Tour Operator Growth Podcast

How Lead Magnets Turn Traffic Into Bookings

Nikki DeSantis & Greg Rosenhan Episode 12

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0:00 | 39:02

Most travelers don’t book the first time they visit your website. So what happens when they leave? In this episode, we break down how tour operators can capture leads, stay top of mind, and turn lost traffic into future bookings using powerful lead magnets.

You’ll learn how to create high-value offers that people actually want, where to place them on your website, and how to follow up with email sequences that drive conversions over time. If you’re getting traffic but not capturing it, this episode will show you exactly how to fix it. 


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00:00 – What is a lead magnet (and why it matters)
 02:00 – Why website visitors don’t book right away
 05:30 – How to capture leads from your website traffic
 07:30 – Best lead magnet ideas for tour operators
 11:00 – How quizzes and itineraries increase conversions
 15:45 – Why most lead magnets fail (and how to fix them)
 24:00 – Where to place lead magnets on your website
 30:45 – How to follow up with leads and turn them into bookings

SPEAKER_00

Greg, I'm trying to think of a different intro for our audience, but I really can't think of anything other than hi, welcome to another episode of the Tor Operator Growth Podcast. So, Greg, I'm gonna have you introduce the podcast. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01

I'm introducing the podcast. All right. I've been dying to do this. Welcome to our podcast. This is Greg and Nikki. We're here to entertain you today and hopefully give you some valuable information that's gonna help your tour business. So, with that said, today we're gonna talk about lead magnets. And Nikki, do you want to talk a little bit about lead magnets before we dive in?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I do actually. Good intro, Greg. That was great. Maybe they're gonna vote, our audience is gonna vote you to do our intros from now on. So, anyways, I'm so excited, everybody, for you to join us. Thank you for always listening and tuning in and supporting the show. We're really excited about today's episode. We're still in the planning phase of the Resmark Growth Engine. So the Resmark Growth Engine is really like five stages. Our first several episodes was the dreaming phase. Our last episode, episode 11, started the planning phase. So today we are continuing the planning phase with lead magnets. We have traffic coming to your website, but how do we capture that traffic? We want people to fill out a lead magnet. And if you don't know what a lead magnet is, I'm going to assume most of you do, but it is something valuable you offer for free in exchange for person, a person's contact information. Usually it's name and email. So I want you to think about maybe a time where you were impacted by a lead magnet. For me, this is actually interesting. So when I was planning my safari in Tanzania, I had no clue what company to go with at first. Um, Kilimanjaro, that was a whole different story. I've told that story many times, but the safari company, I didn't know who to go with. So I'm going on YouTube and I found this girl. She was somebody in my neck of the woods in the United States that loved the safaris. So she would go on safaris all the time and she would rate them and tell us about her experience. And she had a huge following. So I started following her. And in her description on YouTube, she said, basically, visit my website and get a free safari download, get a free guide that tells you everything you need to know about your safari trip. So I'm not telling you a story about a specific tour operator, but this was really valuable to me because I was still planning my safari trip. I landed on her website and she had this really thought-out lead magnet that included several safari companies to go with, what to wear, tipping guides, um, vaccinations I might need, like everything I could have needed to help me choose who to go with. So it's a little bit different story, but that lead magnet I carried with me throughout the entire uh trip. And when I got back, I got another email from her saying, how how did your safari go? Can you leave us a review and whatnot? And I, of course, did because I thought what she gave me was so impactful. So the power of lead magnets is it is really strong. So if you don't have a lead magnet, listen to this episode. And by the end, you need to make sure you have a plan in place to get one.

SPEAKER_01

Nikki, with that lead magnet, did you, you said it had multiple companies to go with. Did you end up choosing your company based off of that lead magnet?

