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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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The powerful rise of digital brings convenience to people in travel, business, shopping, learning and more. However, sometimes it is confusing and distracting for people due to tons of information. Therefore, marketers need to understand deeply the significance of the data delivery methods, especially how to convey complex information to customers in the most comprehensible way. According to the slides by Phocuswright (2017), a travel industry research authority, has led me to the opinion that to improve online services, realizing what travelers want - and do not want - in their digital journey is extremely essential.

Modern travelers

With the development of information, travelers become wiser and more selective. Based on the data provided by Phocuswright (2017), more than 80% of travelers shop for travel online. In addition, less than half of them find it difficult to make online travel plans. Customers adapt to the times rapidly and will bit by bit seek only useful, clear and reliable information. If the website causes frustration, there is no doubt that they may want to leave and book somewhere else. Therefore, the person who succeeds in the end must be the one who minimizes the customer pain points.

"That is true!"

The slides listed the problems U.S. and U.K. travelers face during travel planning as follows:

1. Too much information (not personalized). Since there is no method of screening customers from the beginning, searchers, regardless of gender, age, or income, must all be at the same starting line.

2. Time consuming. Facing with complicated procedures or not finding the suitable information takes plenty of time in the traveler digital journey. Getting an error in the last step is even more annoying. Some people will leave as they feel it is pointless.

3. Price changes. The inconsistency in pricing really worsens the customer experience a lot.

4. Lack of useful visual. Surely travelers have at least once encountered the actual product that is far different from the image on the internet. Unsatisfied expectations contribute to widening the gap between customers and travel agencies, especially the new ones.

These data are not exaggerated in the slightest because I also had similar problems while making travel plans. The chart below shows the percentage of people who booked travel offline:

These could be the reasons why:

They are seeking for fully tailored services, where all the problems and suggestions are personalized.

They are used to booking by that method or get some favorable conditions such as travel agency near home, discounts,...

Real people and a real location are more believable than virtual numbers.

Problems arise throughout the slides and it is time to find a way to solve them.

Recall the days when people still used cash to shop, compared to now, when all payments were completed with just a few taps. The convenience of technology is undeniable, and it will develop even more if it is easy for everyone to use.

An adequate amount of information.

Giving information excessively will make the viewers overwhelmed. People remember information best when they receive it slowly and efficiently.

Nowadays, travelers not only make decisions based on reviews but also actual visuals. Achieving the authenticity as expected can increase customer loyalty.

Conclusion: Become a customer to understand customers

As a customer, there are certain reasons why I chose this presentations. Firstly, it only took me almost an hour to see all the slides, while I have to spend at least four hours reading 20 pages. This makes me think that travelers will lose search motivation when the information is too lengthy. Secondly, colorful pictures help memorize information better than plain words. A good impression on travelers is the key to success. There is nothing better than your customers remembering you.

Applying the above reasons in practice, I have learned the lesson that I have to put myself in the position of the customers to understand the challenges they are facing and fix those problems as soon as possible. The smoother the digital journey, the higher the reputation.

Bibliography

Phocuswright 2017. The Perfect Path: What Travelers Want - and Don't Want - in Their Digital Journey. Accessed 21 March 2022 2017-0712-PhocuswrightWebinar-WhatTravelersWant-UserReplay.pdf

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The Perfect Path: What Travelers Want - and Don't Want - in Their Digital Journey - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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The powerful rise of digital brings convenience to people in travel, business, shopping, learning and more. However, sometimes it is confusing and distracting for people due to tons of information. Therefore, marketers need to understand deeply the significance of the data delivery methods, especially how to convey complex information to customers in the most comprehensible way.

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Best practices toolkit for digital travel marketers - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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With many options also comes the major challenge for marketers of identifying and executing best practices in the digital marketspace.

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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The article " Social Media and the Travel Sector " published by Expedia Media Solutions presents tips on using social media in travel marketing. It introduces the evolution of social media metrics, how social media has evolved, the changing ways to measure the significance of social media, and reasons why continuous relationships are more important than the number of likes on social media.

I find the article interesting because it shows ways to use different social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest in different ways to find new customers. In addition, the article clearly describes the figures for how many users use these platforms.

Content of comments over the number of comments

Social media users are looking for meaningful conversations as well as motivation and encouragement to do something new (Expedia, 3) The number of comments and likes is important to the travel marketers and they often also motivate the development of marketing tools, but nowadays the number of comments is more important than their number. Comments and direct messages can be used to have discussions with current and potential future customers. Verbal feedback on services can also be obtained through commenting.

A certain way of marketing does not work for every company and that is why every company needs to think about which practices work best for them and how to reach their target group depending on specific goals (Expedia). Different ways of marketing should be used for certain target groups. For example, the older population uses more Facebook than Instagram while the young people use TikTok a lot. If you market your product or service for example in the form of a giveaway, targeted to generation X on TikTok, it will be difficult to reach a population over 40 y ears of age.

