How to drive sales with creative content

Are you finding that your phone is ringing again?

Do your clients have the itch to get back out there?

Would you love to start bringing on new staff?

If you’re seeing that life is starting to turn over a new leaf—including enthusiasm for post-pandemic, in-person meetings, group tours, and travel shows—now's the time to utilize the right tools and create content for this new era.

Whether you’re planning your next sales mission or preparing to pitch some new tours to group leaders, you may want to consider revamping your social marketing collateral or jazzing up your presentations so that you wow and win new clients.

Nurturing relationships and enhancing communication is the No. 1 reason to create new content. Yet many savvy marketers aren’t sure what types of content appeals to prospects and clients during each step of the sales journey. Many marketers make the mistake of creating and dripping out the wrong content at the wrong time.

Don’t go down that road! Here’s a road map to navigate content creation and repurposing:

Sales journey 

Let’s explore the sales journey and dive into the types of content that work each step of the way. This will pave the way for a straighter path to recovery success.

1. Awareness: In this step, a prospect (pied piper, student group planner, or church group planner) is becoming aware of a problem or opportunity. They realize they need to plan post-pandemic group travel, as their clients are ready to travel again.
2. Consideration: This step finds the prospect considering how to plan, book, and execute a group tour.
3. Decision: Here, the prospect is researching tour operators—short-listing and meeting with them.

By creating content for each phase of the sales journey, you’re ensuring that prospects don’t fall through the cracks or get overwhelmed. When these prospects see the right content at the right step of their journey, they’ll feel you are speaking directly to them and meeting their unique needs along the way. Content creation is a powerful strategy for nurturing the relationship. When you ace this, you’ll be turning the path to more bookings from a long and winding road into one that’s shorter and smoother.

Content types 

Here’s a guide to the best content formats for each stage of a prospect’s buying journey. Consider creating different formats so that your content will appeal to the wide variety of ways people consume content. Many like bite-sized chunks of information—some like to listen or watch while others like to read.

1. Awareness: During this introductory stage, content helps a buyer understand how your business can help them. Best Content Types: blog post, checklist, tip sheet, infographic, e-book, game, quiz, local newspaper article, animated video, explainer video, e-mail, or newsletter. In a previous article, we talked about tactics to grow your email list.
2. Consideration: At this stage, the content positions your business as a leader in the industry. Best Content Types: podcast, video of past group tours and testimonials, video slideshow, webinar, checklist, or comparison matrix.
3. Decision: Content for this stage showcases your unique way to meet the prospect’s unique needs. Best Content Types: tour catalog, personal consultation, planning meeting, group tour event, travel show, live video, or voice-over custom slideshow video.

With all these options for content, how can you save some time pulling all this together? The first step is to analyze and catalog the content you’ve created in the past. The second step is to get creative and see how you can repurpose, rejig, or recycle it into an up-to-date style that meets the needs of buyers in this new era.