When you think of digital marketing in the travel industry, you might picture static Facebook ads of sandy beaches or bustling outdoor markets. While that still has its place, cutting edge trends take things further, personalizing advertising in numerous ways. Digital marketers like Charles Lubbat trend watch so you don’t have to, so here are the latest travel marketing trends to leverage.
360° Views and Virtual Reality
Envision realistic virtual reality expectations. Forget science fiction. Give your users a view they don’t need special glasses or a glove to view. It looks cool in movies, but isn’t realistic in mass marketing.
On your website, provide visitors the opportunity to watch a 360° video of the hotel room, vacation rental or boat cabin they’re considering. Shoot one video per room. A virtual tour of an entire house would shut down the memory on most computers.
With any virtual tour option, design for the average or slightly out of date user. You won’t sell more if less people can use the tour. Plus, you’ll turn off users who couldn’t watch. With respect to the bevy of mobile users, offering a low resolution version of each video provides them an option to view easily on their phone. It also affords everyone an opportunity to view the higher resolution video later from a computer.
You can work your digital marketing into your company’s convention and conference booth presentations, too. For example, Virgin Holidays used Google Cardboard products to create a 360° video of one of its Mexico resorts. Virgin’s project resulted in increased bookings for the resort and a spillover increase for others.
Big Data, Bigger Impacts
Big data covers every aspect of your products. Its variety coupled with its velocity and volume provide a window into the wants and needs of your competition, customers and vendors. If you want to sell more, harness your data – and your competition’s. Information agencies cull data from firms using sources like retail sales, company websites and social media.
For digital marketing to consumers, you can discover the favorite restaurant chains of your frequent hotel guests. This lets you sell advertising to the chain on your hotel’s website and offer discounts together to draw more business. The restaurant might offer a discount with proof of check-in or your hotel might offer a discount with proof of dinner receipt from the past day or week. A further benefit of co-advertising is cost reduction. Big data makes it easy for you to offer relevant content and offers.
Online and In-store
Cover every channel. Multi-channel marketing helps you capture more sales. Some people want to walk in and buy, some want to book online. The key to marketing better is to provide an equally great experience using both methods. Whether you’re an airline, travel agency or hotel, offering a stellar online booking experience sells more.
Use these tips to market your travel business. You can learn more each week from Charles Lubbat in his blog.
