Social Media and Marketing

IN-DEPTH: Paolo Torchio, VP, E-marketing & Revenue Consulting, Sabre Hospitality Solutions says one needs to investigate the potential of each channel and decide which ones support your business strategy

Published: 19 Apr 2011

IN-DEPTH: Paolo Torchio, VP, E-marketing & Revenue Consulting, Sabre Hospitality Solutions says one needs to investigate the potential of each channel and decide which ones support your business strategy

By Ritesh Gupta

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently said that the amount of money companies spend on digital advertising continues to grow, as do the opportunities to innovate.

For its part, Microsoft Advertising wants to rethink and reinvent everything about digital advertising, from things as simple as banner ads, to better targeting and customising ad experiences for consumers to make them relevant, to creating cutting-edge experiences made possible by products such as Kinect. The speed of innovation is accelerating like no other industry, which doesn’t always make life easy for marketers and advertisers. Considering this one needs to be wary of how to embrace emerging opportunities.

“Be wary of investing in new channels without understanding the value to your business and your brand,” says Paolo Torchio, VP, E-marketing & Revenue Consulting, Sabre Hospitality Solutions.

Torchio, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2011, to be held in London (May 10-11), recommends: “Investigate the potential of each channel and decide which ones support your business strategy.”

Some tips and best practices for any strategy, according to Torchio:

• Call to actions: Include clear directives and call to actions for your consumer in each channel where you promote your business.

• Track your campaigns and marketing efforts to a granular level

• Promotion parity: Include promotion/offer parity across channels, with the difference being the way the message is delivered in each medium

• Be visual, but legible: digital marketing allows for a high visual content both on your own Website as well as on third party channels and within E-mail. Make sure your images and videos are the right format, size and type to open quickly and easily in the media you choose.

• Share and interconnect your marketing channels: Include, where possible, opportunities for guests to share and like your brand. Have these cross media (such as like tags after an Email message). Allow consumers to like your brand through email messages, sign up for your newsletters via other social media channels, etc

Marketing touchpoints

It is being highlighted that the approach of marketers has shifted towards tracking all marketing touchpoints and monetising across all online channels at once and not each in a silo.

Each channel has a role and the return on investment is measured within channels. Also, with the evolution of web analytics and targeted media networks, one can do lot more.

Web analytics and marketing automation systems have responded with more sophisticated software so marketers have best of both analytical worlds. One can understand the stand-alone contribution as well as the interaction within campaigns and across multiple channels. Professionals are able to measure both the short-term payback and impact on life-time value. Companies, including ones in the travel sector, have moved from batched data to real-time outputs, from single to multiple channels and know which touchpoints are used by different audiences and can design specific campaigns to appeal to user segments.

Torchio said, “We have been encouraging hoteliers to look at the overall impact of their promotions and campaigns via all channels for some time – other industries realised the billboard effect of their marketing a while back but for hotels this concept has taken a little longer to take effect.”

The challenge, according to Torchio, has been in that different channels may have traditionally been managed by different groups within the hotel organisation, and sometimes not funded by a centralised marketing budget, which may have lead to these silos.

“With the integration of rate and inventory management across channels, more integration between sales, distribution and marketing and tracking tools that can cross channels this should certainly become more transparent,” Torchio added.

Budget fluidity

As convergence between online and offline marketing continues, budget fluidity is also expected to increase.

There’s no doubt that digital marketing has become an essential marketing tool – especially when paired with off-line. Global recession made this even more apparent as brands cut back off-line marketing budgets and had to do more with less. Interestingly, many marketers saw a benefit from “blended buys”.

Pairing the two drove a better ROI as off-line keeps you top-of-mind and on-line drives the direct response for an overall better performance. The investment in off-line ensures you stay top-of-mind with users in a competitive market and the online supports specific calls to action such as room discounts, special sales or membership drives. As a result, many are seeing that the pairing has increased search and on-line better clicks rates and lower costs. In many cases, off-line advertising plus on-line can triple brand search navigation and improve both SEO and PPC click performance. So, with the right approach, off-line coupled with digital spend can help you reach targeted users more directly and maximise your overall marketing spend.

Torchio said from a trackability standpoint obviously online channels are so much easier to show Return On Advertising Spending as well as turn on and off based on the real time results.

“But it is not just about tracking, as consumers spend more % of their “disposable” time with electronic media advertising spend should be proportional to that time spent. For example, if consumers are spending less time watching TV and more on social media or online video, should we not be channeling the proportionate amount of time to marketing in these channels?” questioned Torchio.

Torchio added, “But continuing this argument, there will still be a % of time spent with print and other offline channels, and this may become skewed towards certain consumer demographics. If these consumers are in your target group a % of marketing budget should continue to be spent here, as always the call to action can move them online making the channel trackable.”

Prioritising

On the best way to prioritise resources be it for SEO, SEM, PR, brand marketing, social media, CRM etc., Torchio said one should look at these as ways to reach consumers and have them take action in context of a strategic plan that clearly outlines what you are trying to achieve – going back to the marketing funnel: are you looking to acquire new customers through brand awareness, are you trying to engage with a consumer and push them to making a selection and convert or are you trying to build loyalty and advocacy.

“So it’s not so much about prioritising SEO over SEM but looking at which channel will give you the most effective desired result. This will of course also vary in terms of order or priority based on where you are with your brand evolution – are you building awareness for a new hotel opening or reflag or trying to promote a package to fill a need period. Each requires a different mix of these techniques,” recommended Torchio.

Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2011

EyeforTravel is scheduled to conduct its flagship event, Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2011 in London (May 10-11).

For more information, click here

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Tim Gunstone
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Phone: +44 (0) 207 375 7557 (London, UK)
Email: tim@eyefortravel.com