The way we advertise to and engage with consumers has changed dramatically thanks to the explosion of mobile.
Today’s travelers use multiple devices to plan their trips, research new destinations, buy travel packages and then stay up-to-date while on-the-go.
NB This is a guest article by Susan Lietz, senior vice president of marketing at Tapad.
More than 61% of travelers in the US will use a mobile device to look up information prior to a trip – representing 47.4% of all digital travel research, according to eMarketer. By next year, this number is expected to hit 72.8 million, increasing to 54.6% of digital travel research. While a majority of actual purchases are still ultimately made on desktop; today, numerous screens are engaged along the way.
To ensure a consistent brand experience, marketers need to connect with consumers through the entire process. From hotels to airlines, travel agencies and more, travel marketers should deliver a seamless, consistent brand experience to customers, regardless of what device they’re using.
Consider this scenario: A traveler decides to take a weekend getaway. She starts searching for beach vacations on her phone during her morning commute. On her lunch break, she checks for travel deals on her office desktop. Later, she looks at those same deals on her tablet while watching her connected TV at home. The next morning, she purchases the vacation package on her laptop.
Using the siloed approach of advertising’s past, a marketer would see this person as five different people – a persona on each device – not as one person using multiple devices.
This gets even trickier when multiple browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari are involved. These changes often cause inconsistent brand experiences for the consumer.
How can you reach today’s always on, always on-the-go consumers?
Travel marketers need to move away from “spray-n-pray,” - where marketers spray a campaign across multiple channels and hope one will land and be effective - to “connect-n-effect.” - cross-device advertising where marketers can now seamlessly personalize the consumer’s exposure to the brand across screens in a targeted way.
Cross-device advertising shows the entire path-to-purchase experience of consumers. For example, from the scenario above, the technology is now there for advertisers to know that the ad the consumer saw on her tablet led her to the website on her laptop, eventually booking the trip.
Before this technology, it would be unknown that the tablet impression definitely caused the conversion on the laptop.
Through a unified, cross-device approach, marketers benefit from:
• Strategic Spending
Understanding that numerous devices belong to the same user prevents marketers from sending the same creative to someone who may have already seen it or isn’t a proper target. For example, if someone is searching for a ski vacation on their phone then showing them a beach travel package on their tablet is a waste of precious ad dollars.
• Exposure Control
Delivering a brand message the right number of times. Through modern analytics, marketers can know the optimal amount of times users should see an ad to drive the greatest results. Without a unified view, marketers see fragmented results for how many times one user is exposed to their message. A cross-device view of the consumer allows for a true frequency cap on the amount of times an ad is shown to a specific person-- cutting the risk of over- or under-exposing someone to a brand message.
• Sequential Messaging
Different brand messages are more valuable at different times. Delivering a message sequentially can help move consumers closer to the ultimate KPI: the purchase. For example, starting with an awareness ad for a Bahamas vacation and then following up with specific information about hotels in that area can create a natural experience for the consumer through to their final purchase.
• Connecting the Dots
Measurement is key in understanding how a user is engaging with your brand. Cross-device allows for true measurement into the role of each campaign tactic on driving results.
For example, a hotel may see customers book rooms on its website and conclude its mobile ad spend is not working. But cross-device insights reveal how many of those desktop conversions took place after the user was exposed to an ad on their mobile device, and actually may have been a key driver in the action taken.
Overall, it’s essential for travel marketers to look across a user’s devices for delivering a unified, relevant and beneficial advertising experience for their brand or client.
To put it in airport terms: don’t miss your connection!
NB1 This is a guest article by Susan Lietz, senior vice president of marketing at Tapad.
NB2Image by Shutterstock