People are always telling me that marketing is ‘common sense’ – usually those not in the profession or those that have made a made a move from another role.

Frankly, this particular observation drives me round the twist.  It’s like telling a doctor all those years of study and practice were a waste of time as you can just look up your ailment on the internet.  Quite apart from that it’s clearly wrong.  We’re surrounding by thousands of examples of ‘common sense’ marketing and do we pay a jot of notice to it – probably not.

But every now and again, something really cuts through all the surrounding clutter. And creating those campaigns requires a deep understanding of target customers, the brand’s own message and the fundamentals of communication and persuasion. Let me give you an example of how transformative clearly expressed vision and values can be.

I had the good fortune back in 2003 to work with a chap called Marcus Codrington Fernandez, one of the UK’s leading brand gurus – the man behind the success of brands such as IBM, Mercedes-Benz and Orange.

My brand, Simply Travel, was drifting – and drifting in the wrong direction. Our campaign was becoming increasingly ineffective, our service levels were slipping – everything we tried had little or no effect. Like many marketers, I was focusing on the tools – trying different advertising formats, different timings of mailings and emailings and different offers. Good ‘common sense’ marketing – problem was, I wasn’t getting the message right.

Marcus had been recommended by another supplier. I met him more in hope than expectation. He suggested he spend some time with members of the Simply team – both old and new and across all functions – to define a positioning for the brand that we could use to shed new light on all our activity.

The Celestial Model of Brand Vision and Values

Marcus’s aim was to define a vision for the brand – a guiding star upon which we kept our gaze firmly fixed as we moved forward – and 5 values, the rungs on the celestial ladder we needed to ascend if we were going to reach our goal. For him, we needed to define no more. No rational benefits, emotional benefits, brand attributes or any of the other numerous and sometimes unfathomable layers of the ‘brand onion.’ His view was if you got the vision and values right, and then followed the fundamentals of good communication, everything else would flow. Like a deliciously simple recipe you can easily remember and make again and again rather than one with an irritatingly long list of instructions.

So what did he come up with? He defined our vision as ‘Helping People to Find Their Own Way’ – a beautifully simple way of defining our role for our clients. We weren’t there to tell them what to do, but we weren’t there to stand back and let them do it all themselves and make inevitable and avoidable mistakes.  We were facilitators and helpers – enabling people to discover the little known and unspoilt parts of the Mediterranean we loved, but in their own way.

Our values? Chatty, Honest, Informative, Nimble and Surprising or ‘CHINS’ as they became known.

Onions - Great for Eating But Not So Great for Defining Brands

Chatty because we were passionate about what we did and wanted to share it with people, because we viewed our customers as fellow travellers rather than transactions and because we were just as interested in them as they were in us. Honest because the places and properties we chose were authentic and we wanted to depict them in as honest a light as we could because that made for happy customers. Informative because we knew our destinations and properties inside out and wanted to share our knowledge with those who wanted to listen. Nimble because we moved fast to deal with customers problems and faster than our competitors in unearthing new places. And surprising because people like surprises – good ones at least – and they’re what makes an experience memorable. And memorable holidays make people want to come back and tell others about them.

By reviewing all our activity in the cold light of these visions and values, we made some remarkable things happen. Our customer service ratings in the UK and overseas leapt up after 4 years of decline. Our marketing efforts scooped awards at CIMTIG’s annual bash. And I’m sure we outperformed the market – we certainly outperformed our sister brands at TUI.

My point is that we have a tendency to get immersed in the best ways of using the tools in marketing rather than focusing on the core message which will resonate with our customers. The ‘what’ rather than the ‘why’ or the ‘how, so to speak.  But I can be the most skilled paintbrush user in the whole of the world – without a vision I’m just a painter/decorator, not an artist.

So the next time someone tells you marketing is ‘just common sense’, you can tell them from me that they’re right – ‘run-of-the-mill’ marketing is common sense.  And great marketing is sense too, but of an entirely more uncommon variety.

I’ve just been on holiday. Not a remarkable event in itself I’ll admit but my experience of booking and taking that holiday provided some prime examples of ‘schemas’ and their role in generating word of mouth.

So what precisely is a ‘schema’ I hear you cry? In brief, it’s a little movie containing generic properties about a concept or category stored in our memories and ready for ‘play’ when someone pushes the button.

No help? OK – let me give you an example. What springs to mind when I say ‘package holiday?’ For me, it’s images of sunburnt people with tattoos at the airport, having my knees wedged underneath the seat in front on the flight, the smell of cheap fried food at innumerable cafes selling full English breakfasts and families crammed into studio apartments that allegedly sleep four.