Co-creative SoMe campaigns are effective

Innovative social media campaigns with a clear goal can lead to positively surprising results. The Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions' goal was to promote Holland and its year-long celebration of artist Vincent Van Gogh in 2015 using the hashtag #VanGogh2015. (Expedia, 13-14.)

"The premise of the Flock-to-unlock invites your audience to tweet using a specific hashtag until a targeted number of tweets is reached, and once that happens, exclusive content is unlocked" ( Flowics 2016). The mechanism makes Twitter users feel a key part of the campaign. Rewarding them for their participation is an excellent way to spread the message.

Flock to Unlock gave Twitter users motivation to tweet using the hashtag #VanGogh2015 "to earn brushstrokes that revealed six of the artist's famous works." In addition, the possibility to win a trip to the Netherlands only by tweeting or retweeting motivated users to use the hashtag increased the campaign's visibility on Twitter. (Expedia, 13-14.)

Several people took part in this campaign as on Twitter it had up to 2.2 million impressions and more than 22,000 engagements. This proves that the opportunity to participate and the feeling of being an important part of something increase engagement.

Conclusion

Using social media platforms as interacting with customers actively can be very profitable in many ways. It can increase the number of customers, make the company reliable, and show customers that they are most important to the company. That is also why travel marketers need to keep finding new ways to develop and maintain customer and other relationships.
Bibliography
Expedia. Social Media and the Travel Sector - Insights and tips for travel marketers. Accessed 15 March 2022 https://lucit-my.sharepoint.com/personal/outi_kahkonen_lapinamk_fi/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fouti%5Fkahkonen%5Flapinamk%5Ffi%2FDocuments%2FCEMIT%2DMECIT%2FMaterials%2FWorkshops%2FSocial%20Media%2FGeneral%20Materials%2FeBook%5FSocialMediaTravelerSector%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fouti%5Fkahkonen%5Flapinamk%5Ffi%2FDocuments%2FCEMIT%2DMECIT%2FMaterials%2FWorkshops%2FSocial%20Media%2FGeneral%20Materials.

Flowics CTRL MAGIC 2016. Flock to Unlock - A powerful solution to boost social engagement. Accessed 15 March 2022 https://blog.flowics.com/2016/03/11/flock-unlock-powerful-solution-boost-social-engagement#:~:text=The%20premise%20of%20the%20Flock,an%20exclusive%20content%20is%20unlocked.

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Creative Ways of Using SoMe in Marketing is Significant - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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The article " Social Media and the Travel Sector " published by Expedia Media Solutions presents tips on using social media in travel marketing. It introduces the evolution of social media metrics, how social media has evolved, the changing ways to measure the significance of social media, and reasons why continuous relationships are more important than the number of likes on social media.

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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According to the article written by (Five9) on how to increase customer experience, every customer wants to encounter an exceptional experience. A great customer experience is known as being a seamless and effortless interaction between the customer and the company. It can take place on multiple platforms, which results into a fast and accurate resolution of the problem. By offering the customers a positive experience they will value the brand even more. As a response they are open to spend more money and convince their friends to purchase the product as well. Due to this, Five9 believes that customer experience is the same as human experience since us humans react to how the brand makes us feel. Especially during the pandemic, where the uncertainty was very high, the need of a human connection increased to provide the customers with a feeling of comfort and positive support.

Human Experience

Human experience can be divided into two main topics, Empathy and Responsiveness. Every person is changing and therefore the businesses need to adjust to the constant change in both customer needs, government mandates or global crises. To understand the perspective of the customers and to react correctly to their needs, companies need to be empathic. To increase the human experience of the customers, the following 7 elements need to be taken into account which are covering both the needed Empathy and Responsiveness: Know me, Meet me, Empower Me, Remember Me, Respond Me, Support Me and Assure Me.

7 Elements of Human Experience

Know Me - Customers want to be recognized, to feel valued and known. They don't want to identify themselves. With the help of pre-built CRM integration, the agent could focus on being empathetic instead of keeping the customer on hold to find information about them.

Meet Me - A company should provide several channels as a contact option for customers, to leave the decision to them.

Empower Me - Respect the customer time and preference as an individual by offering the option of self-services through visual IVRs.

Remember Me - The customer should have the possibility to start a conversation on one channel and later change to another one. There shouldn't be the need to repeat their history or issue a second time.

Respect Me - Respect their time by not keeping them on hold and solving the issues quickly.

Support Me - Proactively send reminders for appointments, follow-ups, product availability and shipment notification to resolve potential issues.

Assure Me - Reassure your customers that their data is safe, and that help is available if necessary.

Importance of human experience

The primary message of the article is to convey the knowledge that for an excellent customer experience, the journey of the customer needs to focus on the human aspects. I agree that companies need to constantly adjust to the quickly changing external environment to remain interesting to the customer. Especially during the pandemic, many businesses had to create a new type of service to keep their customers. I also agree that empathy is an important factor during the customers journey, but it depends on the type of business. In Tourism for instance, it is important to listen, understand the customers and hiring empathic people to take care of them. When people do not feel confident around them, they would not book a safari with them but would go to the competitor.

