If you are selling travel services in a traditional way, you know that each customer has their temperature. When we say temperature, we don’t mean body temperature, but how close they are to buying. A "colder" customer is harder to convince than a "hotter" customer. In your day-to-day work it is very important to talk to more "hot" customers than "cold" ones. In this article, we are going to show you an alternative for handling more "hot" customers than "cold" ones.
Why would you want "hot" customers? A travel agent’s most important resource is time spent working. A hot customer might be convinced two or three times more quickly. A cold customer might take hours, and even repeat visits. With a working day of eight hours, it makes sense to spend time selling to people who are ready to buy, right? But how can you do that? You can't just tell customers to leave the agency because they are not ready to buy.
The best way is to have a strategy in place that addresses the bigger picture. If you start investing in maintaining a closer relationship with your customers, then you can talk to more hot ones. How is this possible? The most cost-effective way is via a good marketing strategy. If you create content on social media or newsletters for your customers, then you will be in your customers’ minds. You can make them dream of holidays and start searching for options. Then, through re-marketing techniques, you can display ads only to interested customers. This costs much less than advertising to cold customers. Do you see how this hot-cold idea applies to marketing?
If you keep sending customers relevant information for their interests, they will select themselves from the big group. They will virtually raise their hand and say, "I want more". If you have a good online platform that can help you with all of this and a good marketing strategy, you will see amazing results.
Some of the online customers that you wouldn't have reached otherwise will prefer to complete everything online. Others will just make enquiries, but they will be much closer to the buying decision. A good online platform can show you how each customer who has made an enquiry made their way through your website. What is his/her temperature?
A good online platform tracks customers and reports to you how many pages they visited before making an enquiry. Usually, the more pages someone has visited, the hotter he or she is.
What about your agency’s cold customers? With a good strategy they will move online and you will start handling more hotter clients and fewer colder ones. And you can send the cold ones to your website to find all the information they need.
This is why a good content strategy saves you time in the long run. Instead of telling the same story over and over again, you can write it once on your website and direct your customers there. Ideally your website should provide the same experience for the customer as if he or she were talking to you. If you display only a few prices or generic descriptions, it will not be sufficient to convince your customer. You have to pick selected hotels and experiences that people will love.
In the end, this is the main mindset for a good online business: work once and make profit for many years to come.
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