaring other aspects of our 2009 Marketing Plan.

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No two marketing plans are identical. Your individual circumstances will largely dictate the final form your 2009 Marketing Plan takes. However, there are a few essential elements that every plan will have. Further, a marketing plan is not a static document. You will re-visit your marketing plan throughout 2009 to adjust for macro and micro environmental and economic factors.

Keep in mind as we build your marketing plan that marketing has two fundamental objectives: the retention of existing clients and the acquisition of new clients. Your existing clients are your base and represent your steady income. New clients represent growth and replace clients you may lose or fire along the way. Whatever steps we take in building a plan, we will want to ensure that we are acting to either retain desirable existing clients or acquire new ones.

Understand too that while the plan is important, the very act of planning has great value. Writing down your goals along with the tactics you will use to achieve them is an invaluable exercise in itself.  When you put a plan into writing, you are ensuring that you are capable of articulating your ideas and you will be better equipped and more confident in your ability to carry out your objectives.

It is easy to get lost in the details of a marketing plan.  For that reason, the plan we build with you will lean heavily on the strategic and tactical issues and a bit less on numbers.  We want to make recommendations that you can immediately put to use.  This is not to say that the numbers are not important: they are.  In the time we have available, however, we want to have the maximum impact on your planning.  For that reason, we will stick with action items and trust that you will fill in with the numbers.

This week we will work toward developing the key components of your 2009 Marketing Plan.

The Essentials

• Strategic Objectives – Marketing plans begin with a set of strategic objectives: goals that you want to accomplish over the duration of the plan. While some of the strategic objectives can be broad and general, it is important to be able to attach some real numbers to your goals. If you are going to manage a process, you must be able to measure it.
• Tactics - Strategic objectives are realized through tactics: the specific actions you will take to achieve the strategic objectives.
• Marketing Calendar: Your strategies and tactics will be plotted on a Marketing Calendar. It is important to have a grid against which you can measure your progress.

Let’s begin with your strategic objectives. What do you want to accomplish this year? Do you want to grow your client base by 15 clients? Do you want to increase your profitability by 20%? Do you want to improve your client relationships? To create a niche market for your practice? Travel more?

In order to focus, choose no more than four key priorities as objectives. Make sure your goals are realistic, but don’t undershoot your goals. You can always adjust downward later. Be specific and attach numbers to your goals where possible. For the sake of example, we will use some of the goals above.

Sample 2009 Strategic Objectives

1. To grow my client base by 15 new, FIT clients;
2. To enhance the professionalism of my practice – retaining my existing clients and acquiring new ones;
3. To increase my profitability by 20% by increasing my revenue and watching expenses;
4. To create a niche market for my practice, thereby enhancing my expertise and my unique selling points

Exercise: Write down your strategic objectives. Pare them down to no more than 4 that you will pursue next year.  Tomorrow, we will begin to develop tactics for achieving your objectives.

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