Top 3 Marketing Strategies For Travel Agencies In 2024

Want to grow your travel agency in 2024?

Today we are going to discuss the top three travel agency marketing strategies that can help you do that…

Why You Should Build a Sales Funnel First

Marketing is about generating traffic.

But if you want to grow your travel agency, merely doing that won’t be enough.

You need to build a system for converting those visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers. 

A well-designed sales funnel can help you maximize sales, revenue, and profit, enabling you to make the most out of the traffic that you get!

What is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

We recommend using the Value Ladder sales funnel to grow your travel agency.

This funnel is based on three key ideas:

• You need trust to close sales.
• The more expensive your product or service, the more trust you will need to sell it.
•  Trust can only be built gradually over an extended period of time. 

And here’s how that looks like in practice:

Completely Automated vs. Partially Automated Sales Funnels

The Value Ladder sales funnel can be either completely or partially automated.

In the former case, you can use a digital lead magnet as bait and then pitch your Frontend offer to the potential customer via email marketing.

In the latter case, you can use a digital lead magnet as bait, then use email marketing to invite the potential customer to book a free consultation with you and pitch your Frontend offer at the end of that consultation. 

Which approach you should take will depend on whether you are selling low-touch offers or high-touch offers.

Say, if you are selling all-inclusive vacation packages that either aren’t customizable at all or have predetermined customization options, it probably makes more sense to build completely automated sales funnels.

Meanwhile, if you are selling custom vacation packages that you tailor to the needs, interests and constraints of each customer, then it probably makes more sense to build partially automated sales funnels.

Also, if you just launched your travel agency, then building partially automated sales funnels might make sense even if you are selling low-touch offers. Why?

Because this approach gives you an opportunity to talk to potential customers one-on-one and learn more about what’s important to them. 

You can then use that knowledge to improve your offers, copywriting, and marketing!

How Many Sales Funnels Does Your Travel Agency Need?

It’s probably safe to say that people who want to go on vacation typically know what travel destinations they are interested in. 

That’s why it makes sense to build a separate sales funnel for each destination that your travel agency covers. 

This will allow you to target potential customers who are already interested in those destinations!

How to Create Lead Magnets for Your Travel Agency

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address. 

It’s important to understand that a lead magnet shouldn’t just serve as bait that you use to attract potential customers.

It should also help you build trust so that you could then capitalize on it to sell them your Frontend offer. 

The best way to achieve that is to provide a solution to a problem that your potential customers are struggling with that is related to the problem that your Frontend offer addresses. 

As we just discussed, it’s probably best to create a separate sales funnel for each destination that you cover.

If you decide to take that approach then you can use free destination guides that potential customers can download in PDF format as your lead magnets.

Example: An All-Inclusive Trip to Florence, Italy

Let’s say that one of the destinations that you cover is Florence, Italy. 

People who have never been to Florence but want to visit it will probably start planning their trip by doing online research. 

If you can offer them a comprehensive guide to Florence for free, they will probably be interested in it because that will save them time. 

Then, once you have their email addresses, you can either pitch them an all-inclusive trip to Florence via email or invite them to book a free consultation with you and then pitch it at the end of that consultation. 

See how in this case the lead magnet helps to not just attract the potential customers but also build trust and set the stage for your Frontend offer pitch?

How to Build Squeeze Page Funnels for Your Travel Agency 

The squeeze page funnel is the simplest and probably the most popular sales funnel that can work well for any business, including travel agencies.

The Squeeze Page Funnel Structure

Your squeeze page funnels should consist of three pages:

1. Your lead magnet landing page is where you present your free destination guide and ask the potential customer for their email address in exchange for it. 
2. Your thank you page where you thank the potential customer and explain how they can download their free destination guide. 
3. Your sales page where the potential customer can purchase your Frontend offer travel package. 

You can easily build a sales funnel like that with ClickFunnels!

The Automated 6-Email Welcome Sequence

We recommend setting up an automated welcome sequence.

Here’s a proven template that you can follow:

So when the potential customer gives you their email address, that should trigger this welcome sequence.

