Planning for Social, Local, and Mobile As a Travel Marketer - By Ritesh Gupta

The combination of social, local, and mobile is being described as a weapon that can immensely strengthen marketers’ arsenal. The convergence of these outlets is pushing travel companies to work on their tactics and constantly test options to see how they can leverage these platforms to reach both in-market and travellers in the planning phase.
 
Technology is allowing for faster innovation, but it's also important for travel companies to prioritise where they invest.
 
Assessing the current trends, Lucas Cobb, director, Mobile Product Development, MMG Worldwide, says, “I don’t foresee a truly effective strategy being executed within either of these channels individually.”
 
Talking about social, local, and mobile working in isolation or as part of an integrated initiative, Cobb says, “There are components of each where an impact could be made, but none would be as significant, or effective long-term, as doing something holistic. There is just too much cross-over. Local search drives mobile traffic and local action, social content consumed via mobile drives local action, local action drives social interaction and mobile referrals, etc. Marketers need to see these things as a unique ecosystem and plan to address the potential of them as one.”
 
Cobb, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel USA 2012, to be held in San Francisco (March 5-6) next year, spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about the same in detail. Excerpts:
 
The convergence of two technological shifts – with the rise of the smartphone use and the popularity of social media – has created a seismic shift in consumer behaviour. What new trends do you foresee as this convergence is now a part of consumers’ lifestyle?
 
From a marketer’s standpoint, I see this convergence trending in four ways.

First, time spent with our deep, information rich websites will become less and less as fewer users rely on traditional means to access them. It is critical to have content formatted for smaller screens and tactile navigation.

Second, our content is not under our control anymore as social applications have empowered the consumer to define our product. We need to listen and know what is being said and have a defined response plan.

Third, it’s more important now than ever before to cultivate a vibrant and engaged community on Facebook. 100 loyal advocates will spread your good message faster than 10,000 sweepstakes prize hunters.
 
Lastly, cross-pollinate your channels. Leverage social dialogue to make your web and mobile sites more sticky.
 
Deploy a mobile search programme that includes paid placement and organic optimisation for local market terms.

How can the travel industry leverage the combination of location, activity, demographic and time targeting?
 
I believe the key to any successful strategy addressing these elements has to be formed with delivering contextual relevance as the guiding objective. For example, consumer context at a base level starts with the interface used to interact with you. Phone and tablet interfaces require a different approach in order to be useful, or relevant, to
the end-user. So, simply versioning your website to fit the parameters of the device accessing it is being contextually relevant.

Extending this principle you should then look at contextual factors beyond the device to continue to support relevance. Geo-fencing and hyper-local advertising approaches are examples of where the location of a user’s device determines the message and offer structure of advertising displayed. This type of intelligence does not have to be restricted to advertising, though. As developers and distributors of our own mobile content we should be leveraging the same approach. For instance, how does the initial page of your mobile site render if the user is viewing it from out of state versus from within 5 miles? What bits of content would be most relevant, packages and offers or maps and directions?

Further leveraging these data points can be compared to how direct marketers have leveraged database indicators for decades. If the presence of a certain data point is an indication of potential action then it should be used to trigger messaging when such messaging will be most impactful.

I think the best example of how this would work from a mobile or social perspective could go like the following:

Loyal customer Bill has been a friend of The Golfer’s Resort Facebook page for years. He usually visits the resort multiple times from Spring to Summer. He monitors status changes and updates regularly, but never comments and rarely interacts. He just likes being in the know. Occasionally Bill spots an update related to activities on the
resort’s courses. These are the things he tends to ‘like’ and when he is inspired to visit again he’ll click through from his smartphone to the resorts mobile site. Since the site is setup to leverage the Facebook open graph it dynamically renders a welcome message to Bill, thanks him for his recent ‘like’ and presents a golf oriented offer.
 
Travel companies have been rewarding customers for their affiliation towards social networks and location-based services. A lot was expected from location plus social, and geo-location check-in campaigns were initiated regularly. How do you think the travel industry leveraged such trend in 2011?
 
