There's a huge pool of potential customers that just keeps getting deeper. So how do you keep your head above water, and prepare yourself for a new wave of customers? Here are some tips on how to best handle an increase in customers.

1. Increase the manpower and implement necessary systems

To make sure you are well equipped to handle more customers, hire new, experienced staffers, while also rearranging current teams to maximize capacity, performance, and overall service. That includes implementing an online booking system and tour management software, and assigning supervisors to double check all forms to ensure smooth operations.Another aspect to maintaining a great customer experience with rising demand: renegotiating with suppliers. Work with suppliers to offer more possible destinations, activities, or pieces of equipment so that customers have more options (and existing tours won't be over-crowded).

2. Focus on your core customers

HVM Consulting, a Belgium-based tour agency, owes much of its 25 years of success to the relationships it builds with customers. “The success of HVM Consulting is founded on its personalized relationship with clients and suppliers—we simply build rapport with them in person, listen to their specific needs and requests, and ensure that their trip arrangements correspond to their expectations," says Hans Vanmaele, managing director of HVM Consulting. "Because of this, our best sales people are actually our satisfied clients." A core of their business practices: the Pareto Principle, in which they prioritize and recognize their clients' potential and productivity. "We maintain focus on the 20% of our clients who produce 80% of our sales," says Vanmaele.

Your best sales people are your most sastisfied clients

3. Match customer requests with complimentary offerings

To increase your revenue per customer, you need an efficient system, in which you offer personalized experiences alongside complementary offerings that will dramatically enhance the over-all experience for the customer.During the booking process, it's important to learn about each customer as much as possible to provide them their ultimate dream vacation, so ask if they have any specific requests to best prepare prior to their arrival. To achieve this, incorporate segmented email marketing campaigns on each of your website's landing pages, segmenting these visitors based on their previous travel history and upcoming trips. For example, a couple who recently booked a trip to Italy will get a complimentary quick guide to the city they're looking to visit. If your company has local partners in the area, include in special packages and discounts from those partners to sweeten the deal.While no business would complain about a new influx of customers, it could cause problems if you're not properly prepared. But if you reinforce the systems you have in place, you'll free yourself up to build and maintain relationships with your customers that will keep them coming back.

The Internet isn't just a place to peruse social media and complete BuzzFeed quizzes; it's a wealth of business tools- and resources-gold just waiting for you to mine. So whether you're on a tight budget or just looking to trim some fat, small business owners can find dozens upon dozens of free tools and resources available that can help their business grow. There are free apps that can help to streamline business operations. There are free apps that can manage administrative tasks. There are even apps to help strengthen your writing for email and website content.But, with the web being such a jam-packed and confusing place to roam, it can be hard to find those resources. So, just consider us your prospector: Here are 21 free tools tour, activity, and recreation businesses can take advantage of.

1. Free Accounting Software: Wave

If you're just getting your business up and running or working with a tight budget, take care of invoices and basic accounting activities with this free accounting software program. The company behind this program offers free, unlimited invoicing to make billing suppliers and vendors a breeze. Make use of the free accounting tools to manage expenses and few financial snapshots.

2. Free Legal Docs: KISS

Approaching investors for seed funding? Then you'll want to make use of Keep It Simple Security (KISS) docs—a set of free legal documents that small business owners can customize without missing out on key legal details and terminology, while also outlining investor rights. The company behind the open-source documents, 500 Startups, consulted a number of law firms to design the documents—so they contain all the necessary legal features, while also keeping it fairly customizable. Just add a few prompted figures and information, and you'll be on your way to getting funding—without the cost of lawyers.

3. Create and Sign Legally Binding Docs: Shake

If you need to create legally binding agreements for a vendor, employee, or contractor, you don't have to pay high fees for a lawyer to put together your documents. Make use of Shake to create legally binding documents within minutes and send it to the recipient for a digital signature. The free version allows you to create, sign, and send unlimited agreements from any device with a set of starter forms.

4. Create Stunning Graphics: Canva

It can cost a pretty penny to buy graphics and fonts (or to pay someone to create them for you), create attractive blog posts and content to share on social networks with the Canva design tool. The tool contains dozens of designs, shapes, illustrations, icons, and charts. And everything is drag-and-drop, which means you can create stunning graphics, Facebook covers, posters, and other visual media within minutes.

