Epic Exploration Travel Agency Marketing Plan

Epic Exploration Travel Agency Marketing Plan

Developing a brand requires making strategic decisions to create and sustain a positive brand identity and increase brand awareness. Epic Exploration Travel Agency faces stiff competition from established brands and companies in the travel and tourism industry. Therefore, the company needs to focus on using its strengths to create a strong brand and leverage the opportunities in the market to maintain a competitive advantage. One of the things that the company should consider in its brand development is adjusting its marketing plan to focus on marketing strategies that promote brand awareness and enable the company to reach more customers. The main marketing strategies that the company can use include implementing a strategic alliance with a known brand in a cobranding program that can quickly add value and awareness to the new or small brand, developing a loyalty program to grow repeat business, and using social media to reach the connected generation through storytelling.

Implementing Strategic Alliance

Small and new brands can use strategic alliances to grow their brand by increasing their customer base and brand awareness. Essentially, strategic alliances include joint ventures, direct investment, mergers, exporting, franchising, and foreign cooperation (Al-Gharrawi, 2018). Epic Exploration Travel Agency can implement mergers to add value and awareness to the brand. Mergers will enable the company to bond with other brands in the travel and tourism industry and benefit from their customer base, leading to increased brand awareness. Mergers will also enable the company to combine its strengths with another brand’s strengths and leverage the opportunities available to multiple brands, leading to high brand value. For instance, the company can cobrand with another travel agency offering its services within and outside the United States to expand its market share to global markets and increase its revenue and profitability. This program can serve customers who seek epic exploration in different parts of the world because it would enable them to discover different travel destinations outside the United States. The company can also collaborate with travel agencies to increase customer reach and add brand value by ensuring that customers get the best travel packages, leading to increased customer satisfaction and attracting more customers. This program will serve customers who seek convenience when looking for travel and adventure trips because the company can organize transportation on their behalf by collaborating with travel agencies.

Loyalty Programs to Grow Repeat Business

Loyalty programs play a significant role in increasing customer loyalty, leading to repeat business growth. Notably, loyalty programs can decrease price sensitivity, increase brand loyalty, and enhance customer resistance to counter offers provided by competing brands (Yapa & Kennedy, 2020). Epic Exploration Travel Agency has established strong customer loyalty by offering tailored attention and exceptional customer service. The company can leverage customer loyalty to grow repeat business by rewarding the repeat customers. For instance, the company can offer discounts to repeat customers to encourage them to continue purchasing its services. This program serves customers seeking new places to visit and a new adventure experience. The company can use its social media platforms to inform customers about the discount program and send personalized emails to loyal customers to inform them about the discounts and how they can be applied in upcoming travel events.

Epic Exploration Travel Agency’s loyalty program can also include one free trip per year for customers who use the company’s services for a specific number of trips. For instance, the company can offer a free trip for customers who use its services to travel to at least five destinations to motivate them to continue using it. The destination of the free trip can be determined based on the amount of money paid for the five trips and the customers’ interests. Accordingly, this program serves customers who want to travel to many destinations on a budget because they can choose an extra travel destination that may not be within their budget since the company will cover the trip’s costs.

Using Social Media to Reach the Connected Generation

Social media offers a platform that brands can use to communicate with their target customers for increased brand awareness. One of the approaches that companies use to appeal to the target customers is storytelling. Storytelling can be used to raise awareness about a brand, increase trust in a brand, and demonstrate its unique features (Lundqvist et al., 2012). Epic Exploration Travel Agency can use its social media platforms to reach a connected generation by posting stories narrated by customers who have used the company’s services before. The company can post different stories to help target customers understand what the brand offers from different perspectives. For example, it can post stories narrated by young, middle-aged, and older people because the three groups of target customers have different needs and preferences. Therefore, they can offer different opinions about the company’s services.

The company can accompany the stories with pictures and videos of different travel destinations mentioned in the stories to appeal to customers seeking adventure. Storytelling serves customers who seek the opinion of other customers when making a purchase decision and customers who seek evidence to confirm whether what a company or brand has advertised is what it offers. The program also serves customers who rely on other customers’ experiences to determine whether a travel destination and the company offering travel and tour services to the destination meet their needs and preferences before making the purchase decision. Therefore, Epic Exploration Travel Agency must ensure that the stories are true and verifiable and focus on the company’s unique services to attract more customers.

Conclusion

The travel and tourism industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, leading to stiff competition, particularly for small brands. Therefore, Epic Exploration Travel Agency must invest in marketing and make strategic marketing decisions to increase brand awareness that can be leveraged to support its growth and sustainability amidst the stiff competition. Some of the options that the company can consider include implementing strategic alliances with known brands, developing loyalty programs to grow repeat business, and utilizing social media to reach the connected generation through storytelling. The company can use mergers to serve customers who seek epic exploration in different parts of the world because it would enable them to discover different travel destinations outside the United States and customers who seek convenience when looking for travel and adventure trips; after all, the company can organize for transportation on their behalf by collaborating with the travel agencies. The loyalty programs can be used to serve customers who are always seeking new places to visit and a new adventure experience and customers who want to travel to many destinations on a budget. Epic Exploration Travel Agency can also use storytelling to serve customers who seek the opinion of other customers when making a purchase decision, customers who seek evidence to confirm whether what a company or brand has advertised is what it offers, and customers who rely on other customers’ experiences to determine whether a travel destination and the company offering travel and tour services meets their needs and preferences before making the purchase decision.

References

Al-Gharrawi, A. (2018). Strategic alliances Azhar. Journal of Business & Financial Affairs, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.4172/2167-0234.1000319

Lundqvist, A., Liljander, V., Gummerus, J., & van Riel, A. (2012). The impact of storytelling on the consumer brand experience: The case of a firm-originated story. Journal of Brand Management, 20(4), 283–297. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2012.15

Yapa, Y. M., & Kennedy, F. B. (2020). Impact of loyalty programs on brand loyalty (With special reference to Dialog Axiata and Mobitel Company in Badulla District). The Journal of Business Studies, 4(2). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348137317_Impact_of_loyalty_programmes_on_brand_loyalty_With_special_reference_to_Dialog__and_Mobitel_Company_in_Badulla_District

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Review all the articles and videos for this unit.

Write a 4- to 6-page paper in which you discuss the possibility of using at least three of the ideas below for your new brand. Some of these ideas might work for the new brand, whereas others do not fit your particular marketing plan needs.

Epic Exploration Travel Agency Marketing Plan

Implementing a strategic alliance with a known brand in a cobranding program that can quickly add value and awareness to the new or small brand
Developing a loyalty program to grow repeat business
Using social media to reach the connected generation, which can include storytelling
Producing private label products for retailers
Using cause marketing to build the brand’s image
Using the Internet to sell the new product
Selling the products beyond U.S. borders
Explain who is served by each program. Define the consumer group served, but if the program goes beyond this group and serves a broader social need, then explain the desired reach for these added groups.