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Story Based Travel
Marketing
Roger Wu
ze Webinar on October 6, 2016
for eLearning University
How Do Consumers Make Purchase
Decisions About Travel?
Story!
92% of people trust
recommendations from
individuals (even if they don’t
know them) as opposed to
brand recommendations
(nielsen)
74% of people use
social media to make
purchase decisions (sprout)
1) Word of mouth, personal stories
from friends and family
2) Social media (Friends, family,
influencers, and celebrities)
3) Search engines (after much has
been decided) allow consumers to
make comparisons between hotels,
destinations, and airlines.
Stories always trump data (U.Mich
study)
Agenda
• What is influencer marketing?
• What is sponsored content?
• What constitutes success?
• Pitfalls
• Best practices
• Real life examples
• Takeaways
What is Influencer Marketing?
Celebrity/Large Scale Influencers MicroInfluencers
Large, diverse, minimally engaged following Small, specific, highly engaged following
Why Micro-Influencers Work
There is more incentive for one to share a micro-influencers story than to share a celebrity one;
every one wants to be the breaker of news
What is Sponsored content?
“A specific and distinct piece of content located on a web site that is paid for by an advertiser; it should match the subject matter, as well as the targeted audience on the
website in order to be successful. It is also paid for on a typical advertising metric.”
The best of
All Worlds
Sponsored content provides you with
an influential voice (influencer
marketing) while providing you
guaranteed exposure (advertising)
and potential upside (PR).
The best of
all Worlds
Sponsored Content provides a guarantee of traffic
(black line) like advertising while minimizing the volatility
of PR. The red area is the potential loss of PR, which is
eliminated via sponsored content. However, since
sponsored content is a shareable story, the upside of
PR (green) still exists. Thus, in a worst case scenario,
sponsored content acts like advertising and in a best
case scenario acts like PR providing the best of both
worlds.
Driving the Dreaming Phase
The world is a huge place with many tourist attractions. How do
you get your destination into the “consideration set”? After all, if
you aren’t Googling it, it may as well not exist!
Ensure your content is read by using
services that guarantee views to your story.
We’re now able to get all kinds of data on
stories, from scroll time, time spent on page,
and where readers are accessing the story
from.
Don’t Fall for it!False Metrics
These are NOT considered to
be successful KPIs:
- Followers
- Engagement
- Clicks
- Media Value
You can now buy followers,
you can buy likes, you can
buy clicks.
Media Value is a made up
metric based on “fuzzy” math.
Do followers matter?
Or the right followers?
Not a lot of followers, but the right followers.
But what is success?
Success with storytelling is engagement with
your audience and increasing awareness of
your destination or product, so they are top of
mind when brainstorming and Google
searching their next vacation.
Compliance
The FTC legally requires brands
and influencers to disclose when
they are posting paid content.
This requires a disclosure at the
top or bottom of the story and
#ad, #sponsored in Twitter and
Instagram posts.
Google requires “nofollow” tags
on links in sponsored content.
Earned Media Pickup
Sponsored stories live on
long past campaign end
dates. Your story could
show up on BuzzFeed, or
another major publication.
Retargeting
Sponsored content can include
cookies, third party trackers, and
verification pixels! Cookies allow
display ads to follow a reader around
the internet, upon finishing a story,
keeping the destination top-of-mind!
Stay on Site
Content widgets are great to include in stories,
because they allow brands to include a large
amount of information about the brand in one
place, perfect for mobile viewing!
Takeaways
1) You can’t create virality but you can seed it
2) Keep voices authentic with a relevant audience
3) Be upfront about what is paid and what is not
4) Headlines still matter
5) Understand the pitfalls of digital advertising and marketing
6) Utilize all the tools at your disposal to create a holistic
approach