This may not be a true reflection but my schema doesn’t have to be built from actual experience of package holidays  but perceptions of them built up from a myriad of sources. You may not have driven a sports car but you’ve got a schema of one in your head.

By conflicting with schema in credible ways, you can get people talking about your product or brand.  This may sound easy but first of all you have to understand which schema exist in the minds of your target market for your product or service category. And secondly, you need an offering which not only conflicts with the existing schema but one that does so in a credible way.

I see it like a seesaw in the brain – jump in near the centre (too close to centre of the existing schema) and nothing will happen. Jump and miss the seesaw altogether and your attempt was clearly too far from the existing schema to generate any action. Jump on near the ends and it will tip into action, but remember it can move both ways – one positive for your brand and one negative. A little known PR disaster when I was Marketing Manager at Austravel provides a prime example.

The WOM/Schema SeeSaw

Back in the late Nineties Austravel launched into a joint venture with a Dutch firm to launch a charter flight from Maastricht to Australia.  The inaugural flight was a big PR event – all the top brass from Austravel and their Dutch partners were there, as well as the cream of the Dutch media curious about this new venture. Problem was, the plane went ‘tech’ and it didn’t go anywhere.

The whole management team returned home with a sense of impending disaster. The commercial success of this venture was seriously jeopardised – no-one was going to book with a company that couldn’t even get their inaugural flight off the ground. But this so-called disaster had an unexpected result.  The press gleefully reported the story but also included the price of the flights. The phones (no internet booking in those days) went berserk with people booking. What had happened?

How Can Planes Stuck on the Tarmac Generate Word of Mouth?

Word of mouth schema theory explains it.  Your schema of airlines and charter airlines in particular is that planes will occasionally go ‘tech’ – unfortunate but no surprises there. But nobody expected that you’d be able to fly from The Netherlands to Australia for the price the newspapers published and a word of mouth tide began to sweep across the country. Disaster turned into success in the most unexpected fashion.  But when you look at it with reference to schemas, it all makes sense.

So back to my holiday – which provided 3 classic word of mouth ‘events’ triggered by interference with schemas.  Firstly, the booking process was so badly handled (how can you spell the parents’ names right but their child’s name wrong, and do it for 2 sets of passengers with different surnames? And who spells ‘Cox’ ‘Cocks’?) that it prompted me and my wife to talk to our friends about it.

Secondly, we travelled with friends and although we’d been there before, the experience conflicted with their perceptions of a package holiday – unspoilt island, no ‘full Englishes’ in sight, spacious villa – which got them talking to relatives about booking another trip for next year (for those of you curious we were on a Simply Travel holiday – and no doubt alot of Simply’s success in the late Nineties and early Noughties was in presenting holidays far from the package in terms of environment and accommodation but in a packaged way.)

And thirdly, Thomsonfly screened an excellent safety video on the flight featuring children as the cabin crew – interfering with my schema of safety demonstrations (bored looking cabin crew member shows me how to do up a seatbelt and flaps arms in vague direction of exits). People paid attention and some even laughed and no doubt people will be talking about it (as I am now).

Getting someone talking about an airline safety demonstration must be the ultimate challenge in word of mouth marketing. If Thomsonfly can do it, surely generating word of mouth marketing for your product or brand must be achievable?

Too many social campaigns are ‘channel specific’, isolated, unintegrated and therefore doomed to have a fraction of the impact they could have had if planning had started with the objectives and audiences, rather than the tools to connect with them.

I don’t know about you but when I’m planning a bit of DIY around the house (a rare event I’ll admit), I don’t make a beeline for my toolbox and look in there for inspiration as for what I should do (hmmmm – what could I make with these….).

I start off with an objective that I need to achieve (usually allocated by my wife), like putting up a shelf, and then head for the tool box for the tools I need to achieve it – in this case, my drill, some wallplugs and screws, a pencil and a spirit level (should I be starting a DIY blog?) – with the aim of communicating a message to my target audience (e.g. I do do stuff around the house other than work).

Effective Social Media - Don't Forget Your Objectives and Audience

But I see so many examples in modern marketing of the tools coming first, and the objective and the message coming second – especially with social media. People jump on the bandwagon and start letting the tools drive them, rather than working out the best way the tools can help them achieve their objectives and engage their audience. Worse still, this activity becomes discrete, isolated from the other tools their using – like putting a set of shelves up with just a spirit level – and so therefore doing only part of the job.  And even worse, customer relationship implications are not thought through – the niche audiences that use these tools are afforded better service, discounts and offers than the customer’s core client base.

