If I told you I run a high street travel agent, which welcomes lots of people through the door and is always busy – but rarely makes any sales – you’d rightly question why this is happening and who my customers are, if any!
Of course, it’s great to feel in demand. But if my customers don’t want to buy what I’m selling, I’m clearly wasting time and effort, using the wrong marketing techniques, and my bottom line will suffer as a consequence. And yet, that’s what the travel industry is doing every day.
Why? Well, we all know it’s never been more important to promote websites, telephone numbers and social media channels. But all too frequently, companies don’t track who has been in touch, where they came from, and why and how they’ve been contacted – nor the sales that are made as a result.
Tracking itself can range from simply having unique phone numbers, online forms and individual URLs, to high-end CRM and telephony systems.
It’s no exaggeration to say the success of your business is directly influenced by tracking. It’s vital you can see the value of your work and the returns on your investments. The better at it you are, the more you will gain.
In fact, you can’t afford to get it wrong – the price of Google Ads increases year on year particularly since the end of the pandemic as more travel businesses return to spending on digital marketing.
As an example, we helped a large travel business who were spending a considerable amount on Pay Per Click (PPC), including bidding on their own brand name. They wanted to appear top of the Google rankings when their name was typed in, and understandably so. But potential customers, who were already interested in the brand, were clicking on the paid for link.
When we looked into what this channel was costing them in total, on the surface the returns looked reasonable; but when you stripped out the brand terms it clearly wasn’t a good use of their money. In fact, thousands of pounds every month was only generating a handful of genuine new enquiries and sales.
As a result, we recommended they stopped investing in their brand PPC clicks, and allocated budget on promoting themselves on non brand terms. After some initial scepticism, they took the plunge, and sure enough the sales from their organic listing spiked, with no costs attached. This new approach is now embedded in their marketing strategy. It’s a tactic more should do, but don’t, and is one way to make your digital budget go further.
Three steps to help
My team and I support clients across a range of industries with their online and offline marketing. It’s clear that, when it comes to tracking, travel companies are missing a trick compared to other sectors. We estimate this shortcoming applies to around 80% of travel businesses, ranging from sole trader homeworkers to big firms with a £5m+ turnover.
We’ve noticed three key reasons as to why travel is selling itself short, and how that can be addressed.
Firstly, much of what the industry ‘sells’ is unique: feelings, emotions, good times. And quite rightly so. Holidays are an escape that feel more important than ever right now. Agents want customers to know they are buying into something special and have a wonderful instinct for doing that.
In our view, this has led to businesses spending more on promotion than analytics. Maybe that’s understandable – let’s be honest, tracking and data reporting isn’t as sexy or eye-catching. And yet, analysing what works and what doesn’t is vital to all of us. By ensuring there’s more of a better split towards both activities, we have every confidence the bottom line will benefit.
Secondly, we’ve noticed an uneven number of travel companies are, for whatever reason, unaware or not resourced to take advantage of tracking’s potential benefits. Employers don’t have the in-house skills, training and knowledge. Plugging this gap with data expertise could prove enormously beneficial both to profits but also growth.
Finally, there is still a mindset to push people towards phone sales rather than converting online. Again, we understand why: agents can provide reassurance and receive direct feedback over the phone, while also having the opportunity to upsell. If that’s a preferred method then no problem – although we’d always encourage a balance of phone and online selling – but even then, we often see examples of companies steering clear of even the simplest tracking, e.g. asking where the client had seen the product advertised.
Having more of a balance of phone and online conversions is our recommended approach, as online can be simple, quick, hassle-free – and importantly, it’s simple to track.
Back to basics
Wherever you can, make a conscious effort to keep tabs on your customers and their enquiries. Don’t worry about what your competitors are doing, or make the decision to throw resources at a new social media campaign, until you have a robust tracking process in place.
This might mean you end up focusing your investment in a specific area, or scaling back significantly on a marketing channel where you’ve regularly spent budget.
But that isn’t an issue: it’s much better for your shop to have a few of the right customers than lots of the wrong ones.