IN-DEPTH: Figuring out how to couple demographical and transactional data with social data will be the next big challenge for travel brands in 2012, says Tarik Qahawish, director, Digital Marketing & Communications, Aeroplan.

By Ritesh Gupta

Travel companies continue to make better use of social media to effectively communicate with their customers and prospects.

Many companies are now more versed in targeting content to the various social audiences they communicate with on the different social networks through past experience and social network analytics that have become more advanced.

Also, the value of having a fan base that is interested in your brand, versus just trying to get as many fans/followers as possible without regard to their connection with your company is becoming much more apparent as marketers shift focus to engagement.

Also, synchronising the look and feel of social media accounts and the tone of the messaging has also improved.

“Most brands now have apps that are built in to their Facebook pages and are experimenting with Facebook ads and contests to draw users to their pages and increase engagement. On Twitter many travel companies have refined their strategy for engagement and offer deals to gain new followers. YouTube is being utilised for customer testimonials, highlighting corporate culture, site usage how-tos and videos of important events and announcements,” says Jennifer Stafford, Social Media Manager, HomeAway.com.

While not all travel companies have reached a fully diversified social strategy that encompasses all of the major social networks, they are moving in that direction.

“I expect to see more diversity in engagement, content, promotions and apps throughout 2012 as they try to stay ahead of the competition. But no matter where your company is in terms of social marketing maturity, developing a social marketing strategy if you don’t already have one should be a priority for all brands,” Stafford told EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview recently.

Travel companies are increasingly finding that engaging with customers and prospects online has been rewarding in terms of relationship building and identifying brand advocates so as long as it’s done with the intention to help solve a problem engagement from brands is usually accepted by users.

Travel companies are looking at engaging their audience with stimulating, relevant content, and/or provide them with the tools necessary to meet their needs over time.  

“Facebook is not just another channel to push the same content to fans. But similar to how email targeting has advanced over the past 10 years, I think engagement targeting will get much better with tools such as Facebook Connect and travel brands will be able to deliver the most relevant offer and information to the right fans and of course at the right. Figuring out how to couple demographical & transactional data with social data will be the next big challenge for travel brands in 2012,” says Tarik Qahawish, director, Digital Marketing & Communications, Aeroplan, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel USA 2012, to be held in San Francisco (March 5-6) this year.

Learning Curve

Travel companies acknowledge that going by their experience over the past year some posts and tweets performed much better or worse than expected, which was a great insight in understanding what language and content resonates the most.

Sharing results on a frequent basis and providing training in interpreting the data definitely helped in motivating the relevant teams to remember to tag all the posts and landing pages.

Finally, keeping record of activities and looking at the overall picture is definitely essential.

“In many cases, a specific social media activity might have produced “x” amount of traffic from that social media channel, but at times there were overall lifts from other channels, like search, which could be correlated back to that social media campaign. It is important to do a full analysis rather than just focus on the obvious reports/data,” says Barbara Pezzi, director of Analytics & Search Optimisation, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International.

Advantage

Travel companies are attempting to tap into online conversations around their brands, products or services to understand what their core audiences are saying and determine the influence they have on their brands. Travel companies have been attempting to gain “information advantage” by closely monitoring the preferences of their guests, as well as the way they communicate about these preferences on the Internet.

“Not many companies have been successful at reacting very quickly to new consumer insight from the social web, except to reverse a fee announcement for example, but there are more evidence that organisations have begun to consider the social media impact when considering future plans,” said Qahawish.

Stafford believes that as the travel industry is one of the most talked about on social media, the ability to find data should not be an issue for most companies.

“Travel companies can easily monitor likes, dislikes, requests, issues and more from their customers as well as customers of competitors through social media conversations. By tracking the conversations brands can gather public information from customers previously reserved for focus groups and surveys. Many companies are using this data for improving customer service on social media channels and build social apps in addition to internal product and process improvements. Utilising social conversations to learn what content your followers want to see from your brand is also a great benefit so you can deliver valuable information to users,” says Stafford.

“Additionally, conversations can provide you with information that can be used to more accurately craft messaging used in social advertising.  Social data also gives brands the opportunity to identify who your brand advocates and social media influencers are so you can engage with them if they’re providing feedback to your company,” added Stafford.