Savvy travel marketers know social media can be an effective way to target consumers where they’re already spending their time.
Many campaigns are hosted via the usual suspects - Facebook and Instagram - but Pinterest is emerging as a particularly useful platform to reach travelers who are in the inspiration phase, and perhaps haven’t yet decided where to go.
For destination marketing organizations, this is a compelling prospect: “We [at Pinterest] like to say that what's special about our business is the unique mindset where travelers are open, they're undecided and they're really looking for content from brands,” says Vikram Bhaskaran, global head of vertical strategy at Pinterest.
Because of this openness to ideas, travelers don’t see content from brands as an interruption to their search process; rather, they’re “excited to see someone with authority giving me ideas based on what I’m searching for, based on my interests,” Bhaskaran says.
"The big headline is: Here's a place where people are explicitly coming for inspiration around travel. And, [as DMOs], you can reach them in a way that's additive to the experience.”
Taking the “D” out of DMO
Pinterest, which counts more than 300 million users, says 97% of top searches on the platform are unbranded.
Which means for undecided travelers, the inspiration phase isn’t necessarily dedicated to looking for ideas in specific destinations, but rather to general searching based on their unique interests.
For example, a “foodie” browsing Pinterest for places with a rich food scene might discover a destination like Sardinia on the platform rather than explicitly seeking out culinary activities in a well-known gastronomic hub like France.
Bhaskaran says this type of behavior takes the “destination” out of destination marketing and replaces it with “passion” or “interest.”
So for DMOs, beyond tactics like bidding on a keyword for their destination, they have the opportunity to target consumers browsing content on various topics such as food, wellness or adventure.
The company says 78% of Pinners on the platform have made a purchase based on seeing travel content from brands on Pinterest, and 73% of users say the platform inspired them to plan an additional unplanned trip.
Visit Florida
This past spring, Visit Florida ran a campaign on Pinterest targeting travelers open to adventure and nature-based travel experiences.
In addition to using image pins, the organization was the first to test Pinterest’s new Performance Video offering with the goals of determining if performance was in-line with traditional video units as well as driving traffic to the Visit Florida website.
Here's a place where people are explicitly coming for inspiration around travel.
Vikram Bhaskaran - Pinterest
“Pinterest is a highly visual platform; it’s users engage with content by searching and scrolling for click-worthy imagery,” says Staci Mellman, vice president of brand for Visit Florida.
“We believe that Pinterest offers a unique opportunity for advertisers like us to visually appeal to travelers in the discovery and inspirational phases,” she continues. “Other [social] platforms are ‘in the moment’ sharing tools. Pinterest is an aspirational planning tool, and that is the ideal place to intersect potential travelers to think about a future vacation in Florida.”
The Outdoor Adventures campaign achieved a click-through rate of more than 2.06X that of the DMO benchmark, and the Performance Video ads format received more than 15 million views.
“Targeting is intentionally broad, but it’s tailored to the specific travel audience interests,” Mellman says.
“Destination selection and activity planning can happen in any phase of the funnel. … Because of this, Visit Florida runs campaigns that reach the desired audience at any point in their travel journey.”
No fear of missing out
With Pinterest, compared to other visual-heavy platforms like Instagram, there’s no FOMO - or fear of missing out - says Bhaskaran.
“On Instagram, or other social platforms, there’s a little bit of, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful trip. I feel FOMO, I actually feel bad,’” he continues.
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“Planning something on Pinterest is something to look forward to as opposed to reacting to someone else’s photos when you’re obviously not there.”
Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California, which also runs campaigns on Pinterest, says: “On Pinterest, we can provide resources to a potential traveler when they are actively looking for inspiration and ideas. Pinterest users [compared to users on other social platforms] are already in the mindset to engage, save, read and explore.”
According to comScore, people are coming to Pinterest before other social or travel platforms, and for 2019 searches around bus travel, less-traveled islands and small-town travel are on the rise.
For DMOs, this presents a “very rich canvas” to reach consumers, Bhaskaran says.
“We have this unique window into not just where people are going, but what they’re interested in,” he says. “I think brands have woken up to that.”