5. Image Editing Tool: Pixlr Editor

Since you practically need a PhD to use Adobe Photoshop these days, use Pixlr to edit and enhance existing images for your blog posts, social media sites, and website. This free online editing and image re-sizing tool has almost all the features of Adobe Photoshop—but is easy to learn and use. Tour, activity, and recreation businesses that want to post high-quality images can make use of this tool to edit and enhance all types of professional and candid shots within minutes.

6. Content Editing and Grammar Check: Hemingway Editor

Why does everyone love Ernest Hemingway so much? He wrote clearly and to the point. And that's a lot harder than it sounds—until now. So whether you're publishing blog posts or tour descriptions, make sure your content is free of grammar errors and has good, easy-to-read sentence structure. This cuts the cost of hiring a freelance editor or blogger, while also making your content clear and more relatable for potential customers.

7. Advanced Grammar Checker: Grammarly

Don't rely solely on your word processor or personal editing skills to catch grammar mistakes. This tool is downloaded on your web browser to help you write without mistakes no matter what you're doing. It corrects mistakes on everything from Facebook posts to email messages. Your text is checked automatically as you type and the program monitors activity in an editor panel. You can also upload documents for a quick check.

8. Marketing Lessons: Primer

If you don't have much experience running your small business and navigating the digital world to coordinate a marketing strategy, read up on the basics with this free online learning program. The mobile app features five-minute lessons with practical advice about marketing basics. Use it as a guide or refresher to put together your marketing strategy for your tour, activity, and recreation business.

9. Blogging Guide: FirstSiteGuide.com

Blogging takes a good deal of effort and know-how to make the most of it. So if you're just about to launch a blog to compliment your business website or are completely new to blogging, use this free guide to learn how to launch, maintain, and grow the blog. The guide serves as a blueprint with step-by-step guidelines from expert bloggers, covering everything from customizing and designing the blog to adding content and blog promotion tactics.

10. Schedule Instagram Posts: Latergramme

Promoting your business via Instagram with a series of candid shots, behind-the-scenes images of tours and activities, or even professional shots to give viewers a glimpse of what you offer? Well, you no longer need to worry about posting to Instagram in real-time. Use Latergramme to schedule and manage your Instagram posts so you simply upload a collection of images, add captions, and let those posts get released on a certain date.

Use Latergramme to schedule and manage your Instagram posts, saving you time

11. Automated Social Media Posts: Buffer

Instead of worrying about the best time to schedule your Facebook posts and Twitter updates, just upload all of your content into the Buffer queue and let the program release those Facebook updates and tweets at the best time of the day. The posts are spaced out and posted at optimal times based on Buffer's algorithms, so you can free up administrative time on social media and just update the Buffer queue with fresh content whenever it's convenient for you.

12. Create Surveys: Free Survey Creator

Free Survey Creator makes it a breeze to collect customer feedback. Use this free tool to create a free survey to learn more about your guests and customers. You can post the survey form right on your website or embed it within a blog post to start collecting feedback from visitors. Creating the survey only takes a few minutes and the survey can be placed virtually anywhere on your site.

13. Free Stock Photos: Stock Up

If you need some high-quality images for a blog post or website page but don't want to pay a premium for them, check out the collection at Stock UP. The company adds 28 new photos each week and you can choose from 26 free photos on the site at any time.

14. License-Free Images: AllTheFreeStock.com

This is another free resource for a library of images, videos, music, and icons in one place. Use the free search tool in the left sidebar to search by keyword across multiple sites, including Finda.Photo and Unsplash Search—all in one place. Use keywords like "adventure", "travel," and "trips" to open up a library of high-quality images you can use free of charge.

15. Organize Projects: Trello

Create boards of information to share with employees and team members so that everyone is on the same page about a project or upcoming event. This program makes it easy to organize projects with visual materials and notes. You can also add members to each board so that everyone has access to it and can contribute on their own time. This can eliminate a lot of back-and-forth emailing and also makes it easy to create a to-do list for various projects.

