Help needed marketing my travel agency

[mrbear]

So I offically lauched my business after 2 years of hard work..first of all I had to get a ATOL, formulated company then I had to build a rapport with suppliers..then the nightmare of finding a developer. I eventually did get the whole dream done and my website (realdealholidays.com) launched about 3 weeks ago..only problem now is I have not had one customer and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Our niche is being a low cost travel agency..our strong point is we have great net rates cheaper than most the big boys and our suppliers are the same..our weakest point is that we don't have a strong enough track record to negiotate the best flight prices..that being said we still offer as good deals as some other sites (i have compared numerous times to my competitors..)
I've researched my competitors and done alot of online reading. I've even networked with marketing companies and business mentors- they all seem to tell me what am doing is fab..but no customers..so I think maybe its my site..so I decided to go around to my local town centre and ask 20 random people to give their opinion on 'this business' not stating its mine..and I paid them £1 each..for a free 1 quid for 1 mins work they were happy to participate..the general feedback I had was my site looks professional, easy to use but they don't know my travel company its not a 'trusted' brand..so my next thought was well lets get advertising then..but as alot of u say in other threads..who do i want to reach..why?

So I figured I want to start regionally- nottingham and aim for age 25-50 males/females.
I started posting on facebook, doing a competition..using social media..spent about £200 on facebook advertising using videos i had made, photos..even a free hotel if u get 20 shares to the page..the competition worked well we got about 200 genuine likes..but again no sales..the fb promotion says we reached 3000 people no sale!

So then I decided I would use adzooma try some google work, i put £50 in to see what it did..nothing..again

So I decided to look at as much free advertising as i could- fb, shpock, gumtree, fb selling pages..we got a few enquiries no sales..

I had a few hints that maybe as i have good support in my community to print some a2 flyers and give them out to a friends businesses..i plan on doing that..and another idea I have is to also approach my local newspaper shop and perhaps ask them if i pay them a small fee if they'd get the local newspaper boy to hand my flyers out with the paper..

I've started to begin to think now theres no way for me to get customers without investing thousands..my competitors like thomas cook, on the beach..they are spending upto £10,000 a month...right now whilst my site looks 'bigger' than what I am am running this whole thing from a bedroom as such supported by 2 full time jobs..so my budget isn't in the thousands..

i've been looking at investing promotional time into - a) post office digitial screens- although im unsure about this as i read on here that the majority of people dont look at them b) i have approached a recommended local google seo company..scouted them out and they seem very legit so i've told them i will try them on a ONE MONTH basis..that i need to save up for..i was also looking at advertising on buses..but I've found i'll need another few thousand for that!

As well as this i'm going to approach schools/universities (including my last uni and head of year) and i also have got 2 celebs to endorse the brand ..

However is there any other ideas you could all think to help me? My main problem is that i am using my own personal finance to pay my bills and i am single parent dad alongside pay the business bills ie website hosting, it maintaince, etc..so my budget isn't huge for 'marketing'..right now am thinking the only way around that is to save up every 3-4 months and invest into a marketing scheme ..any help appreciated!

 

[AllUpHere]

My answer is the same as it is to most marketing related questions on this forum. You are trying to work back to front. 90% of marketing is in the planning. Strategic marketing planning is what you should have done right at the very start, before anything else. As soon as you had the idea for the business, that was the time to start planning your marketing. Doing it now, without going back to do the strategy based work is going to be expensive, and your results will be poor (as you are finding out).

Your research is basic and fundamentally flawed and it's probably leading you in the wrong direction.

I work with clients in your position literally every day of the week. Your 'cart before horse' approach probably accounts for at least 50% of my work.

 

[Nervousnewbie]

Firstly kudos for looking to set something like this up...I might be being really dim, am using a smart phone and cannot see how on earth I book a holiday with you, I went to book your Florida deal (as a test) and couldn’t add any extra people (I could only book for one as it was a fixed price)

What am I doing wrong? ( this might be a contributing factor to why your adverts ain’t converting..)

 

[AllUpHere]

I too just had a little poke around the site. As I suggested in my first post, your research is leading you in the wrong direction. The site may look professional, but it will also stop pretty much everybody actually booking with you. The only option you have is to take a few steps back and get the basics right first.