SPEAKER_00

I absolutely did. Yes, I did. And it was her number, it was the number one spot. It was the number one company. And on the lead magnet, it had how many reviews that that tour operator had, um, which I don't know if she updates regularly or what, but it like was like a thousand plus, you know, reviews. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's a that's a great example of how Lead Magnets can really help other businesses too. We talked, uh, I know we're gonna talk a little bit about Expedition Canab in this, and and Nikki will kind of go in about their example. Um, we had him on recently as well, and he talked about it, and it's a guide that you know doesn't just talk about his company, but other things to do. And so it's businesses helping businesses out. And I think that's always really cool when there's lead magnets that else that help other companies and not just all about yourself. But let's talk more about leads, right? Leads are extremely important. What we do with leads is even more important. So you can get a lead, do nothing with it, and it's basically useless information that you got that's just sitting there waiting to be utilized, right? The issue is there's a lot of companies that I see out there, tour operators, non-tour operators, that are just leaking the demand that they already are trying to get. Meaning, you have people coming to your website, you may be even paying for these people through through ads, pay-per-click, whatever it is, and they're coming to your website and they're leaving and you're not getting anything from them, right? So they come to your website, they're not ready to book yet. What are you doing with them? Because if they're not ready to book yet, they're then potentially disappearing. They got some information they needed, and they never came back because maybe they forgot about you. It's it's months in advance. So how do you get them to come back? And that a big piece of that is gonna be lead magnets. Having lead magnets helps create more returning traffic and stickier um traffic that's going to equal conversions, right? So focus on the goal of the visitor when they come to the website. Many visitors they have different goals. We talked about this a little bit on the last episode. In the early dreaming phase, someone might be literally just looking for information. They're not ready to book, they're just looking for what's even available in the area that I'm going to. They might be interested in what you specifically offer. Maybe they heard about your company, but they don't know what you offer. So they're just looking around. They might be in the stage where they're putting together an itinerary. So now they're kind of in the planning stage. They have an idea of some of the things they're going to do on their trip, and now they want to put some tours into that as well. And they're trying to figure out the times and and days that they they can do these different items. And then after all of that, now they're ready to book, right? And so they might be to your website four, five, six times in this process. And if you're not capturing that lead and bringing them back, they might forget about you, they might move on. So this episode is all about capturing leads. And if you're not capturing leads, just remember you're losing future bookings when you're not capturing those leads. And then we'll talk about this a little bit as well. But if you're not nurturing those leads, you're doing the same thing. You're just losing future bookings. So because the reality is that most travelers aren't ready to book, Nikki, what can we do to help them convert when they visit the website?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there are a few different things, and it's going to depend on your audience, right? Is this a higher ticket item? Is it something where they need a lot of thought behind it? So a few ways that we like to kind of establish these lead magnets are in things like itineraries, if it's a longer buying cycle. So they come on your website, get a pop-up, land somewhere, or see secondary call to action throughout the page to fill out their information to download something that's going to be really valuable to them. So then when they come off your website, they're now getting emails. And what in next episode, we're going to talk specifically on how to nurture those people. We might dive into it a little bit today, but they come off your website and now they're seeing your email. They're seeing the lead down, the downloads to the lead magnet they just signed up for. So now they have that, but then they're going to get additional emails on top of that. So you're capturing that. But we have to remember a lot of times, especially for higher ticket items, it's a longer decision cycle. And even if it's not, we can still capture their information because maybe they didn't choose your trip today or tomorrow or next week. If you're if you've captured their data and can mark it to them in a month, two months, maybe they'll choose your trip next time. One of the things that we've done is on actually a few of our clients is a quiz. So this is another form of a lead magnet. So when somebody comes to your website and they're looking at your tours, you already have a website that's beautifully designed, built for conversion, and they just don't know what tour is right for them, possibly, and they want a little bit more guidance. So we kind of gamified it in a way where we're saying, which adventure is right for me? Take this quiz or something along those lines. So now they take the quiz because it's awesome, it's fun, it's nicely designed. So they're going through, you know, I'm traveling with my partner, I'm looking for this sort of landscape, I'm looking for this duration, um, I'm looking for this, and I'm looking for that. I'm adrenaline junkie, so we we're kind of getting personas. So not only are