My advice would be would be to start with your objectives and your audiences and then look at the tools at your disposal in the context of these. What social media tools are my audience using and how? What can these tools help me achieve?

Best Job in the World - How to Use the Tools Not Get Used by Them

Of course, make sure you understand these tools and the unique features they offer for you to connect with your clients and/or prospects and get your message across, but be wary of creating an effective 2 or 3 tier service where niche audiences who use these tools get something that others aren’t. You could end up upsetting alot of loyal customers.

I love the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign as an excellent example of a way to use social media tools to amplify a message communicated through a wide range of channels to support a specific objective. So much better than all these gimmicky ‘channel specific’ campaigns which if properly thought through, could have been so much more effective.

Which reminds me, I really need to get that coat rack up….

When segmenting your audience and positioning your brand in travel and tourism marketing, psychographics is key and in particular how values and personality manifest themselves in ‘preferred level of cultural immersion’.

I described what I regarded to be the key segmentation criteria in travel and tourism marketing in brief in a previous post. I now want to delve a little deeper into one of those in particular which I consider to be absolutely key – psychographics.

The whole area of psychographics, a phrase that describes values, personality and lifestyle, first became of practical rather than theoretical use to me when I was at Simply Travel, especially when comparing and contrasting the brand with it’s ‘sister’ brand in TUI’s Specialist Sun Division, Magic Travel Group (rest in peace).

I’d had passed on to me via a colleague that one of the TUI senior management had described the only difference between the 2 brands as distribution (Simply was mainly direct and Magic mainly trade) but I regarded this as a misguided observation. The distribution difference was a manifestation of the core difference between the 2 brands, and that was the ‘level of cultural immersion’ the 2 brand’s customers preferred – a manifestation of their values and personality.

(Pricey) Dining in St Marks - Heaven for Cocoon Travellers

Simply core customers were very much at the ‘live like the locals’ end of the spectrum. For them, the sight of more than a small gaggle of fellow British tourists was a cause for dispair. Local people, local fare and ‘authentic’ lodgings (or their perception of authentic) was at the heart of their ideal holiday experience. By contrast, Magic core travellers preferred to ‘observe’ rather than ‘interact’ and it was more about ‘show’ than ‘do’ – they’d be the sort you see dining in one of the overpriced restaurants in St Marks in Venice, doing organised excursions to see the major sites or going to the local ‘cultural’ show in their 5 star hotel.

I also felt these differences in approach were reflected in their purchase behaviour – Simply customers searching out the experience provider direct, Magic ones taking the ‘safer’ route of relying on their trusted travel agent.

Understanding where along this ‘cultural immersion’ line our customers sat helped inform our product strategy, our service strategy  and our marketing strategies. For example, Simply properties had to be away from mainstream foreign tourism and feel authentic whereas Magic’s properties were more showy and in the mainstream destinations, particularly the ‘places to be seen’. Magic reps were smartly uniformed whilst Simply’s wore their own clothes to blend into their environment and create a ‘traveller to local’ rather than ‘tourist to rep’ style relationship.

The Self Challenger's Dream

I came across the best formal segmentation model for this theory a couple of year’s later whilst doing a consultancy stint at APT. It was produced by Tourism Australia, was entitled ‘In it for the Long Haul’ and mapped 5 major groups. 2 were inexperienced traveller groups that had yet to settle on a preferred type of travel. The other 3 were Cocoon Travellers (take me to the main sites with all the comforts of home), Comfort Adventurers (I want to interact with the locals but I’d like to stay somewhere comfy too) and Self Challenges (show me where the mud huts are, I’ll sleep on the floor like the locals). I’ve attached a link to this excellent piece of research which although 6 years old still makes for interesting and relevant reading (In it For the Long Haul – Tourism Australia).

The particularly interesting thing was that these ‘psychographic characteristics’, although they had some demographic biases, were observed across all age groups and lifestages.  It’s for this reason that I believe that when positioning your brand, this key psychographic dimension should be at the top of your list.

For example, if you’re a destination specialist and want to develop your business, you should look to what experiences you need to offer to those not catered for in your existing offering.  If you’re only offering self drive, you may be missing out on a market that wants to be more cocooned and would prefer an inclusive touring experience.  Conversely, if you cater for one of these psychographic groups only, then a more relevant growth strategy may be to spread your offering geographically, as Simply and Magic did, to attract more business from your existing customers but to new destinations.

Even if you’re a tourism attraction, you need to remember that some will feel uncomfortable with activities that require them to ‘get involved’ whereas others will get frustrated with an experience which is all about observing. To maximise satisfaction, you have to cater for both audiences.