 

[fisicx]

Got to agree with the others. Everything about the site is wrong. So you may be getting lots of leads from your adverts but because of the site nobody is booking.

Join UKBF as a full member and get your site reviewed. It won’t be pleasant but I suspect you have wasted a lot of your money on the website and all you advertising.

Forget the two celebs and the universities. You need to rethink your whole business plan.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Hi,
I understand your problems but for a business to work you have to invest. You can start to learn by yourself to make a good SEO and SMM, without to pay some agencies to do it for you. It's important to have a blog on tourism also.
Good luck!

I think they've got enough on their plate without learning SEO too, why is it important to have a blog on tourism, the site needs to rank for the holidays & categories they're operating in, not via blogs?

@mrbear I'll not try to cover whats already been said, but I have to agree with the UX side of things AllUpHere & fisicx have highlighted.

I'd strongly suggests you need to understand what customers are looking for when they're booking a flight or a holiday, you don't deliver the basics for this at present; as an example: -

• Flights - I need a flight next month for a business trip, I'm funding it so it needs to be cheap, I'll fly from any London airport within reason to get the best price & time.
  - On your site I cant select all London airports, I'd leave & go elsewhere
  - If I do complete the search for a specific airport your site then shows other London airports, with the one I selected nowhere to be seen! I know the flights exists because I've carried out the search on Kayak & Skyscanner
• Deals on holidays or accommodation - I need enough information to be able to trust the site before I book; e.g. detailed descriptions, images, reviews etc.

Each area of your website needs a review against best in class & as a minimum to at least fulfil the basic requirements. This will to ensure you're viable & that any traffic you drive to the site doesn't bounce straight off.

You also have a trust problem from what you've said about your potential customers form your research. I wouldn't buy anything on your site because its too difficult to find out who you are. You should have your contact (NAP - Name, Address, Phone No) details with your registered address clearly visible on the site, this is a legal requirement for a UK limited company (your company name is buried in the T&Cs but that's not sufficient).

You have no proper local listings with the NAP, this means you don't rank well in you local vicinity SEO wise. You seem to have no reviews other than Facebook, not even a Google My Business Listing!

Marketing, this is an online business, your customers are searching online, you need to be visible. Not in the post office, or on Facebook, but on Google & Bing where your customers are typing their holiday & flight queries. I'd suggest you need to improve the technical SEO & content of many of the sites pages, but ranking organically in your market is a long term project against big budget competitors.

You need to look at Google & Bing PPC search engine marketing to drive customers initially & test the markets you need to work in. This will require careful targeting & setup, plus a decent budget, as you're in a high competition industry.

But first you need to fix some of the on site basics & decide what you can afford to do marketing wise & what your most important services/customer demographics are.

 

[mrbear]

Hey thanks for all the feedback and help guys.

I've taken it on board and decided i'm going to not spend anymore money on anything marketing wise.

I think your all right and the useability of the search engines is difficult..I am going to speak to my IT developer and see if theres a way we can scale the usability issues and improve them..i guess it will cost me more money but i'm better to have a decent search engine that the site currently..

 

[AllUpHere]

Hey thanks for all the feedback and help guys.

I've taken it on board and decided i'm going to not spend anymore money on anything marketing wise.

I think your all right and the useability of the search engines is difficult..I am going to speak to my IT developer and see if theres a way we can scale the usability issues and improve them..i guess it will cost me more money but i'm better to have a decent search engine that the site currently..

You've completely missed the point. Your problems can't be solved by an IT guy or web dev. What you have is a business / marketing problem, not a website one. The problem has simply presented itself using the website as it's communication method. Kind of ironic when you think about it.

 

[mrbear]

You've completely missed the point. Your problems can't be solved by an IT guy or web dev. What you have is a business / marketing problem, not a website one. The problem has simply presented itself using the website as it's communication method. Kind of ironic when you think about it.

So if you were me what would you do next..apologies I took it as the site is so poor that i need to work on that to fix it.

I've got a good google SEO company I plan to work with, but my worry was paying them to do SEO if the site is poor and difficult as you say.

I've used TAWK to track customer analytics and seen generally customers do stay on my site for 15-20 mins then seem to leave..it seems to be after using any of the engines which has sparked me to wonder if they're spooking people off as such..

 

[Paul Carmen]

It depends what they're going to do, you need to start with a business/marketing plan & work from there.