Send them the first email immediately and then the rest of the sequence at a frequency of one email per day. You can set it all up with our software. 

This will remind the potential customer about your lead magnet, give them time to check it out and allow you to build more trust before you pitch them your Frontend offer.

Note that this sequence can work well for both personal brands and company brands so customize it according to your travel agency’s branding. 

But What if You are Selling High-Touch Travel Services?

You can use the squeeze page funnel to sell both low-touch and high-touch offers. 

In the latter case, instead of pitching your Frontend offer at the end of your welcome sequence, you want to invite the potential customer to book a call with you.

Then, once you get them on a call, ask questions designed to help you learn more about their needs, interests, and constraints. 

You already know which destination they are interested in but now you should take time to understand what kind of trip they have in mind. 

If you believe that you can help them organize that trip then pitch your Frontend offer at the end of the call!

How to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Funnels With Our Top 3 Travel Agency Marketing Strategies

Once you have your sales funnels all setup, it’s time to start driving traffic to them. But how can you do that?

Travel Agency Marketing Strategy #1: Google Search Ads

Google Search ads are the ads that you see displayed above the search results. 

They allow you to target specific keywords and therefore can be a great way to promote your lead magnets to people who are already actively looking for information about that particular travel destination.

Let’s continue with our previous example of a Florence travel guide lead magnet. How can you put it in front of people who are interested in visiting that city?

You can run an ad campaign targeting keywords such as “best things to do in Florence”.

The ad itself should emphasize that you are offering a FREE travel guide that covers the best things to do in Florence. 

Once a potential customer clicks on your ad, you should take them to your lead magnet landing page.

Here are some helpful resources if you want to learn more about Google Search ads:

• “Your Guide to Google Ads” by Google. This is the official guide so you can be sure that the information in it is going to be accurate.
• “A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Google Ads in 2024” by Michelle Martin on Hootsuite’s blog. This is a great article if you want to get an overview of how Google Ads works. 
• Google Ads courses on Udemy. This platform has several reputable Google Ads courses with thousands of customer reviews. You can wait until the next Udemy sale and get one of them for less than $20. 

Travel Agency Marketing Strategy #2: Facebook Ads

Facebook may not be as in vogue as it used to be in the late 2000s – early 2010s but it’s still the biggest social media platform out there that has more than 3 billion users at the time of writing. 

This means that whoever your dream customers are, you can almost certainly reach them with Facebook ads.

While this platform does offer incredible ad targeting capabilities, figuring out who exactly you should target might take some experimentation because it’s not as obvious as it is with Google Search ads.

It’s probably best to start off by targeting people who fit your dream customer profile in terms of demographic traits and who have expressed an interest in that travel destination in some way.

For example, you can start promoting your free Florence guide by targeting people who belong to groups related to the city of Florence, the region of Tuscany, and just Italy in general. 

Then, once your ad campaign is up and running, you can begin calibrating your targeting based on the analytics data. 

Here are some helpful resources if you want to learn more about Facebook ads:

• Meta’s Ad Library. Meta is the company that owns both Facebook and Instagram. You can use its ad library to see what ads are currently running on these platforms. It’s a great place for doing competitive research!
• “How to Advertise on Facebook + Strategies [Complete Guide]” by Jacqueline Zote on Sprout Social’s blog. This is a great article if you want to get an overview of how Facebook ads work.
• Facebook Ads courses on Udemy. There are a bunch of reputable ones with thousands of customer reviews. You can wait for the next Udemy sale to pick up a course for less than $20. 

Travel Agency Marketing Strategy #3: Influencer Marketing

You might also want to consider experimenting with influencer marketing where you offer influencers free trips in exchange for shoutouts.

These shoutouts should include a call to action encouraging their followers to go and check out your lead magnet and a link to its landing page.

For example, if you offer influencers free trips to Florence in exchange for shoutouts, they should direct people to your free Florence travel guide. 

Make sure that you give each influencer a special link so that you can track how much traffic they are sending your way. 

