Stage 4: Run a test marketing campaign
Its about to get serious. We can either get ready to generate some interest (and be prepared to deliver the holidays that people want) or we can test for interest by creating something customers will respond to register interest. One word of warning, if you intend to generate one booking, then you will need to be operating within the travel industry regulation and legalities, please read that first!
Generate some real leads: In some ways this is the ideal position to be in as you are going to test the real market. How many sales, at what price can I generate? Design the material (an AD say) around the marketing messages from stage 1 and run the campaign. If you are running multiple Ads or trying different ways of generating interest, then try and categorise the responses so that you know what created the response.
Test For Interest: Design the test so that potential consumers register their interest without creating the expectation that you can supply the holiday. It might be that you offer an information pack which lets the customer fulfil the holiday. It might be that the customer registers for a interest group or join a network online. The key is to make sure the customer has to do something meaningful to register interest, in some ways not making it too easy to register interest helps determine real interest.
In the surfing father’s example, I am prepared to arrange the holidays. I design an AD around the marketing messages from stage 1, place the AD in the surf magazine and cross my fingers. The AD has a number to call.
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