Social Media, Branding and Content Strategy

Most marketers are active in social media

Fully three-quarters of all travel marketers in our sample conducted social media activity in the last two weeks. And those activities spanned nearly every channel we listed, from FaceBook posts and tweets to commenting, reviews and photo sharing. Of course, our assessment can’t report on the investment in these efforts, or the return on that investment, but clearly, travel marketers are engaged in the social realm and exploiting it to advance their marketing agendas.

Travel brands are suffering from identity crises

Just under 30% of respondents are using positioning statements and mood boards to maintain their brand consistency, and are probably benefitting greatly from it. We found it remarkable that 23% of travel marketers surveyed went through the positioning process but don't follow through with monitoring their brand's execution against that position. And almost 47%, nearly half, of the assessment participants haven't even bothered to define a competitive position. Without a clear position, their attempts at consistent messaging, image or identity are shots in the dark – how do you measure the effectiveness of marketing when you’re not sure what you’re selling?

Content generation is up, but the industry remains down

It appears there is considerable content generation activity in the travel industry. And still, the industry is down. If your content development efforts are showing a positive return, we applaud you, but if this investment is not positively influencing your search rankings, web traffic, visitor days or bottom line – you may want to rethink your content strategy.