As you may or may not know, I love all things techie and social media driven that offer a marketing guy like me new ways to sell travel. I mean that's what I do. Look for and expound on NBG - New Business Generation for the global travel industry. So I was taken aback by my own level of shock and awe when out of the local paper slipped a flyer from Scenic Tours. It was like the old days for goodness sake.
So there I was, not a click, no signing in, no logging on, no use your Facebook account to join, no hashtags, no nothing... just pick it up and start reading. What a concept. Almost forgotten, but not quite by one supplier.
This was no ordinary flyer by the way. This was huge - 32" x 33" and full colour. Yes that's me reading it at my desk and I still have it here beside me. You see you don't click this off the screen, you don't delete it. You might throw it in the bin, but most people interested in travel keep these types of full colour flyers around for a while. I mean they are rare. They like to show their friends, chat about it, read it again, ponder and imagine, lay it flat and check the itinerary that best suits them.
Social media cannot do this. It's a simple fact of online life. Social is sucking wind when it comes to this type of easy peasy engagement. Of course, it's not cheap to create, print and deliver such a flyer as this. But then, if I was back in the selling saddle, I would have called my Scenic Tours rep by now and ordered 200 flyers for my agency. After that I would be folding them nicely into an envelope duly stamped with enticing "open me now" slogans.
At the same time, I would be gathering my known river cruise and deep water cruising clients into a huddle and arrange to meet them as a group and take them to the Scenic Tours information session if it came to my city. Yes, so old and offline. So non social media. Just flat out traditional - and you know what I LOVE IT! You wanna know why? Because it WORKS!
If you get a chance to read this flyer yourself, you will see that Scenic Tours has arranged a series of cross-Canada consumer events and prior to that event they are offering training for travel agents. It's well planned and if you are a Canadian travel agent and on your toes, this is a great opportunity for you to make some money. Be quick about it before your competition is calling their Scenic Tours rep!
So, that's one for traditional travel marketing. Of course today, as I have mentioned so many times, a blended marketing plan works best - mixing social with traditional.
What's the message here then? Have you got it? Well it's called customer service - you deliver something of importance to your clients and it's instant. No hoops to click through - just open and read. Your flyer does not have to be so grand, however, if you printed just enough to mail one flyer to each of your top 200 clients, you'd be in with a chance. Naturally you would add your social connections, website, email and telephone number to the contact us area and overall you would stand out from the competitive agency crowd still trying to fathom how to turn a Like into a hike, or a Tweet into something suite.
Now, you could use your social media marketing outlets to announce that your flyer is coming soon. A little softening of the market via social media is good. It's part of the blended plan. Using new as in social to promote something old as in traditional is the way to go.
If you need to chat about this post, Skype me here: smptraining1.
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So there I was, not a click, no signing in, no logging on, no use your Facebook account to join, no hashtags, no nothing... just pick it up and start reading. What a concept. Almost forgotten, but not quite by one supplier.
This was no ordinary flyer by the way. This was huge - 32" x 33" and full colour. Yes that's me reading it at my desk and I still have it here beside me. You see you don't click this off the screen, you don't delete it. You might throw it in the bin, but most people interested in travel keep these types of full colour flyers around for a while. I mean they are rare. They like to show their friends, chat about it, read it again, ponder and imagine, lay it flat and check the itinerary that best suits them.
Social media cannot do this. It's a simple fact of online life. Social is sucking wind when it comes to this type of easy peasy engagement. Of course, it's not cheap to create, print and deliver such a flyer as this. But then, if I was back in the selling saddle, I would have called my Scenic Tours rep by now and ordered 200 flyers for my agency. After that I would be folding them nicely into an envelope duly stamped with enticing "open me now" slogans.
At the same time, I would be gathering my known river cruise and deep water cruising clients into a huddle and arrange to meet them as a group and take them to the Scenic Tours information session if it came to my city. Yes, so old and offline. So non social media. Just flat out traditional - and you know what I LOVE IT! You wanna know why? Because it WORKS!
If you get a chance to read this flyer yourself, you will see that Scenic Tours has arranged a series of cross-Canada consumer events and prior to that event they are offering training for travel agents. It's well planned and if you are a Canadian travel agent and on your toes, this is a great opportunity for you to make some money. Be quick about it before your competition is calling their Scenic Tours rep!
So, that's one for traditional travel marketing. Of course today, as I have mentioned so many times, a blended marketing plan works best - mixing social with traditional.
What's the message here then? Have you got it? Well it's called customer service - you deliver something of importance to your clients and it's instant. No hoops to click through - just open and read. Your flyer does not have to be so grand, however, if you printed just enough to mail one flyer to each of your top 200 clients, you'd be in with a chance. Naturally you would add your social connections, website, email and telephone number to the contact us area and overall you would stand out from the competitive agency crowd still trying to fathom how to turn a Like into a hike, or a Tweet into something suite.
Now, you could use your social media marketing outlets to announce that your flyer is coming soon. A little softening of the market via social media is good. It's part of the blended plan. Using new as in social to promote something old as in traditional is the way to go.
If you need to chat about this post, Skype me here: smptraining1.
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