How to increase human experience?

Connected to the primary message is the second most important message of this article: "how to increase the human experience?". To answer this question, the company Five9 is explaining the seven aspects which both are focusing on how to increase the responsiveness and empathy in your service.

Know Me

Indeed, the customer feels more valued if the company knows about them and their history with the brand. Out of security reasons it will always be necessary to identify yourself and answer a few questions. It is unrealistic that it is not necessary anymore. On the other hand, I do think that an integrated CRM and screen pop reduces the search time of finding the file of a client and therefore the agent can focus on listening to the customer and knowing their history quicker.

Meet Me & Remember Me

People love having options and deciding for themselves if and where they want to call, text, or use videos to try and fix the issue themselves. According to a study by (Gareiss, 2019), contact centres which offered eight or more channels saw a 92% increase in customer satisfaction rate. Businesses with four or less channels only saw a 50% increase. I believe the satisfaction only shows improvement if the company has an up-to-date software. With these systems they can share information just-in-time to avoid the repetition of the customer. Repeating the same history over and over again only decreases the customer experience. In addition to this topic, I believe contacting from the beginning on the correct agent would make the customer journey even better, instead of jumping from one agent to another. Therefore to fulfill the element "meet me" correctly, "remember me" needs to work smoothly.

Support Me

Supporting the client by proactively sending appointment reminders, follow-ups, and information about the product availability etc. is a good way of resolving potential issues. On the other hand, no customer likes to receive too many messages from a business, even if it could contain helpful data. Therefore, I would suggest giving the customers the chance to decide for themselves on which topics they would like to receive emails on.

Conclusion

To sum everything up, I agree that human experience is extremely important during the customer journey. Nonetheless it must be difficult for a company to master all seven elements explained above. Not only is a high investment into modern tools and software necessary but also qualified personnel and the correct forecast in the customers behaviour is needed.

Therefore, I believe that the company should focus on the main elements, which have the highest impact on the customer. Based on a survey of (Five9), 48% of the clients believe solving the problems the first time is the most important thing, followed with 42% by the "speaking to a human and not a machine" category. Thirdly, 39% value a quick response. Last category is the "not being transferred from person to person" (37%).

Based on these numbers, the business should first focus on solving the problems the first time before moving on to the second most valued need which is providing human contact. Mastering each element step by step gives the company the opportunity to slowly invest and see how the customers are reacting to the changes.

If you are interested to find out more about the company Five9 click here.

References

Five9. (n.d.). Making Customer Service a more human experience.

Gareiss, R. (2019). Omnichannel Accelerates Contact Center Success Factors .

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Increase customer experience by making it a more human experience

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According to the article written by (Five9) on how to increase customer experience, every customer wants to encounter an exceptional experience. A great customer experience is known as being a seamless and effortless interaction between the customer and the company. It can take place on multiple platforms, which results into a fast and accurate resolution of the problem.

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Santa Claus Village vs Sustainable tourism

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Offering different activities to bring people back to nature

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"Making customer experience a more human experience"

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Own company sounds proud, but starting your own business takes a lot of time and planning. Marketing is also a very important issue because we need to advertise our company somehow. In this article, I will try to introduce you to promotional strategies that will allow you to be successful in your industry without breaking the bank. The article The Tour Operator's Guide to Online Marketing is divided into three parts. The first of them is about how to create successful marketing using customer information, the next part is about reaching customers through websites for free. Finally, tools are presented that will help you increase traffic on your website, which will also increase your budget.

Why is it interesting?

This topic interested me because it contains many useful tips on how to lead your company to success, how to advertise your business, use free tools that are easy to use. Tourism is very much based on marketing and that's why we should know how to encourage our future customers to use our services.

How to do conduct market research

When collecting information about future customers, we need to know which information will be useful to us and what tools to use for the information to help us find our client's profile, who is our competitor on the market, and how much people are willing to pay for our service.

An objective of the BMC is to create a commonly known way to picture the ontology around the target domain. The BMC offers you pre-defined building blocks to divide your business domain or a single product/service - it works in a very scalable way because it fits both small and larger target domains. The BMC consists of nine building blocks that contain points of view from a value proposition, customer thinking, business infrastructure, and economics

.

I think that the Business model canvas is a very useful tool, even though this technique was already used in the 1960s. Thanks to this tool, you can visualize your entire company in one place, it is great for market research. You can map the types of relationships you want to develop with future customers and what channels you want to reach them.

Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Qualitative data refers to detailed customer information such as group focus and interviews. It takes a lot of time, but thanks to the TripAdvisor website you can collect user opinions, which is the starting point for qualitative analysis. Additionally, if the client tries out your offer, you can encourage them to share their impressions.

On the other hand, quantitative data focuses on gathering more basic information from a large set of customers. Surveys are a great tool for collecting a lot of information. Thanks to the google form, you can create a quick and easy-to-use survey, thanks to which you will collect the necessary data.

