Marketing Trends with Michal Maguire

Welcome to this strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez.

Hello.

I've been a travel Advisor for over 10 years and am navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But alas, the important thing thing is I'm aware of them now and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show. Let's jump in. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast, which is now officially one year old.

I am so stinking excited to have made it to this feat. Thank you so much for tuning in every week, listening to daily different things that I have coming to topic that are relevant for our travel industry, but also listening to the speakers that I have brought who are both in and outside of the travel industry. I hope they have brought you so much value throughout this past year of us being together. So, again, thank you so much for being here. We have a super. I feel like I say this every week, but we. I love the people who I bring onto the podcast with me because they have such a incredible insight to each of the different things that they specialize in. And today's guest speaker is no less than that.

And her name is Michael McGuire and she is the director of integrated marketing at AMA Waterways. So welcome, Michael.

Thank you for having me. This is exciting. One year. Congratulations.

Thank you. It has been a lot of hard work, but sure, I think everybody's gotten really great value from everything that we've brought to them this past year. So, director of Integrated marketing, what does that mean and how did you get here?

It sounds really complicated, right? But it's actually quite simple. I manage the team that gets all the messages out, whether that be on the website, in email, social media, direct mail. If there's a message that needs to be told, my team handles that. It's pretty simple.

I love how you say that. That marketing really is messaging.

It's just messaging and the right audience, right time. All those marketing key fun phrases and how I got here is not super complicated. I followed a boss from place to place.

Yeah.

I've had a very entwined career with a few different people and luckily have built some great relationships. I spent a lot of time in ocean cruising, moved over to theme parks and then now into river cruising. So it's been quite the progression.

Nice. So what about marketing specifically? Were you like, that's the field that.

I want to get into. To be honest, my background was actually in public relations, but it's very closely related to marketing. But once I started in digital marketing back, and I'm not going to say the time because that would really date myself, but back in the, in the dark ages when we were buying paid search terms, I just got addicted to it. And marketing travel is so much fun. Who would market travel when you could be talking about tires or insurance?

Yes. No, I mean, this is how it brought us together on the podcast is because we were geeking out about all the different marketing avenues coming into this year. That's right.

And it's just so interesting. I love data, I love reporting. I just love to see all the different trends, things that are coming our way that are totally new and different. And it is constantly learning. It is never boring. So to me, I am just, I could talk about this all day long.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a really good segue into talking about some of the trends that we had discussed and some of the trends that you're really leaning on for AMA waterways that I think are really good for travel advisors to be aware of when they're planning their own marketing strategies for the year. So what are some of the trends that are kind of like at the focal point for you?

I mean, we say trends, but these are things that are really not new. They're just having a little bit more traction. Right. A little bit more engagement with the times that we're in. We're seeing lots of engagement with longer trips. If you think about your own vacation, it's so complicated right now. What QR code, what pass, what test do I need? And so when people go through that level of effort, once they get to that destination, they want to stay there. Right.

You want to be there a little bit longer, maybe take two weeks instead of a week. You want to make it worth all that effort that you put in to get there. And so we're really seeing that trend pick up with people doing combination cruises back to back, jumping from ship to ship, people taking advantage of the seven river cruise, which is 46 nights. I mean, people just want to be out and away for such a long time. And I'm jealous. I do too.

Right? No. We've been cooped up for so long. Just get me out, get me out anywhere and keep me out for a little bit longer.

Yeah, exactly. And I want to see all the things, we've got all this pent up demand. I'm sure everyone is seeing it. Right. It's starting to pick up now and you're just so excited. The things that we thought were so boring and mundane before are still exciting. I want to go through tsa. Please put me through.

I can't wait to get on the plane. I don't care if I'm in a middle seat. I just want to get out.

Right, right. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And that's like, I feel most of the travelers that are starting to travel are very resilient and they're much more understanding of the situations because of that. The importance for them is to get out there and experience the world and they'll jump through all the hoops.

Absolutely. You have to be a travel pioneer right now. You have to be willing and able and flexible. And, you know, we're seeing also that river cruising is kind of setting itself up for success and that we have a lot of things with river cruising that you may not get on a different vacation. Lesser crowds, lesser known places. That's very advantageous right now. I want to go to a city that has hardly anyone in it and be the only one everybody wants. You want that badge of pride.

