Volume II | Issue no. 1
Using Social Media In Destination MarketingA little over a year ago, we queried our social media networks (Points of Interest blog followers, Twitter followers, LinkedIn groups and Facebook fans) for ROI stories using social media in destination marketing. We had experienced some initial social media successes, but were looking to build a list of best practices to share with our clients and readers. Instead of examples touting measurable results, what we received were numerous accounts of the many tactics various destinations, resorts and attractions were using in social media. Everyone was throwing things up on the wall to see what sticked. The few that addressed the topic of ROI either told us it was about “engagement” and not direct results, or offered us anecdotal evidence: “I tweeted a discount weekend rate and landed a booking. It didn’t cost anything but my time.” Social media experts (to call yourself a social media expert back then, all you had to do was have a Twitter account or Facebook page) were claiming that advertising no longer works, and that the best thing was to stop wasting money advertising altogether and put all faith into social media, regardless of the lack of evidence that this would work. Vail Resorts actually took their advice. For Vail’s sake, let’s hope they didn’t make a huge mistake. At the time, we were surprised at the apparent lack of interest in measuring real ROI.Before social media’s rise in popularity, the difference between internet marketing and traditional advertising was the internet’s ability to directly link cause and effect. Then Twitter comes along, and suddenly tracking ROI no longer mattered. Forget about reaching enough people to move the needle (it’s just not scalable: you can’t put enough heads in beds or feet through the turnstile one tweet at a time. Not yet, anyway). However, while we still firmly believed (and still do) in an integrated marketing strategy including some form of advertising, social media's rising influence could not be ignored. So we kept searching for evidence, anything, that could prove that using social media in destination marketing could help deliver real results and help us begin to build our list of best practices. At the 2009 PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando, we finally found it. The Best Job in the WorldChris Chambers, Director of Digital Marketing for Queensland, Australia, presented a fairly detailed case study on his campaign to market the Great Barrier Reef internationally: The Best Job in the World. Before we get into the details of the campaign, let’s start with what we began looking for eight months ago: a social media ROI story with measurable results. Here’s what Queensland had achieved as of October 31, 2009: Marketing measures
Business measures
Pretty impressive results for a social media campaign, nes pas? | ||
Social media strategies conference in San Francisco – six key takehomes.
After two packed days of listening to some of the best tourism companies in the world presenting their current strategies, I thought I’d give a rundown of the things that struck me as good topics to take home from the event and also, hopefully, some salient points of those not fortunate enough to have attended.
The event run by Eye for Travel was the most successful of its kind to date, with standing room only during most of their presentations. Here are a few of my personal takehomes from this event – I hope you find them useful.
1) Is social media the new email?
Is this true? I don’t know yet – but it’s a very good question. Nowadays many people ignore a lot of the emails they get. I myself receive about 45 emails a day that I simply delete without reading. Junk email is the new junk snail mail / post and therefore as more and more people are switching off to the marketing messages that reach them via email, is social media the way to now communicate with your audience? This begs the question – will social media junk mail soon become an issue and what will be done by consumers to combat this? As I mentioned, I have no set opinion on this yet – but I’m going to use this question and rationale to shape my thinking about social media and ponder this concept.
2) Facebook rules OK! But are we wise to avoid the rest?
The majority of presentations at the Eye for Travel event focused on Facebook strategies.Facebook’s market penetration is undeniable – stats show that if Facebook were a country it would be Pangaea, and a community of 400m users is hard to ignore. But I believe we need to be careful about putting far too much stock and effort into this single resource. Using the share functionality you can currently add content from your own social media solution to 246 social media sites and social media networks including Facebook. None of the 245 are as big as Facebook, yet how wise is it to concentrate almost exclusively on FB when every major brand is trying to engage with this 400m community? Wouldn’t it be better to focus on some of the other communities and become the best represented brand on there? It’s definitely something to consider.
3) Look to the future...please?
While it’s clear that today many people are running Facebook campaigns, building their FB communities and Tweeting regularly, where will all this be in 5-10 years? Remember what happened to Friends Reunited – or, more to the point, perhaps you don’t. Is it possible Facebook and Twitter could go this way? Twitter is still very new and has already become the new golden child of the internet. What is next? To use a well-word cliché, it’s probably not wise to put all your eggs in one basket, or all your connections into one social media solution. At the same time it’s important to remember that while the current ‘big spending’ demographic uses Facebook, this will change. Are the younger generations just as likely to use FB? Are there other sites that younger users (tomorrows travellers) using instead? It’s my belief that in a few years time, FB will still be massive, but there will be other equally big players. By investing in each major social network that comes along we are responding to the current trend, but that’s all it is – the current trend. What about the future?
4) Invest in your own social solution.
In my opinion the very best brands are engaging on the current social network and social media communities OFFSITE but they also have a strategy to build their own online community and social media archives ONSITE. By doing this, they are preparing for the future and building a loyal and lifelong community, base not to mention leveraging organic search engine traffic from their social media content.
While your own social site may not grow as fast as your group on Facebook could, I am convinced that the benefit of slowly but surely growing a lifelong base of users in your own community and under your own branding is the most logical and sound strategy to adopt for the longer term. After all, do you really want to invest a large amount of your budget on building a community within another brand that you have little if any control over?
5) Social media is still a baby – what will it grow up to be?
Social media is still a baby and none of us knows exactly what’s going to happen with it. What we do know for certain is that there’s a huge amount of sizzle about this particular area of marketing, and many projections about its significance and its place in marketing budgets over the next few years have been made.
6) Social Media should be judged by the same ROI as other marketing activities and campaigns – but it isn’t! Yet...
Today’s organisations are quick to get involved with Facebook and Twitter but very few are able to show a demonstrative ROI.
Anthony,
Thanks for the summary of the Social media strategies conference. You make a lot of great points, most of which we totally agree with and have written about - especially the point about building your own social solutions on your own internet real estate. I'm sure the readers of our newsletters and blog will find your corroboration valuable.