Free ads to help you attract a customer

In the era of online advertising, most people immediately click the cross. A good strategy is to see what alternatives the internet offers:

Google My Business - It is a tool that allows you to create your own local google business card so that people can find you in google maps and search results. Today, a lot of people use google maps to find certain things, so this tool allows you to increase your visibility to a large extent.

Use the forum communities - Reddit and Quora are communities that have huge reach for free. All you need to do is create an account, search for the appropriate social group related to your activity and join the discussion. People are eager to learn more about the people they write with, which allows you to leave, for example, a link of your company in the description, which is certainly a form of promotion of your business.

Best Marketing Tools to increase revenue

Appropriate tools allow you to increase the popularity of the company, thanks to which will translate into an increase in sales for example:

WordPress - You don't need to be a website specialist to create an attractive and transparent website. Thanks to this, you can easily promote your product.

Google Analytics - That a tool that, you can take a close look at who is viewing your website, for what purpose, and what the interest of the potential customer is. This information, you can use to get an offer for a future customer

MailChimp - Reliable device for creating email marketing. This is a great way to promote your services, you can freely configure templates that you will use to attract potential customers

Buffer - If you need a tool that publishes a post on all your social media with the push of a button, you should definitely try Buffer. Thanks to this, you can save time and focus on more important things

Conclusion

After reading the article, I am fully convinced that the possibilities, technologies, and tools to which we have access for free give us the full opportunity to create successful marketing. Thanks to the points in the text on how to create them, I now know what I should focus on. Also, many of the tools that were mentioned and that I did not know before turned out to be extremely useful. I hope that in the future, thanks to the information, I will be able to better create marketing strategies and I will know exactly which tools to use to obtain a satisfactory result.

Reference:
https://venngage.com/templates/diagrams/gradient-column-swot-analysis-382033cc-7222-4c92-bce1-25b1061c1dba https://gofore.com/make-your-business-visible-with-the-business-model-canvas/ https://www.raflaamo.fi/en/current-topics/news/tripadvisor/014973990_392769 https://bleakton.com/create-survey-using-google-forms/ Tour Operators Guide - Article

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Key Strategies and Tactics to Win Customers on a Low Budget. - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Introduction Own company sounds proud, but starting your own business takes a lot of time and planning. Marketing is also a very important issue because we need to advertise our company somehow. In this article, I will try to introduce you to promotional strategies that will allow you to be successful in your industry without...

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Santa Claus Village with Google my business

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Santa Claus Village on TripAdvisor

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TripAdvisor or Google business are some examples

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Digital marketing keep the budget much lower compare to the traditional one

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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The New Era of Tourism

The customer service has changed a lot during the past couple years. Emotions are big part of life and being humans. They control our actions. We value the feeling of getting heard and understood when we are expressing our interests for certain thing. This is important to acknowledge in marketing industry. I read an article called The Travel Consultant of Tomorrow by Amadeus. The article is about how fast travel industry is changing and what kind of impact Covid19 left on it. Also, how artificial intelligence can never be emphatic like a real human.

Critical Thinking

The fast-changing travel industry requires new kind of skills from employees. Travel companies' employers need to find employee who is good using different marketing tools. The skill to solve problems effectively if something does not go as planned. Today it is easy to find information we need for a topic from internet. Only problem is the amount of information. We need to be critical while reading information from different sources. Online is full of fake news. Anyone can write information about anything they like even though they do not have correct knowledge. I agree with the authors that today companies need employees who know how to read customer data. This helps to keep up with trends and customer needs. Otherwise, it is impossible to keep a company running. Companies need to stay updated on changes.

Here you can read more about honest marketing.

Social Media Effects

Social media has a huge impact on our interests. The article mentioned how people these days try to find the most "Instagrammable" place to travel. This makes us sound little bit shallow persons, doesn't it? I do not believe that our only goal in life is just to show off in online. Trying to make our life look interesting to other people. It is also to find people who have similar kind of interest. Travel companies which are active on different social media platforms have better change to find more customers. A customer finds something which wakes their interest and starts to find more information. If a travel company has been following the trends, the customer will eventually see advertisement which responds to their needs.

Being There for Customers

Customer service is about being there for a customer when they need help. The main idea of social media is being able to reach someone in a quick and easy way, right? This is the most important thing to travel companies to remember. Even though today everything is easy to book online by ourselves. It does not mean that we do not need human interaction at all. The pandemic has shown us how important it is to be able to reach for help if things do not go as planned. Being there for customers even after they have purchased a product or service. The idea of giving customers a feeling that the company is not just there to get customers money. The company is there for them in every situation during the journey.

Artificial Intelligence is An Opportunity

We often find the idea of artificial Intelligence little bit scary. Is it going to take our jobs? In the future is there social interaction with a real human at all? However, this is not the case. Artificial Intelligence in travel industry is a tool to help us to reach more customers. The ability to respond faster and react faster to customer needs and concerns.

