Number of students required to work in team: 2 teams of 3 students (flexible)

We want students to help us build a marketing strategy to grow and engage our target market. We’d like to know how we can maximize different channels and what will work best for us.

We are a 25-year old family-run, "boutique-style" tour company (www.america4you.net) that was strictly B2B, working with international tour operators to bring visitors to the US and Canada. With the borders being closed due to the pandemic and therefore with time available to concentrate on a different project we fulfilled a longtime "dream" and branched out to create a travel company (www.travelyourbackyard.com) offering our packaged self-drive tours and ranch stay vacations to the domestic direct consumer. As a wholesaler we knew how to market ourselves through sales missions and trade shows, as an online direct marketing company we now need to find marketing strategies to attract direct consumers through, for example, social media. We need to find ways to optimize our website to make our products attractive to the active traveler, offering "adventures" and cultural experiences. Being well-traveled we know our "products" and are excited to share our knowledge so it translate into a perfect vacation, but we need to find the right strategies to be successful getting our name in front of the right audience.

The main questions we’d like students to help us answer are the following:

• How should we promote our company?
• What channels should we utilize?
• What budget is appropriate for advertising?
• What messaging should we use?

Having been in the travel industry for 25+ years we can provide adequate virtual supervision to a student as well as mentorship when it comes to travel-related subjects. We will be available for guidance and training to gain in-depth knowledge of the needs of a travel company like ours. Lena Ross, the main contact for this project has a Masters in Sustainable Travel and is currently on the executive board of IITA (https://inboundtravel.org/)