And so we're seeing people want to interact with our imagery that has lesser crowds, that has big, open, wide spaces, be able to take that biking and hiking tour and be out among the fresh air. That's a really great trend right now.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. When we start to think about, you know, spent marketing can be a huge expense for our businesses. And you're saying that Alma Waterways didn't spend any money last year marketing and was able to stay throughout the pandemic?

Well, last year we spent a little bit. In 2020, we didn't spend anything. We didn't sail, which is so strange to think that our ships were just sitting there and waiting for us to get back on board. But we didn't. We didn't spend any marketing dollars. And what we did was we went back to basics. We went back to simple things. Right.

We went back to our owned channels when it comes to social media, because there is no spend really there. It was a hugely powerful tool for us. We are very lucky in that our cruise managers are all over the world during these wonderful places that we visit, and they're home, too. So what did we do is we reached out to them and we said, can you show us some of the places that you can see in your backyard that are places we visit on our river cruises? Because you're there and we want to be there. We created hundreds of videos from our cruise managers, and we just took advantage of the resources that were there that we might not have actually thought of before, but we tried to make the best of the situation.

When travel advisors are looking to utilize that, how can they. Because it was doing. Were you doing live videos or was this recorded videos?

Recorded videos from them. You know, they would walk out. We actually were inspired. There's a teacher who lived near Washington D.C. and because her students were stuck at home, she went out and visited the places they would have gone on their field trips. And in seeing that, we thought, well, we have that, we have that advantage. We can have our cruise managers take people on this kind of virtual trip. You want to see them walk around in Passau and see the river, that you're really anxious to get back on board too.

That is. I didn't even know that a teacher had done that, but that sounds like a lot of fun if I was a kid.

Yeah, I know, I know. And the other thing that, especially for our travel advisor community, the huge thing I think that came out of the situation is our weekly webinars. We used to do them just once a month. And then for two years now, we have had a webinar every single week. Every single week.

And we crazy to think about that, right?

And we talk about destinations, we answer questions. We have between 10 and 20 moderators who are answering your live questions. I have a guest that's sailing. What do they need? And so we were able to have that live interaction when we couldn't have in person events or have our sales team out and visiting their advisor partners, have all of our business development managers and moderators on and talking directly to advisors that have questions and that, you know, want to know, what do I tell my guests? What can I do right now? How do I find more leads? And we just, we felt like it was a really great way to connect with the travel advisor community. And we just plan on continuing them because they've been such a great success.

Now kind of going off of that model because I'm like, huh, this is very. It's like a really great case study for travel advisors to utilize what supplier partners are doing with their businesses. So you have a private live webinar that happens every week. Every week there's, there is a certain topic that comes up every week along with general Q and A. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. Sometimes, you know, we're talking about just Egypt, right? It's a hot destination right now and people want to know more. You know, what do they tell their clients? How do they find the right Clients for Egypt or even our seven river Journeys. That's a totally different type of clientele. But we're able to have that one on one interaction in those webinars and have our executives speak to the product. We have people coming in from operations that talk about the details of it and then we can connect and answer any questions that come up. We've also had webinars that are more about an update on the state of the business. If you think about fall of last year, complicated travel, right? Lots of restrictions changing and people had lots of questions.

And what better way than to have our VP of operations answering questions directly on that webinar with a few hundred travel advisors who were curious.

Yes, yes. Yeah, no, because I can see this, that a travel advisor, because I think that's one of the keys too, if like we're kind of breaking it down too, is that it wasn't a Facebook Live, it was something that people had to register for. You got the email. So now they're on your email list from that and you were able to send them reminders too. Now because it's been a while since I've been on a webinar Wednesday. Are people able to ask questions through the registration form?

You can ask it ahead of time or you can ask it live, right? We have those 10 to 20 moderators that are there. I myself love to moderate our webinars just because I like to see what people are asking. And so we're in the background and you know, we may get questions on travel entry requirements, we may get questions on what kind of coffee do you serve on board. But instead of it being just a Facebook Live, I'm posting this and it's more of a one way transaction. This is more two way, right? We're telling, we're setting it up with a topic and information, but you can directly ask those questions that maybe you just want to ask a few things. And you haven't called your business development manager, you haven't called another travel advisor partner to ask their questions. You can just ask them live in our webinars.

