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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Why it’s women who make swimming pools dirty.

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What do you mean I’m dirty?

Girl in pool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A survey back in 2006 found that the biggest pollutants of swimming pools is the stuff women put on their bodies to make them the beautiful creatures they are.
Yep it’s the oil that floats on the top of the water.
So much for stories of little boys peeing in the pool.

Earlier pools were designed with a wall around them with a few openings at water level to allow the water to be re-cycled. The main drain was at the bottom of the deepest part of the pool. This dealt with dirt at the bottom of the pool but what about the film of oil on top of the water?

Most modern pools are now built in the Infinity style where the water runs over the top edges of the pool into the drains. This deals with the problem of the oil lying on top of the water, because as we know, oil floats on water.

But where does this oil come from?

In the survey, it was found that 83% of the oil came from cosmetics, body lotions, make up and hair sprays.
And whereas when men shower before taking the plunge most of their body gets washed, or at least wet, women wearing one-piece costumes expose little of their body to get washed so bikini wearing girls are much cleaner, but it’s rare for any of them to shower their face and hair.

So it’s not little boys, or even old boys peeing in the pool that make it dirty, it’s those nicely made-up, sweet smelling ladies who are the real culprits.

Thank goodness for Infinty pools.
We can all now rest assured that the problem caused by “dirty women” has been solved once and for all.

For more on where to go, what to do and where to stay around the world go to the #1 Adventure Travel Directory

Thank you

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies

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Why are immigrants leaving Australia?

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A number of reasons.

Some find it too hot or humid. Some find it too expensive (it is not a great place to live if you have no income.) Some find it too far away from the rest of the world – either because they have loved ones elsewhere or they like to travel to Northern Hemisphere countries. Some find adjusting to anywhere new very difficult; they get homesick and are overcome by rose-tinted views of “back home”. Some are offered jobs or transfers somewhere else.

Many don’t know how good they’ve got it until they leave Australia and go elsewhere. You do realise, with hindsight, that if you have a job and have your family in Australia, it doesn’t get much better anywhere else. Sadly, it’s often lack of having one or the other locally that is behind the decision to leave. People get sick of 24 hour journeys to see parents, especially when parents get infirm or elderly and can no longer fly out to see their grandkids.

In the end, it comes down to how you’re living, not where you’re living. For me, family, sticking together and having the means to support my loved ones are what come first.

#leaving  #Australia

Thanks to Melissa Johnson first published on Quora

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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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About Traveljunkies – Our Story

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What’s all this about Traveljunkies?

And how come it’s at the top of Google Page 1 (and every other search engine)?

Everything was going well until March 2006 when we had a visitor, and that changed everything.

I’m Cliff and in 2000 our daughter Alison left our shores on Hayling Island in the UK and emigrated to Australia.

After spending a year exploring Melbourne and Sydney the time came for her to earn some money.

A friend in Sydney said she should work for herself and I should help. Great!
Nevertheless it was good advice and she found a small business running jet skis in Mission Beach, a small town near Cairns in Far North Queensland.
We bought the business and Alison, now known as Ali, became a first-time business owner.

Every morning, at the crack of dawn, Ali and her friend Joe drove a tractor from their lockup towing 6 jet skis and unloaded them on the beach. They rode two skis and towed the other four 7kms across beautiful clear blue waters to Dunk Island in the Great Barrier Reef Heritage area.

On the island was a large holiday resort that supplied our customers.
Each day, Ali and her team ran tours round the beautiful island accompanied by exotic birds, colourful fish, and the occasional whale, to places that could only be reached in small boats and jet skis, and it was a great lifestyle.

Then, on 20 March 2006, Larry paid us a visit.

Larry was a Category 5 Cyclone that built up in the Pacific Ocean and roared ashore right over Mission Beach demolishing almost everything in its path, and that included the resort that supplied our customers.

Luckily our jet skis were back in the lockup on the mainland so all was not lost, except we no longer had any customers.

Along with other businesses hit by the cyclone we struggled on for a while.

We hired out jet skis from the beach encouraged by the news that the resort was being rebuilt and would soon reopen, and after several delays it reopened eight months later.

 But it had it’s own jet skis.

On that fateful day in March 2006 we went from having a great lifestyle business to having no business at all. A cyclone and a big company had put us out of business.

So how does Traveljunkies figure in this?

Back in 2002 we had produced a small newsletter promoting our jet ski business and a few other businesses in the North Queensland area.

In 2006 with our jet ski business gone we broadened the range of activities including articles about the Great Barrier Reef, the tropical rainforest and activities such as  scuba diving, fishing, 4wd trekking and sky diving onto the beach. We also extended the area we covered and interest grew rapidly and with the advent of social media, the word spread and we were soon getting enquiries from beyond Australia.

By this time Ali had moved to NSW and gone back to her first love, caring for animals. She had many years experience as a vet nurse in the UK and was much in demand in Australia, so she had little difficulty in finding employment.

So it fell to me to continue to develop Traveljunkies which I treated like a hobby rather than a business and I’ve made many friends and contacts around the world.

Then I heard from a friend in Honduras.

Hello Cliff,
The information is correct although we have sad news. Tyll’s Dive will close down begin May this year.
Our small business could just not survive and compete against new dive businesses with a good money back up.
As of now we have no one interested in buying the name and the permit owner of the building is not interested in new tenants, which makes it difficult to sell the business as a whole package.
After we close down we will take a couple of weeks to relax and enjoy the island again, then most likely going back to Denmark for a while and find out what will happen from there and what options we have.
Thank you for your support over the years.
Dorte
Tyll’s Dive
Roatan, Honduras

A big company had closed down her business and that prompted me to do what I could to help small businesses. After all, we were once a small business that was shut down by a big company.
So I started promoting small businesses in the travel and activities industries giving them free one-line adverts in Traveljunkies. A bit like yellow pages.

We’ve been doing this now for nearly ten years and have made more than a quarter of a million referrals to small businesses around the world, and you can see some of our customer’s comments in Testimonials.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, we were asked if we could do more to help our clients, and with small businesses finding it hard to get customers I decided to offer premium adverts for a small fee.

We carried out tests posting simple adverts and this was very successful, increasing “Getting Found” by an average of 425%.

Bringing my story up to date, we are redesigning the Traveljunkies website to include Premium Listings for a small annual fee that in most cases will be quickly recovered by additional customers. In fact, just adding one extra customer will usually recover the fee we charge to display a Premium Advert for a whole year.
With lockdowns and travel restrictions worldwide, timing has been important and we will be offering this option in 2023.

In the meantime, if you own or manage a small business that qualifies for a free advert in please take a look.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story and I hope you found it interesting and helpful.
If you think joining us at Traveljunkies could help your business we’d be delighted to welcome you.

With my very best wishes

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies
Helping you find customers by helping customers find you

So remember, if you’re looking for new places to go, or exciting things to do, or you just want somewhere to stay, hop over to Traveljunkies.
And if you own or manage a travel or adventure business and you don’t have a free advert then Traveljunkies is the place for you.

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You should be doing this

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Excellent post includes

Why Brands Should Prioritize Facebook Reels Right Away

To promote your business for free – check us out at here

Cliff
Traveljunkies

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