16. Keep Track of Notes: Evernote Basic

If you currently email yourself random things you've found or ideas you think of on the go, make use of this app to store everything in one place to view and organize later. Evernote is designed with virtual "Notebooks" and "Notes" where you can capture screenshots, text, and links with ease. The free version allows you to use all of the basic features to improve productivity and stay organized. There's also a built-in chat feature to invite colleagues or employees to view a note you've created.

17. Synced Cloud Storage: Dropbox

Keep track of files, video clips, and other important documents by uploading everything to Dropbox and organizing it into folders. You can access all of these files from the cloud and authorize other users access to certain documents when you need to share them. Dropbox has a free and paid version depending on how much storage you need. The free version includes 2GB of space and simple file sharing features.

18. Organize Online Search Findings: Pocket

Capture everything from articles, video clips, photos, and anything else you find on your web search with Pocket. You can save directly from your browser or favorite apps to view or read later. This can make it easier to research something or just keep track of notes and ideas when you're exploring and brainstorming ideas for a project.

19. Small Business Templates and Tools: SCORE

Whether you want to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, put together a marketing budget, or read up on tax tips for running your small business, you'll find a wealth of free resources and guides available from the SCORE Association. Download free templates to create important business documents with little effort.

20. Expense Reporting: Expensify

Take the guesswork out of tracking and recording expenses with this app that makes it easy to categorize expenses based on different expense accounts you set up, while also linking card transactions with cash expense reports for accuracy. Make use of the SmartScan tool to upload and store a receipt to link it to each reported expense.

21. Back Up Your Files: Google Drive

If you currently use a variety of Google apps and want to keep track of documents, images, and other types of content in one place, make use of the Google Drive. The free version gives you 15GB of free Google online storage to store all types of media and files. You can pull up the files from any smartphone, tablet, or computer and also share files and folders with others via email.

The tourism industry is a series of ebbs and flows, as different trend rise and fall. And right now, if you're a tour or activity operator, you should be attentive to two evolving trends: overseas travel from India and adventure tourism.Here's a closer look at these trends and some ways tour and activity operators can capitalize on it:

Tap Into India

How do you capture the vastness that is India? According to Expedia of India, nearly half of Indian travelers make their travel decisions based on the activities available rather than the destination. More than half of those surveyed preferred to book the activities online in conjunction with hotel and flight bookings while 25 percent booked their activities at the venue itself.Tour and activity operators can position themselves as a "destination" for these types of travelers instead of relying solely on locals and interest from travelers who just happen to be in the area. Adventure seekers from both overseas and domestic markets may be planning their trips around a tour or experience you offer so you can tweak your marketing strategy to cater to this active market.

Adventure Tourism Travel Trends

As a tour and activity operator, you know there is a hungry market seeking out activities and experiences you offer. Some may even be choosing to travel to your location to participate in certain activities.According to Venngage, 88.2% of travelers find gastronomy a defining element of the brand image of travel destinations. If you're a food-tour operator, winery owner, or conduct any type of food and wine tours, you can attract more guests by promoting your experience as a "foodie destination" by highlighting your roots in the area and sharing information about your connections with local farmers or artisanal food suppliers.

Ways to Capitalize on These Trends

Whether you're a winery tour operator or conduct kayak excursions, there are several ways you can promote your business to travelers who are seeking out activities over a specific destination. Here are some ways to capitalize on the latest trends:

Harness the Power of Social Media

We Are Social reports a 26 percent growth rate of active social media users and 5 percent increase in active mobile social users in India. Becoming a part of the social conversation is more important than ever before. Increasing awareness about your company via social networks can help you attract travelers who are searching for activity ideas and want to learn more about your offerings. Deloitte Consulting, LLP, reports on consumer behavior trends that show digital channels are a "source of inspiration" when someone is planning a trip—approximately one-third of those surveyed stated they started daydreaming about a new holiday while using a social site or when they noticed a friend checking in to a destination.Skift highlights some of the ways top media travel brands are using social media platforms to their advantage, pointing out the value of travel videos, sharing high-quality images, and leading conversations on major social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Promoting your tours and activities by dropping links to descriptions on social media platforms, sharing photographs or videos of different experiences on social sites, and engaging in conversations on Twitter and Facebook could help you stay in mind of those travelers who are seeking out what you have to offer.