I love that idea because I've started going live on my Instagram account. But I feel like that's a pretty neat experiment to be able to like even like maybe create a registration through my Zoom account, have clients or potential clients sign up and I give them like the run around. I know my one of my big focuses for this year is river cruising. So I could see like maybe one is like featuring a certain cruise and featuring an onboard experience. Experience giving Some updates of what's going on in the world in terms of CDC and restrictions. And then another one could be like packing tips or foods or things that you need to have for that. Like make it. Maybe France is what you designate February month to be and then have a different topic scheduled for each week.

And then next month is a different.

Absolutely. And then when you see who attends, those are the people you follow up with. I happen to see this great offer that's coming out for France. Well, I know I have this group of clients or advisors who need to know more information about this offer and I know they were interested in France. I can reach out to them and say, hey, I know you attended my webinar. By the way, here's something that's special for you. I mean, what better way to connect data and information.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because you already. It's like a fast pass. You already know that they're interested.

That's right. Your hand raiser. Right. I want to hear more.

Yeah.

And then go back and use that information to reach out to you again. For sure.

Yes. When you are looking to attract new clients this year, are there certain modes that you're going in? Like maybe you're putting more focus on one social channel versus another or even nurturing clients?

I mean, it really depends. When it comes to nurturing, I think email is our best channel to nurture someone. Right there they're telling you a little bit more about themselves. Let's say they're signing up to hear more information about you and you happen to ask them as they sign up, what destinations are they interested in. That type of nurturing to me is done better in, you know, in an email channel because it you can give more information. You can link to places on your side or onto partner sites so they can find out more. But when it comes to social channels, there's no one size fits all for one type of message or client.

Right.

So if you think about Instagram, that's such a visual place. Right. You want to show this gorgeous imagery that really draws you in. When it comes to Facebook, it's a little bit more about engagement and a conversation. And then when it comes to things like Pinterest, that's also visual, but it's also for that planner type. So you want to tell them what are tips and tricks guides, those 10 things, those things tend to work really well in a Pinterest type of channel.

I was going to ask why Pinterest? I don't think Pinterest has gotten really a lot of stuff speak in the travel community to utilize that.

It hasn't. But if you read some of the marketing newsletters that I try to stay up with and see what the new trends are. Pinterest is a huge channel for travel and it became really big in 2020 regarding travel because of that planner mentality. You might not be planning your wedding or your baby shower or trying to decorate a room, but you are planning that trip. And so if you're going to somewhere that's a lesser known place, let's say, or you're taking a river cruise for the first time, Pinterest has guides of what kind of river cruises are there? What kind of places can you see? What's the best souvenir you want to buy? In Strasbourg, for example, you may not have ever heard of Strasbourg, but as you're planning your river cruise and you see it on the list, you want to go and look it up. And Pinterest has some great guides. And so I think it's an untapped. This is a secret, I guess.

I think it's an untapped channel really for some of us travel suppliers out there.

Right. Because when, when we're looking up Pinterest, it's really. You have a graphic that kind of draws them in. So, like the five top tips for visiting Strasbourg. But there's something else. There's something missing. There has to be like some sort of like blog post.

Correct.

That drives them somewhere. Elizabeth? Yeah.

You have to fulfill on the promise. Right. You have to fulfill and link to something that has data information that you've told them. If you're going to say in your graphics, you have five tips of souvenirs to bring back from your river cruise. You've got a link to a page. So you do have to have some supporting content for it. It's not like an Instagram or a Facebook where it's a graphic can tell the whole story. And you may not need to link out.

You got to have a little bit more supporting information in Pinterest because it's not just the inventory.

Okay.

Okay.

Anything else about Pinterest that was like so fascinating, especially when you talk about lists, Because I feel like there's, especially for myself, something that I've noticed is that the information that people really crave is what's super obvious to us. Like, it's right in front of our nose. And I was like, doesn't everybody know this stuff?

