You've done your research, created a product, lined up your travel supplier partners, established a budget and contracted with a recommended travel and technology provider to run your website. It's now time to create what I call a light-model sales and marketing strategy to acquire your first 100 reservations and bookings.
Remember everything you do going forward is about focusing on selling your first 100 bookings/reservations. Do not it caught up in all the noise that will come your way as you prepare to start thinking about how to market and advertise your new travel business start up and its products.
The Light-Model Sales & Marketing Strategy is your written, mini-plan, that pulls everything you have been working on up to now all together. It outlines who your business is, what your business sells, whom your business sells it to and how you'll acquire your first 100 bookings/reservations (your marketing and advertising strategy).
Your light-model sales and marketing strategy plan should be no more than 1-2 pages long. Do not get bogged down in trying to write a "traditional" business plan like you read about in the scholarly and business books as this is just a waste of time unless you are seeking to raise capital or a bank loan for your business. Again this program is not about raising venture capital or securing debt financing this is about getting your business started and launched as a home-based business in the most efficient and strategic way possible.
Download the Light Model Sales & Marketing Strategy Plan Worksheet from the resource section below.
Your light-model sales and marketing plan is a living and breathing document. You should always have a copy printed out and if you can tape it or adhere it to a wall in your home office so that it is visible every day. As your moving towards the launch of your travel business you can come back to this document and read it over whenever you have any questions or are unsure of what or where you are going.
Marketing your online travel business
Marketing your new online travel business and your travel products is all about creating a message that entices people to want to buy your travel products. Your website and your online booking engine or online checkout cart is your sales process. Your marketing needs to be focused on clearly articulating your message and selling your travel products. The ultimate goal is to create such a persuasive marketing message that by the time the consumer gets to your online booking engine or checkout page that the consumer is already sold. I can't overemphasize how important this is.
One of the biggest failures new ventures make is that they loose focus on how to effectively communicate their marketing messages and they never have a chance at making the sale cause they don't focus initially on a niche target buyer within their target market. Their messaging becomes broad in scope and it looses its effectiveness. Again, I cannot over emphasize how important it is to make sure you are marketing directly to your core niche travel buyer. Do not try at all to market outside of your niche travel buyer or you will loose and waste valuable resources including time if you move outside your core target.
Remember the power of 100 only works if you completely adhere to all your focus going towards trying to reach your targeted niche buyer.Please reread and or rewrite your "Define who you are" worksheet because it is very important when it comes time to start marketing your new travel business and travel products. You want all your marketing messages to be targeted at your core niche target buyer and how your travel products benefit the buyer. This is imperative. Ok, I think I've made myself clear, lets move on.
The next three sections outline the different strategies you can use to market your online travel business. All the strategies are geared towards helping you acquire your first 100 bookings/reservations. I break down the marketing and advertising strategies into three sections, free-to-inexpensive, moderately expensive, expensive. Remember it's all about how effective you can be at acquiring your first 100 bookings/reservations at the lowest cost possible.