NB: This is a viewpoint by Tine Thygesen, CEO of Everplaces.
I recently went to a traditional consumer travel show, Herning Travel Show in Denmark, to see how travel companies today share information and promote their destinations.
The event covered five halls and included all the major destinations, airlines and travel companies in Northern Europe. Many had spent small fortunes on their stands, which did look impressive.
But when it came to thinking creatively about marketing, I was disappointed, there was practically no digital touch to any of the exhibitors marketing materials.
The goal for having a stand is to meet people, look them in the eyes, build a connection and get them to select you when they finally book their next travel in some months time.
A highly competitive situation, so I was surprised everyone opted for same traditional paper brochures, since they are notoriously ineffective in the long term effect.
Despite that fact that 34% of people now book travel from their mobile, and 40% use their mobiles to find information, no one was pushing visitors to download an app.
All the exhibitors had a wealth of physical brochures, all beautiful colorful materials which would be a great marketing if it wasn’t because most people throw them away before they ever read them.
A big advantage to digital marketing over physical marketing is longevity
Once a potential costumer has downloaded information about you and your offerings onto their phone they can find you again. This small detail is crucial because:
- With such similar offerings, it’s hard for the costumer to remember who offered what. This is both after a big trade show and after browsing the web
- Most people will book months after they’ve met you. By then they’ve forgotten who had the deal or the destination, maybe even your company name
- People loose brochures, or throw them away, but
- Up to 80% of people never delete an app once its on their phone
Digital marketing trumps when it comes to flexibility and cost savingsInstead of producing expensive brochures that become outdated, or fail to hit the sweet spot, an app is flexible. The app can be updated with new content to keep it up to date, or have the contents replaced if the existing content isn’t effective.
This allows the marketing manager to test different material and different segments. Long term it offers serious financial savings for printing, because an app can be distributed over and over again.
As an alternative to big catalogues (which people are loath to carry around) I’d suggest a tiny little brochure in the shape of an app which encourages people to download the app in their own time. You’re much more likely they will take this tiny brochure than a big catalogue, yet it allows you to present as much information.
Once you have an app on people’s phone, you have the first foot in the door to start building a connection.
Looking at the piles of paper brochures at the trade show I couldn’t help think how much rainforest we could have saved, and how much better results the travel companies would have got if they’d promoted downloads of branded apps with information and offers instead. After allm, many apps only cost four figures to produce.
You don’t get many brochures for that!
NB: This is a viewpoint by Tine Thygesen, CEO of Everplaces.
NB2:Magazine pile image via Shutterstock.