No, they don't. I mean, you know, one of the things that we're seeing from a content perspective Is listicles are amazing. And listicles work in almost every single channel. Okay. About listen, in Pinterest, people want, you know, think about your own self. What are you drawn to? I want to know what's the best eye cream. I want to know what are the top three things to pack. And I also want to know the opposite.

What are the two things I should never put in my suitcase? If you ever see that in an article headline, are you going to click on that?

Probably. I'm very intrigued now too. I don't know what I tell my clients. Right. What would I tell my clients are things you don't pack.

That's right.

I don't know what that answer is.

But if somebody wrote an article like that, I'd want to click on it. I want to know. Right? Yeah.

Oh, wow. So what is it about lists? Is it because it's just so bite sized? Like I can say the top three treats in Strasburg are cakes, tarts and wine or whatever?

Yeah. It's digestible. Right. If you think about, especially from a digital perspective, you want digestible content. If I know my own self, and maybe you are the same when you get an email with tons and tons of copy, are you going to read it? Probably not. Right. We're really drawn to skimming. I'm going to look for the bullets, I'm going to find the headlines.

I'm going to keep going with my day. And you know, we're all like that in many digital channels where we just want that bite size information. I want to take it in and move to the next thing. So I think that's why we're drawn to lists. Maybe it's a little bit of OCD in us as well that we just want to have that list. Take it and move on from there to the next thing that's coming up.

Yeah, yeah. And that's really good that we're going on to email as well because I know we had a very big discussion and I was like, huh, okay. Because I have changed the way I've done emails and I'm still. So I used to write an email every week. I had the article in the email and that was pretty much it links to just find me on other channels. But that is a no no for you.

So here's the thing. With email you have, you have one goal, your first goal. Let's say with email you just want people to open it. Yes, I just want you to open it. Because I can tell you whatever I want inside. But if you don't open it, it doesn't matter. And so you have to think most about that subject line and then make that impactful and make somebody want to open it. And then when they open it, what do you want them to do? Do you want to inform them about France travel and an offer? If you put it all in the email, then your goal from that email and the content needs to be to call you.

If your goal is to read more and you're going to evaluate that email success on how much they read and how much they click. If you gave them all the information, why would they need to click? So you have to think about what is it you're trying to get them to do. And you develop your call to action. You develop your subject line around that thing.

Okay, yeah, that. I was testing a lot of buttons. Is there, Is there kind of like a perfect formula for writing an email? Like you have a nice little intro, you put a little blurb, then you link to the article or ready to play bingo in your travel business? Did you even think you could play bingo in your travel business? The monthly bingo board is more than just having fun while working your business. It is a tool to help you stay focused and hold you accountable while taking the necessary actions to move your business forward. You can even enter to win special rewards when you achieve a bingo for the month. Join our travel bingo community by visiting the link in the show notes. We can't wait to cheer you on in success.

There's no perfect formula and it really depends on what you're talking about, right? If you're talking about travel, it's one thing. If you're talking about an offer, it's another. If you're talking about shoes, it's another, right? There's really no one seat thing. No one size fits all. Boy, I wish I could tell you what that formula is. I would be a gazillionaire in marketing. But you know, there really isn't a one size fits all formula. But testing is the best way, right? You've got to test and you've got to learn.

I always want to be testing our emails. We want to do more of that in the coming year. And it's not just testing your subject line and seeing who opens more, but testing everything. Test the layout, test the order, test how big your images are, how short your copy is, the color of your buttons. Everything will make a difference in how that email performs. But before you test, you have to decide what is it that you want to learn? You can't say that I want to learn, you know, which imagery works best. But I'm never going to use an image that has this in it. Well, then that can't be in your test because you're not going to apply it.

So what is it you want to learn? What are you going to do with it when you learn it? And then you develop your test around that.

Okay, so how do we even get people to open the email? What are kind of like some. Yes, this is juicy information here. You should open this up.

All right. Juicy information. So think, think short and sweet. Okay. Right. Think about a mystery, ask questions, and then also test your subject line. What we find are subject lines that have new and announcing will draw people in. And it also really depends on your audience.