we gathering all that data so that we can market very specifically to those people, we are also getting in front of them again with, or they're now getting value out of it because they have a perfect tailored trip that they that is right for them. So they're not necessarily getting a lead download, but they're getting something of value because they're getting it right on right when they hit submit. Okay, here's the pop-up. But then comes the lead nurturing. So now as long as you have it set up correctly, after they submit that, they get the pop-up right away, which trip is right for them. But now in their email inbox, they get it again and then they get additional emails here and over and over. Um, so I do think that lead magnets have different purposes for your demographic. So you have to know your demographic, and then you could establish what kind of lead magnet you want to create for them. I think it's important to always remember, and I think, Greg, you touched on this, and I know we have so many times, people come to your website and then they leave your website. They're not always ready to book, whether it's high ticket or not. You know, a lot of times, maybe if it's not as high ticket, they might just book, but we don't know that all the time. Um, sometimes it takes a lot of effort and planning on their end. So they want to be aware and they want to be reminded of your company in their email inbox. So you're not losing people because your tours aren't good. Okay. Just remember that your website is good. Like I said, it is built for conversion at this point. But you have no way to stay in the conversation of those people who have visited your website. And the only other way that I could think of right now, I'm sorry if I'm wrong, is to retarget them on Facebook or retard you do retargeting ads based off of, you know, as long as they accepted your cookies, right? We don't know their name. We don't know their what kind of buying persona they have. Like we know nothing about them. So let's own that data as much as we can.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure. I I think like retargeting is super powerful. Getting someone's information that they gave you, so many people hold on to their information, right? They don't want to give it out. I mentioned recently or previously, I don't care about mine. Like have my email means nothing to me. I'll just unsubscribe if I don't like what you're sending to me. But so many people are not like that, that if they give you their email, they want something from you. They don't want you to just not deliver on anything. Um, unless you're just offering like a discount. I go into a lot of like apparel companies have that, right? Like give us your email and we'll give you 30% off. It's like every time. Of course I'm gonna do that. Um, I don't expect anything from them after that, except for maybe some other ads down the line. Um, but when it comes to lead magnets, remember that it's not just a freebie. So it's always free. Don't don't charge someone or have a paywall or anything for your lead magnet. There are situations where that's the case, right? Um, but for most of what we're talking about, it's gonna be free, but it's not a free B. So make it valuable. It's not just giving them a PDF just to give them a PDF of something. Make sure that the content you are giving them is of value to them. So that when they give you their info, you're giving them something of value. That way you stand out against those that are just giving freebies, that are just giving these basic things in it in exchange. If you're actually adding that value to the person that gave you their contact info, they're gonna remember you way more. Plus, they're gonna see your brand more and remember you that way. I'm the type of person where I could be on your website and I might love your website. I may never be able to find your website again because I'm gonna forget in two days that I was even looking at that because I've that's just how my mind works. I go all over the place. I may never remember you again. So when I get that email, I'm like, oh yeah, I was looking at that. Let's go back in and like look further, right? Um, I also am the type where I have five, six, seven tabs open looking at different companies, and so it's a lot harder for me to remember who's who. And so when you follow up after I give you my information, now you're staying in that conversation. You're reminding me who you are, you're reminding me to continue my process as well, because I'm also a procrastinator when it comes to planning things. I'm not a great planner, but when you're in my inbox, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to do that, right? And it reminds me and many others that you exist and that I need to continue planning because my trip's coming up soon. I need to lock it in. So making sure your lead magnet is giving that value and state that you're nurturing after and staying on top of the mind really connects that dreaming phase with the planning stage. Um as we transition from really just figuring out what we want to do to locking down an itinerary, you're gonna be in that conversation the whole time. Um Nikki touched on this a little bit, but lead magnets are how you turn that anonymous traffic into people that you actually own. So you actually have an a name usually with them and an email or a phone number that you can then use to personalize things. You can use it if you are a smaller business, especially to like when they show up, you know who they are because you've been interacting with them. Things like that that make it just that much better of a of a touch point. Um that being said, not all lead magnets work. There's definitely a lot out there, like I said, these freebies that aren't offering the value as much, maybe. They just don't work. So, Nikki, where do most tour operators get this wrong? And how can we fix that?