That’s not too discount other segmentation criteria.  Lifestage in particular is also a very important variable and I do think that people can ‘subsume’ their psychographic preferences to a degree when thinking of the greater good, especially when kids are involved.  However, it’s likely the ideal will be combine both their lifestage requirements and their required level of cultural immersion. I’m off to Lefkas in a couple of weeks – authentic, unspoilt Greece, albeit in the grip of a financial crisis.  But my compromise is heading for a cluster of villas around a pool where other families go and where my little boy can mix and play with kids of his own age. I’d probably rather be in the heart of Africa sleeping with the locals in a mud hut but it could be worse – I could be at Butlins.

Have the rules of travel and tourism marketing been re-written with the emergence of Facebook, Twitter et al? Or are we simply playing the same game with a different set of tools at our disposal?

We’ve all heard quotes like ‘social media is a game changer’ or ‘you’ve lost control of your brand’ from the new crop of social media experts that have sprung up due to the rapid adoption of services such as Twitter and Facebook.  But have the rules of marketing really been re-written? For me, the answer is ‘no’.

A very clever chap called Marcus Codrington-Fernandez, a man who has worked on brands such as IBM, Mercedes and Orange (and has now invented a cricket bat) explained to many years before the social media revolution that a brand was communicated by a series of conversations. Some of these conversations the brand would be directly involved with and some not (see fig 1 below). A large part of the marketer’s brief was to get the right sort of conversations going about their brand.

Brand Conversations - the Good Old Days

So brands have always been about conversations, and people were having conversations long before social media came along. So what has social media changed?  Well I’m not sure ‘change’ is the right word. ‘Amplied’ and/or ‘Multiplied’ would be more appropriate.

What it has done is engendered new social connections, multiplied the level of conversation, increased the speed of diffusion of those conversations and made them much more visible (see fig 2 below).

Brand Conversations - Post Social Media

To give you can example close to home, my wife is an avid ‘Facebooker’ and I dabble with Twitter. We’ve have both made new social connections as a result of these services with people we may not have been in contact with otherwise. For my wife, its old friends and colleagues she’d lost touch with and for me its people who share a professional interest.

And there’s no doubt that the number of conversations we have has increased. Both of us now have conversations with new and existing contacts that simply wouldn’t have happened before. You post something about your day you think your friends might be interested in, and ‘hey presto’ they respond. But we still email, we still skype, we still text and, heaven forbid, we still occasionally talk to people face to face.

Of course we’ve all heard the ‘wildfire’ effect of social media. The Jan Moir/Stephen Gately furore was whipped up on Twitter and most people who complained about the Jonathan Ross/Russel Brand incident never ever heard it live. But ‘old’ media could spread good and bad news – the Mail in the case of JR/RB – it’s just speeded things up and allowed us to more readily connect directly with the people in the heart of the firestorm.

And social media conversations, especially on Twitter, are much more visible than they were before – Google can’t index personal emails and IM like it can Twitter for eg. As a travel company, you can use twitter search to find someone looking for honeymoon ideas and make some useful suggestions. Or find someone moaning about your service and nip the problem in the bud.  But then again, you could find someone complaining about your service on TripAdvisor – it just that social media makes it easier to identify and connect.

As individuals. social media enables us to do things that we’ve always done and always wanted to do – have conversations with people we share an affinity with. It’s just made it a darn site easier and therefore encouraged us to do it more often. When push comes to shove, it’s people using these things, and people’s motivations are the same as they’ve always been.

So the game hasn’t changed – engender the right sort of conversations about your brand – you’ve just got a few new tools in your locker which means you need to re-think your tactics.  But don’t throw out the old rulebook.

And the de rigueur phrase that irritates me most of all – ‘you’ve lost control of your brand’. Rubbish.  You haven’t suddenly lost control of your brand because you never had complete control of it in the first place. Conversations were always taking place about your brand that you never had complete control over. But by focusing on delivering a customer experience consistent with your vision and values, you could influence those conversations in the same way you can influence the new conversations happening as a result of Facebook, Twitter et al.

Two recent developments have suggested ways to more than double the effectiveness of online advertising – a combination of ad content, frequency and placement.

It seems a little premature to be blogging on the subject of online advertising again but there have been a couple of developments in the past week that have compelled me to put ‘fingers to keyboard’.

The first is a report released by Eyeblaster based on a study of online advertising by the airline industry. How I know the airline industry isn’t representative of the whole travel and tourism industry but I do think some of the learnings can be applied more widely.

