You love your work in travel marketing and know enough that your colleagues bestow the title of "guru," "ninja" or "master" or some other laudatory title. They will more often than not come to you for help if they're stuck or need a final arbiter. You might even dream about it…in a good way.
But not even masters have all the answers all of the time. You still might have some issues here and there, and you can certainly run into problems that don't always have an easy solution. Sometimes they can make your usually enjoyable work a pain in the rear. This article by Lindsey Kolowich in HubSpot details the eight of these issues. While she writes about marketing challenges in general, I'll apply them to travel marketing in particular. We'll take a look at the first four here, then look at the next four in a couple of weeks.
Businesswoman carrying big increasing graph. Growth concept
1. What's your ROI?
Yep, everyone's favorite metric – not really. But how else will you know how well your marketing efforts are paying off? The best way you can achieve the return on investment is using the marketing software and CRM (customer relationship management) programs. Also, check in with your analytics several times a week to see how your digital marketing is going. Keep meticulous records of everything to make your case that your travel campaigns are truly paying off.
2. Budget, budget, budget
Doesn't your work always seem to depend on number crunching? Of course, if you work for larger company, budget is less of a concern than when you're at a smaller one. But no matter what your company size is, you need to prove your spending is bringing in results, or ROI. If you're putting more effort into your inbound marketing, know that it's often for the long-term, and having the fiscal resources is critical. So reference #1 again, and pay special attention to those numbers.
3. Who's minding the (online) store?
Managing your website is a necessity, but it's not something just anyone wants to do. The smaller your company is, the less likelihood that you have a person or team to take charge of it, and you're the one who has to do the honors. But even with a substantial team, updating and optimizing content, making the website design user and mobile friendly, and taking care of the existing regular visitors is always a chore. The most efficient solution to this is to hire outside help, either agency partners or freelancers. Also consider hosting your site that puts all aspects of your digital marketing in one convenient place.
4. Techie talk
If you have a knack for this kind of thing, then you can probably stop reading here. Now this isn't talking about the channel (social media, email, content marketing, etc.) so much as it's about the software and tools you need for them. Automation is the key here – you want to use something that's going to put everything together with minimum fuss. When you can deftly use this kind of program, you can reasonable expect your ROI to increase and even a larger budget at your disposal. A great resource for travel marketers here is Tnooz
, the UK-based news source for what's working in tech and travel.
During January, we'll talk about the next four marketing problems that bug even the most dedicated travel marketer, and how you can get around them.
How are you dealing with your marketing's most vexing issues? Share your thoughts below!
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