Category Archives: Marketing

New Year

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It’s that time of the year – again.

Have you noticed how the big companies are fighting for your money? Of course you have.

Before Christmas they were bombarding us with ads for perfume, jewellery, toys and booze and now they’ve switched to selling beds, sofas and all kinds of furniture we neither want nor need.
But it won’t be long before travel companies free up their huge advertising budgets and go hunting for our vacation dollars.

So where does that leave the small businesses who can’t compete with the big companies?

Now’s the time to up your game and the first rule is don’t fight the big boys because you you can’t afford to. Let them fight each other to attract the hoards of families dreaming about their package holidays. Actually there’s little to choose between them other than price.

As you’ve probably worked out your marketing strategy you have a pretty good idea where to spend your modest advertising budget.
You may be using the growing list of aggregators like Booking.com, Expedia, Tripadvisor etc to provide you with customers.
There are benefits of doing this of course, but there are also some downsides, but that’s for another time.

At this time of the year you’re competing with millions of small businesses around the world all chasing their 2024 customers, so you need to stand out to get found.

You’ve already done the hard work.

You’ve created your website and your blog and like most of your competitors you’ve been working to grow your social media presence.

So what more can you do?

There’s a great saying that top marketers have been using for years.
Top of mind mind means tip of tongue.
And one of the most effective ways of getting attention is by getting referrals from friends, your customers and other businesses.

This is what we do at Traveljunkies.

Big companies rely on getting as many punters as possible crowded into aeroplanes and bulging hotels and resorts. But our visitors know they will find something different. We don’t advertise big companies, we only promote small businesses like yours.

And unlike most casual searchers in Google who only scan the first few pages, the prospects we refer to our clients are already looking to buy.

Not got a free advert?

If you aren’t already listed, hop over to www.traveljunkies.com and get listed.
It’s simple to do, takes just 5 minutes and is completely free for as long as you want.

So as we say goodbye to the old year and look forward to the new one we’d like to wish all our clients, and all our new ones, a healthy and prosperous 2024.

Happy New Year

Cliff and the Traveljunkies team.
www.traveljunkies.com

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Market Your Business Like Seth Godin

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7 Ways to Market Your Business Like Seth Godin (Without Spending Thousands)

Molly Lye

Thanks to Molly Lye

Seth Godin – The greatest marketer of the 21st Century:

I’ve spent 50+ hours studying his books, podcasts, blog, and videos.

Here’s 7 of his best ideas to help you market your business and sell through the roof:

1. Marketing isn’t about selling.

Marketing is about creating change.

Change in your customers, your team, and yourself.

Marketing is about creating meaning and telling stories.

Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.

2. The goal of marketing is to be seen, heard, and remembered.

The goal isn’t to sell someone on your product or service.

It’s to be seen, heard, and remembered.

If you can do that, the sales will come as a result.

Spread the word.

3. Be specific.

The more specific your message, the more people it will resonate with.

You can’t please everyone, so don’t try.

Design and build in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.

4. Be generous.

Give more than you ask for.

Show up — regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years.

Be generous with your time, your knowledge, and your resources.

It will come back to you tenfold.

5. Embrace failure.

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.

Failure is a part of the process.

Embrace it, learn from it, and use it to become better.

6. Be remarkable.

Stand out from the crowd.

If you’re doing what everyone else is doing, you’re not going to get noticed.

Be remarkable in everything you do, and people will take notice.

7. Be passionate.

If you’re not passionate about what you’re selling, no one else will be either.

Passion is contagious.

If you love what you do, it will shine through in your marketing.

These 7 lessons from Seth Godin have helped me become a better marketer.

I hope they help you too.

PS.  Business owners in the adventure, travel and hospitality sectors, get your Free Advert  here
#marketing #sales #salesfunnels #SethGodin #marketingstrategies #Traveljunkies
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How To Get Onto Google Page 1

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Google, Bing, Yahoo and most other big search engines do an excellent job helping you find what you’re looking for, but they are the kiss of death for lots of small businesses.
The goal of most companies, big and small, is to get a good Google ranking that pushes them up the search engines pages, hopefully to eventually get onto page 1.