The report covers how online creative, environment and frequency can optimise the effectiveness of online travel advertising.

The biggest win, if you haven’t actioned it already, is to replace your old fashioned banner ads with interactive or rich media ones. From Eyeblaster’s study of the airline industry, this change was found to increase click thrus by a factor of 2.7 and to double conversions. This makes sense – not only are rich media ads more prominent, they’re also by their very nature more interactive and, if you’re clever, more dynamic and therefore more likely to be relevant.

Eyeblaster also investigated the optimum frequency. The figure they arrived at was 4 – that is 4 impressions per target user was the optimum to maximise click thrus. The conclusion was that even the airline industry was significantly under-investing in online advertising as 82% of campaigns served users 3 or fewer.

Online Ad Conversion Rate by Placement - Airlines

The really interesting stat however was to do with environment. Most travel companies would opt for ‘travel’ sites and/or travel sections in other more general sites as the optimum place to serve their online ads. Eyeblaster’s study found that travel sites were not the best environments for either direct response or branding.

For direct response, news and finance sites performed better when both good ‘post click’ conversions (conversions from those who click thru from an ad) and ‘post impression’ conversions (conversions from those who see an ad but don’t click thru from it) were analysed. Travel sites delivered good ‘post impression’ conversions but poor ‘post click’ conversions, probably due to the competition with other travel advertising.

For branding campaigns, Eyeblaster used Dwell Rate (proportion of users who see an ad who interact with it in some way) and Average Dwell Time (the average length of that interaction) as the key metrics for success. In this case, travel performed well for Dwell Rate but poorly for Average Dwell Time, again most likely to do with competition from other advertisers. News, lifestyle and finance sites were the best performing overall, with finances sites warranting an mention as a particularly good place to engage a more upmarket user.

Dwell Rates and Average Dwell Times for Online Ads - Airlines

So these results are suggesting that you should be looking beyond pure travel sites to news, finance and lifestyle sites which can yield more fruitful results dependent upon your objective.  However, I certainly wouldn’t rule out travel sites’, it’s just that in this environment you’re going to have to work harder to stand out.  That could be by using rich media, including video, it could mean by ad synching (running 2 related creatives on the same page) or it could be by making the ad content dynamic and personalising it to the user.

And it’s on this latter topic that I move on to the 2^nd development – the launch of the personalised ad service by Google. Now totally personalised ads are not new – as you know I blogged about Struq only a few weeks ago. But the launch by Google of this service means that it has moved into the mainstream.

So how does it work? Well, in the same way that Struq does in that visitors to an advertiser’s site will be receive an ad with content bespoke to their actions on that site when they visit any part of the Google content network.  Hence, if a user visits your site, searches and clicks on a holiday and doesn’t go on to book, you can serve an ad to that user when they’re on a Google content network site (which includes YouTube) which offers a discount on the very same holiday they’ve been looking for.  Clever stuff.

It’s by doing clever things like this that services such as Struq have claimed better CPAs than search. And the reach of the Google Content Network, over 1m sites in total, makes this launch even more exciting and significant.

The one caveat is consumer reaction to behavioural targeting. Services such as Phorm have run into difficulties in the UK over privacy concerns.  Cookies are ‘anonymous’ but the launch of services like these not only make personalised advertising mainstream for advertisers, but more visible to users to.  I think it’s unlikely but a backlash could result.

* Eyeblaster found that for every conversion ‘post click’, 6.7 conversions were generated ‘post impression’. So when judging the effectiveness of your online advertising campaign, you should be applying a multiplier of 7.7 to your ‘post click’ conversions.

Online display advertising has always been a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have’ in my own promotional plans.  But recent developments have prompted me to re-think my position – in fact, its poised to make a leap between the 2 camps.

I must admit that online advertising is one of those disciplines I’ve probably misjudged.

I remember having a conversation with a senior online marketer at TUI 5 or 6 years ago in which he revealed to me that online advertising was very much an after thought in his digital marketing mix, trailing in a poor third behind search and affiliate activity.

That impression has stayed with me ever since, and although I’ve dabbled, I’ve never found the results so compelling as to make me divert significant budgets from other activity.

But new research is leading me to reappraise my opinion for 2 reasons. First of all, I’ve been too simplistic in the way I’ve been measuring it. Secondly, the targeting options are getting ever more sophisticated.

Let’s tackle the measurement issue first and let’s be frank, the click thru rates for online ads are not that great -  somewhere in the region of 0.1% is the industry average and your search campaign is probably delivering at least 10 times that. So surely it makes no sense to divert any budget from search to online advertising, right? But that’s precisely what some recent research would suggest that you do.