I’m not a strong believer that the function of ‘check-in’ had a significant impact on travel brands in 2011. I think there were still too many players in the market with fractional audiences and without enough commonality to support a single strategic approach. The environment has just been too unwieldy to execute effectively within. I do see this changing over the last few months though as Facebook is taking a much more active approach to supporting and incenting this activity through it’s mobile pages and apps. If their acquisition of Gowalla is any indication, Facebook has plans to make more of this functionality. With the market potential of Facebook behind it, I think check-in becomes very relevant in 2012 and should be a key component of mobile and social strategies going forward.

As for the other players, without a strong value-proposition they will continue to struggle acquiring users and positioning their services as much more than a niche activity that requires little more than monitoring from marketers.
 
Even as geo- location apps are enhancing their offerings with new features, it is being mentioned that their growth rate hasn’t really taken off in a big way compared to last year. How should the travel industry go about such opportunities considering the current geo-social behaviour or the adoption rate of such offerings?
 
I believe there is opportunity to be a part of the action, again with the caveat that it is an active but somewhat limited audience, if you are a rental car company you could see return doing this, if you have an active and popular restaurant or club you could see return doing this, if you are an attraction…etc. If your selling luxury hotel rooms
or trying to get people on planes or boats, these geo-local apps are probably not the most effective channel to drive conversion.

On the flip-side, destination marketers probably have the most to gain from a strong program within geo-location products. The viral reach of in-destination content posted to these networks could be an effective driver of referral and inquiry from a user’s extended network. But, like challenges in other social mediums, quantifying the value of
these referrals to offset the expense of the program would pose a challenge.

There is also potential for hoteliers in this channel, especially for brands with a wide footprint, strong loyalty program and a product that appeals to a younger affluent demographic.

I’d recommend keeping tabs on how Facebook integrates or modifies the Gowalla service. If they make a big play in this space we’ll see usage and potential return jump dramatically.

Sales and promotions are termed as the most popular types of information that mobile consumers are looking for when engaging with location-based services. Also, local deals are increasingly an integral part of the mobile shopping experience. What do you make of the mobile shopping behaviour especially from the travel industry’s perspective as this juncture?
 
I’d argue that deals provided by location based services have a minor impact on overall mobile shopping activity. Mobile shopping is much bigger. It’s a phenomenon much akin to the first iterations of ecommerce and it’s scaring the wits out of traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Again they are challenged to compete with online retailers for widely available products, but this time the buyer is in their store using their price as a starting point. Look at how Amazon’s latest price comparison app has been received by the retail community. There are some chains considering a ban on in-store phone usage.

Local deals tend to be more service or entertainment oriented and are limited in distribution by quantity and provider. They are also akin to taking out a short-term high interest loan. They can be a quick fix but not a long-term solution. For the travel industry I’d say local deals, whether purchased through mobile or otherwise, only make sense where there is potential for a tertiary spend by the consumer. Casino hotels, amenity rich resorts, and attractions with retail concepts may be able to see incremental return. Maybe.

Let’s look at another angle. The OTAs are seeing a high percentage of their mobile conversion coming from users looking to book same day accommodations. Orbitz announced this percentage at nearly 65%. The others have related similar numbers. My guess would be that many of these reservations are coming from consumers who are already in a destination or on their way to or through it. While this doesn’t fit the local deals model exactly, it is a trend that the industry should be responding to. Across the board travel product providers need mobile content and mobile search optimisation programmes that can position them to capture the local/ last minute buyer directly.
 
 
Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel USA 2012
 
Lucas Cobb, director, Mobile Product Development, MMG Worldwide is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel USA 2012, to be held in San Francisco (March 5-6) next year.
 
For more info, click here
 
Or contact:
Gina Baillie
GM
EyeforTravel
London, UK: +44 (0)207 375 7197
US Toll Free: 800 814 3459 ext. 7197
gina@eyefortravel.com

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