Maintain a Mobile-Friendly Site

In this blog post, marketing expert Frederico Gonzalo points to studies that indicate almost half of users browse or look for destination and vacation ideas on a mobile device and 37 percent of mobile travelers consume content related to 'things to do' on their trip.Making sure you have a mobile site available for prospective visitors to browse and book can also help. You need to have a mobile-friendly site available for these travelers who prefer to browse and book travel using a smartphone or other mobile device. Make sure you have a large "Book It" button placed on each page of the mobile site so the visitor doesn't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to make a reservation—it should only take a few screen swipes and taps to proceed with the checkout process.

You need to have a mobile-friendly site available for travelers who prefer to book travel using a smartphone or tablet

Provide Lodging and Flight Tips

Position your company as a go-to destination for a certain type of experience by encouraging travelers to take advantage of area lodging and easy access to the airport when planning their visit. Whether you choose to partner with area companies or just provide insider information on where to stay and how to get to your location, the goal is to give travelers as much information as possible to make their trip-planning process easier. In the case of Indian and overseas travelers, consider setting up a dedicated page or section on your website with plan-your-trip tips that include maps, links to area hotels and resorts, and other relevant information a prospective traveler might find useful if they are planning their entire trip around your tour and activity experience.

Build Your Customer List

Capture the attention of interested travelers the moment they visit your website by setting up a newsletter subscription form or encouraging visitors to register with the site for updates. Building your email list will make it that much easier to stay in touch with these prospective guests and steer them towards the booking and checkout process. You can promote the benefits and highlights of different tours via an email newsletter, send out special offers and promo codes throughout the year, or just send informational tips and guides about maximizing the experience with your company to subscribers. Focus on the activities and your company as a destination to keep in mind when booking travel in the upcoming year to cater to travelers looking for something new to do and experience this season.Use an online booking software program like Peek Pro to organize and maintain your customer list in a secure database. These programs make it easy to send out personalized emails automatically so you can keep up with your email marketing strategy with little effort.As more travelers start to make their booking decisions based on activities rather than a particular destination, you can tweak your marketing efforts to cater to these groups. Use these tips and strategies to capitalize on this emerging trend.

One of the most effective ways tour and activity CEOs can grow their business: positioning themselves as a trusted expert in the industry. It'll help expand your company's reach and can even generate more bookings each season. Spreading your wealth of industry knowledge by publishing articles about your business, leading speaking events that get posted online, or participating in online forums will increase your visibility to both customers and competitors — and can even make it easier to find your business in online searches, a valuable asset to any business.But becoming a trusted voice in your industry doesn't just happen over night; it'll require some work. So to get you on your way, here are some of the most effective ways tour and activity owners can become a trusted expert in their industry.

Lead a Discussion at a Speaking Event

Jeb Blount, author of People Buy You, explains that speaking gives you a chance to showcase your knowledge and increases your visibility and credibility. She states that “it creates the perception that you are an expert and authority in your field, and it creates an endless stream of qualified leads that come to you almost effortlessly."Reach out to small business networking event organizers and other groups in the area that host presentations, seminars, workshops and other events that require professional speakers. At these events, you can speak about the state of your industry, upcoming trends, or share insights about the local travel and tourism industry from an owner's perspective. For example, a kayak tours operator could speak at a local travel marketing conference about their success with their social media strategy. A ghost tours operator might lead a discussion for small business owners about seasonal trends and marketing strategies that have helped them increase bookings during a slow season.

Share Industry Insights on LinkedIn

Yvonne Halling, a bed and breakfast owner and coach for other B&B owners, posts tips and marketing strategies on her website. But she is also an active member of the Bed and Breakfast Guest House Owners Group on LinkedIn, a community of 1,800+ members in the hospitality business. A recent post talks about handling bookings during a slow season and she shares advice on how she grew her B&B by 7-times in just a single year.Positioning yourself as a thought leader on a subject that is relevant to fellow business owners and sharing your insights on LinkedIn will help you build your online presence and help to establish yourself as a leader in your industry. For instance, Bill Beaudoin, proprietor of the Alaskan Viewpoint Lodge, is a member of the same B&B LinkedIn group and posted about how the lodge has been open for only 53 days, yet has already amassed 250 Facebook "Likes" — a significant milestone for which he credits his active presence in this community.

