The Importance Of Omnichannel Marketing In The Travel Industry
Sergio Alvarez is a performance marketing expert, digital attribution leader, CEO and founder of AI Media Group .
Marketing in the travel industry is complex. While 90% of travel customers search online, only 82% book through the same digital channel. Although sites like Booking.com and TripAdvisor receive millions of visits each month, hotel sites still receive two-thirds of all bookings. It's fragmented, and can overwhelm the average travel industry marketer.
Why should you do multi-channel marketing when orders are coming from your website? Because the direct selection path is not at all straightforward and all the intermediate paths are the real key to success.
Understand your customer journey In a $1.2 trillion industry, 63% of the travel market is online; And while this percentage is growing every year, most customer research is divided into different digital and physical channels. Your customers will use all of these channels when ordering. Understanding how it happened is the first step to staying in front of their eyes.
Your marketing strategy can range from social media and paid advertising (such as Google Ads) to earned media (such as PR events). Data is the foundation for planning exactly how to implement your marketing mix, and if used correctly, it can give you an edge over your competition over what you can get through other channels. Using the right data from digital channels like paid search, paid social, broadcast TV and automated programs can help you understand where and how customers are engaging with your digital marketing efforts.
Recent data shows that there is a divide between travel consumers who spend less than a week researching flights before booking and those who spend weeks or months. However, there is one common denominator between the two groups: searches are primarily online, with multiple digital touches between the start of the search and the end of the booking. Understanding the power of digital marketing in the travel industry can help you meet potential customers and convert them into bookings at each of these digital touchpoints.
Many channels, many approaches
When using multi-channel marketing, it's important to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, much social media is driven by images, and search engine results (and many forms of paid marketing) are driven by the search terms users use. Each method must be approached separately for maximum benefit and access.
Since social media marketing is driven by visual content, brands should focus on creating engaging videos and images that are consistent with their brand message and easy to share. Engaging with users by responding to comments and messages immediately and personally is essential Instead, personalization is the key to email campaigns. Be sure to use the recipient's name and mention past purchases or interactions with your brand. When creating an effective search engine marketing campaign, it's important to identify the keywords that users are searching for and create ads that match those words.
In my experience, one of the most effective strategies when integrating multiple channels is to assign skills to each phase of the campaign and ensure all teams involved are highly collaborative and focused on common goals. While marketing skills can be outsourced, training people within your company by investing in continuing education and professional development is also an option.
Containers and bulk allocations
While each marketing channel should have its own strategy based on how it generates traffic and engagement, be aware of the silo effect. It is one thing to maintain a proper and distinct strategy for each channel, but another thing to differentiate them and their goals from each other.
There will always be some overlap between different marketing channels, but this needs to be carefully and consciously managed to ensure your overall goals are met. Your social media posts may get a lot of attention, but does that make them the most valuable funding channel? Is it really the source of conversion bookings, or do other channels play the same role?
A useful way to answer this question is through full attribution. If you don't measure individual exposures, matches, and all the ways your strategies lead to eventual conversions, you'll never know what worked and what didn't. End-to-end attribution means you track and analyze the entire customer journey to determine what impact each marketing channel has on overall business results. This means avoiding last-click benchmarks, which only count the last marketing touch before conversion. Here are some best practices to keep in mind.
• Define your goals and key performance indicators. Before you start referral tracking, you need to know what you want to achieve. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) and set measurable goals for each marketing channel.
• Track across all touchpoints. To see how well your marketing funnel is performing, you need to track every touch point along the customer journey. This includes everything from social media interactions to email opens to websites and navigation.
• Using multi-touch referral form. Instead of relying solely on last-click referrals, use a multi-touch referral model that provides credit for all touchpoints in the customer journey. There are several models to choose from, including linear, time-lapse, and location-based.
• Analysis and control. When you have data across all touchpoints and use a multi-touch reference model, analyze the data and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Identify the channels that generate the most conversions and allocate resources accordingly
Multi-channel applause
Marketing in the travel industry is not an easy task. However, you can harness the power of omnichannel marketing when you understand the customer journey and their touchpoints. Once you've done this, identify the channels and strategies to use to fulfill them across these touchpoints, and ensure through end-to-end attribution that each of your channels work together to achieve your overall goals.
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