What is "Marketing"?

Marketing is a big, esoteric term that is thrown around like the holy grail. But what is it really? In my experience most people in the retail channel do not know what marketing is – they just know they must have it.

To most business professionals, marketing and advertising are the same thing and while there are many similarities – like sales and marketing, they are different. The easiest way to understand is to imagine it as a pie: pumpkin, pecan, it doesn’t really matter. We will call it the marketing pie, and each slice represents a subset of the overall pie.  Each slice represents: market analysis, pricing, customer service, advertising, public relations, and community involvement.

When we dig deep, we find that most are not investing their money in marketing, what they are really buying is just one slice of the pie - advertising.

The real estate industry does marketing just about better than any other, they embrace each slice of the marketing pie. The most successful ones have a written process to ensure they serve the whole pie every single time. Otherwise they are doing themselves and their client a disservice by not utilizing 100% of their resources at their disposal.

Most of travel agents are probably serving only a couple of pieces of the pie – Advertising and Customer Service.  Imagine the results if you were to add the other slices to the mix. You would have a better understanding of who is your customer, and who your real competitors are. You would be creating and executing a media plan to maximize exposure in all channels. And being an active member of your community, be it local or online, helps position yourself and attract prospects who see you as an expert in your field.

The late, great Peter Drucker is famous for saying “The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers.” If you take his statement and break it down into its two parts, “Create” and “Keep,” we need to look at it from two different perspectives. Creating a customer is an Attraction strategy. Keeping a customer is a Retention strategy. Two very important and different perspectives. The second step in the SA-6 Framework is attraction marketing.

Attracting Your Target Prospect

Now that we have a better understanding of what marketing encompasses, this process becomes clearer. The first law of attraction is to be clear on who you are trying to attract. Car dealers have this down to a science. If you are selling Jaguars, you don’t want to spend your time or money attracting Hyundai buyers, right? The dealers understand that both buyers are typically price sensitive in their own ways. While the Hyundai dealer may advertise $0 down and $199 month, the Jag dealer will advertise $4999 down and only $700-month payments. Each price point attracts a particular buyer.

You should consider implementing a similar strategy to attract your target customer. Your advertising is the first step in qualifying a prospect. Instead of advertising Carnival for $599 per person, try Seabourn for $5999. The phone may not ring as often but when it does, odds are high it will be your target prospect.

Creating Customers

One thing that will help you to use your marketing dollars more wisely is to understand your role in the big picture. It is not your job to create demand. The supplier, the owner of the product has that responsibility. They are building larger (or smaller) ships with amenities we would have never dreamed of 20-30 years ago. Hotels and resorts have changed their offerings and in room amenities to create and cater to the demands of today’s business and vacation traveler. They spend millions of dollars advertising and marketing their products to the consumer, educating them on the respective brand experience. They do this very well. In fact, virtually every segment of the travel industry continues to grow to meet the demands of today’s traveler.

The job of the travel professional is fulfillment. Your job is to find those prospects who are interested in purchasing a particular product. Depending on your specialty (or lack of) you may be the big fish in a small pond or as most agents- a minnow in an ocean of competitors all vying for the attention of the prospect.  The faster you realize that demand creation is off your plate, you can start focusing your efforts on attracting qualified prospects, and the faster your business will grow.

As travel agents, we are the “middle-men” paid a small percentage of the sale for our fulfillment efforts. Typically, money is tight and cash flow is unpredictable. Many are living commission check to commission check. As a result, it is critical to consider of all the resources at your disposal. Your attraction marketing program should consist of both strategic (long-term) and tactical (short term) strategies.

Strategic Marketing

Strategic attraction programs are a costly proposition and the reason most businesses owners complain about for all the money they are spend, no one is buying. Strategic marketing is about positioning and building rapport with your targeted prospects. This takes time. Many experts will tell you it’s more about “exposure” (I hate that word and so should you). If someone tells you this whether for advertising, charity donations, or any promotion – run away as fast as you can.  You are better off burning your money – at least you will stay warm.

Community involvement is a great example of a strategic marketing. It helps position your expertise and build rapport with your prospects. This column is an example of strategic positioning and rapport building. Your blog should make a similar statement.

For those in a consortia or host program, most of advertising they provide is strategic. You can typically participate in their programs at various levels of investment that should cater to your specialty or niche.

These programs are funded by the suppliers, so your cost is typically little or nothing. Most will allow some customization, so you can add a positioning statement as well as the products featured will send a message to your target prospect. Many suppliers offer similar programs, sent on your behalf, for minimal cost. Use them. Despite what you hear in industry surveys and anecdotal conversation, they do work –  if they didn’t, suppliers would discontinue funding the programs.

Tactical Marketing

My suggestion is to focus your personal attraction marketing efforts on tactical strategies. These are the local activities that make the phone ring. When I was a kid, I learned to fish by putting a worm on a hook, throwing the line in the lake, and wait, and wait, and wait. You get the picture. When I did get a bite, it often wasn’t a fish I wanted to keep, so I would go home empty handed.

On the other hand, if you know exactly what you want kind of fish to catch and cast your line with the right bait in front of them again and again, the odds are much greater you will catch more and bigger and better keepers. The key to tactical promotions is using the right bait and this is typically lead- in pricing. Most tactical promotions are price driven, however that doesn’t have to mean price driven products. If you want to sell World Cruises, the lead-in price may be $75,000 – a relative bargain for that product.

Tactical promotions should have a strong call to action. Price + limited availability = Urgency. If an offer is valid for one week, you typically see 40% of the sales within the first day, but don’t get discouraged. Up to 50% of the sales will take place on the final day. Why? People by nature are procrastinators. They wait until the last minute to buy, it’s your job to remind them that time is running out.

Attraction marketing is a reactive strategy that is taught by almost exclusively by most industry experts. However, when combined with a proactive prospecting strategy, you will have more leads than you can handle.

Dan Chappelle is a professional business advisor, best-selling author, and speaker. His training and consulting firm helps develop sales focused business leaders and entrepreneurs in the travel and tourism industry. His book, Get Your S.H.I.P. Together: The Wealthy Travel Agent Guide to Sales, is available on Amazon.com.

For information on Dan’s business building programs centered on selling to affluent travelers, visit: www.DanChappelle.com

©2018 Dan Chappelle, CCI Inc.