Conclusion

These are my thoughts about the article. The technology is evolving, and we are evolving with it. It creates new ways to work. In the end humans will always need and want interaction with real people. We want that our emotions and needs will get a real response.

Bibliography

Insight of the new world of Travel. 2021. Amadeus. Referred on 22.3.2022. https://lucit-my.sharepoint.com/personal/outi_kahkonen_lapinamk_fi/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fouti%5Fkahkonen%5Flapinamk%5Ffi%2FDocuments%2FCEMIT%2DMECIT%2FMaterials%2FReaction%20paper%20%2B%20LC%2F2021%5FAmadeus%20Customer%20feedback%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fouti%5Fkahkonen%5Flapinamk%5Ffi%2FDocuments%2FCEMIT%2DMECIT%2FMaterials%2FReaction%20paper%20%2B%20LC

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The customer service has changed a lot during the past couple years. Emotions are big part of life and being humans. They control our actions. We value the feeling of getting heard and understood when we are expressing our interests for certain thing. This is important to acknowledge in marketing industry.

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Customer feedback form at Chrismast house restaurant

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Running parallel with providing better service through social media platforms and increasing human interact, Santaclausvillage company also emphasizes on listening customer feedback for the improvement

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"Being there for customer"

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Travel planning is a significant part of going on a holiday whether that is done online or not. Nowadays it's a norm to find information through web searchers and I'm pretty sure we all do it. Planning travels online is beneficial on many levels, which is something that article The Changing Impact of the Internet on Travel Planning Behavior (Wang, Park, Zach & Fesenmaier 2016) focuses on.

The change

The reason I chose this particular article is because I find it interesting how internet has such a big impact on our daily lives. Without even knowing, it affects our behaviour. In regards of travel planning, people have adapted to the new way and it shows positive effects. For example I have only ever booked holidays online. Much like in the article, being online has made our lives easier. The results include more satisfaction, saving time and money as well as easier way to share information (Wang, Park, Zach & Fesenmaier 2016.)

Although the article points out how the impact of internet is decreasing, I would think otherwise. Internet is becoming more and more part of our lives and technology is improving with it. Along that, the ways we use internet have increased and I find myself reaching for my phone every time I think about travelling somewhere. Times have changed. In fact, I don't know anyone who would plan their travels by calling a hotel walking to the airport to book tickets.

The message

The authors point out how the benefit of internet is directly impacting our behaviour in travel planning. Here are some of their findings that caught my eye.

Using the internet for planning resulted in people exploring more places than they normally would have

Not using internet as much for planning had significant impact on travels

The changing trends of internet usage also effect travel planning behaviour

Next I will explain why these things specifically were the most interesting to me.

1. Increased exploration

As mentioned by Wang, Park, Zach & Fesenmaier (2016), people who did their travel planning online explored more new places at their destinations. I found this interesting because I tend to do the same thing.

When I'm planning a holiday I tend to search beforehand what the place has to offer. Sometimes I even do this at the destination but since a lot of things can be found online I can easily figure it out on the go as well. It has resulted in me finding places that I probably wouldn't have visited otherwise.

2. Lack of experiences

The second bullet point is about how not using internet has significant impact on travels. By this I mean that those who decide to book their holidays more traditionally or by using online book as little as possible, result in missing out. They benefit less from the usage of internet and the efficiency that it brings (Wang, Park, Zach & Fesenmaier 2016).

Of course the situation is different now and I have some disagreements with the article due to it being from almost 10 years ago. Either way, some people still like to explore places on their own and find cool spots to hang out at.

3. Internet usage trends

Something that was brought up in the article is that those people who tend to use internet when travel planning are not tied to that "stage" (Wang, Park, Zach & Fesenmaier 2016). By this I mean that people who use less internet now can turn into the one's who do everything online. Usually the affect is from low usage to high usage and I see why. For me it would be difficult to give up on travel planning online, since for me it feels so easy and effortless. This alone also affects the behaviour of people. As mentioned above those who use internet a lot for planning seem to have more experiences.

Conclusion

I believe that the article tries to shed light on how much the internet is changing our lives and behaviours. It may not seem like much, but something as simple as booking flight or even searching for them can be really time consuming if it was done traditionally. Honestly I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. The article gave me insights of how simple things in life affect our behaviours. I think the next time I start planning a trip I'm going to be even more grateful that the internet exists and how easy it has made life for us.

Do you book your holidays online? If so, would you be able do travel planning without internet? Leave your comments below!

Bibliography

Wang, D., Park, S., Zach, F. & Fesenmaier, D. R. 2016. The Changing Impact of the Internet on Travel Planning Behaviour. Accessed 22 March 2022 https://lucit-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/outi_kahkonen_lapinamk_fi/EW8pd3FRs3pKs917vQF9d6oBcDDsExdhhrVlp3_O-9sFEA?e=6eX0k6.

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The domination of online travel planning - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Travel planning is a significant part of going on a holiday whether that is done online or not. Nowadays it's a norm to find information through web searchers and I'm pretty sure we all do it.