Position yourself as a thought leader by sharing your insights and ideas on LinkedIn

Self-Publish a Book on Amazon

If you've had great success selling tours and activities or have extensive experience in the tourism industry, consider selling your tips and strategies as an eBook or print-on-demand title, following Gordon Bartlett's example. After retiring from a 28-year career in computer sales and computer management, Bartlett started a tour business in 1993 with just nine passengers in a rented van, eventually building it into a business that escorts passengers in a chartered bus around Arizona. In 2014, he published a book, How to Start and Operate a Profitable Tour Business: Make Money While Traveling and Guiding Tours, using details from his own success. In the book, Bartlett shares valuable information with illustrations, sample itineraries, and pricing guides to help other tour operators succeed — positioning Bartlett as an expert in the industry.Luckily, Amazon makes it easy to self-publish through the CreateSpace platform. You can upload your book, add a cover, and sell it on the Amazon Marketplace within a matter of days.

Host Workshops for Tour and Activity Seekers

If you have a group of veteran tour and activity guests — people who book tours and activities more than twice a year — consider hosting an educational workshop for them to learn more about the area, your business, and other interesting insights about the experiences you offer. Some of your loyal guests may be intrigued to learn more about kayaking tours, canopy adventures, rainforest excursions, and the history of boating in the area from an industry expert such as yourself. You can host these special, invitation-only events throughout the year, and also offer a discount on a tour packages to those who bring a friend.

Host a Training Event for Small Business Owners

Shift your focus to fellow industry professionals by hosting a training event or seminar. If you have several years of experience in the tourism and hospitality industry, you could position yourself as an expert by sharing your wealth of knowledge with a PowerPoint presentation, webinars, and by creating a training program for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to get started. For example, a kayak tour operator may share insights about how to start a kayaking business or challenges to be aware of when entering the market. Or, a food tour operator may host a training event for aspiring food tour guides.

Sponsor Local Events

Serve as one of the main sponsors of a sporting event, fitness competition, or travel events in the area to position yourself as a leader in the industry. For instance, Florida-based Sunrise Surf Shop, which offers surfing and SUP lessons in addition to selling surfboards and accessories, stays active in its Jacksonville Beach community by sponsoring local surf contests, charity events, and sports affiliated teams by running clothing drives, hosting surf camps for children with autism, and finding other ways to give back to the local community.Seek out connections with local event organizers and activity leaders who are looking for sponsors, or send out inquiries about sponsorship opportunities for any upcoming events that compliment your business. You would be able to promote your company logo and website on their marketing materials and the organizer may ask for a few words from you to promote the event. This can be a great way to connect with the community and establish your business a leader in the area.

Run or Attend Professional Networking Events

Build up your professional network by attending local networking events designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs, or serving as an event organizer of a networking event in your community. Many of these events are posted on Facebook and serve as business casual social mixers for professionals across all industries. You can introduce yourself as the owner of your company and network with marketing, business development, technology, and financial professionals across different industries. Ultimately, establishing a strong network of contacts can help you build credibility in your market and local community.

Post Webinars and Videos Online

Whether you promote these presentations and video clips as "Notes from the Owner" or set up a separate section of your website dedicated to "industry news," share content about the industry straight from the owner's desk for site visitors to view at their leisure. You could also share this type of content on LinkedIn to attract viewers in your industry and establish yourself as an expert in the field. Blog posts or industry-specific articles published in industry publications with links to this content could further your reach and help you earn 'expert status' in your field.

Final Thoughts

From hosting training events to self-publishing a book, there are several ways you can establish yourself as a trusted expert in the travel and tourism industry. Use these tips to develop a community outreach and marketing strategy to build your online and offline presence.

