Given the sticky economic climate (not to mention that swine flu), I couldn’t help but wonder what extremes companies in the travel industry are taking to incentivize consumers to break into their piggy banks this summer season.
According to OAG FACTS, April 2009 marks the ninth successive month of declines in flight schedules, specifically reflecting a drop of more than 136,000 flights and 9 million seats. Ouch!
What are companies doing to stay afloat in these turbulent conditions? Here’s a snapshot of current promotional and marketing efforts:
USA TODAY and DiscoverAmerica.com recently collaborated on the “Picture America Contest” campaign where visitors to pictureamerica.usatoday.com were encouraged to submit photos that capture the essence of America and best represent the country to international travelers; deadline entry was May 8th. Professional photographers will select the top 10 and USA TODAY readers will vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. The 3 winners will receive trips to American cities through Travelocity, along with a $500 American Express voucher credit toward airfare. Discover America will also use the images from the 10 finalists as part of their marketing campaign geared at promoting U.S. travel to international tourists. What a great way to incorporate interactivity and validate consumer generated content. Read the rest of this entry »
Online marketing tools have given marketers and decision makers an amazing amount of mostly accurate data to mine. However, as the saying goes, you can have too much of a good thing. As we see it, there are three key issues:
- The mind-boggling amount of data generated by online data gathering tools, be they website server logs, keyword searches, ad impressions, clicks, etc.
- The relative lack of analytical tools to make sense of all that data and transform it into actionable knowledge (data in and of itself is prety useless, as you may have noticed).
- A seemingly total dearth of tools and experts that can take the still-confusing knowledge generated form the data and make it easily digestible by mere mortals, like your typical marketer (yes, that includes us).
There is obviously not much that we can do about the first issue. And the second issue is slowly but surely being resolved through the emergence of more accurate, more user-friendly and more affordable analytical tools. The third issue is something we have been bedeviled by with little hope for resolution…until now. In the past few weeks, we have come across a very impressive array of tools and companies that are tackling this nagging problem. Not all of them are directly answering marketers’ prayers but the concepts and the thought processes are great harbingers of what we can expect in the marketing field. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Media Marketing = Word of Mouth = Awareness
Social media is as simple as its component parts – social interaction meets media — the sites, events, communities and resources that enable people to share with each other, collaborate, communicate and reinvent.
Social media marketing is harnessing that media to drive conversation, build awareness and spark word of mouth around a brand, individual or particular subject matter.
Your audience is living in the new media space – on Social Networks (Myspace, Facebook, LastFM), Sharing and Bookmarking sites (Digg, Stumbleupon), opinion and voting sites, UGC and video sites (YouTube, DailyMotion), and a variety of communities and blogs targeting niche interests. For successful social media marketing, it is important to:
- Find those consumers;
- Listen to them;
- Amplify their voice; and
- Engage them with the information and content they’re asking for.
Why Social Marketing is More Effective.
Traditional Media = Monologue
Social Media = Dialogue
Now, more than ever, consumers have the opportunity to involve themselves in the marketing mix, and they will. As new, digital media became the preferred media of the Millennial Generation, information and content became easier to create, share and manipulate. This democratization has led to an unprecedented interconnectedness both to the world and one another. This real-time, interconnectivity creates a two-way communication channel for everything, always, which is one of its primary advantages over traditional media.
Traditional media is characterized as monologue, slow if ever to adapt and respond. Social media is defined by dialogue, evolving constantly and responding instantly. Consumers have gravitated to and adopted social media because it allows them the opportunity to interact with and engage the people, brands and ideas that matter most to them. And this two-way communication channel requires that brands interact and engage in return. After they are done speaking, they are now required to listen and respond. Those that don’t will be left behind.
Once people are engaged it becomes increasingly likely that they will share and this sharing is the ultimate value for brands practicing effective social media marketing. All of the actions we take online are now shared with our friends – we are clicks away from sharing the links we like, from seeing the clothes and music our friends just purchased, from reading the restaurant reviews posted by our neighbors. And we know this sharing is the most important factor when influencing consumers to adopt a specific brand identity or purchase a certain product.