My worry is you don't seem to have one. As an example you suggested TUI are spending £10k a month on marketing, I ran their domain through our PPC tools & they're spending well in excess of 10 times that a month just on PPC. They'll be spending more on link building, plus they regularly advertise on TV.

You really need a plan, as you can't fight all these massive travel websites & hope to get any traction.

 

[mrbear]

It depends what they're going to do, you need to start with a business/marketing plan & work from there.

My worry is you don't seem to have one. As an example you suggested TUI are spending £10k a month on marketing, I ran their domain through our PPC tools & they're spending well in excess of 10 times that a month just on PPC. They'll be spending more on link building, plus they regularly advertise on TV.

You really need a plan, as you can't fight all these massive travel websites & hope to get any traction.

Right I see that makes sense, well the company I was going to use was going to target specific local region for me and specific keywords they researched. The company I was looking at using i wont name but they have said they will manage the whole google ad words campaign for me..

I told them I want to try their services on a 1 month trial and I was completely honest about my situation anyway after the normal sales spin I got this from the

In regards we could do this for 1 month for you on a trial basis yes and we will however, the reason the minimum contract length is 3 usually months normally, is that by this time the data has built up more than 1 month and we are able to compare and contrast the data. We are able to make more informed choices based on a large volume of data i.e 84 days’ worth of data as opposed to 28. As many of our customers work is seasonal dependant on what month you go for you can get very different results so better to have a few months to draw a comparison/average.

In terms of what you get for your budget, I have carried out some keyword research and based on historical data from Google, it is estimated that your cost per click would be around £1.62 so with a budget of £500 could expect the following:


Total £500 plus VAT

Management fee of £150

Actual advertising spend of £350


£350 advertising spend:

217 clicks per month

7/8 clicks per day



We do tend to find that the CPC does decrease slightly as the campaign runs, hence why we recommend a minimum of 3 months

Now in terms of future marketing I guess your all right I did do this backwords and I understand now from re reading the posts..you should save a marketing budget for before you launch and have a marketing plan.

The original plan was to work with Wowcher then unilad etc etc as they approached us last year..long story short that is going out the window and has failed as Wowcher take 18% commission if your not VAT based which I am not yet as the business hasn't earnt over 80k..

However that being said I've looked at other avenues to draw generic organic traffic and have invested in the blueprint travel guide (we are in there) and also other similar sites and am looking at travelzoo as well.

My target audience for know i've decided will be Nottingham based males and females 24-55.

 

[mrbear]

I now however had come to the conclusion that it would take me 6-8 months to save a reasonable marketing budget and my worry as I said above is that I am drawing customers to my page which they may feel is difficult/they bounce off?

 

[mrbear]

I have also got some outbound and in bound marketing straegies in mind - the outbound being direct m ail campaigns with Royal Ma il, leaflets in local community shops and I have even thought to go door to door myself and put flyers through.

 

[mrbear]

nbound marketing wise- I have thought about googl e ad words with someone of expertise as per the above, I also have got someone on board to manage my social media who are a professional company..I want to also run a fb and insta click campaign

 

[fisicx]

You are bouncing ideas around without a sound marketing strategy.

Forget the website for now, it needs tearing down and starting from scratch. The developer hasn’t got a clue.

Forget SEO, no point in doing this until you have got a marketing strategy in place.

Forget PPC, no point in doing this until you have a marketing strategy and a set of landing pages.

Same with everything else.

Your suggested target is too small to sustain a business. There aren’t enough people in the age range in that location to keep you going. If you need 10 bookings per week to be viable you will need at least 1000 enquiries per week. At 4000 per month you will soon run out of targets.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Probably not what you want to hear but many travel companies use outsiders as franchise agents at low cost

This might be a way you can build up some real knowledge and earn good money and take a year or two or so to build your own website up and have a good marketing plan

Here is one i picked up
https://www.globaltravelgroup.com/m...18-Bd1nRZNrtmU2MkRKTXBU0TjdfelgYaAt1xEALw_wcB

 

[mrbear]

Hi thanks for the feedback in terms of franchises my mum wanted me to do that route originally the start up costs are about 15k+ they take 20% every month of what you earn and if you don't earn above 1000% for them to take 20% they want 1000 a month regardless..for me this is too expensive and not profitable.

