Content and advertising strategies today need to span all personal electronic devices or risk missing out on nearly a quarter of prospective customers.
When we look at travel motivations, research, and buying behaviour, consumer content needs vary by decision phase and device. With consumers typically owning multiple devices, this creates challenges for marketers, but also opportunities.
According to comScore, mobile represents 30 percent of all internet usage in the UK, including 18 percent from smartphones and 12 percent from tablets, demonstrating the vast and valuable mobile market. As consumers integrate multiple devices into their daily life, reaching them through tailored content is paramount and should be based on the understanding of the consumer journey, purchase considerations and type of device.
We have looked at this in-depth, across a number of research projects, and the findings illustrate that consumer travel spending and advertising spending are both on the rise. This is true in many segments of the market and is not necessarily new, but the modern content journey is spread across devices and varied digital resources, such as online travel agencies, airline sites and search engines. Brands need to embrace and understand all new content types and platforms to effectively target audiences.
Opportunities certainly exist. With travel purchases for example, pictures and images are often the most important content type during destination selection, but other content types play an important role before, during and post-trip. Looking at reach and engagement levels throughout the content journey can inform where brands should optimise their content, frequency and messaging to reach customers.
Brands like VisitBritain understand the content journey and how effective content marketing can transcend borders and reach a global audience.
To maximise the exposure and global interest generated during the 2012 London Olympics, VisitBritain aimed to further position Britain as a desirable destination for international travellers and establish tourism as a key contributor to the UK economy on a long-term basis. VisitBritain deployed a series of integrated, multi-tactic campaigns that highlighted different aspects of the UK – countryside, culture, food, heritage, music, shopping and sports – across TV, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, cinema, radio, outdoor and onsite advertising. Strategic brand partnerships to reach and understand fast-growing markets like Asia Pacific were also included, and contributed to positioning Britain as a desirable destination both now and in the future. This content and ad mix, underpinned with strategic targeting, ensures the reach and engagement desirable to brands.
Brands need to reach consumers no matter where they are, and through whatever device they are using, which is why emerging content areas such as mobile should play a role in brand strategies. In the travel segment, the mobile travel audience has eclipsed the PC travel audience: Of the 156 million people engaging with online travel content, 104 million access travel content via mobile device, while 52 million access travel content exclusively on PC. This shift in engagement further illustrates the importance of implementing a cross-platform marketing strategy, and targeted content mix, to reach consumers.
Understanding how consumers navigate content and make purchase decisions in a multiscreen world needs to be tested, learnt, iterated and repeated to overcome today’s marketing challenges.
By Jane McFadzean, Expedia Media Solutions.
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