You've spent hours upon hours painstakingly creating a professional website to attract customers. You've made sure the photos are vivid. You consistently update your content to keep them engaged. You've smartly made it easier for them to book an activity or tour directly through your website. Now, make sure all that work isn't for naught, and make sure your checkout process is equally cared for. Statistics from the Baymard Institute reveal that more than two-thirds of shoppers end up abandoning their shopping cart at checkout. This means that two out of three customers may only work their way through part of your checkout flow process.Whether it's because of technical issues, losing interest, or any type of interruption while the customer is online, you need to do whatever you can to create a streamlined checkout process that customers are eager to complete. Here are some best practices for optimizing the checkout process to maximize bookings for your tour and activities business.

1. Include teaser video snippets of the activity or tour.

Short teaser videos help to engage and entice potential customers during the sales process. Kissmetrics reports that anywhere from 64 to 85 percent of video viewers are more likely to buy your product after watching a product video. It's a simple and powerful way to share your offerings while moving the customer through the buying process with ease.

Best approach:

Place these videos right next to the "Book It!" button. The videos don't have to be lengthy—a minute or less, in fact—since they are essentially teaser videos giving the traveler a taste of what they're in for. Watch our webinar How Video Boosts Your Brand presented by our guest Chris Torres, an expert of tourism marketing. In the webinar Chris explains how to use video with any budget.

2. Make ratings and reviews more obvious.

Increase customer confidence by making reviews and ratings readily available within the listing. According to a survey by ReportLinker on the trustworthiness of online reviews, 59% of respondents find online reviews as trustworthy as a friend’s review.

Best approach:

Embed a list of reviews or star ratings prominently on your website, somewhere close to the banner and your "Book It!" button. This will encourage customers to read positive reviews before making their purchase—and without having to drift away from the call to action.

Show off testimonials and reviews all over your website, especially near your Book Now buttons

3. Include related bookings of interest.

Sites like Amazon have capitalized on the concept of generating more sales per visitor by sharing related product information or recommended products during the checkout process. For example, Amazon shoppers are exposed to Similar Products at checkout to provide personalized recommendations, thanks to Amazon's patented recommendation algorithm. The concept is simple: shoppers who are already in the mindset of buying are more likely to continue buying. FuturePay reports on this behavior, pointing out, "The more time customers have to contemplate their purchase, the more likely they will rethink the purchase. One-click shopping is one option to increase impulsive buying behavior within checkout."

Best approach:

If you use Peek Pro's online booking system, your customers can browse multiple activities and rentals at once if you utilize the Bundles feature. You can set up multiple activities and products available during the booking process in the backend so that customers see even more options as they proceed through checkout—and confirm multi-bookings with ease. Another option is to set up Add-Ons to your activities or rentals.

4. Increase customer confidence with a stepped checkout process.

Even though you want to collect as much customer information as possible, automate the registration process with the checkout flow so that customers don't have to spend extra time setting up an account and then providing payment details for each booking.

Best approach:

Make things easy for your customer by only requiring them to provide contact information once and using a stepped process to get them through checkout. Amazon does a great job with this by taking shoppers through a step-by-step process with a "Sign In," "Shipping & Payment," "Gift Options," and "Place Order" sequence.

5. Disclose discounts or dropped prices upfront.

If you're offering discounted tours and activities as part of a seasonal special or have a discount code available for first-time travelers, make sure the site visitor knows about it well before they hit the checkout page. eConsultancy reports that 27 percent of shoppers surveyed abandoned carts because they were prompted to enter a coupon code and they didn't have one—possibly upon seeing the promo code box.

Best approach:

Reduce the risk of cart abandonment by deliberately including a link to the deal or other details about the discount on the homepage. This way, the customer doesn't have to click back to the site or dig around for the code or discount when they are ready to go ahead and book.

Final Thoughts

Generate more bookings each season with a streamlined checkout flow that helps increase customer confidence and, when possible, prompts customers to book more than they initially intended. Keeping customers engaged, providing just enough information, and recommending add-ons or other activities as an up-sell are just a few ways to generate more bookings and increase revenue from each completed booking. Also take advantage of Peek's Abandoned Booking feature, which automatically sends customers who abandoned their booking a (customizable) email with a link to their booking flow!

Offer winery tours? The one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is no longer. Want to watch your booking calendar fill up? Then it's time to step out of your marketing box to help generate more interest and excitement in your business. After all, your customers are a mixed bag—locals and travelers, men and women, groups and solo wine aficionados—so you need to start developing pitches and offerings just as diverse.But don't worry. Stepping out of the box isn't as hard as it seems. Here are five lucrative marketing tips to get you on your way to selling more winery tours.