I did user testing yesterday following all of your feedback and contacted a few freelance testing companies but they all oddly
Oddly said that my site is good but yes the search engine useability, visual results and presentation could be better. They said that needs re-tweaking but isn’t a deal breaker.

I’m confused as surely as independent user testers they should be flagging the same issues as you as I went to UK IT Testing companies. I also sent them all the code and the plan my developer said initially.

As due to my budget the developer originally said this was a MVP, minimal viable product to launch with, he did say improvements can be made but he said it’ll be a few thousand pound.

I agree though with you all I do need to come up with a marketing plan, I think I perhaps need to google and do some more thinking about this..

 

[fisicx]

I did user testing yesterday following all of your feedback and contacted a few freelance testing companies but they all oddly
Oddly said that my site is good but yes the search engine useability, visual results and presentation could be better. They said that needs re-tweaking but isn’t a deal breaker.

What question did you set?

As a generic run of the mill flight checker it works. But it just uses the same script as everybody else so nobody is going to use your site for this (and other site do a much better job of finding flights). Everything else on the site is (sorry to say this) just junk.

Because you don't have a marketing plan the site was unfortunately a waste of money. To achieve anything useful it needs just about everything changing. Even the logo fails. Look at the site on your phone to see why.

Not trying to diss everything you are doing but you don't have an MVP. There just aren't enough people in Nottingham for this to succeed (unless you have a huuuuuge marketing budget).

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Regardless of the web site, there is one area where you don't really use a web site and that is the more profitable business flying for local companies

I know a couple of travel agents that just do business flying, you need to identify companies thet send bosses or workers away, be it oil industry, seamen, sales trips to the middle east and far east, any international companies and so on. most are operated by a secretary or may be the MD itself who just prone up and ask for fares and tickets to xxx for the next day, week, month, some want cheap others executive seats, some with car hire and hotel

Both tend to work whenever called be it 08:00 or 23:00

Far easier to identify your target users and no hassle with private travellers wanting a cheap flight to Spain for £25.00

This is the personal touch with accounts the normal 30 day

 

[Ally Maxwell]

So, not trying to be rude here, but could you not have knocked up a site like yours in a couple of days using a white-label affiliate system and saved yourself a stack of time and money on start up costs which you could have used as a marketing budget, albeit with a reduced income per sale ?

 

[mrbear]

thanks guys some great feedback. I'm taking it all in..going to start working on a marketing plan and thanks Chris that makes sense..i need to think of a way to target those companies

 

[mrbear]

So, not trying to be rude here, but could you not have knocked up a site like yours in a couple of days using a white-label affiliate system and saved yourself a stack of time and money on start up costs which you could have used as a marketing budget, albeit with a reduced income per sale ?

I looked into when I started if you do an affilate link you earn commission only very small and they don't work very often as you have bigger and better sites..a key example is this site here- megadeals which is run by a guy I spoke to who bought the whitelabel affilate site for £300..in 2 years hes made £20 and others have said 'script is the same the search the same' its very much the same for that site..infact ive seen that same kind of search engine 2-3 times..

The other way is you go through a franchise who charge 15k set up fee for the site and software and then take 20% of anything over `£1000 you earn, if you earn under that or not over you have to pay monthly £1000.

I didn't want a generic site so I had this site designed custom as it is now..but yes I agree with peoples comments the site is weak..I think refurbing and visually changing the homepage it could be made better as i've looked at some other sites like traveljunction which work and are similar..but i am going to come up with a marketing plan now anyway and i think pay off some off my accruing debts in the meanwhile.

Thanks everyone for your comments though this is a very competitive industry and your right I need to be more detailed about my target market and marketing aims

 

[fisicx]

I didn't want a generic site so I had this site designed custom as it is now..but yes I agree with peoples comments the site is weak..I think refurbing and visually changing the homepage it could be made better

It's not really a custom build. It's just a generic layout with the search engine incorporated. It's the sort of thing you can bung together for a a few hundred pounds.

The homepage isn't the issue. It's the whole thinking behind what you want to achieve. For example, you need to think about how you are going to get people on the site and what you are going to show them when they arrive. You could run facebook adverts offering a particular deal but they would need to land on a page which has galleries, itinerary, flight details, testimonials, insurances, your ABTA credentials and most importantly a booking and payment form.

