Guest column: three steps to booking more vacations this summer

Here are the 3 steps to booking more vacations this summer…

 1. Identify Your Target Market

If marketing seems like a mystery, it’s only because this step gets completely overlooked. For example, say you have an incredible travel ad — the perfect design, copy and offer to produce great results. Now, imagine that you send that ad to two different groups. The first group is homeowner’s in their 40’s with expendable income and the second group is high school students. One of those ads is going to produce great results and the other is going to flop. Why? The audience.

That’s a clear cut example, but I’m telling you this step right here is where a majority of marketers waste their marketing budget. The ad is irrelevant in the wrong hands.

Now, to identify your target market, you need to look back through your client list. What types of individuals and families use your services? Older retirees? Professional couples with kids? Honeymooners? Of course, the answer is almost always going to be that there are many different groups that use you, so the trick is to find out which groups are the most profitable and make them your first target market. You can get to the others later.

One possibility could be marketing to your previous clients. Case in point, my husband and I recently visited a lovely bed and breakfast we remembered from five years ago. We would always talk about wanting to go back one day, but it never happened. But, if the B&B or a travel agent had contacted us, reminding us to go back, we would have, probably many more times over the years.

2. Promote to Your Target Market

When it comes to targeted marketing, direct mail postcards are the way to go, because you can get a specialized mailing list that targets the exact population you identified in step 1: your target market. You know that your target market is ripe for your ads because you already have a client list full of people just like them.

Find a direct mail marketing company that is trustworthy and work with them to develop an ad campaign. I say “campaign” because one-off mailings almost never get the job done, and usually end up being a waste of money. Think about TV commercials. Do they ever just run once? If so, you wouldn’t know because you wouldn’t remember. Postcards work the same way, except they cost less money.

3. Follow Up with New Leads

When you send out a postcard, calls are going to start coming in. You have to remember these are not necessarily sales that are calling in — they are leads. Leads need to be nurtured. Sure, some will close right away, but not the majority. That means you need a system for collecting their contact information and following up with them.

The go-to for cheap, simple follow-up is email. There are very affordable services out there that allow you to set up “email autoresponders”, which are basically just preset emails that get sent out to your leads at set intervals once they are added to your list. This keeps them in touch with your business and helps warm them up into a sale. Throw in some follow up phone calls and you’re on your way to a ton more sales.

It is honestly that simple. At least the theory is. In practice it takes hard work, but the upside is that if you put in the work your marketing will produce — consistently. It’s no mystery. Just target, mail and follow up, and you will get more leads and, consequently, more sales.

Joy Gendusa is the owner and CEO of direct mail marketing firm, PostcardMania. Joy began PostcardMania in 1998, with nothing but a phone and a computer, never taking a dime of investment capital. Since then, PostcardMania has expanded to offer its clients more services including website and landing page design and development, email marketing and full marketing evaluations — all while continuing to educate clients with free marketing advice.