SPEAKER_00

Most tour operators get this wrong because they're fo so focused on the design of the lead magnet, and they're not focused on the content within the lead magnet, and they're not focused on the content enough to address their ideal customers' problems, wants, needs, desires. So I think that that's probably the biggest thing. The first thing when you are creating a lead magnet, you don't want it to be generic. You want it to be very specific. So whether it's tied to a real trip, it's solving a real problem or question that people are asking, you know, look at your FAQs, look at uh the questions that people ask in your chat inbox and text messages and emails. And it needs to be immediately useful to them. They want to download it and read it immediately. So, some examples of this are itineraries, packing lists, hidden gems, timing guides. I know something that I genuinely enjoy is when it is um adding value outside of the tour operator specifically. So, for example, Western River does a really good job at this. I can't remember which lead magnet it was exactly, but I have a lead magnet saved on my computer that I keep sharing with my dad because it has so much information in it. And it also has information based off of like where to eat, where to stay, what to do in Vegas while I'm waiting for the bus to pick me up, right? So it's adding just so it's answering so many questions in one single, you know, source. So I think that's the important thing. I want you to avoid things like generic travel guides, uh broad destination content, and vague polished PDFs. Like I said, you could have a beautifully designed piece of content, but if the value isn't there, people aren't gonna want it. I would rather a piece of content that had a lot of good value in it and it wasn't designed nicely. Here's an example you guys might be aware of, our audience. Um, we had a DIY guide for marketing. It was literally called a DIY guide for online marketing. It's about three years old now, so I'm not trying to remote this specifically. I need to update it. I keep telling you that so that I could hold myself accountable. But in 2025 alone, we had 300 downloads, 30 calls. So that's what we call a call a qualified lead, is when somebody books a call with us. And then we got seven clients. Now, not all seven clients were specific to, you know, just because they weren't specifically attributed to that lead magnet, but that lean magnet had something to do with that. I'm saying all of this because that lead magnet was a simple Google Doc. It was not nicely designed. I actually made it that and per Greg's idea so that we can update it as time goes on. So you don't have to create or spend money on a graphic designer if you don't have it. What I would rather see somebody do is sit back and think and build something out that is going to be really valuable to them. The other time I, the other thing I see, and I think the original question was, why do they fail? I think something like that, is they turn a blog into a lead magnet. They turn something they already have into a lead magnet. Like, come on. If you're going to expect somebody to put in their personal information, their name, their email, and maybe even phone number and some other details if you want, birthday, you know, what kind of traveler they are, it needs to be really valuable. And I am not saying that your blogs aren't valuable because I'm sure they are, but your blogs aren't gated. Anybody can get access to that. So when you're creating gated content, it needs to feel even more exclusive. And if that means maybe you're rewriting a blog, making it more in-depth, or adding something to it that not just the general public can see, it needs to feel special.

