Disclaimer: At InfluenceBLU, we respect and protect our partner’s identity. While their stories are true, names and images may have been changed to protect their privacy.
Lucky are the ones who get to transform their hobby into a full-time affair. Mark is one of them. Mark comes from the beautiful conurbation of Switzerland and has traveled to over 36 countries (and counting). Alongside traveling, he calls himself a self-taught photographer who loves to capture the serene of the world.
Travelling was the only aspect that Mark liked about his family business. But with the dreams so big and will so strong, he was determined to opt for a profession that he could embrace as full-time work. After months of introspecting and gathering courage, he finally took a call to peruse traveling as the only work and live the life he envisaged ever since.
He knew the challenges and the repercussions, but he was ready for all. Even though he was from a well of family, his biggest challenge was how to find the asked to — “Why someone would pay him just to travel?”
Mark hustled to find the answer but struggled to turn up with a credible one. Hence, his biggest challenge was to devise a sound strategy for a full-time career in traveling. In the process of attempting to find the answers, Mark contacted InfluenceBLU to fabricate a growth strategy.
1. Research and Analysis
The definition of traveling has evolved drastically over the years. With the surge in social media penetration and rise of influencers, the quest among the audience to adapt to the aspirational lifestyle has increased. People seek to live and travel similar to their favorite influencers, leading to the rise of travel vloggers/creators by many folds.
Acknowledging the demand and supply in the market, team BLU undertook extensive research to find the essentials of the market by surveying over 2500+ people online. The idea of the survey was to understand the psyche of the potential audience and frame a strategy accordingly.
The entire research process took a time span of a week and the following observations were made:
- 81% agreed that they like watching travel vlogs
- 77% of millennials agreed upon deciding on traveling after watching travel vlogs
- 59% of people would travel with their favorite influencer if given an opportunity
- 10 out of 7 people acknowledges themselves as amateur travelers and wishes to learn more about traveling
Many more such interpretations were drawn from the data received. All of these learnings were shared with Mark, helping him to segment, position, and target his audience effectively.
2. Business Development
With vast experience in traveling all across the globe, Mark got immense help for the research and data offered by team BLU. Cumulating both, Mark and team BLU extracted a sound strategy that would help us to pitch the offerings better. Our team segregated the implementation of the strategy into three parts.
We took forward the development of the business assets based on the strategy. This included website and mobile development, content development for media platforms like YouTube, Instagram and much more.
3. Travel Membership Programme
Based on one of the research outcomes where team BLU learned about how ardent the audience were to travel with their favorite influencers, we wished to build our offering around it. Even though a lot of influencers were already practicing the same, but very few of them were successful due to ineffective implementation and marketing.
Once Mark obtained a decent social media fan base and at par engagement rate, our team launched a program where only a few lucky winners would get to travel Spain with Mark. To our surprise, we received a 10K+ application within 3 hours. Our team decided to pick only 20 fans for the first batch albeit.
During the trip, as expected, the first batch posted every bit of the trip on social media. This lead to growing of Mark’s Instagram followers by 4%. The entire effort gaged a revenue of $20,000 and invaluable satisfaction among the fellow travelers. Since then, we have already arranged and completed 32 batches with a lot more fans than we started.
4. Personalized Merchandising
With all the business plans hitting the jackpot, we decided to extend the engagement with Mark and the fans further. Because of Mark’s honest and amiable image, his fans adored him and exhibited a gratifying gesture to own him as their beloved influencer.
Team BLU launched personalized merchandising revolving around Mark’s image. This included t-shirts, pullovers, track pants, lower, phone covers, posters, and much more.
5. Brand Deals & Partnerships
With his sporty and tough image, Mark has already lured 30+ brands to partner with him. This includes brands of segments like skin care, apparel, footwear, accessories, education, body care, and many more.
Mark has beautifully commenced his journey from a traveler to a celebrated & known influencer. He has given lines to his childhood passion together with InfluenceBLU. Team BLU has fizzed this dream by developing a remunerative self job for Mark.
We have accumulated in-depth research on the travel industry and the related professionals from the industry, rooted some business ideas, initiated commercial travel schedules & arranged personalized product-line for him.
We design distinct business models for different creators and professionals. At InfluenceBLU, we believe in nurturing your image into a remunerative business plan. Explore new horizons for your career and turn your concerns to the best of your confidence.