Forget the flight search thing. If people want that they will use expedia or trivago or whatever.

Marketing is the key to everything, the website is just part of the whole process.

 

[mrbear]

It's not really a custom build. It's just a generic layout with the search engine incorporated. It's the sort of thing you can bung together for a a few hundred pounds.

The homepage isn't the issue. It's the whole thinking behind what you want to achieve. For example, you need to think about how you are going to get people on the site and what you are going to show them when they arrive. You could run facebook adverts offering a particular deal but they would need to land on a page which has galleries, itinerary, flight details, testimonials, insurances, your ABTA credentials and most importantly a booking and payment form.

Forget the flight search thing. If people want that they will use expedia or trivago or whatever.

Marketing is the key to everything, the website is just part of the whole process.

Thank you that makes alot of sense, think I need to re-think all of this and decide.

But no thank you everyone for the comments and thanks for being abrupt. I need this kind of direction to better myself and it's helped alot- this is clearly why the business isn't making any sales.

In terms of the site being generic, I had the homepage designed by a graphic designer exclusively I told him I wanted something professional looking and this is what he came up with. At that point of time I conduced a consumer feedback group with 30 people, they all liked the design and picked the current homepage out of 5-6 options..the search engines have come from scratch so are custom build in that element- you won't see a search engine like this which is where it's unique..but your right I think I need to think past that all..

I think the poster earlier had a good point at targeting companies like international sales etc and this is something I will do. But I also need to have a good think of my demographics I want to reach. My idea right now just as a brain storm is 20-55 year olds in the East Midlands, year 2 maybe go to the whole midlands and keep diversifying as we grow. But I guess the next question is looking at their needs for my sector..not sure where to get that data from so need to rethink that

 

[fisicx]

I had the homepage designed by a graphic designer exclusively I told him I wanted something professional looking and this is what he came up with.

And that right there is where it all started to go wrong. Building a site from a design is 100% the wrong way to do things. You need the marketing plan first, then wireframing and content development, then comes the information flows, navigation, calls to action, trustmarks and finally after all the user testing you can start to play with the content.

Look at your site on a mobile phone (the device of choice for 70% of all personal internet use) and you can see where it's all going wrong. You can't even read the logo.

This can work for you but the site just isn't right. Get someone like @AllUpHere to give you some help and then find a developer who really understands how to build an effective website.

 

[dan19900]

You should of targeted a smaller area, a blog/review type site would of been easier to start with.
I really can't imagine how you'd market a website like that, I highly doubt any sort of PPC would be profitable. Offline advertising definitely won't be profitable. SEO will be pretty much impossible without a 5 figure per month budget and even then it would be tough.
Posting in different Facebook groups and building instagram accounts would probably be your best bet, test different methods and then pay a VA $2 per hour to do it for you once you've found a system that works.

 

[NewGardenStyle]

You should of targeted a smaller area, a blog/review type site would of been easier to start with.

He should have targeted a very specific niche. There are countless ways you can dice up the travel industry and its forever changing as new interests, destinations and a million and one other variables change and emerge.

Sorry if this sounds harsh OP, but competing at the budget end of the market against very well oiled incumbents, minuscule resources, no product differentiation and a hope that digital marketing will do the job is a very difficult task indeed.

 

[Scalingspace]

I have a question..
Do you have a team, or at least partner who work with you, or you doing it all on your own?

 

[Andrew Robinson]

When I tried to open your website, it failed to load up, have you now taken it down? I've tried to skim through all the comments. Strategy is of course true, and marketing is fundamental in overall business strategy. In terms of your website, your of course in an industry with major players, meaning that generic holiday searches are never going to find your website. So if it is a digital approach you want, you need to be make your online strategy focused on a few key search terms, certainly nothing generic like 'low cost holidays'. However, a potentially more cost effective solution is to use offline marketing to increase online traffic, or even just get people to call you direct.

 

[The next Steve Jobs]

@OP

GIVE IT UP AND WALK AWAY

Go on holiday or something

And then figure what kind of business (If any) you might be capable of running

That is my honest, to goodness, best advice after reading several pages of excited drivel. ( enthusiasm good comprehension and execution unprintable )

Sorry Bear, but I just can't bare to think of how out of your depth u r with this


Sometimes our enthusiasm gets the better of us...live and learn