27 May 2009

Travelmole Guest Comment: 'The internet is the centre pin to your business'

Total Media head of digital, Nick Oram, explains why he believes the internet means more to your business than you might think...


"Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, once said: "The travel industry provides a wonderful reminder, if anyone still needed one, of how integral the internet has become in the life of todayââ¬â¢s consumer. The internet is now officially a mainstream form of media and companies who still believe it can only form a ââ¬Ëœnicheââ¬â¢ part of any consumer-focused strategy will soon find themselves marginalised as the 21st century progresses."

We know this though donââ¬â¢t we?

Thing is, itââ¬â¢s even more than that. Itââ¬â¢s not just another medium or set of media to add to a plan, itââ¬â¢s the framework for nearly all communication with your customers, from the initial contact all the way through to e-CRM (re-messaging, email, mobile, social media, etc). And all of this via your site, the centre pin to all activity.

This becomes business critical when you consider the consumer journey. Research has found that it takes the average consumer one month to plan their holiday. In this time they will visit 12 websites and perform 21 searches.

Think about that! Your compelling offer/image focused ad (on or offline) might have got someoneââ¬â¢s attention in the first instance and you may have already paid to get this person to your site, but the research suggests that there are going to be 21 other opportunities for competitors to capitalise on the inspiration you have provided as that individual looks for the information they need to complete their decision.

How do you handle this?

This leaves you with two courses of action and you probably need to implement both. 1) Be present at all of the possible contact points and accept that you may end up paying to get someone to your site on several occasions before converting them (in fact Google research says that on average the converted customer visits a tour operator site 3.9 times before buying (source: IAB)) 2) Try to make that initial contact as effective as you can.

Both require careful thought on what it is the consumer needs during the process. If I take my own recent holiday to Vietnam (yes superb, thank you) as an example; the inspiration was an article in the Observer (and they say press is dead), but the follow up was a whirlwind of visa info (tourist board site), flight prices (Cheapflights, brand sites), hotel recommendations (Trip Advisor mainly), Vietnamese based tour operator sites, guide books, Flickr for pictures, Google Earth for more detail (slightly geeky I know), BAA, Weather.com, etc, etc. All good fun and across many sites, and I guess it goes without saying that Google was the common thread.

Interestingly the tourist board only appeared in a couple of searches and didnââ¬â¢t provide much information. None of the commercial sites I visited were consistently in the search results either nor did any of them offer me more than basic travelling info. If they had they would have drastically increased their chances of me returning for free and ultimately converting.

But where do you get all of this information (content)? My view is that you shouldnââ¬â¢t be too precious about it. Link with partners and allow the public to get more involved. You need to be the provider or facilitator rather than creator.

In fact, user generated content (UGC) now forms an important part of the decision making process. Established and trusted websites such as Trip Advisor and Where Are You Now (WAYN) provide travellers with detailed and non-partisan information from other travellers.

Word of mouth has always been massively important but now itââ¬â¢s not just the words and mouths of your nearest and dearest. Applications from sites such as Trip Advisor now enable you to embed UGC into your own website. Though this strategy is not without risk, it does show real confidence in your offering. Why not go all the way and develop your own social media platform and allow your customers to communicate directly with you and each other?

So how can a brand take advantage? Firstly, get yourself a media agency with the ability to develop this kind of end-to-end strategy but also the wherewithal to implement it.

Of course it all sounds like a measurement nightmare even if you ignore the problems of linking offline adverts to online reaction and online visits to offline booking, but all of this can be untangled to a large extent (I feel another comment coming on!).

The key thing is the realisation that nice adverts and a PPC campaign are not enough and that the embracing of a more complete digital strategy will increase your ROI."


www.totalmedia.co.uk

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