People all around the world can now access information about places that before would have seemed unreachable, and can research, consider, compare and purchase through the click of a button. That makes travel that much easier for the consumer, but more difficult for the marketer. Our recent study indicates that American, British and Canadian travelers make more than 120 to 160 visits to travel sites in the 45 days leading up to a booking.
With so many ways to reach the consumer throughout the path to purchase, the digital marketer has a challenging task to find out how to influence them. We want to make it easy and share our top four digital marketing tools to reach, engage and inspire travelers.
- Start with Data – Data is the most important tool for a marketer. We use data to understand and engage our target audiences – using targeting to reach the right traveler at the right time – optimize our campaigns in real time and deliver measurable results such as conversion reporting to demonstrate real business impact.
- Use Interactivity to Engage with Travelers – A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it’s often not enough to cut through the clutter and engage with new visitors. Using interactivity helps involve the user and keep the brand top of mind. You can read about our campaign with Destination BC, where we created a dynamic and interactive online campaign featuring an integrated Concierge Service microsite that gives people the opportunity to pick their ideal holiday.
- Inspire Travel in an Authentic Way – There is a lot of competition from travel brands to get the traveler’s attention and influence them to book, especially when they are considering multiple destinations. It’s important for travel marketers to focus on what makes their brand or destination unique, and to reach the travel shopper in an authentic way.
- Always Consider Opportunity for Partnership – Last, but certainly not least, is partnership, which is a core tenant for our business and industry at large, and a key tool to bring scale to your efforts. Consider the opportunities you have for partnership – whether with your destination marketing organization, industry influencers, online travel agencies, and more – to cast a wider net and reach into consumers where they are online.
For more digital marketing best practices and to hear about our campaigns, subscribe to our blog via the form above. We are coming out with more products soon to help you to reach our audience in more ways – stay tuned!