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With Santaclausvillage website, customers can easily book their accommodation, meals, activities and have a perfect plan for experiencing arctic nature and cultures

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Travel planning are shifting toward online

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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What if all travel marketings are fake?

If you are wondering the one who wrote this blog might have a trust issue or some sorts of distrust in life, you might be right! 😀

As a web user who spends hours in a day switching from Facebook to Instagram and probably ending up with countless videos, what one sees on social media appears much more beautiful than it could be in reality from my viewpoint. It is likely to be true that it is just my assumption and there is no concrete argument for that. Hence, with the available curiosity and the possibility to work in the hospitality sector in the future, I have an enormous motivation for finding out what is travel marketer's trick to catch all the "prey" to their strategy.

The article I read today is "Social media and the travel sector" published by Expedia Media Solutions. Going through 3 main parts, the writer group wants to convey some insights or tips for travel marketers to maximize their work productiveness through different social media platforms. Choosing this article because of the "easy-to-read" illustration, I am impressed, however, by how social media can make a business become more engaging and appealing than ever. I would say social media is a part of our life, and it would continue to become an indispensable part that connects all people from every corner of the world and helps to share all good moments. So, social media and travel, why not?

1. Everything posted on social media sets expectations for readers

Have you ever wondered why social media is so charming? Sometimes it can keep us scrolling on the screen without knowing our behavior. We suffer the newsfeed, we see new things, we like or react to posts, we interact with people who share that. I would say it can be because of its newness. Social media opens a new window for us to see the world. Since its creation, humans first time in their life have seen how beautiful it is in a place that is far from them thousands of kilometers. Every single day it brings new things to surprise and motivates you to see another land. However, the more popular and familiar social media to travel users, the more challenging for tourism marketers to keep it real but still appealing and attractive.

Excellent photographing or video editing skills are needed in this section, but it should be taken into consideration that everything posted on social media can set an expectation for customers. what if, the things we saw on social media and the thing we feel in reality are completely different? Hence, the number of "likes" or "follow" is no longer a metric to evaluate how the success of a travel marketing campaign (ExpediaMediaSolutions, 2022). It is more important to have a better understanding of the relationship with your customers: how to balance between planning an attractive marketing campaign and meeting customers' needs in an honest way.

2. Strategy vs your true beauty

Obviously doing marketing needs strategies. However, instead of feeling obligated to have a presence on every social platform out there, it is worth investing in the quality content and how it can engage more customers. The group of writers has given some examples of how successful of utilizing the strength of every platform in practice. After all, if traveling is considered to be healing, it should come from its true beauty and exoticness. The best trick to "catch your grey" in tourism marketing is inspiring them with your true beauty. Here is an example of how the beauty of nature can motivate you to travel more.

3. "From dreamer to doer"

Finally yet importantly, every step needs a start. Having plenty of ideas to attract your customer could not be compared with jumping into doing it, "from dreamer to doer" (ExpediaMediaSolutions, 2022). The article somehow inspires me to learn more about social media and look for new insights about it. Everyone can start trying doing marketing, it is not necessary for the purpose of tourism marketing practice, but it could also aim to build your personal branding as a try.

To answer the question in the title, not all travel marketings are fake. It is more about how we acknowledge about it. Take it all as inspiration and preference, be wise 🙂

P.s

You can find another viewpoint of how to utilize social media to maximize tourism marketing work from here.

Bibbliography
ExpediaMediaSolutions. Social Media And The Travel Sector. Accessed by 22 March 2022 https://tinyurl.com/4apfukd4

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If you are wondering the one who wrote this blog might have a trust issue or some sorts of distrust in life, you might be right! 😀 As a web user who spends hours in a day switching from Facebook to Instagram and probably ending up with countless videos, what one sees on social media appears much more beautiful than it could be in reality from my viewpoint.

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Youtube

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Instagram

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TripAdvisor

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Facebook

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Having presence in different social platforms

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live webcam

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Providing experience to customer as honest as possible

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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❝The only way for travel brands to fully meet the desire for a highly personalized experience is to deliver a true omnichannel approach❞ - Amadeus 2021, 5

Introduction

The Article

The Insights for the New World of Travel: Omnichannel is a summary of four articles published by Amadeus. It discusses how the modern traveler is both offline and online and how the omnichannel strategy should connect those needs. It relies on co-creation, service-dominant logic, and maximizing marketing. All these themes are also important in the Marketing and eCommerce in Tourism study unit.

Amadeus interviewed, surveyed, and studied 35 travel sellers, 800 travel agencies, and 600 travelers. Their research was conducted in six languages.

Omnichannel 101

Omnichannel aims for the same content, the same service, and freedom of choice for customers (Amadeus 2021, 7). In other words, customers should have a seamless experience across all the platforms that they choose to use.

For example, Disney's MagicBand offers seamless and personalized service that combines multiple channels into a cohesive experience. This is illustrated in Figure 1.

