Encore Romance Travel-The Entrepreneurship Roller-coaster | Travel Research Online

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Encore Romance Travel-The Entrepreneurship Roller-coaster

Last month I was pondering my “re-branding”  (it wasn’t a complete rebrand, just a fine tune) and I shared my fears. I was worried about the re-print costs, website traffic and the complete do-over of my SEO. I belong to a few travel agent groups on Facebook, and I know that many agents are going through the same roller-coaster as me. It seems that more and more travel professionals are beginning to re-think, or even chose a “niche” for the first time, in their career and many have the same questions I have.

Since last month, I took the plunge and changed the logo on my website, the META keywords and the SEO data for most of it. I felt like I was committing business suicide of some sort, but I knew it would only be temporary. I know it can take a few days for the new information to propagate around the Internet so I shifted my focus and began doing the other marketing tasks on my list. I decided to spend a little more time “pinning” my own pictures into my many Pinterest boards as well as a few community boards I “Pin” to.  I was surprised at the results; two inquires; and one became a customer after submitting her retainer two weeks ago.

I also focused on revamping my bi-weekly e-newsletter, complete with a clean template that does not take away from the message. I also tweaked the format into one that is easy to read on a smartphone — 70% of people on my list read it on their smart phones. I was pleasantly surprised to get a reply to one of my newsletters with an inquiry for a destination wedding. It wasn’t a reply to the newsletter I had just sent however; it was from someone that replied to a newsletter I sent back in August of 2012!

As anyone in business knows, the marketing systems work if you put them in place and you execute them in a consistent manner. It is so easy to get discouraged when the phone doesn’t ring constantly though. Those clients proved to me that if I keep going at it day in and day out it will be successful. As long as I stay on the rollercoaster and don’t hop out I will make it, do you feel like you’re on a roller-coaster too? Or are you blissfully cruising along now?

Brenda Llamas Young is the owner of Encore Romance Travel which specializes in weddings and honeymoons to exotic beaches to include the South Pacific, Asia, Australia, Indian and African Coast. Brenda entered the travel industry in 2009 and after two years of education, opened her own home based agency.

  One thought on “Encore Romance Travel-The Entrepreneurship Roller-coaster

  1. Bryna Blum says:

    As someone with a business that has been dedicated to the print and product needs of travel agency community since 1981, I congratulate you for taking a good hard look at how the public perceives your business-logo, branding, niche (so important) and website. Image is everything…

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