3 of the best ways to get potential customers as a Travel Agent

When you work as a travel agent, your success is dependent on getting new customers. After all, one customer can only take so many vacations a year. Although there may be some challenges, there are some great methods to help you grow your customer base.

Be Active on Social Media

It’s important that you’re active on social media, and this means across all of the different platforms. Consider the type of audience that you want to cater to. Certain demographics may be more likely to be on Facebook, Instagram, or even LinkedIn. Be sure that you’re on at least two social media platforms actively so that people know who you are. It will also make it easier to promote various services or trips once you have a strong following.

When you’re on social media, you can post, ask people to share posts, run contests, and even take advantage of paid advertising.

If you find that social media is taking up too much time, there are a few things to help you:

• Establish a posting schedule

• Take photos of your travels so you always have things to share

• Follow other travel accounts to get ideas

• Hire a social media manager

• Use social media scheduling apps to automate your posts

When you’re more active, it will make it easier to get the following that you desire. It’s also important to establish a few key hashtags, especially if you’re going to be on Instagram. Some hashtags should be focused on you as a business and the others should be on the specific details you’re posting about.

It’s also important that social media posts aren’t always promotional. Instead of always trying to sell people a vacation package, provide tips. Talk to people about what they need to know when packing for a trip, what countries need visas, and so forth. When you provide great tips, people will follow you and share your posts. Then, the next time they’re ready to book a vacation, they’ll be more inclined to rely on you as their travel agent.

Establish an Email Marketing Strategy

Email continues to be one of the best marketing tools that you can use, with the U.S. Spending over $350 million on email advertising in 2019 alone. As you develop a mailing list from past customers, contests that you run, and even a lead generation form on your website, you can have quite the audience to advertise to.

There are some great email marketing tools that will let you establish a professional template. You can schedule the emails to go out to your audience often.

Share such things as:

• Travel tips

• Destination photos

• Upcoming specials

A well-written email with photos and videos can be a great way to get people’s attention. You want people to read the emails that they get from you, too, which is even more reason to spend a few extra minutes creating an incredible header. If the header doesn’t catch them, your email will end up in the ‘Deleted’ folder. A/B testing can also help you to establish what will work best with your audience.

Maintain a Beautiful Website

One of the most powerful tools that you have in order to reach potential customers is a beautiful website. As a travel agent, you may have a specialty — the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, or somewhere else. Be sure that you showcase photos from these areas on your website as a way to get people excited about the possibilities.

You can achieve several marketing goals when you have a comprehensive website in place.

Define Your Services

While you may be using social media and email marketing as a way for people to get to know who you are, they’ll be using your website to do their own research. Be sure that you define the different services that you offer so they know how they can benefit from you as a travel agent.

You don’t need to share prices as those are going to vary throughout the year anyway. Instead, talk about what modes of travel you work with, the various credentials that you have, and more.

When you provide details, it makes people feel more confident that they can benefit from what you have to offer.