Do’s and Don’ts for Successful Multichannel Travel Tech Advertising

Travel business is flourishing. According to a research from Deloitte, the travel industry's growth has skyrocketed over the last ten years. However, a thriving industry like this still presents a problem for business travel management companies.

Problem?

We live in a world where travel is easier than it has ever been. From online travel agencies to metasearch engines and the travel agents down the street, there are a variety of ways businesses can choose to book a trip for their corporate travelers.

How Can Business TMCs Stand out in a Crowded Marketplace with so Many Travel Choices?

Marketers need to effectively reach consumers in this ever-evolving digital landscape. To be successful in this era of convergence, business travel providers must think more strategically about how they’re selling the entire corporate travel experience. And, only the travel brand that leverages the best multichannel advertising strategies are going to win the race.

To put it simply, multichannel marketing is all about giving your customers choices. Marketers today are evolving and they need to implement multichannel marketing solutions for customers.  As the number of channels continue to rise, the need to embrace multichannel marketing will become a critical strategy for corporate travel management companies. So, the opportunity lies in overcoming these challenges by introducing these businesses with novel corporate travel tech solutions. And embracing this could turn out to be a paradigm shift for the corporate travel industry.

When working on your marketing campaigns for corporate travel management companies, it is important to note that they’re very different from those of B2C. Sales cycles are comparatively longer, there are more points of contact, decision making at every stage gets more complex than ever, and the volume of purchases is a lot higher. Hence, you must ensure to leverage every aspect of these hyper-paced digital channels with your target customers in mind. 

Below are some of the ways to make the most out of these multichannel strategies and increase sales for your business travel platform:

Make Mobile-first Approach Your Top Priority

In 2018, Google revealed that more than half of business travelers use their smartphones to book their trips. And according to a report by Amadeus Study, 61% of business travelers use smartphones for flight check-ins and open the apps after reaching their destination. Business travel management mobile apps aren’t just useful, they're rapidly growing in demand as well.

If business travelers can’t use your marketplace for booking their flights then you’re losing on your sales big time. Therefore, in your mobile marketing efforts, keep the following points in mind:

• Focus on mobile compatibility and ease of use
• Improve your page loading speeds
• See that your website is responsive on smartphones

Focus on Delivering Top-notch User Experience

Your target customer should be the focal point of your marketing strategy. So, make sure to have an outstanding landing page that highlights your offering and the unique value proposition for your audience to see.

Also, be sure to write compelling ad copies for your PPC campaigns and backing up your clients with data. A poorly designed landing page that fails to highlight the benefits and unique value propositions to its clients will lose audience to its competition. Hence, when targeting your ideal corporate traveler, remember to always show your discounts and benefits on the hero section of the landing page. This strategy will not only improve your CTR but also improve credibility and be able to position you as a trusted source of information.

Harness the Power of Voice Technology

It was reported by Travelport Digital in 2017 that more than 23% travelers have used voice search to search or book a trip. In that sense, the sooner business travel agencies realize the potential of voice search, the better equipped they will be in offering a more meaningful conversation with today’s modern traveler. This new ecosystem will not only transform how travelers communicate with brands, airlines, and travel companies, but also have a greater impact on ‘the next billion’ mobile users who are now online for the first time.

Use Video Campaigns to Bring the Travel Experience to Your Customers

Reading about a travel experience is one thing but watching a video brings a far more immersive experience. A video-based campaign will enable your target audience to live the experience beforehand and will result in a more engaging, powerful, and authentic outreach. Not only for the travel industry but marketers across all industries use video campaigns to spread brand awareness.

YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are great platforms to run your multichannel video campaigns with an ever-increasing consumer base.  As of 2017, around 51% of U.S. marketers have been advertising on YouTube. According to Wyzowl, 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service    Tweet This! and this surely holds even more true for the travel industry. 

Build Relationships for Recurring Customers

If they choose you once, make sure they choose you again! It is essential to cultivate a strong relationship with your customers in any business; it holds a significant impact on your corporate travelers as they are more likely to give you their business again. Building brand loyalty can prove to be the game-changer for your business. Go further into how to enable personalization of your corporate travel business with this in-depth blog.

Come up with a Unique Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Brand

The social network will give business travel marketers the greatest variety of engagement opportunities, access to the biggest audience, and integration with a ton of free marketing tools. As a travel marketer, you should use your social media channels to keep your audience updated with the latest travel news and information. Utilize platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram to show consumers what they're missing out on, if they don't book through you.

For example, travel is one of the ‘Top 10’ interests on Pinterest with travel-related pins hitting a peak of 4 million repins a day.    Tweet This! The images or visuals on Pinterest and Instagram serve more like banner ads. Leveraging these platforms provide you with the features of both, a visual search engine and a social media platform, offering plenty of ways to share content and inevitable photos of the accommodation places and facilities.

‘Office Away from the Office’ Experience

Corporate travel clients aren’t just looking to on-site Wi-Fi and amenities in their transportation options but they also seek the first-class corporate experience as a travel tech company customer. So, it’s always better to highlight these in your ads when advertising for travel tech companies. In addition, highlighting features like office lounges at the travel destinations and crucial corporate stationery facilities can add value to your corporate travel ads and help deliver with the ‘office away from the office’ experience.

Don’t Underestimate the Value of Your Brand Website

In the digital world we live in today, the role of an organization’s website has become increasingly important. A lot of the time, a customer-first interaction with your organization is by visiting your website. For corporate travel management companies, it’s important that their brand identity comes through their website and reflects who they are and what are their products and solutions. Having a strong logo, graphics, fonts, website design, and interstitial ads on travel tech services’ landing pages are super important, and they should all be working together.

Don’t Forget to Leverage Your Owned Media Channels

Apart from social media channels leveraging on owned media channels like the company website and service pages, blogs, whitepapers, and pubsites offer an excellent platform for advertising of travel tech companies. Since these are company-owned advertising platforms, they have 360-degree control on it to establish their travel company brand through advertising.

Pubsites, especially work as the best channel for advertising of travel tech companies as they host one-stop destination for news, trends, and events related to specific industry domains. For example, the industry domain focused pubsites like travel.report, wheels.report, aviation.report, etc. make sure that specific and relevant travel insights are delivered when visitors land on these sites.

Don’t Skip on Refining Your Own Information Flow

For a multichannel marketing approach, it’s important to get the information overflow under control. Use tools like Netvibes or iGoogle to customize your own information sources. To be successful in a digital world, travel marketers must continually change messaging to get in front of individual travelers at just the right time, but be flexible with those messages, channels, and timing.

By effectively executing multichannel strategies, social web and well-optimized mobile technologies, spread brand awareness.TMCs can keep business travelers well-informed and aware, offering newly personalized corporate travel experiences.

Business travel is mainly driven by well-optimized corporate travel management solutions along with constant innovations in business travel solutions. Imagine a situation where a corporate travel management company is completely equipped with all the latest technologies from the travel industry and has the most effective management for its travel solutions.

Here, multichannel marketing comes to your rescue and sets a niche in the tech travel world. Multichannel advertising always works because when it comes to marketing, it’s always better to leave no stone unturned.