If you're talking to someone who has just signed up for your newsletter, well, you want to tell them the reasons why they should continue to stay signed up for your newsletter. But if you're talking to someone who has been in your database for a little bit of time and you want to get them to come back and book a trip with you, you've got to develop your content and your subject line around that too. Okay. But also thinking of the opposites. Right. When we talked about listicles, thinking about the opposite list that will draw somebody into. And then if you just, you know, you have to fulfill on the promise. If you tell them you're going to give them something, you say that in the subject line.

I'm going to give you the top three tips for booking a river cruise. But the content inside doesn't pay off, then you're not building that credibility. So you've got to make sure you fulfill your promise too.

Okay. When we're talking about the subject lines to the emojis, that's the word. I'm like, what's the word? Emojis. How do you feel about emojis and subject lines?

I mean, I think it depends. We're. We're a luxury brand, right. So we don't tend to use emojis because our clientele doesn't really seem to be drawn to that. But if you're talking about a different kind of product, that probably will work. And also an emoji can sometimes be blocked by an email service provider. So you might see those weird boxes and X's too. So you gotta be careful.

Okay. What about first names like Rita? Here's the top three tips for visiting Strasbourg.

Absolutely. Personalization will draw you in every single time.

Okay.

Also a consistent subject line. If you're sending out a newsletter, give it A title, let them know what the title is and then every single time you send it, use that subject line. Right. If you're saying it's your monthly newsletter, if you're saying it's your monthly newsletter and it's your January one, call it the January newsletter and then the February newsletter. And then every time they get the email and they see newsletter, they're going to want to open it because they know what's inside. Right. You've also fulfilled on the promise.

Yes. Are there, when we're, when we're thinking about like the content for the emails, is there a certain length or. I've also been seen recently not to have too many links up in, inside of or within the email address because.

That could also ding you. Yeah. I mean you're not going to know until you've tested. Right. There's no perfect content. But I tend to kind of go back and forth with whether or not to have more links or less links. If you want to drive clicks, you probably should have more links. And if you want to have people interact with the content, you probably should have more links.

But you're going to have to test it and see when it comes to the length of an email. Since most of us are reading email, if you come to, you know, if you're talking about a consumer, you're mostly reading an email on your phone. Think about how it displays on mobile and people do not mind scrolling. So you can have lots of things in there but you don't want to dump the kitchen sink. So you'll find a fine balance there. You're going to have to test it. But since most of us are used to social media and scrolling away, we don't really care about scrolling in an email if we need to.

That's a good point that you bring in there. Now what about frequency of sending them? Because I'm doing a lot of testing now. I was sending them weekly, I'm testing bi weekly and I may also be testing monthly just to see if I can increase engagement because I feel even though I thought weekly was beneficial, I'm not getting people engaging back and forth with me when I ask questions. My click through rate is poor because people have not had to click through before.

Yeah, when it comes to cadence and frequency, it will depend. I know I keep saying that a lot, but it will really depend on your audience. And then also, how are you evaluating the success of frequency? Are you sending the exact same content three weeks in a row versus every other week for six weeks versus every three weeks? For 12 weeks or nine weeks. Are you, you know, how are you evaluating that frequency to see which one is successful? You have to do the exact same thing in each of those groups. Right. To make a really clean test.

Right.

But frequency also depends. If you have something valuable to say. I don't mind if you're going to email me every day, really. But if you don't have something valuable to say, I don't want to hear from you that often. I think about every morning I read two newsletters and I will look forward to them. And if they haven't sent it to me by the time my alarm goes off, I'm like, what happened? I needed to see these two. These two newsletters that I want to read. I will read them every morning.

If they looked at my statistics, they would see that I have 100% open rate every single day because I know what they're going to send me and I'm interested in the content that is so.

And I think it's so fascinating too, because I myself, I think I'm getting like email fatigue. So I've been unsubscribing a lot to email addresses because I'm trying to clear out and block the noise.

Right. But what you're clearing out isn't something you've been looking forward to getting. Right?

Right.

It's stuff that you're like, I don't need to hear from these people all the time. I don't need to see the shoe sale every single day. I don't. I want to see it when I want to see it. So you know what? I'm going to unsubscribe from that email. I'm going to go back and look at it when I want the information. But if it's something, like I said, that is valuable to me, I will open it all the time. It's not the same every time.

