If you already have a robust corporate tour business, consider reaching out to your regular clients about booking their holiday parties with you. On the other hand, if you’re just starting to grow the corporate tour side of your operation, proactively working to book holiday parties is a great way to gain new clientele who will come back again and again for their corporate events throughout the year.
The perfect time to start marketing your holiday party offerings is at the end of September and the beginning of October. As companies head into the fourth quarter, they’re planning their end-of-year budgets. Here’s how to make sure your tour is a line item on that budget!
Key Takeaways
- Heather Fortes of SacTown Bites — Catering or food trucks at unique stops like breweries. Great reminder of timing to focus on holiday events now.
- Corey Taylor of Food on Foot Tours — Told us about encouraging tours to move their holiday party to January instead of December.
- Karen Anderson of Alberta Food Tours — Fill your red Santa bag as you go through the tour. Pitch a January tour instead. Partner with cider, brewery, food trucks. Incorporate games on tours to add value.
- Bethia Woolf of Columbus Food Adventures: Restaurant partners are too busy to take groups. Reach out proactively to corporate clients about holiday gift boxes.
- Adam Boles of UpLevel Tourism: The best time to plan holiday parties with your partners and vendors is now, even before you’ve booked any. Reach out and ask about the best days to host groups over the holidays and see if you can get penciled-in.
Book More Corporate Holiday Parties
As a tour operator, you already know that your products offer a unique value to corporate groups — something that feels different and special that goes beyond another tired outing to Top Golf. For the same reason, your tours represent a fun departure from the forced camaraderie of a traditional office holiday party.
Here are a few tips to book more corporate holiday events:
1. Target your messaging.
Imagine your ideal corporate tour customer, and design your ads, emails, and social media posts to talk directly to them.
- The time to start your targeted messaging is at the end of September, heading into the fourth quarter.
- You don’t need to sell someone on throwing themselves a holiday party, you’re just filling a gap. Be the best option for what they should do.
- Target previous corporate groups. People who already know what you do. You’re going to sell most of these to people who already love what you do.
- Create a specific email sequence to a segmented list of previous corporate tour guests. Also, start including talk of holiday parties in your general monthly newsletter.
- On social media, begin planning a post a week starting late September into the middle of October. Then, ramp up that pace to 2-3 posts per week going into November.
- Be sure to tag previous corporate tour guests in your social media posts. Don’t just post and hope the right people see it.
- Add discussion of holiday parties to your tour guides’ scripts. Give your guide a very clear CTA — “If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll connect you with the owner.”
- Add a page in your Digital Guidebook about holiday parties. Allow users to easily message you with an inquiry directly from the Guidebook.
2. Create a sales page on your website specifically for corporate holiday parties.
This product-specific page should include seasonal pictures, unique product descriptions, and a specific FAQ section.
- Use this page as the CTA link on social media posts, in emails, and in direct outreach.
- Create a temporary section on your regular corporate tours page that links to this landing page.
- Embed a contact form on the page, and have a clear CTA to get visitors into the sales funnel quickly and efficiently (i.e. “Schedule a Call” with a Calendly link).
AVOID putting too many sales arguments in a single sentence.
Also avoid:
- Talking about how amazing you are.
- Telling people every little thing that’s included.
- Starting sentences with “we”, “our”, or your tour name in 3rd person.
- Using rhetorical questions.
- Witty language, tag-lines, or trying to make things sound grandiose.
DO start sentences with the word “You.”
Further, you will want to:
- Answer your Target Guest’s question, “What’s in it for me?”
- Use short, direct sentences.
- Write at a 7th-grade reading level.
- Try to use as few words as possible.
- Write for real people, not search engines.
3. Find new ways to add value to a corporate holiday tour.
- Give them an upgrade option such as including a local photographer or videographer as part of their experience.
- Include holiday-themed swag for the tour guests.
- Create holiday-specific experiences with your tour destination partners to make this more than just a regular tour with Christmas sweaters.