Getting onto page 1 isn’t too difficult if you have unique or popular products and a huge advertising budget, but how does a small business with budget of £1000 per year get any better than page 17.
Quite simply, most of them don’t.
So how do you get round this? There is a way if your small company is in the travel industry. It’s by using the help of a small company called Traveljunkies.

Traveljunkies is not only on page 1 on Google, it’s on page 1 of just about every other search engine for it’s popular adventure travel directory.
So the smart small travel companies are getting themselves listed in Traveljunkies.
But how much of their £1000 travel budget is this going to cost?
The answer is nothing.

So if you own or manage a small business in the travel industry, jump over to www.traveljunkies.com and get yourself listed.
It’s free.

 

 

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Do You Have A Tagline?

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What do these make you think about?

  •  “Just Do it”
  • “Think Different”
  •  “Because you’re worth it”
  • “It’s finger lickin’ good”
  • “Open Happiness”
  •  “I’m lovin’ it”
  • “Diamonds are forever”

You’ll notice that many of the slogans above have a few things in common (that you can use as inspiration for your business):

How to choose a slogan for your business

  • Consistent — Your slogan should be able to be used (and should be used) in every product and experience.
  • Different — Different is better than better. Stay away from the “We’re the Uber for ______” or a similar comparison to an existing business.
  • Short & Simple — Most of the slogans above are under 10 words. Phone numbers are 7-10 digits so they can easily be remembered. Your slogan should be as well.
  • Timeless — Ideas that hit on a moment in time are part of a marketing campaign, not your tagline. Be mindful of referencing current trends or technology in your tagline.
  • Stand Alone — Be clear (not clever) so that even when your tagline is separate from your brand, it can stand on its own.

Thanks to Rachel Burns at Active Campaign for her ideas

PS.  Business owners in the adventure, travel and hospitality sectors, get your Free Advert  here
#marketing #sales #marketingstrategies #Traveljunkies

 

 

 

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Promote Your Travel Blog For Free

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Hi There Travel Bloggers And Welcome To Traveljunkies.
You’ve done the hard part getting your blog going so what’s next?

As top marketer Russell Brunson of DotCom Secrets says, “Do It Once Then Market Like Mad”

The only problem is advertising is expensive. But it doesn’t have to be, in fact, it can be free.

Since 2002 we’ve been promoting small travel businesses for free and two years ago we included a section for Travel Bloggers, but we didn’t publicise it for fear of getting overwhelmed.
So you can now list your Travel Business Blog for free in our Adventure Travel Directory.
It costs nothing and your entry remains as long as you wish.

Enter your details here and we will add you to the Traveljunkies Adventure Travel Directory for free, within a few days.

Welcome aboard.

Cliff Chapman
www.traveljunkies.com

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Good To Be Back

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Hello everyone, It’s so good to be back.

For the past two years we haven’t been very active promoting small travel businesses with free adverts in Traveljunkies.

Instead, we’ve been looking ahead to when travelling gets back to some kind of normal so you’ll be pleased to know that you’re still here with us and your free advert in Traveljunkies.com is still alive and well.

We’ve made some changes which we think will help visitors better understand who you are and what you do, which in turn could create more traffic to your website.

So my message to our customers, old and new., is please keep watching as we roll out the new Traveljunkies Adventure Travel Directory and thank you for continuing to trust us to help you grow your business.

Best wishes
Cliff

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Marketing For Free

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Many Businesses Won’t Survive The Crisis. Don’t Be One Of Them

The biggest mistake a business can make is to stop marketing, especially in difficult times.

Marketing can be a cost, but it doesn’t have to be.

Remember your customers are your greatest asset. Don’t ignore them.

Many businesses that survived recessions in the past have gone on to thrive because they were well placed to take advantage when the hard times were over, and that is particularly true in the leisure industry.

When people have struggled and had to cut back, booking a holiday is often high on their list. Will you be ready to serve them? If they’ve booked with you before, will they remember you?

I have followed Chris Cardell for many years. He is a world renowned authority on entrepreneur success and has run a webinar showing 10 ways to do marketing for free.
I would urge you to watch it.