Mine, you know what I like to read is there's a news newsletter and I want to read it every single morning because that's kind of how I start my day. But there are, like you said, there are some people that, that send an email, send a newsletter, and I'm just not that interested. It hasn't really. It hasn't really rung true for me.

It doesn't speak to me.

It's okay. And I'll read it every blue moon when I get a chance. But chances are it's going to get filed away and I probably won't open it now.

I'm kind of like, no, I need to comb if there's any. There used to be emails that I used to open every week, but I don't think, I think there's other things that I've got, I've got focused on and I think that's something that like to keep in mind for your ideal client too. How do you grab their attention when they do have a lot of stuff going on? And I just think naturally travel is one of those things that people want to learn more about.

Absolutely. But they may not always be in the vacation planning mindset. Right. They may. You know, if you're talking about a river cruise people aren't taking traditionally, you know, more than a couple in a year. Do I want to hear about river cruising every single day? Probably not. As much as I love it and I would love for them to hear from me every single day, they don't want to hear from me every single day. And that's okay.

That's okay. And so I think it's also important to evaluate the data in your list. If you're starting to see people unengage, you have to do something different and you might have to segment them out. There might be a group that's only going to open your email once a month or once every six months, but there might be a group that's in that active vacation planning mode and they're going to open it frequently. You just have to think about where they are in their planning cycle and you might have to segment them out and parse the information differently. It's all about segmenting and targeting.

Yeah. And that I wanted to mention that also because you sell river cruising. Many travel advisors sell river cruising. But I think it was key what you mentioned about the buyer's planning cycle and that there needs to be different content put out for different seasons stages. So like a list will grab them when they're like, oh, what's that? I want to travel. Maybe that's the type of travel I want to do. But what when we're looking at the other types of content, like when we're nurturing somebody versus okay, now we're going to invite them to take a trip. What? How does the content differ at each of the stages?

Well, I think you have to understand more about your audience. I can't guess right. So I can use things either by their survey that they're filling out when they're signing up for my information, or I can use the data that they tell me with the information that they're clicking on. If I see that you are always clicking on articles About France. I should send you more content about France. I shouldn't send you articles about the Mekong because you're not interested in that. You're interested in France. So I have to tailor my content to you.

But you have to know more about them. So you either have to use your analytics that you have in your email service provider or you have to use the data that you have from what they provided. Or you can survey them, ask them, do they want to hear from you every week? Maybe not. Maybe some do, maybe some don't. Maybe some want to hear tips and tricks and some want to hear about new and exciting destinations. You're going to have to ask them and then you're going to have to plan the content around it because again, you have to fulfill the promise.

Right.

They only want to hear from you once a month. Don't email them every day. Mm.

When you say if you're you're able to identify who has clicked on like a mechanic, is that something that certain email providers will try and I know they'll track like where the clicks come from, but is there, are there certain ones that will track like, okay, so Rita has clicked on the Mekong 15 times. You should probably send her information on that. Or is that something that when you're tracking analytics every week you go, okay, Susie clicked on France, Rita clicked on me Con, that you should probably have a different spreadsheet to track.

Yeah, exactly. Most of your email service providers will either provide the information to you so that you can segment it or you can use your email tracking. If you have like a UTM code that will tell you, I have this coded for France and these are all the people who have clicked on a France article in the last month. You can usually get down to that level of detail with your email service provider. Okay. Yeah.

What's a UTM code?

I can't remember what it stands for, but it's basically a tagging code that's in your URL that you're able to see through your email service provider. You can also set up triggers based on that. So let's say I have an email that talks about all the different products I offer as a travel advisor. I offer cruising, I offer trips to Las Vegas, I opt for whatever the next thing is and I list those out. Or I offer ocean cruising and river cruising. I list those things out, I list those articles and I drive to different places on my site. I can set up a trigger for everyone who clicks on river cruising and send them a follow up that is just Specific information about planning their next river cruise. So you kind of have to set it up like a waterfall, like a tree and see how everything spreads out.

