By Sherry Laskin
Travel writer / NACTA Webinar Moderator
www.cruisemaven.com

Are You Planning for Success?

It's easy to forget what season it is when you live in Florida. When a client would say that she wanted to book a cruise for next spring, I'd always stop and think,
"What season are we in now?"

In case you have been too busy to notice, the second quarter of 2011 has begun. Cruise lines have opened deployment into 2012 and some into 2013. I'm totally confused as to what year this is right now, because I'm booking travel for people nearly two years in advance.

If the cruise lines are open to booking a year and a half ahead, they have certainly done their homework and business plan. I'm also booking a year and a half ahead, but I'm not so well planned. I'll go out on a limb here and venture a guess that most of you who are reading this article have not mapped out your marketing plan/business plan for 2012-13 either.

When I was a travel manager for a major travel company, I had to prepare two plans: a marketing plan and a business plan. The marketing plan told me where I was going to spend my time and money. The business plan told me how much I could spend on marketing. Since you are responsible for balancing your checkbook, let's focus today on creating your marketing plan.

It doesn't matter if you are an independent agent with your own agency, work with a host or are in a storefront location working for someone else. Without a well thought-out marketing plan, you have no concrete direction to follow and no way to track and analyze the success or failure of your business. A carefully designed and worked marketing plan is like a roadmap for success. It can help you proceed in the right direction, stay on course and not get lost among the myriad of marketing opportunities that may lead you off the road to success.

Just because you are moving forward doesn't mean you are moving forward in the right direction.

I've learned that creating a marketing plan accomplishes three goals:
1 Assist with identifying which clients are your best prospects
2 Provide a way for you to evaluate your business against the marketplace
3 Track the results so you can learn what works and what is a waste of time (and money.)
Within these three goals, there are five basic steps to create a well-planned and practical marketing plan. I've compiled and adapted this information from several courses I've taken, articles I've read and from presentations by leaders in various industries.

STEP ONE:
Positioning Your Product (cruise, tour, vacation rental, etc.)
If you have taken any of the CLIA marketing courses, this might sound somewhat familiar. This is a distinction between actually marketing your business and the actions you take for promotion, advertising and public relations. Those three actions are components of a marketing idea, not the actual marketing. Marketing itself is basically made up of the Four Ps: Product, Price, Promotion and Placement.
Product: Have the right product for the market to which you plan to sell. Repeat that please. While you cannot pigeon-hole or assume one type of travel is not suitable for a particular demographic, you do have a good idea from your client base what would work and what would not work.
Price: Wouldn't it be great if everyone sold the same product at the same price and people shopped where they received the best service? These days, even your most loyal clients are shopping online and exuberantly point out to you where they found the better price. Then you are supposed to match it. That leaves you to not only find a way to match the price, but also to create a value-added mindset in order to keep your client away from the online discounters.
I've lost count as to how many times I've booked a group and a friend/relative of the group leader has insisted on booking outside of the group because they think they are getting a better deal. Know the prices of your competitors. Be prepared to stand up for your worth, value and expertise. Nothing feels better than (politely) telling a tire-kicker to "call back when you are ready to book."

STEP TWO:
Ask for Opinions
Sometimes it pays to ask for opinions. Your friends, family, trusted colleagues or other professionals can be a great source for narrowing your marketing ideas. Ask them who they think your target clients might be (based on what they know of you), if they think you can reach that target demographic, what it is that makes you stand out from the crowd, your strengths and weaknesses and what marketing tactics they think would make your business stand out and be noticed. Sometimes, it takes seeing your business through others' eyes to truly understand your intent and ability to achieve your goals.

STEP THREE:
Listen to Your Clients
No one can give you a better image of your business than your clients. Are you making the welcome home calls? If so, this is the perfect time to ask your clients if their needs were met and what, if anything, you could have done better/different. You might consider composing a brief survey to email to your clients. Keep it short, simple and offer a thank you gift for completing the survey.

STEP FOUR:
Get the Lead Out
Now that you have started to more clearly identify your clients and the marketing environment, it's time to put your thoughts on paper. This doesn't have to be a formal edict nor written in stone. A successful marketing plan is not static; it is a malleable piece of work able to be modified as needed throughout the year. Points to include in your plan are:
• A summary of your market position (what/whom you intend to target) and goals;
• What you expect to accomplish in a given time period (this can be a dollar goal, a booking goal, a move to a new travel venue goal – it's your plan!) Be sure to state the time limit and stick to it as closely as possible;
• A list of several target markets and complementary products to go with them;
• Financials — expenses — and how you will allocate;
• Marketing channels — flyers, E-mail, snail-mailed newsletters, consortium brochures, blog entries, tweets and Facebook posts — and how you will get them to the target clients and then be noticed;
• Competition — what strategy will you use when confronted with lower-priced competitors?

STEP FIVE:
You should know whether your money is being well-spent or wasted on marketing channels that don't pay off. I've spent hundreds of dollars mailing out consortium brochures, cruise line alliance brochures, printing postcards, subscribing to online E-mail blast companies.
Ask your new clients how they found you. It's important to know where they came from so that you can focus your strengths and dollars on ventures that have a high return on investment.
Plan a marketing calendar in conjunction with when your customers tend to book travel. When I started my online agency nearly two decades ago, my busiest booking period was Thanksgiving weekend. Families got together and would plan next year's vacation. Phone calls and emails were off the charts for me from Friday to Sunday.
Be sure not to invest most of your marketing dollars during the slow months in the travel industry. Plan ahead for Wave Season and use your resources wisely.
Find out when your sales reps get their annual budget. Ask for a piece of the action. It doesn't help to ask your rep to participate in a cruise night if they have already allocated and/or depleted their marketing funds for the current year.
Remember, a successful marketing plan one year may not work in the next year. Analyze the successes and not-so-successful attempts. Re-evaluate and adapt a new marketing plan on a yearly basis.
Once you start to put all of this in writing and take the time to systematically re-visit your plan and review your progress, you will find that you are not caught off guard when you realize that you should have been more pro-active.
Your business will thank you for it.