Wednesday 2 May 2018

Search and social dominate travel brands’ mobile marketing


Search engine and social marketing are the priority spending categories for 67% of travel brands’ mobile marketing budgets finds new research.



New research from EyeforTravel and SAP Digital Interconnect, which surveyed nearly 300 travel industry professionals on the topic of mobile has found that search and social have a stranglehold over mobile marketing, likely reflecting the dominance of Google and Facebook in the digital marketing sphere.

When respondents were asked what is the largest component of their mobile marketing budgets, 35% selected search and 32% social, according to EyeforTravel and SAP Digital Interconnect’s new Driving Intelligent, Interconnected Mobile Engagement Throughout the Travel Journey report, which is free to download now.

Search spending was even higher among hospitality and accommodation brands, where it was the most important category for 45.3% of brands. This preponderance is a result of the way in which consumers search for hotels, with mobile still a last-minute channel when it comes to booking and at that stage consumers are looking mainly for specific locations, largely through search engines. However, it may also indicate an over-focus on the latter stages of consumers booking journey and an acquisition-driven strategy that doesn’t fully take into account the role of mobile in inspiration and initial research phases.

One area where travel brands might look to expand spending and make the most of mobile’s role at the inspiration stage is video marketing, which was rated as most important in just 4.4% of budgets.

The small role of video marketing currently would seem to be a major missed opportunity for travel brands given the growth of mobile video consumption in recent years. A multi-country study by AOL estimated that 57% of consumers watch videos through their mobile every day and Zenith estimated that there was 20% growth in global video consumption in 2017.


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