Whilst social media has increased the volume of daily communications people engage in, there is still no real substitute for communicating face to face. With late night shopping nights and busy high streets, Christmas is an ideal time to invite your customers in and spread a bit of goodwill and festive cheer.
The key to success is to plan well to maximise the opportunity and keep focussed on what you hope to gain from the event (e.g. collecting email addresses!)
‘To Do’ this month
Today’s task is to plan and draw up a ‘To Do’ list for a festive meet and greet. Here’s a useful link to help you get started. Click here.
Some further ideas to consider are:
- Send out invites via Facebook, email and window displays.
- Make sure you have a simple way for people to leave their email address with you so that you can continue the conversation after the event. This could be as simple as having a notebook and pen available, or entering them straight onto an ipad or computer as you chat.
- If possible make a note of what type of traveller they may be or destinations they’re interested in so that you can target marketing efforts accordingly.
- Make sure you have something with all your details (including web address and social media connections) ready to handout.
- If your team have different specialist areas eg. Cruise or Adventure Travel or destination knowledge make sure customers know how to identify them to make starting a conversation easier.
- Ask a Tour Operator to help support your event.
- Make sure your shop is looking as attractive as possible and create a display area for any demographic/destinations you specialise in or want to promote e.g. Ski/Cruise/Adventure/over 50’s/Millenials. It could be a great opportunity to test interest in a new holiday type.
- Take some photos of the event and share on social media
- If you offer Gift Vouchers be sure to let visitors know in case they are looking for a gift idea for the special travel – lover in their life.
I founded Net Effect to provide digital marketing tools and websites to Independent Travel Businesses who sometimes find it hard to compete online with the larger Online Travel Agents.
I started off my career in Zimbabwe with British American Tobacco having developed his love of travel from spending part of my childhood in Malaysia. I quickly realised that growing tobacco wasn’t the thing he wanted to devote his life to and so returned to the UK, trained as a Chartered Accountant and joined the travel industry as Finance Director of Simply Travel and then MD, later selling the business to TUI and after a brief spell with the travel giant, realised my passion was with small businesses.
Fast forward to 2011 and a number of different businesses I saw a niche to provide marketing tools and expertise to Independent Travel Businesses whom otherwise would be unable to find the right tools to help grow their business and Net Effect was founded
Net Effect now provide CRM and Quote software, email marketing, specialist holiday search and cruise search and marketing tools to over 200 clients.