Possibly one of the leading examples of Social Media Marketing (SMM) in the UK at the moment is TRIPADVISOR. Firstly, it’s important to remember that these 1000’s of reports from the general public have been uploaded along with their own photos, for no benefit to themselves, they are just happy to tell people their personal experience be it good, bad or funny. This enables other people to use it as a research and recommendation bible for discovering the best places to visit and stay. Secondly, purchase decisions are then being made from the submitted comments, I’m sure some of the hotels and destinations are thankful that not everyone is aware of this particular site!
Excusing the pun…where are we going with this…well lets look at the business purpose of these SMM forums, reports, twitters and blogs which engage these customers and influencers before, during and after their trips.
It is believed now that over 90% of all travel purchase decisions are made with SMM influence, after either searching online for destination reviews or from a family or friend referral site, which often comes from reading their experiences through their Facebook or MySpace pages or looking at Flickr photos and YouTube video clips. So if you accept this is true, then if you don’t strategically engage with these people in the zones they are using today, then they won’t be booking with you, it will be with someone else who is!
The role of the traditional travel agent who can influence customers with their personal experiences face to face still has impact and as we all know, word-of-mouth advertising delivers bookings. But in the online 21st century, its “word of mouse” that has far wider and more impact on the travel purchase decision. So if you’re still resisting change, it’s too late, you are already probably being talked about online, the question now is, what are they saying, how are you monitoring it and most importantly how are you going to respond to it?
With the latest software, it doesn’t take much change to start making a difference to your profile and bookings with SMM. How much more impact and business would you generate by getting your staff to write stories about their own travel experiences and recommendations, then submit these agency referrals to all the SMM blog and forum sites with general photo and video connections that link back to your website and feed directly onto pages offering your own ongoing deals to these destinations and hotels, this makes a purchase decision so much easier for the client.
It must be pointed out that there is no simple ROI on SMM, however done well and more importantly correctly, it is proven to massively enhance your SEO and creates links to your website from the search engine natural listings, ultimately this saves you fortunes on Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns. Customer engagement is a good and fair measurement for SMM, how often do people comment on, link, trust and visit your site, these all ultimately lead to sales, but not directly, so don’t try and measure short term sales you will be disappointed.
One of the most interesting areas developing for travel is Twitter. Could this be the new Teletext, which revolutionised the travel industry in the 90’s? Twitter with its immediacy, impact and essentially a good following can create impulse buys from late offers online delivered directly to people’s phones and computers in real time. Then using clever tiny-URL’s leading the follower back to find out more information, interestingly the airlines are already offering deals to their followers on Twitter, how soon will it be before the rest of the industry catch on?
6 Comments
Interesting post concerning twitter and travel. Like any technology, twitter needs to be used in a way that takes advantage of its strengths so just re-packaging your website through twitter probably won’t be too effective.
I’ve seen some good examples to improve customer service @ http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/statuses/1037023985, but not too many have effectively used it to market a particular product or service. To respond to customers 24/7 however requires a fair effort and cost.
We are experimenting with twitter as a distribution channel for our partner businesses on bakpaker.com @ http://twitter.com/bakpaker. Currently we just post our latest deals but we are developing a twitterbot that people can query in real time EG “what HOSTEL DISCOUNTS do you have in BARCELONA at the moment” should result at response with http://tinyurl.com/a4wn2h included. (CAPS was only to highlight what keywords the bot would understand).
Anyway - it might be huge or a total flop. Who knows until you try it!
We specialise is development for the travel sector and recommend this very thing, engaging with the community. But, easier said than done and there must be a good strategy behind it.
Not so sure about Twitter, good for customer service maybe, who knows. Interesting your comment on a 90% influence by SMM - have you any online sources for this?
cheers
Lawrence
if you have a route to market we have some great software to make this happen fairly simply and would love to white label or work with you on developing this.
SMM is made for the travel industry, most of them just dont know it yet.
Unable to get a contact for you, you need to set up a gravtar!
cheers
Dave
Had a look at your http://twitter.com/bakpaker page and yes you seem to have the right ideas, are you linking this to any facebook groups throug friendfeed or we are just playing with ping.it
would love to know if you have had any bookings as a result, i booking proves it works and then its justb a matter of fine tuning to the right markets to improve on that.
Let me know
At NileGuide (http://www.nileguide.com/), we believe that as the volume of user-generated continues to grow exponentially with platforms like TripAdvisor, Twitter, Facebook, etc., the value of content curation, filtering, and organizing will be ever more important. People need to be able to cut through the clutter to find what’s interesting and relevant for them (and not necessarily some person they don’t know).
Great thoughts Ian. Twitter and SMM certainly have a strong role to play in influencing a buyer’s decision before making a purchase. But I see them playing an even bigger role in the airline market, as opposed to the hotels market. This is because of the need for close to real-time updates due to external factors like weather causing delays in flights etc.
Already, airlines like JetBlue and Southwest do a great job engaging their customers on Twitter. But how do you see a holistic Web 2.0 strategy for airlines panning out, which would leverage on SMM, SEO/SEM and tools like Twitter?