SPEAKER_01

So And it needs to be valuable. Like you can't just give information just to give information. It needs to answer questions people might have. So put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Ask what questions are they asking on trips, right? This is you used Western River as an example. I was going to talk a little bit about them in the next section as well. But in their expedition guide, it's basically full of questions that people have answered or questions or questions people are asking, um, whether it's on the phone call or when they're looking on the website or things that they say on trips as well. So they have a whole section in their expedition guide that talks about like physical requirements, right? They get phone calls, and this section is answering some of those questions, but also answering questions that like just they can't have people over a certain weight or under a certain weight due to life jacket restrictions, right? And so it's answering those type of things. They have packing lists because people don't know what to bring, they've never been on a seven-day rafting trip, and they're answering those type of questions as well. So really getting into understanding your ideal customer and giving them things that they might need. So we talk a lot at times about these more, you know, longer trips like Western River Expeditions or or whatever it might be, but I also like to think about these really short ones that don't need planning, right? How can you add value if and I use Segway tours as an example because it comes to my mind the most, I guess, of like something that like I'm gonna do because I'm in Chicago, I see a Segway tour, like, hey, that sounds fun. I'm not like planning it in my itinerary usually of like, let's, you know, take two hours to do a Segway tour. At least me personally, people probably do, but me it's more spontaneous. If I'm going to do something like that. But you can still add that value on your website and even in person of like, here is information about other things you can do while you're here. So you're coming to Chicago, you want to do this Segway tour. Here's other information, other things you're going to want to do. You're going to want to go on the architecture tour because it's phenomenal. Just putting a plug in there. I love it. Been on it like four times. But things like that, where maybe you don't have a packing list. No one's asking, what should I wear on a Segway tour? Or you know, how much can I weigh on a Segway tour? That might be a question that people are asking. So answering those type of questions, but also giving them other information to add value to their whole trip is going to be super valuable as well. And a great way to build, you know, a lead magnet that's going to really help. So as you're doing that, understand that like planning often starts weeks or months in advance. And you want to get them early to just keep bringing them back and keep them engaged with your brand as they're they're planning everything. You can really just build that trust with them as they're leading up to the experience, which is only going to lead, if you're doing it right, only gonna lead to a better experience on their trip and after their trip, and you're just gonna get better and more powerful reviews as you go throughout that as well. So, Nikki, I I know we kind of moved quickly into the next section here of capturing in intent early, but when you're in this section and you're competing with competitors and others to try to capture people's attention, can you share that example of Expedition Canab and how they're utilizing their lead magnet to capture people's attention, but then also give them like just great value?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What I find really, really awesome is, and if you didn't listen to, I believe it was episode seven, eight, I can't remember, but it was with Reese, and he talked specifically about OTAs. And then we did a quick segment on lead magnets because his is awesome and it's super successful. So Reese got 5,000 downloads alone last year, and he got tons of bookings out of it. So that alone is awesome. But this is what he does. So we built Reese's website, we built Expedition Canab's website, and of course, the main call to action is going to be a book now or something along those lines to get people to book a tour. But as we keep saying time and time again, a lot of people aren't ready to book that tour, whether it's multi-day or not. A lot of times people come to your website, they leave, and then maybe even the same day or a day later, they come back. But for the people who aren't ready to book that tour, his secondary call to action right in the hero. So what is the hero? It's, you know, the main, the very top part of the website could be on any page, but I'm talking specifically on Expedition Canab's homepage. Right in the homepage, he has, you know, his main call to action and then a secondary call to action to download this free five-day itinerary. So right there, it's in your face. It's not a pop-up. We see many times for most of our clients, pop-ups are not very successful. I'm not saying we won't do them. We'll always test it because every client's going to have a different story. But pop-ups usually just we don't see a lot of success out of them. Um, most of the time. Sometimes we do. But same with banners. But when you strategically placed your call to actions on your website in specific places like the home page and a specific page in the navigation, people are going to be drawn to do that. So you download this lead magnet. Basically, he doesn't even ask for the name. We're only simply asking for our email. I would suggest maybe asking for a name as well. That way, whenever people get the email, you can say, Hi, Greg, you know, hi, Sarah. And it looks a little bit more personalized, but if you don't, that's okay. Email, it's just nice and clean. Uh it's on his form that he uses. Enters in the email. Immediately when I signed up, I got a confirmation saying, here's your five-day itinerary. It was beautifully designed. It was well written. It was long. Now, not all lean magnets have to be super long. So don't ever think like, oh, I need to make something that's 10 pages long. No, you don't, as long as it's really valuable. But his was fairly long, nicely designed, like I said. And then I got that. I downloaded it to my computer. But then a day later, I got another email from him. This email was not a salsy email. It was, hey, you know, how about this? Check this out. Check out these restaurants in the area. Something that wasn't included on the lead magnet. I am now getting an email about. And then a couple of days later, another email, then another, then another. And I'm continuing, continually getting emails. And then eventually he started to push them down the funnel to try to get them to book their tour. But not only that, you know, whether they open the email or not, and we want them to open up the email, of course, they're seeing your brand pop up in the inbox over and over and over again. And that is starting to build trust. So I I I went off on a tangent, Greg. I hope that answers your question.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the mistakes that are many, there's a lot of mistakes you can make with lead magnets. One of them is, and I think it's probably the most crucial, is not following up. You were just talking about it. You like Expedition Canab didn't just give you this valuable information once, they repeatedly emailed you more information and things that weren't in that document as well. And so as you're in the dreaming phase or planning phase, you're not booking yet. And so that follow-up is really just again keeping you top of mind. But also, what if I don't know if I want to go to Canab yet? Maybe I'm debating between Canab and St. George, two places that are right by each other in southern Utah, and I don't know where I want to go, what I want to do. And you just keep popping up in my email with these great things like, oh, that that Mexican restaurant looks fantastic, or that tour looks really fun. And now I'm leaning more and more your way because you keep reminding me of how cool Kanab is and the people in St. George aren't, right? And so now I'm getting more excited. So there's more benefit to it than just trying to sell the whole time. But obviously at the end of the day, you want that booking. So another mistake that people have is expecting instant bookings, right? Like someone gave me their email address and they didn't book immediately. What's going on? Like remember, people are planning things out. You have to stay top of mind. Are you doing things right to get them to book? That's super important as well. And then the other piece is just having it placed on your website in a strategic way, right? Like you mentioned, pop-ups aren't always a great option. Sometimes it's because you have cookies popping up, live chat popping up, and now another pop-up, and like on your phone, you can't see anything. It's like you're on a recipe um blog where you can't actually see the recipe. That's not a good experience. And so making sure that it's showing up in the right time, the right place to help drive them to give them your or give you their information is going to be super beneficial. So, Nikki, another question I have for you is we're we're giving up the information. Can you go into a little bit of the specifics of that follow-up? Like it's it's one of the most important pieces, but how can we kind of set it up and what are the important pieces of that follow-up that can lead to conversion?

