AP 0582: How Should I Market an Expensive Trip to My Audience?

AskPat 582 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 582 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you my answering your all night business questions 5 days a week.

All right. No let's check out today's question from Brooke.

Brooke: Hi, Pat, my name is Brooke Roberts and I'm the founder of YogaTravelTree.com. And my question for you is about how you would go about marketing and promoting a trip abroad that costs anywhere from $2-3,000 that has to be booked several months in advance due to flight prices and things like that. How would you go about marketing that in the online space? And what kind of traditional marketing strategies do you think would apply to marketing something like this that's purely vacation for enjoyment? There's no sort of additional business training workshop, it's just purely for people to go enjoy themselves, relax, have a great time. So, I'm just curious how you would market that and what kind of strategies you would use from your arsenal of online marketing strategies. So, thanks so much, I love, love, love the podcast and I'll super, super stoked if you answer my question. Have a great day, bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Brooke, thank you so much for this question. First of all, sounds like an awesome trip. I don't know where you're going, or what it's going to be like, but, trips are great. I think communities, if you have a community, it's definitely a lot easier to promote a trip because people know who you are, they have, you've earned trust with them, you're an authority, they want to get access to you. So that's one of the things I would definitely sell, is if you have a community and you've been delivering this value to people, this is definitely a way for people to get to know you and the community, that's one of the big marketing plays here. You're talking about the community gathering, access to you, dinners, all that stuff that people want especially when we're so tied together in the online space.

Getting offline is a great idea, so I love this idea of a trip, I think it very much reminds me of Chris Ducker's Tropical Think Tank event, which just finished off at the time I record this, that was done in March of 2016. And it's one of the best experiences. What's cool is he's been doing this now for three years in a row and each year keeps getting better and better and better.

And it was a good experiment at first but he's kept doing it because it was so successful. Because it was a destination event, yes, it was a business related and yours is more leisure and things like that. But I wouldn't say it's totally disconnected from business because you guys are traveling together, you're networking, you're building relationships, so in that way it's business related although it might not require or have in the agenda specific moments for masterminding or specific training periods, things like that.

The first thing I would say is make sure you create the itinerary, I think for something that is of such high price, like traveling to a destination place, to do yoga, for example, people want to know what they're spending their money on. Yes, it's a trip, but what's going to happen, what are we going to do each day. I think people want to know exactly what the itinerary is, what all is included, are they just traveling to that destination and then they're off on their own? Or is it actually very much based on an itinerary that you create.

So, it's going to be up to you, but I would definitely make sure that that's known because that's what will excite people and of course, the more awesome things you include in there, the more likely is that somebody's going to convert into paying for a ticket. Make sure you have the dates because people don't know if they want to sign up unless they know when that travel is happening. And also the price, I think being honest with the price is very important too, what's all included and all that stuff. That's something that you want to mention up front because you don't want to have to worry about people signing up, but then not going because the price is too much. You want to be upfront with that.

So, that's what I would recommend. But beyond that you also want to mention why you're doing this and the purpose behind it and what people will get out of it. So beyond the itinerary and the agenda, why is this happening? Why have you decided to do this now, I would create a video, being very honest about it, maybe even a video that not only includes the why, but the what's happening and then also some scenes and scenery, if you have any of that stuff, of what they're going to be able to see and get and do and experience.

Really, this is about the experience. It's not just about the trip, but it's about the experience and what people are going to come home with and I think that's really important to understand. In terms of technical things you could use for marketing I would absolutely mention this on social media, obviously I would mention it on your email list. But here's the thing, and there's two parts I would also include.

That is, make it limited. So a limited trip, that was there's some scarcity that's in play here, meaning there's only a certain amount of seats so people have to act now. It's going to be a trigger for them to make sure that they're actually thinking about it. To actually decide one way or another. And then having an end date, when you're going to be taking tickets by.

Another way to help you promote an event is to also increase the price over time, so people who get in early, they're going to get it at a better price. But what's cool about that, is as you get closer to the date you're going to increase the price, and that price increase, every time it's going to happen, maybe it happens at the end of every month, for example, gives you another excuse to talk about it and fill in those seats. And as seats fill in, you're going to have a lot more social proof, oh, we had ten people sign up last month, you better get it in now because you're going to get it at the earlier price, the price goes up by $400 tomorrow, so you already got ten people in, let's get another ten in before, and all that stuff.

So, scarcity is good, increasing the price over time as you get closer to the date is good also. And that's going to trigger people to want to get it now. But again, nobody's going to buy unless they know exactly what they're going to get at this high price point and the experience that they're going to have and what they're going to get out of it.

So, Brooke, that's what I would do and I wish you the best of luck and sounds like an awesome trip so, all the best to you and all of your attendees.

So, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to askpat.com, you can ask right there on that page, thank you so much.

All right, here's a quote to finish off the day by Plato, and he said, “We can easily forgive a child who's afraid of the dark, the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” That's deep. Cheers, take care and I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat.