Travel and tourism brands are tipped to continue leading the way in the emerging discipline of "moment marketing".
Whilst the idea of hitting travellers with relevant messages during a particular event or scenario isn't entirely new, social media and the technological overhaul of other channels have allowed for so-called moment marketing to become more efficient, timely and - hopefully - effective.
The industry is already seen as a beacon for the sectors to follow, such as financial services, consumer goods and technology.
Benchmarked against adoption rate, how much a sector is spending, reaction times, and planning and scalability, travel came in ahead of the likes of motoring, general retail and entertainment in a study by TVTY, a company that specialises in digital marketing.
The growing importance of moment marketing is being led by the fact that many consumers are often looking at their mobile smartphones more than 200 times per day, giving marketers an opportunity to hit potential travellers with messages that are related to external factors.
Inevitably, travel brands focus on elements such as the weather, content from TV shows that are running at the same time, and sports events (for example, a major football match close to the Mediterranean resorts in Europe).
Some brands are even using moment marketing to react to the TV advertising of their competitors, giving consumers a contrasting point of view or, more perhaps importantly, a price differentiation within minutes of an ad being screened.
So what the channels being used to push out such messages?
Inevitably, Facebook leads the way with 73% of marketers surveyed saying they use the network to target consumers with quick messages.
Other popular channels include Twitter (65%), Instagram (44%), online video (43%), search (40%) and online display (34%).
TVTY CEO Pierre Marechal says TV stands out as the current trigger for moment marketing campaigns.
"52% say they will align moment marketing campaigns to popular TV shows and 38% plan
to sync campaigns to their own TV advertising.
"TV is closely followed by sports events (48%), and then financial events (40%), such as fluctuations in the stock
market.
"Weather is also a very important trigger for 33% of respondents. It’s not surprising to see why: weather is recognised as the single biggest factor (after money) affecting consumer behaviour and can directly influence purchases."
Still, reaction times are getting quicker for travel brands to send out moment marketing messages to consumers.
Only 10% of marketings are running it at one-to-five minutes, with the majority of others taking anything between six and 60 minutes to respond.
NB:Moment marketing mobile image via Shutterstock.