The argument is that search works at the sharp end of the purchase funnel, so targets those most likely to convert. The problem with taking a pure search approach is that consumers may already have formed brand preferences by then, making it hard to for you to change their mind so far down the track. It’s also super competitive down at that end of the funnel – who hasn’t already invested in search engine optimisation and PPC?

Online advertising, however, has more impact at the wide end of the funnel – in fact, it pulls people into the funnel in the first place, which in turn, makes your search campaign more effective as you’ve built awareness and hopefully preference before they see your search ad.

New ad formats like on cntraveller.com also make online advertising more attractive

‘Sounds logical but where’s the evidence’ I hear you cry. Well Eyeblaster conducted some research in the US and found that across all business sectors for those businesses running cross channel search and display ads, 23% of the conversions came from search only and 5% came from search and display.  5% may not sound much but effectively online advertising is making search campaigns 20-25% more effective, and that’s on top of the conversions the campaigns are delivering themselves.

And of course online advertising is doing things other than deliver conversions and make your search campaign work harder. It’s building awareness and shaping preferences, if done in the right way.

OK – that’s the measurement issue dealt with so let’s move onto targeting.  Put simply, the options available are becoming more and more specific and hence more and more attractive, especially if you’re a smaller or medium sized business without huge sums to throw around.

These days publishers and ad networks (organisations that sell advertising on a range of sites, often in addition to the publishers themselves) offer a range of targeting options from geographic, to contextual (i.e. content on the page relevant to your offering), to demographic to behavioural (i.e. interested based, from data collected anonymously on the individual’s browsing habits). And in some instances, you combine 2, more or all of the above.

Imagine as a tourism attraction being able to target your marketing geographically (within 30 miles of your attraction), demographically (families) and contextually (things to do locally) – you’re going to be in front of a highly targeted audience.

However, it’s with behavioural targeting that things get really interesting.  Take the service offered by Struq.  It uses information collected from web browsing behaviour, combined with 3rd party data, to deliver what it calls ‘totally personalised’ ads.  Try the online demo and you can see what I mean – not only can the system ensure your ad is delivered to the right audience but it personalises the ad aswell.

Behavioural targeting has had a bit of a bad press – if you’re curious just google ‘Phorm’ (in fact, I’ve done it for you) and you’ll see what I mean – but it’s nothing new. How on earth do you think that Amazon works out which books to recommend (although as my wife and I both use the same PC it offers up a strange mix of historical non-fiction, marketing text books and chick-lit)?  Once people understand the anonymity of the data, how to opt out and realise that it makes the web more relevant for them, objections are likely to fade away.

So my advice – free up some budget for online advertising, explore the options and see what it delivers. And by that I don’t mean click thrus or acquisitions alone – look at how it influences the effectiveness of your search campaign and whether it drives an increase in your branded search traffic. My guess is that you won’t regret it.

 Digital marketing is cost effective, measurable and the likelihood is you’re under-investing in it. Make sure you’re keeping an eye on what’s coming over the hill but don’t forget some of the more established digital disciplines.

You could argue that I’m writing this a little late in the year because, believe it or not, we’re already beyond the point when most people have lapsed in their commitment to a new lifestyle for a new year. I have to admit to having one foot in this camp myself as my resolution to blog once a week has already proved an abject failure.

Despite that, I did think it was still worth sharing a few ‘digital marketing’ resolutions for 2010 with you. Why only digital?  Well it’s where your customers are most likely to find you and engage with you, it’s highly cost effective and measureable and if you’re like most brands, it’s likely that you’re under-investing in this sector.  So here goes:

1. Invest in your Website, Invest in your Website, Invest in Your Website

Sorry to labour the point, but it makes sense that you’re going to get more ‘bang for your buck’ if you invest more in converting the people that are already coming to your site rather than trying to drive more of them to a site which isn’t working to the optimum.

Think long and hard about what purpose your site is there for and what sort of people are going to be using it.  With websites, less is often more and you need to resist the temptation to bombard users with navigation options and content that cater for their every possible need and whim but create a confusing experience for those trying to use the site for its primary purpose.

Pore over your analytics to see if your site isn’t performing as you envisaged – primary navigation not being used or pages featuring amongst the top exits when they shouldn’t, for example. Explore more rich media options such as larger images and video which can improve the ‘stickiness’ of your site. And continually gather feedback from all the company’s stakeholders, both internal and external.