SPEAKER_00

So again, next episode, we're gonna go way more in depth on this. So I'm just gonna briefly talk about the what you need to do and what you need to make sure you have in place. So you need to have a form embedded on your website, of course. And, you know, if you're working with ResMark Web, we make this really intuitive and everything works seamlessly together. So um, but let's say you're using MailChimp or you're using whoever you're using for your email system or your email provider. See if they have a form that you can use. That way you don't have to use a third-party system to integrate the form and the emails. Okay, it's so much easier when you do them both in one system. Um, but let's say we'll go kind of both ways. You have a form on your website. That form needs to then pass the information over to your email system. So if that form is from your email system, super easy, right? It's already there. That email system you're using is usually what we call CRM, customer relationship management tool, is then going to be notified immediately and then send that email saying, thank you for filling out, you know, the form. Here's the download. And that download could be uploaded in a PDF, or you could have the download go to a web page. You could try different things. But again, it has to be exclusive. So we want it kind of gated and only accessible through that email or whenever they submit the form information. So I think that key principles is make sure that whatever system you're using, you're comfortable with so that you know, okay, well, where is all my lead submissions getting stored and how is it getting passed over into my email provider? And how do I use my email provider to easily start the emails to, you know, get rolling? And then that's when things can get a little bit more complex because now immediately that email sequence is triggered by that form. So somebody puts in their email, that email sequence is started. So now we can start to add some wait times in that email sequence. So they, as soon as they get the download, they wait a day, then they get the next email. They wait a day, get the next email. And then you could start to spread it out a little bit more. But what you want to do is monitor how many people are opening up these emails. Should I be split testing these emails? Are people clicking on the links? So making sure that you're monitoring that. And maybe you're getting a lot of unsubscribes. We want to, you know, figure out why. But hopefully you'll notice if people are opting in to get your marketing emails, you're going to have a low unsubscribe rate. So just some best practices and it's a way that you can organize those people. So I think the biggest thing is why don't you have a lean magnet? And it's probably, I'm going to guess because you don't know maybe the after. You don't know how to set these things up, but it is pretty simple. It is not complex. And if you're working with Resmark Web, we we do all of that setup for you. And we work with you on kind of next steps on okay, well, what happens in the next demo? What happens in the next demo, or we could help you whatever with whatever system you're using for those. So that's kind of the follow-up sequence without going too much in depth, because like I said, next episode we'll we'll go into that. But the lead magnet is always going to start the relationship. Your follow-up is going to create the revenue that comes thereafter. So one more thing I'll say is as we're sending out emails, we want to bring them further down in the funnel and try to get them to book the tour. Because ultimately, that's what we want, right? We want to make sure that we do have call to actions in the emails to get them back on your website to actually book that tour.