Right. And so you, if you get this giant planning, I'm picturing in my mind a giant planning Excel grid.

Right, right.

Starting off with your destination, Iman you're following up with more specific information about river cruising. And that can be a couple of different touches because there's a big story to tell there. You can plan that out, set it up as an automated journey and forget it. Set it and forget it and have it work for you so that you're not having to do so many manual touches.

Yeah, yeah. And kind of not I'm going away because you just spurred something else. How do we come up with topics to talk about? Because there are so many different things that are out there that we can talk about and so many things that we're passionate about. How do we get that out and make sure that it's also with the people that we want to be selling to?

Well, that's true. I think if, you know, combine two things, combine what you know and what you know about your guests and what you know about your clientele. Let's say that you really know river cruising because you happen to sail with us and you had a wonderful experience. Right. So you want to talk about river cruising. Well, then look in your data and see if you have people who want to know about river cruising and tailor your message to them. You're going to have a ton of ideas. There is a never ending list of things to do.

Right? A never ending list.

Right.

You can also think about the things I enjoy working on, things that speak, speak to me. Right. So I enjoy talking about, you know, the variety of excursions that we have. So whenever we're planning content around that, that's what kind of gets me excited. Maybe you're the same. Right. Maybe you want to talk about river cruising for an example. But you, you know, because you just had this great experience and you're in that, you know, you're in that exciting period when you came back and you want to tell everyone about it.

Yeah. Plan your content around river cruising. Then right. When it's fresh in your mind and you're excited about it and then when you move to the next topic, you plan it then. And as you start to plan these pieces of content and develop these different emails, then you can start to send them out. But really there's no one size fits all. You're going to have a long list. Let's hope you do.

Right. Let's hope you're doing something that you love. Right. And you have lots of things you want to talk about.

Right? How do you keep everything organized once you've kind of like tailored, you know.

I'm an Excel girl myself, so we plan lots of things in Excel. You know, we have planning sessions, we try to have idea sessions with one another. No one wants to be doing the same thing all the time. So throwing in a good brainstorm every once in a while and then ask other people, right? Ask your clients what they want to know and that will likely spark an idea in your head about something you want to plan and you want to send out. Awesome.

Anything else we should talk about before we jump off? I know we've kind of gone like every which way direction.

Honestly, I could do this all the time. I love, I'm sure you can tell I love talking about marketing. I love digital marketing. Email has been my specialty. So again, I mean I. I'm happy to talk about this whenever you like.

Awesome. Thank you. So besides Webinar Wednesdays, what kind of support does AML Waterways have for us to take advantage of to help with our marketing efforts?

Absolutely. I would sign up for our Travel Advisor portal. It's really our hub that you can find everything that we can possibly provide to you to sell to your clients. We have social media toolkits that you can literally copy and paste into your social channels. You don't have to do any of the work. We've done it for you. We have the images for you. We have toolkits for selling, we have lots of flyers for offers.

And then we also have our links to our webinars are in the Travel Advisor portal. And then we have something called a co branded website that you can have a literal copy of our website but under your own branding, your own call to action. Because we're not trying to take your guests data from you. Right. We know you want to sell us. We're not in the business of direct selling. We really work with our Travel Advisor partners and you can create a free co branded site that has all of the information on our site but with your call to action. So I would highly recommend signing up for the Travel Advisor portal.

It's got lots of useful tools and we're here to give you whatever you need. And if you can't find it, let us know. We'll probably create it for you.

Oh perfect. Now that website, so if it says like I would like a quote for this cruise, so it'll go straight to us as the advisor absolutely does.

When you sign it up and you create your co branded website you put in your own call to action and any quote you receive goes directly to you, not to us.

Awesome. Love love that. Thank you so much for sharing with us today Michael. I really really appreciate this and if you can't tell I also enjoy geeking out about all things marketing.

You're very welcome. I truly appreciate it. It was super fun. I'm happy to come back anytime.

Yes thank you listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. If you have any questions, make sure to send them our way. I will be sure to include the portal information in the show notes. And until next week, have a great one. Thanks for joining me on the Strategic Travel Entrepreneur. Please subscribe and leave the show a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the show notes for important information and links.

See you next week.