2. Search is Still the Daddy

When was the last time you had a thorough review of your paid search campaign? When did you last review your keywords?  Do you have a least 3 creatives running at any one time on each ad group to continually test effectiveness? What about your natural search efforts?  Do you have a content strategy integrated with your search efforts?  Are you working on building your incoming links?

Digital Resolutions for 2010

If you answer is ‘yes’ to all of those questions then my hat goes off to you, but the chances are that there are some ‘nos’ scattered in there. My point is that search is the ‘big daddy’ of online marketing and its still growing (UK searches in December ’09 were 35% up on December ’08).  So although you may have been distracted by the winsome looks of social media or mobile phone apps, you need to make sure you’re keeping on top of it. Or keeping on top of the agency that looks after it for you (time for a performance-based deal perhaps?)

3. Let’s Reverse Those Declining Open Rates

Do you actually know why your email subscribers have signed up for email?  And are you giving them what they want?  Are your email efforts one way style ‘broadcast’ communications or are you using them to engage with your customers? Are you treating your recent subscribers in a different way to your past subscribers?

Because email marketing is so cheap, the temptation is to blast everyone with everything, just in case. But you’ll achieve a much closer relationship with your customers if you ask them what they want and then deliver. Much like social media, email offers the opportunity to enter into conversations and you’ll get much better results if you take the time to engage with your audience.

4. It’s Social Media So Start Being Sociable

You wouldn’t have many friends left it you talked at them and never expressed an interest in them or listened to what they had so say, but a surprising number of brands take this approach to social media. One way  ‘brand to consumer’ communication is old fashioned marketing so start getting interactive. Search social media platforms to find out what people are saying and intervene if you can help. Get interactive with your followers, find out what they want from you, and then deliver. The time for ‘dabbling’ is over – set yourself clear goals for what you want to achieve and work out how you’re going to get there.

5. Keep an Eye on Mobile

Mobile is the new buzzword on the digital ‘fashion’ calendar following in the wake of social media in 2009 but just because its faddy doesn’t mean you should turn your nose up at it.  Smartphones and feature phones actually enjoy high levels of penetration – if you look at your own you’ve probably got internet access and even a couple of apps tucked away that you weren’t aware of – but the iPhone has changed the landscape simply because its users are just so active.

The main buzz revolves around apps and mobile advertising, with the former growing at an explosive pace and the latter being fuelled by high profile purchases of mobile ad networks by Apple and Google.  But don’t forget about mobile search, location-based services are offered on both Bing and Google, and whether having a website developed for mobile use (a bit of a nightmare given all those screen resolutions, operating systems and differing key functions) makes sense for your brand.

Don't Just Think iPhone

The question to ask yourself before you plunge in are are what are my target market using their mobile for, and what can I do for them that will be useful for them when they’re on the move?  For example, for city centre business hotels, a presence in mobile search and a mobile website could make sense – I could imagine a tech-savvy and PA-less businessman organising his hotel on the go between meetings. I could also imagine mobile websites for booking hotel facilities such as spas, room service and restaurant reservations when you’re there. By the same token, people on holiday might like to search for local attractions on their mobile device.

And don’t rule out mobile marketing if you target audience is not connecting to the internet on their mobile, which most aren’t. Old and enduring technologies, such as text, offer opportunities as well. Services such as TravelBuddy can add value to your clients when they’re away with you, and text based gaming can offer interaction at visitor sites and attraction for adults and children alike.

6. Keep on Top of Your Craft

I don’t care how you do it, twitter, RSS and/or email, but take the time to take in what’s happening in the world of digital. It’s moving so fast you need to keep on top of it. That’s not to say that you need to get carried away with it – your target audience’s attitudes, needs, motivations and behaviours should always be the filter you see these developments through – but unless you’re on top of what’s coming over the hill, you could miss a big opportunity that your competitors don’t.

More, engaging content means more prospective customers and better conversion of those prospective customers. So how do I create engaging content? Think like a publisher.

I’m connected to a chap called Jeff Ogden on Linkedin. I bumped into Jeff when he was working for Greenlight Search. Now, he’s gone out on his own and runs a company that specialises in B2B lead generation. He’s doing very well, before you ask.

Now those of you that read my earlier post on marketing to high net worth individuals will know that us B2C marketers can learn alot from the very best B2B ones, expecially when we’re targeting HNW individuals.

Recently, Jeff put out a podcast on content strategies for B2B enterprises to generate leads called “Think Like a Publisher” which got me thinking – many more companies in the travel and tourism sector should be thinking like publishers.

Why?

