We have developed a brand guide for travel companies called ‘How to set yourself apart‘, which is designed to help you express your brand personality by creating an individual look, language and community. Read on for a snippet of the guide about how creating your tribe can help you differentiate yourself in today’s crowded market, or download the entire piece here.

Visualise your typical client. Or, even better, your ideal client. The client who makes your sales team grin when they’ve finished a conversation, the client who just ‘gets’ your company and is delighted with the service you provide them.

Now, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could build up a tribe of this kind of client? A pack of people who are passionate about your trips and that are delighted to promote them among like-minded holidaymakers?

The best way to do this is to figure out the worldview that connects your kind of travellers, and play to it. Remember, you’re thinking of a real human being here, not a series of statistics and numbers. On the surface you might be selling a travel experience, but people are buying a whole lot more.

Marketing guru and author Grant Leboff makes an excellent case for this in his seminar, What the Sex Pistols Teach You About Marketing. The Sex Pistols only ever created one studio album, but their legacy has been enormous – the point being that while they were a band, they didn’t just sell albums or records. They sold an ideology, a belief, and the way they expressed themselves meant they were connected to a movement.

Unless you’re a punk rock tour operator (and if you are, more power to you!), the things that define your ideology will be a little bit different to the Sex Pistols. But the principle of tapping into your tribe’s emotional world is the same. Here are a few tips to get you started.

1.  Figure out their worldview

2. Go outside of travel

3. Create a sense of community

Top Tip: Spot the similarities

Take ten of your “favourite” kind of clients, the clients you’d love your entire database to resemble, and imagine they’re all at a dinner party together. What would they talk about? What would connect them? This exercise might help you spot some striking similarities or common interests that you can incorporate in your comms.

Download the full guide to find more helpful hints and tips on how you can make your company unique and set yourself apart from every other travel company out there.