It should be noted that omnichannel is not the same as multichannel. The multichannel strategy does not try to understand customer choices to the same extent, and channels are less integrated because they are managed separately (Westfall 2021).

Key Points

Consumers have high expectations

Firstly, I noticed that a demanding customer was a common theme in the article.

Amadeus mentions Netflix as an example of a company setting high expectations. I can see why. Netflix offers offline viewing and personalized recommendations. It works on various devices, and if you stop watching, the show will continue from the same spot later. Consumers can choose to watch what they want, whenever and wherever they want.

Amadeus (2020, 4) argues that high expectations in traveling are only elevated by Covid-19. Customers demand real-time information and superior service on all platforms even more than before.

Omnichannel improves the customer experience

Secondly, I paid attention to the good results that omnichannel gave in customer satisfaction and retention. This is shown in Figure 2.

An average accommodation purchase journey lasts 36 days and involves 45 touchpoints across different devices and websites (Amadeus 2021, 8). Most of us cannot relate to that, so let's consider laptops instead. When I need a laptop, I will do research on multiple online channels and buy it offline. But without omnichannel, I might still get laptop advertisements from the online store.

If the online store knows that I have already bought the laptop, they can give better service. For example, by offering firewall subscriptions or laptop bags. The same works for flight or hotel bookings. After booking, complementary offers from different channels can improve the customer experience.

Omnichannel is the future

Finally, I found that the main message of the article was to implement omnichannel as soon as possible. In fact, Yuruk-Kayapinar (2020, 56) argues that most traditional consumers have already turned into digital and omnichannel ones.

Did you know that...

There were 204 billion mobile applications downloaded in 2019? (Gultekin & Erdem 2020, 212)

There were approximately 50 billion network-connected devices in 2020? (Amadeus 2020, 4)

There were 4.66 billion active internet users in January 2021? (Johnson 2021)

With society moving towards a digital world, travel companies should follow by utilizing omnichannel across platforms. Because as Amadeus (2021, 4-5) says, every touchpoint is an opportunity to connect with the traveler, but they have very individual preferences about when and how they interact with companies. Multichannel strategy is not enough anymore.

Results & Impact

Main results

The offline to online shift can happen fast, as we have witnessed with Covid-19. However, not everyone adapts to change at the same pace. Clive Wratten (Amadeus 2021, 4) suggests that marketing through multiple channels and touchpoints simultaneously helps the company reach a more diverse demographic. This is what omnichannel does.

The company benefits from the omnichannel strategy, too. For example, more than 60% of consumers use multiple devices when they shop online (Amadeus 2021, 8). When companies are able to track their most profitable platforms, they can improve marketing. Amadeus continues by sharing that while 10% of travel agencies believe communication channels are a top need, 43% of travelers see it as very important. By studying personalized data, companies can meet customers' expectations more easily.

Impact on me

I had not heard of omnichannel prior to reading this article. It helped me understand service-dominant logic and how important it is to make sure that the different platforms work together cohesively.

Moreover, the co-creation aspect is fascinating to me. This is because it does not mean co-creation only between the company and consumers, but also between different sections of a company. It makes me wonder if in the future one must really master all platforms, or if the communication simply works more smoothly across the teams.

TLDR

Is at least one of these true?

You...

a.) Scrolled to the end yawning b.) Did not understand my rambling c.) Want to know more

I got you.

Bibliography

Amadeus. 2021. Insights for the new World of Travel: Omnichannel.

Gultekin, B. & Erdem, S. 2020. Omni-Channel Strategy in the Framework of the Search Engines. In T. Direshan (ed.) Managing Customer Experiences in an Omnichannel World: Melody of Online and Offline Environments in the customer Journey. Emerald Publishing Limited, 211-232.

Johnson, J. 2021. Worldwide Digital Population. Statista. Accessed 22 March 2022 https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/.

Westfall, L. 2021. Omnichannel vs. Multichannel: What's the difference? Ring Central. Accessed 20 March 2022 https://www.ringcentral.com/us/en/blog/omnichannel-vs-multichannel-whats-the-difference/.

Yuruk-Kayapinar, P. 2020. Digital Consumer Behavior in an Omnichannel World. In T. Direshan (ed.) Managing Customer Experiences in an Omnichannel World: Melody of Online and Offline Environments in the customer Journey. Emerald Publishing Limited, 55-73.

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Insights for the New World of Travel: Omnichannel

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❝The only way for travel brands to fully meet the desire for a highly personalized experience is to deliver a true omnichannel approach❞ - Amadeus 2021, 5 The Insights for the New World of Travel: Omnichannel is a summary of four articles published by Amadeus.

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Having presence in different platforms (Facebook, Instagram, website, TripAdvisor, booking...), but all are aimed for providing a fast and covinient way for customers to access the service

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Customers have a seamless experience across all the platforms that they choose to use

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MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Creating stories to market a product or service can help you connect with customers more easily. But how does this storytelling approach work?