1. Invite guests to your site for non-tour activities.

Just like it's easier to sell umbrellas when it's raining, you can boost interest in tours by getting prospective customers to visit your site first. But how do you that? By hosting exclusive wine tasting events, wine appreciation nights, or other events. The idea is to introduce them to the winery and get them comfortable with your business. This way they're more likely to inquire further about tour packages and other services you offer.Another idea: Promote these special events to guests who have already booked one or more tours with you as a "guest appreciation night," offering a discount on a future winery tour for themselves—or a friend—just for attending. Better yet, offer these type of special events as add-ons while booking a tour.Make sure to collect all attendee information in a database so you can send out customized emails thanking the guest for attending and follow up with promotions, special offers, or invites to future events. Use an online booking software program that allows you to collect customer information quickly and sorts it into a database for easy access at any time.

2. Host a series of winery tours or themed events.

Keep your offerings fresh—keeping both seasonal visitors and past guests intrigued—by hosting a series of winery tours around specific themes throughout the year. For example, you could host a harvest-season tour during the fall when visitors are flocking to the area for leaf peeping tours. Another option is to host summer wine tasting events that include live music performances from local artists or a movie night on the grounds of the winery. The Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, hosts a summer concert series in conjunction with its tours and gives guests the option to purchase a complete wine dinner package to enjoy a meal while listening to the music.Or, you could host a grape stomp where visitors could visit the stomping ground and book a specialty tour. For example, Orfila Vineyards and Winery in Escondido, California, hosts an annual Grape Stomp during the late summer months that includes live music, a wine tasting, and catered food.Whatever you do, keep it interesting, fun, and original.

Whatever you do, keep it interesting, fun and original.

3. Maintain a blog.

When customers aren't visiting your winery, make sure they stay engaged with your business by creating a blog. But it doesn't just help customers stay engaged; creating and sharing engaging content also helps you build credibility as a winemaker or tour operator in your industry. Small Business Trends points out that maintaining a blog is, “an opportunity for you to engage customers, as well as to demonstrate your vast knowledge of the industry."Sure, you'll want to share information about your winery and what to expect on each tour, but mix it up with posts including an in-depth history of the winery and grounds, wine pairing tips, recipes, and other informational content. This will help to attract a casual website visitor—not just someone interested in booking a tour—and makes them a potential customer. Take a look at the wine-heavy recipes available on the blog by Adirondack Winery in Lake George, New York. The company shares a variety of gourmet recipes infused with wines they sell and have even included a "related products" feature at the bottom of each post so that the reader can purchase the wine in one click. You could do something similar by adding a button to book a tour or sell items individually after each post.

4. Create and distribute content.

In addition to blogging, consider the value of promoting informational products such as downloadable guides, maps of the winery, video clips, or mini booklets and guides that site visitors can view or download to learn more about the winery. Sharing free information can spark interest in your offerings without direct marketing. Visitors have the freedom to download content they might find useful—and may even share it with friends on their social networks.Even something as simple as a PDF guide with high-quality pictures of the winery and a timeline telling your story can be valuable to a casual site visitor. Just make sure to include contact information and links to your site within the guide, booklet, or video clip description so that the reader or viewer can head back to your site to make a reservation or contact you with ease.

5. Promote group outings and corporate event packages.

Host events or experiences to accommodate for larger groups and corporate trips so that you can reach a wider market. If your winery is located within driving distance of a convention center or high-traffic business areas, you may be able to capture the market of corporate travelers looking for ways to entertain clients visiting the area or to treat employees to a mini-getaway.Use an online booking software program like Peek Pro that allows you to set up tiered pricing and multiple pricing configurations for different groups, tours, and seasons. When you want to up-sell without pressure, consider including add-ons such as merchandise purchases or tour upgrades with each type of tour offering. A software program designed to accommodate add-ons will allow you to include various types of add-ons within a few clicks.From offering specialty wine tours to sharing custom content about your winery, there are several ways to attract and engage customers to your winery each season. Use these five marketing strategies and ideas to promote your business and keep that calendar booked.