Ideally, you want to look for promising influencers, negotiate short-term deals with them to see what kind of results they can produce, and then build long-term partnerships with the ones that can reliably drive traffic to your sales funnels. 

Keep in mind that as the influencer marketing industry is maturing, bartering products and services in exchange for shoutouts is becoming less and less acceptable.

After all, now that “influencer” is a legitimate full-time occupation, influencers want to get paid for what they do. And understandably so!

Fortunately, everyone loves free trips so you should still be able to barter initially, but you will probably need to start paying in order to form long-term partnerships.

Here are some helpful resources if you want to learn more about influencer marketing;

• “The State of Influencer Marketing 2024: Benchmark Report” by Werner Geyser on Influencer Marketing Hub’s website. This report can help you get a better understanding of the influencer marketing industry. 
• “The Definitive Guide to Influencer Marketing – Everything You Need to Know” by Werner Geyser on Influencer Marketing Hub’s blog. This is a great overview of everything you need to know in order to get started with influencer marketing. 

Warning: Be Prepared to Lose Money!

Marketing is a skill.

And just like with any other skill, you can only master it via trial and error.

What this means in practice is that you will inevitably end up losing money until you figure out how to make Google Search ads, Facebook ads, and influencer marketing work for your travel agency.

That’s why it’s wise to set aside a “learning budget” aka money that you are willing to lose in order to learn these skills. 

We also recommend looking into a marketing methodology known as agile marketing where you:

1. Come up with an idea for a marketing campaign.
2. Create and launch a minimum viable version of that marketing campaign as quickly as possible.
3. Observe how your target audience responds to it and then proceed accordingly: either drop that campaign or start optimizing it.

This approach allows you to start small, get market feedback and then gradually scale what works.

Agile marketing won’t protect you from having to pay a “tuition fee” aka burn money until you learn how to run profitable marketing campaigns. But it can help you minimize your losses as much as possible!

Bonus Marketing Strategy: Launching a Weekly Travel Newsletter

Launching a weekly travel newsletter can be a great way to build an audience that you can then promote your travel services to. 

Here’s what Brian Dean, an entrepreneur who has grown his newsletter to 90,000+ subscribers, advises when it comes to running newsletters:

Create a Branded Newsletter

Your newsletter should have its own unique brand that is separate from your main brand. That will make it easier to remember which can help growth via word-of-mouth.

Have a Unique Newsletter Template

Every issue should follow the same template so that your subscribers would know what to expect. 

Focus on providing bite-sized value: you want people to be able to quickly skim your newsletter and get something out of it. 

Send a “Confirmation and Deliverability (CD)” Welcome Message

When someone signs up for your newsletter, you should immediately send them a “CD” welcome message.

First, you want to confirm that they made the right decision by signing up for your newsletter and remind them what value they can expect from it. 

Second, you want to:

1. Ask them to move the email from the “Promotions” tab in Gmail to the “Primary” tab.
2. End your email with a question and encourage them to reply to it.

Subscribers moving your welcome message to the “Primary” tab and replying to it will let Gmail know that people want to read your newsletter. This should help with deliverability in the future!

Have a Consistent Publishing Schedule 

You want to send your newsletter on the same day at the same time every week. 

This will help your subscribers develop a habit of reading your newsletter so that it will become a part of their weekly routine. 

Don’t Miss a Single Issue!

If you fail to send your newsletter at the expected time even once, that can be enough for your subscribers to break the habit of reading it. 

It can also make them feel disappointed if they were looking forward to it. 

So make sure that you don’t miss a single issue!

It’s probably best to go with the link roundup format where every week you send your subscribers links to interesting travel-related content from around the web (articles, podcasts, videos, etc.).

As for promoting your travel services, you can either do it in the “P.S.” section or place a banner ad at the bottom of your newsletter.

Keep in mind that if someone regularly reads your newsletter, they will probably check out your offers eventually anyway so there’s no need to be overly promotional in every issue!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels that CONVERT? 

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert. 

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating. 

But you can also get it directly from us for free… 

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

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