SPEAKER_01

That's interesting as we've gone through this podcast and our last podcast about website conversion. They're very similar in the sense of converting, right? They're both meant to convert because obviously we're in the planning stage. The next stage is booking. So everything in the planning stage is meant to convert. But there are also things that don't need to be static. Like Nikki said, our date DIY guide that we built, although she said it wasn't designed well, I take offense a little bit because it was designed out. We have like a header and a footer, it looks nice, but it isn't a word doc. Um, it's when she says it's not designed that well, it's like not, you know, a Photoshop file or whatever. It's not like this intricate design, right? It's very simple, it's text-based, but it looks nice. Um and we purposely did that so that we could iterate on it, right? So build these things in a way that you can iterate and improve them. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's better to have something out there as long as it's adding value. I I wouldn't say do something that's just like thrown together that doesn't actually add any value because people aren't gonna like that. But even if you can't set up the lead follow-up, having a lead magnet is better than not having one if it's adding value. Obviously, setting up the follow-up is added value as well, and is only gonna lead to more bookings. So if you only do a piece of it, expect fewer bookings than if you do the whole process. Start with your guest questions, use what you already have, and improve it, and then just start now. Iterate on it, improve it, and you're gonna see how impactful it's gonna be. If you already have a lead magnet and you've made it this far through the podcast still, like go and read through it again, have your ideal customers give you advice, have someone else read through it, and refine it, improve it, make it better, add more value, same with your follow-ups, and you're gonna see an impact based on the value you're adding to your potential customers here. The last thing I'll add is there's a lot of free tools out there to create these, whether that's building in Canva, Google Docs, using AI to help you come up with the ideas and even lay some things out for you as a as a starting point. Super great tools that can really get you going if you don't have that expertise yourself. Or you can go to an agency that you're working with or with us or whoever to help you build that out as well a little bit better. So to close it out, Nikki, what do you, you know, what else would you suggest or want to reiterate that we've talked about so far?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I want to step back again and ask, why don't you have a lead magnet? Right? Like what is stopping you from doing that? Drop it in the comments. I'd be curious to hear your answer. But let's say you do have a lead magnet. Well, we can also create multiple lead magnets for your different customer personas. So you could have lead magnets on different tour pages, you could have lead magnets on different uh, you know, ideal audiences that you're trying to get. So, or you could have a more, and I don't mean generic as in like the content is generic, but like it reaches a broader audience that is your ideal customer. That is fine too. Um, the one thing we didn't touch on is we're adding all of these to our marketing mix, right? We now have a website built for conversion. I think we we taught we chatted about social media. We are chatting about email marketing soon. Like all of these things come into place. And now we're chatting now about lean magnets. Make sure that your marketing, your messaging, your tone, your imagery is not disconnected. So people should be able to look at that lean magnet and then look at the newsletter you're sending out and then look at your social media. Social media is a little different, you can have a little bit more fun with, but your website, and it can all tell the story about your brand. It has your brand tone, your brand voice, your brand messaging. And this is where it's really cool because you can create an ideal uh profile. And we did this in a workshop actually like a year ago, I believe, to create that. So you can use AI with all of the information we're giving it and make sure that your brand tone and messaging are aligned throughout all of your marketing. So as we keep building on to this, just keep that in mind. Like we want to make sure that it is speaking to your ideal customer using what you've created, your brand, your voice, and whatnot. So all right, everybody, that is it on lead magnets for today. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Tour Operator Growth Podcast. We're so excited. Thank you for your support. We'll talk to you soon.