Content and social media distribution are vital to reaching
and converting travellers finds a new report from EyeforTravel, which can bedownloaded for free now.
Quality content marketing and a strong social media presence
is helping brands build loyal customer bases and underpinning more effective
sales and marketing funnels according to EyeforTravel’s new Converting the
Customer report, which can be downloaded here.
Strong content can not only be used to make travellers aware
of a destination or brand but it also gives brands critical clues about
consumer intent that can then be used to build out their marketing. Combining
this effectively with social media strategy and sharing tools turbocharges it
and is giving brands a critical edge.
“What
helped us boost conversion is that we managed to build up a sustainable brand
loyalty over social media so people are in contact with our brand every day or
when they see things in their news feed,” says David Armstrong, CEO of
HolidayPirates. “That’s why we have managed to have a lot of brand traffic and
organic traffic on our website and on our mobile app, which helps conversion.”
HolidayPirates,
however, has taken social to another level building its brand almost entirely
through the medium. “We invest in content and viral content on social media
[and] after six years we have over 30 million monthly visits, almost 10 million
Facebook fans, over 10 million app downloads and last year an estimated TTV
[total transaction value] of €362m,” Armstrong told the EyeforTravel Europe summit
2018. This growth has come despite not spending anything on search
engine marketing and last year, his business reckons it only paid for 7% of its
traffic.
It helped, he said, that the business started as a
travel blog recommending fantastic deals. Now, algorithms and technology do
much of this leg work, and the results are posted on social media to hook in
customers and stimulate viral sharing.
“Our recipe for virality has four components – an
entertaining tone of voice, transparency, to be relevant with content deals and
a call to action, and being controversial to foster engagement,” he added. “You
have to inspire people.”
This shows that social media advertising and viral
content can draw eyes to you, even if you are a smaller operator, such as Eurail,
which sells all-in-one train tickets for Europe.
“Our struggle is our brand awareness,” said Roel
Verhagen, head of e-commerce. “We are not top of mind when you think about
travel…but we do have 2,500,000 in traffic a month. Our return on -investment
on ad spend is hugely important.”
They came up with the marketing idea of creating two
videos telling the story of a pair who met by chance in Amsterdam and travelled
Europe together – with longer-play and short versions for paid adverts and
social media pages. At the same time, the team started using Facebook Pixel to
track customer response to this advertising and finding out where people fell
out of the funnel through seven stages, from being made aware of Eurail, to
having purchased a ticket.
“At a certain moment, the return on advertising spend
was better on our own channels like Facebook, and we had success with the
engagement rate,” says Verhagen. The videos of Chloe’s story and Justin’s story
rose to 11 million views, and now the next video is in production with the firm
Boomerang, and a permanent part of marketing policy.
Adding social and review functionality onto your
digital experience doesn’t have to be intimidating either. A growing number of
new digital media companies in this space allow smart partnerships to help
host, monitor and improve social interactions.
Dan Christian, chief digital officer of The Travel
Corporation, believes in harnessing the potential of advertising via social
media recommendation. “Mary Meeker’s latest trend report says selling on social
platforms is very real – people see social content and make purchases,” he
told the EyeforTravel Europe Summit 2018 in London. “We were looking
to get all of our travel directors active on social media.”
For his group – comprising 30 international brands –
the solution was a partnership with a Toronto-based start-up, PostBeyond, which
connects enthusiastic employee advocates with potential customers on social
media, and Feefo, an independent online review site.
“PostBeyond was a tool that our team could use and
with one click could share – their SaaS [software as a service] model worked
perfectly. We also needed user generated reviews – independent reviews from
people who had been on our trip [with Feefo]. We see consumer behavior changing
and we won’t be relevant if we aren’t where they are spending their time, and
we need the tools to do that.”
These case studies from the report demonstrate that
content and social are intertwined with success in the marketing funnel for brands
of all shapes and sizes. To learn more about how to drive up your
conversion rates and revenues download the new Converting the Customer report for free now by clicking here. This
report includes findings on:
- How to measure and understand intent to purchase.
- What content and marketing will drive up conversions.
- How to retarget and remarket in a way that brings customers back.
- How to use different channels effectively.
- Why social proof is critical and how it can dramatically raise revenues.
This report is part of our Behavioral Analytics Report
Series, where we seek to uncover how brands can understand the modern traveler
to drive higher conversion rates, lower acquisition costs, and ultimately give
them the best possible product at the right price. You can find the first
report, Understanding
the Travel Consumer by clicking here. You can also sign up to
EyeforTravel’s newsletter to be notified when our third report in
the series, which covers dynamic and personalized pricing, is released.
