The Biggest Marketing Challenge in 2010 - Does Size Matter?

Last week, we took a look at what over 200 travel and leisure executives on LinkedIn felt to be their biggest destination marketing challenge for 2010. You can find that post by clicking here. This week, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the numbers to see how company size impacted the results.

As you can see on the chart, respondents who work in Enterprise and Large companies had similar results and mirrored the respondents as a whole quite closely. The notable differences are that more (22%) respondents in Enterprise organizations view their biggest challenge to be “Dealing with so many new options”, while more (30%) respondents in Large companies view it to be “Figuring out what sets us apart.” It appears that concerns about brand differentiation is on the minds of executives at larger companies.

By far the biggest difference from the group as a whole was with travel and leisure executives at medium-sized companies. A full 50% are concerned with “Learning how to do more with less,” and the other 50% rank “Creating an emotional connection with customers and prospects” as their biggest challenge in 2010. Available resources are clearly stretched with this group, but half of the respondents have challenges that branding can help address.

Respondents at small companies were also different from the group as a whole, but less in agreement. Fewer (33%) chose “Learning how to do more with less,” yet more (33%) chose “Dealing with so many new options.” Fewer (17%) were most concerned with “Creating an emotional connection,” but far more (17%) chose “Building consensus for my plan” as their biggest challenge. This subset appears to be slightly less concerned with brand related issues and more concerned with planning and execution.