Marketing
Crowded House
Travel marketers are feeling the pinch of market dynamics where customer behavior has changed radically and the number of competing providers and points of intermediation are on the rise.
While it remains true that some travel buyers will reward brands with their loyalty in return for an exceptional experience, it is also true that buyers have significantly more choice and will routinely select the best offer that meets their need of the moment – regardless of past loyalty to any provider.
Effects of The Long Tail
It’s been long accepted as conventional wisdom for travel providers to focus their energy and attention toward capturing and rewarding the 20% of customers who generate 80% of their business. In the new travel marketplace environment, meta-search travel portals and micro-niche supplier products have forced the battle for travel dollars to the periphery where customers must be individually influenced. En mass.
Source: Chris Anderson
Whoever can efficiently acquire and retain customers at the best long term margins will be successful. Of course, that is provided that the provider has survived long enough to realize those margins.
Segmentation Challenges
Segmenting your target market to ensure the right message gets to the right customer is now more important than ever with all this new complexity. Blasting off emails and launching static branding campaigns isn’t enough anymore. Knowing your customer base and developing the right message points and the right method of distribution is critical.
Many travel marketers are responding to this challenge by placing even greater emphasis on market segmentation and CRM systems in the hopes of finding the latent value propositions and associated market messages that will resonate with discrete and much smaller segments of travel buyers.
Fresh Ideas
The inherent conundrum faced by travel marketers is that industry competitors are simultaneously mining similar data in the hopes of finding new and unspoiled pockets of demand they can reach via new distribution methods or with insightful messages that create impact. Simply stated, many travel marketers find themselves in a position where new and bold ideas are required to stimulate growth.
Our recent marketing and operating experience executing plans within the travel sector affords us the ability to present our clients with fresh ideas that have been previously market tested at firms we’ve operated. More specifically, you’ll find that while our recommendations are novel, our advice is grounded by substantial operating experience within marketing at diverse and complex travel enterprises.
The result of a renewed market approach is often new insights into buyer behavior that will allow the firm to take a different approach to buyer segmentation, and more precisely tailor their message and value propositions to the discrete elements that cause discerning (and fickle) travel buyers to purchase again. Backed by strong brand investment, this two-pronged approach is likely to be extremely effective.
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