Running a successful tour business requires more than just offering great experiences. Many tour operators find themselves stuck on a hamster wheel of lead generation and cashflow concerns, despite trying various marketing tactics and agencies.
The Guest Focus VIP Marketing Method™ offers a fresh approach specifically designed for tourism businesses.
This proven framework centers on three core principles: Valuable, Intimate, and Pervasive marketing strategies. Discover how these elements work together to create a powerful marketing approach for your tour business.
The Foundation: Value-First Marketing
At the core of the VIP Marketing Method™ is the concept of providing genuine, practical value to your ideal guests. Instead of constantly promoting tours through interruption marketing, successful tour operators focus on addressing their guests’ challenges, frustrations, and aspirations before they book.
Here are three essential ways to deliver value:
- Inspiration: Share compelling content that sparks wanderlust and excitement. Take Rick Steves’ approach – his YouTube channel and social media presence showcase spectacular European destinations, creating desire through vivid storytelling. Consider creating stunning visual content of your destination, sharing local stories, and highlighting unique cultural experiences that potential guests can’t find anywhere else.
- Education: Position yourself as an authority by sharing insider knowledge. Create comprehensive guides, blog posts, and educational content that helps potential guests plan better trips. This might include local tips about the best times to visit certain attractions, packing guides for specific activities, or cultural insights that help visitors feel more prepared and confident.
- Entertainment: Develop engaging content that captures attention while showcasing your expertise. Consider creating podcast episodes, walking tours, or behind-the-scenes content that entertains while educating. Share interesting historical anecdotes, local legends, or funny stories from past tours that give potential guests a taste of what they might experience.
Building Intimacy with Your Audience
Travelers want authentic human connections with businesses. The intimacy component of the VIP method focuses on building trust and rapport through three key approaches:
Connection
- Share your personal story and team profiles: Let guests know the real people behind your tours. Share what inspired you to start your business, your connection to the destination, and what drives your passion for creating exceptional experiences.
- Create behind-the-scenes content: Show the preparation that goes into creating your tours, introduce your guides during their training, or showcase how you research and develop new experiences.
- Use video messages for personalized communication: Record welcome videos for guests who book your tours, create thank-you messages for reviews, or share personal updates about your business.
- Share authentic moments: Post candid photos from tours, celebrate guest milestones, and highlight real interactions that showcase your team’s genuine care for guests.
Community
- Build a community around shared interests: Create spaces like Facebook or WhatsApp groups where people with similar passions can connect, whether it’s food lovers, history buffs, or adventure seekers.
- Declare your values and vision: Be clear about what your business stands for and the impact you want to make in your community. Share this on your website, social media, email signatures…anywhwere your audience might see it.
- Celebrate community achievements: Highlight guest stories, share user-generated content, and recognize loyal customers who’ve become advocates for your brand.
Conversation
- Engage through email and direct messaging: Respond personally to inquiries, follow up after tours, and maintain ongoing relationships with past guests.
- Create interactive content like quizzes and polls: Develop engaging ways for potential guests to interact with your brand, such as destination quizzes or preference polls that help them choose the right tour.
- Respond promptly to reviews and messages: Show that you value guest feedback by responding thoughtfully to both positive and negative reviews.
- Host virtual or in-person meetups: Create opportunities for past guests to connect and share their experiences while attracting potential new customers.
The Power of Pervasive Presence
To maximize your marketing impact, maintain a consistent presence across multiple channels where your ideal guests spend their time. This doesn’t mean being everywhere; it means being strategic about your platform choices.
Strategic Content Distribution
- Repurpose your best content across different formats: Turn blog posts into videos, videos into social media snippets, and podcast episodes into written guides.
- Create platform-specific variations: Adapt your content to suit each platform’s unique characteristics while maintaining consistent messaging.
- Maintain a content calendar: Plan your content distribution to ensure regular, consistent presence across all channels.
- Track performance metrics: Monitor which content types and platforms perform best with your audience and adjust accordingly.
Email Marketing Excellence
- Segment your email list based on guest interests and behavior
- Create automated sequences for different stages of the customer journey
- Personalize content based on past interactions
- Test and optimize email campaigns regularly
- Include clear calls-to-action while providing valuable content
Strategic Advertising
- Use retargeting to reach website visitors
- Create lookalike audiences based on your best customers
- Test different ad formats and messages
- Focus on platforms where your ideal guests are most active
- Monitor and optimize ad performance regularly
What Sets the VIP Marketing Method™ Apart
The Guest Focus VIP Marketing Method™ differs from traditional tour marketing approaches in several key ways:
- Value-Driven vs. Sales-Driven
- Focus on creating value before seeking bookings
- Build trust through consistent delivery of helpful content
- Establish authority in your niche
- Address guest needs at every stage of their journey
- Create resources that serve your audience whether they book or not
- Relationship-Focused vs. Transaction-Focused
- Build lasting connections that generate repeat bookings and referrals
- Create personalized experiences throughout the customer journey
- Foster community among past and future guests
- Maintain ongoing communication with your audience
- Celebrate guest successes and milestones
- Omni-Channel Presence vs. Siloed Marketing
- Maintain consistent messaging across multiple platforms
- Create cohesive brand experiences across all touchpoints
- Connect with guests where they prefer to engage
- Integrate online and offline marketing efforts
- Ensure smooth transitions between different channels
- Guest-Centric vs. Business-Centric
- Position your services as solutions to guest problems
- Focus on guest outcomes rather than company achievements
- Design marketing messages from the guest’s perspective
- Address specific guest pain points and desires
- Create content that serves guest needs at every stage
Implementing the VIP Marketing Method™ in Your Tour Business
Success with the VIP Marketing Method™ requires commitment to all three principles: Value, Intimacy, Pervasiveness. When you consistently provide value, build intimate connections, and maintain a pervasive presence, you create a marketing system that drives sustainable growth.
Getting Started
- Audit your current marketing efforts against the VIP principles
- Identify gaps in your value delivery
- Plan your content strategy across all channels
- Build systems for consistent engagement
- Create measurement tools to track success
Maintaining Momentum
- Regularly review and update your content
- Stay connected with your community
- Monitor engagement across all channels
- Adjust strategies based on performance data
- Continue to innovate and improve your approach
The VIP Marketing Method offers a framework for creating a purpose-driven, guest-centric business that makes lasting impacts on the guests you serve and the communities where you operate. By focusing on providing value, building intimate connections, and maintaining a pervasive presence, you’ll create a marketing system that naturally attracts and converts your ideal guests.
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About Kelsey Tonner
Kelsey Tonner is the founder of Guest Focus Tour Business Coaching(opens in a new tab) and for two decades he’s been helping tour business owners as a mentor, consultant, speaker, experience designer, guide trainer, and award-winning tour leader.
Since 2015, their programs have helped over 2,000 tour operators from 75+ countries around the world and Kelsey has been a regular speaker at over 35 industry events and conferences. Learn more and get a free 45-minute strategy call here!(opens in a new tab)
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