About the article

Already the article's title " Event Storytelling Playbook " is very inviting. The use of the word "playbook" made me think of easy and playful step-by-step guidelines instead of just "another article", which is a huge relief especially for impatient readers like me! 😉

The most important points:

Stories should be simple and focus on the essential (brand promise, value, identity, USP)

Possibility to use already existing stories, because it is nearly impossible to create something that has never been there before (customers are likely to recognise the story, which catches their attention)

Identifying the attendee journey (I will talk about that a bit later!)

Make customers the heroes of your story

Create relatable scenarios for them to connect with your story emotionally

What to learn from it

As we are learning in this Marketing course, storytelling is an important and useful marketing element, especially in the digital world. It catches people's attention, attracts a lot of new customers as well as it deepens existing customer relationships.

I personally have been interested in creating stories, mostly in form of videos, myself, therefore I am really curious about this specific marketing tool. I like becoming creative in this way and I am sure that I will come back to this article in the future for my own use.

What caught my interest:

1. The 6-point plan for Resonating with the Audience
One: Creating demand for the product/service
Two: Creating value with a backstory
An organisation that came to my mind is 4Ocean. They are the perfect example by creating value with their mission to keep our oceans clean; people with a similar vision or values are ready to become customers for this story.
Three: Creating trust with brand promise Four: Branding identity within an event
Five: Creating relatability by keeping it simple
This point made me think how advertising a story of someone most people cannot relate to at all (like a superhero) might be entertaining, but they won't feel like the brand speaks to them directly. Instead, imagine you are a family father, who often suffers from migraine. One evening you're sitting on the sofa and come across the following TV advertisement:

The man in the video is neither perfect, nor does he have any superpowers that make him the perfect main character of the next Hollywood blockbuster. However, he catches your attention, because you can perfectly relate to his struggle of dealing with migraine and children at the same time, so you build an emotional connection with him.

Six: Making your story the start of the customer's journey
We all are getting loads of video advertisements daily, and from own experience I can say that there often is an "open ending" in a story and it is up to the audience to complete it. University advertisements like the one below are a great example for that. Their video is the product introduction and the next chapter is your own one, with their help: "Start your journey".

2. Defining the Attendee Journey

This point was very interesting to me, because it made me realise how often we can find ourselves in such a situation without even noticing the concept behind it.

Let's say you are planning to go to a concert. Already weeks before the concert you would get emails or videos, which boost your excitement, during the event you enjoy the music and the show, afterwards you get asked for your feedback and get access to pictures or videos for example on social media, which will make you remember the concert even years after it had happened.

3. You are NOT the hero of your story

The customer is the hero of your story! And you are the one who has a solution for their struggles. Heroes are usually not perfect; that way it is easier to relate to them. This is a very interesting factor as well, and once again I was surprised how often I had faced those situations without noticing.

Let's say you have a skincare product like in the video below. Create a story for someone who struggles with skincare. You should clearly show that you understand their struggle and need for something else, which is why you are offering them your product.

While doing that you are creating small emotional hooks, which make them care about your product. Your goal is to overcome their struggles with your help! Showing positive emotions after the problem has been solved increases your believability and that you can actually help them.

What should be improved?

Even though I liked the article a lot, I would improve the point "keeping it simple and relatable".

Having something that is easy to follow is important, but for my own taste those stories are not always the most attractive ones. In fact, the crazier and absurd the story, the more attention I give to a brand's advertisement, whether I can relate to the situation or not.

A perfect example for my point are the Snickers advertisements. You will probably never find yourself in the situation of jumping from roof to roof or changing personality after a snickers, however the story is funny and entertains you, so next time you see a snickers in the supermarket, it will remind you of the advertisement and the positive emotions it gave you and you will consider buying it.

Check out the Snickers advert with Mr Bean!

Bibliography

EventMB Studio Team 2019. Event Storytelling Playbook, page 24 - 43.

Panadol ANZ 2018. Panadol Extra Migraine Headache 2018 TVC. Accessed 21 May 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2NgP8EQRBM.

Snickers UK 2014. Snickers Mr Bean TV advert - Subitled. Accessed 22 March 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIVDxL2lgN4.

Curology 2020. That Feeling When Skincare Finally Makes Sense. Accessed 22 March 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzOrf8Y-qAw.

University of Kent 2021. Start your journey | University of Kent. Accessed 22 March 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nPQeflFd0A.

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Event Storytelling Playbook - MeCiT students blog about digital marketing

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Already the article's title " Event Storytelling Playbook " is very inviting. The use of the word "playbook" made me think of easy and playful step-by-step guidelines instead of just "another article", which is a huge relief especially for impatient readers like me!

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"Making your story the start of the customer’s journey" - The demand for visiting the hometown of Santa Claus creates a momentumn for customers to explore Arctic cultures as well, their journeys do start since then

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Creating a demand for visiting Santa Claus based on a real story about Santa Claus and the Arctic circle

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Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the internet and online-based technologies to promote products and services (wikipedia, 2022).

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Applying specificly to Santa Claus Village as an example