His presentation included:

1.  Online Videos. Video marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your business, and it’s free and easy to do, even if you’ve never done it before.

2. Email Marketing. Send emails regularly, talk to your customers like they are your friends and don’t ignore the current situation. And use your lists.

3. Events. Do an event such as a webinar, an online meeting or a video call etc. There are several ways to keep in touch.

4. Referrals.  Don’t just let them happen, ask for them. People love to connect and comment. This is why TripAdvisor and Social Media channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are so popular.

5. Joint Ventures. Look for joint ventures not only in the leisure and travel sectors but elsewhere where other businesses could have access to people you want to target.

6. Telephone Marketing. When was the last time you called your customers and asked them how things are going? They will remember your call when they start looking for holidays.

7. Social Media. This might seem obvious, but how effectively do you use it? How often do you post on Facebook,. How many groups do you belong to? Do you have a Blog and post regularly? You have the time now that you’ve never had before.

8. Upsells and Affiliate Marketing. What can you add to increase the value of your product or service? Can you add or include other people’s products and services in your offerings?

9. PR. Articles or interviews in the media are great ways to get free marketing often to people you wouldn’t normally target. It doesn’t need to be selling but passing on your knowledge about things and places that would be interesting to others.

10. Split Testing. What is working and how can you improve it?  Testing is something everybody talks about but we never have the time to do it. Well you do now.

Watch Chris Cardell’s presentation here

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Is Your Blog A Business Or A Hobby?

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Some of you use your Blog like a journal or a diary or a newsletter where you post about your travels, and other things, to pass on or exchange information.

Others use it to market or promote something. Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your business, product, or service. This means you can sell something online through your blog as well as using it for informative purposes.

These two distinctions determine whether your Blog is a hobby or a business.

Here are a few rules about using your Blog for business purposes.

The Rules Of Business or more accurately The Facts Of Business

  • You’re in business to make money. If you’re not, you’ve got a hobby not a business.
  • That means having customers.
  • You will have a website or a blog. Actually they’re the same thing.
  • Your website must be found. It’s completely useless if nobody sees it.
  • That means getting traffic to your site.
  • Your website must contain the words and phrases people search for.
  • One of the most effective way of doing this is by using hashtags #.

And of course there are other things you’ll see everywhere such as “You must have a list” and “Response time must be within 3 seconds” and “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)” etc. etc.

What Does This Tell You?

First and foremost, your blog or website must be found, because that’s where it all starts.

This means three things:

  1. It must be relevant for your target audience
  2. It must contain the words and phrases people search for
  3. You must advertise and promote it in some way

The first two are down to you. Make sure you have a clear view of who your target audience is and that what you post is relevant to them. Aim to provide help, address and solve problems, save time or save money.

  • The third can be a little more difficult especially if you have  tight budget.
  • Post on Social Media, especially on Facebook and Instagram
  • Post on other peoples’s blogs.
  • Comment on other peoples blogs.
  • Join groups & forums
  • Pay to advertise on Social Media and Google.

But first get a free advert in the popular Traveljunkies website. It’s been going since 2002 and is completely free.
More about this here https://www.traveljunkies.com/free

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies

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Who Is Your Blog Or Podcast For?

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Reach is overrated

It might be the biggest misconception in all of advertising.

The Super Bowl has reach.

Google has reach.

Radio has reach.

So?

Why do you care if you can, for more money, reach more people?

Why wouldn’t it make more sense to reach the right people instead?

To pick an absurd example, you can use a giant radio telescope to beam messages to the billions or trillions of aliens that live in other solar systems. Worth it?

I read an overview that pointed out that one of the cons of Amazon advertising was that they didn’t have the reach of Google.

This is wrong in so many ways.

Reach doesn’t matter, because your job isn’t to interrupt people on other planets, with other interests. Your job is to interact with people who care.

Running an ad on the most popular podcast isn’t smart if the most popular podcast reaches people who don’t care about you.

Perhaps it makes sense to pay extra to reach precisely the right people. It never makes sense to pay extra to reach more people.

This Is From Seth Godin’s Blog 

Promote your Blog here.

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