• Well firstly, more content means better conversion. As a rule of thumb, the more content a potential customer can find on their chosen subject, the more likely they’ll trust your expertise on that subject and the more likely they’ll get in touch. Of course it can’t be any old rubbish – it needs to reflect areas on which your company is an authority, be consistent with the brand essence and values, be interesting and topical, and be part of a well structured site so that it channels your prospective customer rather than confusing her.

• Secondly, it means more potential customers coming to your site. More content leads to more relevant links being swapped on social media, RSS, bookmarking sites and via email. It means more content being indexed by Google, Bing etc and more frequent visits to your site by those search engines which can lead to improvement in your PageRank.

More and more companies are adopting ‘branded’ content strategies but for the only part of the right reason (if that makes sense). Content strategies shouldn’t only be used for search engines, and I’d always advocate creating content for people first and robots second.

I’ll cover some content generation ideas in another post, but bear in mind when you start out on this process that you’ll need to think about how you’re going to integrate this content on to your site (or on another site you create for it) and where, commercially, it make sense to focus. By that I mean if you have a wide product portfolio, which areas drive you highest margins – those are the places to start.

High spending customers take time, creativity and focus to reel in, but the rewards far outweigh the efforts.

I mentioned in my recent post on marketing segmentation and targeting that as long as a segment was profitable, it didn’t necessarily need to be substantial. Hence, a marketing segment can be as small as one.

Big Fish - Worth the Effort

I’ve worked right at the top end of travel & tourism and I’ve seen this phenomena plenty of times – the client who spends £100,000+ every year.  These clients are like rare diamonds to be polished and cherished. And because it doesn’t take 20 times longer to service a £100,000 holiday than a £5,000 one, the return on investment for your consultant’s time (and your marketing efforts) are so much higher.

So how do you market to a segment of one?  My advice would be to take a leaf out of the marketing journals of our B2B colleagues, who have much more experience in developing and nurturing one-to-one relationships.

Take an example of a high net worth individual that’s made a initial enquiry to your business – here’s how I’d coach a Sales Consultant through the process:

• Thoroughly Research Your Client – if you work at this end of the industry, your Sales Consultants should be in the habit of googling all new prospective clients to identify if they fit into this  category.  They’ll probably find a Linkedin profile at the very least. Tools like Ebsco (free with CIM membership) can be used to fill out your profile further.

• Leverage Every Conversation to Find Out More – make sure your use every conversation orf contact point with them (or their intermediary, be it PA or concierge) to find out more about them. When do they go away? (when we go on holiday is largely predictable, if we ask the right questions.  What interests them?  Who else is in their DMU (=decision making unit – husband/wife, children etc)and what roles do they play?  My experience is that everyone has the same favourite topic of conversation – themselves. Forget about yourself and practice the fine art of conversation – ask them about them and listen.

• Thoroughly Research Their Requirements – for these people, you need to go that extra mile. Share the information you’ve gathered with your partners,  be they hotels or DMCs, so they can give you the best advice. Scour the internet for alternative options – you really want to demonstrate your expertise and understanding of their requirements. And don’t be over-awed by their status – they’re experts in they’re field but you’re an expert in yours, that’s why they’ve come to you.

• Maintain a Dialogue – you’ve sent your quote, you’ve even followed up by phone and nothing. Your assumption – they’re not interested. They’ve booked elsewhere.  Wrong assumption.  We’re talking about seriously busy people and you have to accept that it’s your responsibility to keep the conversation going. But don’ become a pest – ensure every contact point adds value from the client’s perspective. Their prefered room type is about to sell out, a special offer is expiring, a new activity which they’d enjoy has just come to your attention. And mix it up from a channel perspective (email, phone, letter) – if a message is extremely time-sensitive, pick up the phone.

• Don’t Let the Trail Go Cold – even if it’s been weeks since the last contact, don’t give up.  Your focus may shift, however, to communications not directly related to your recent quote and reduce in frequency.  When you see ideas that would interest them, send them over – be they luxury hotel openings, new adventure activities etc.  RSS feeds are a great way of keeping on top of the latest travel news.  If you have an event that might interest them, send them details.  In every case, remember to look at things from their perspective and bring value.

You can continue this approach until the client tells you to stop.  Your rivals will give up after 3-5 contacts.  In my experience, it can take anything up to 12 contacts to get a response – that’s going to require some careful thinking and creativity from you to craft each contact.

Just think about the potential rewards – future high value business and hopefully recommendations. But don’t rest on your laurels once you’ve got that initial business in.  You’d be foolish to assume subsequent bookings are going to come your way.  You’re going to have to maintain an ongoing dialogue to reinforce that initial positive impression and secure that loyalty affirming 2nd piece of business.