I came across this article by John Frenaye talking about how marketing travel using traditional methods seems to have died, or at the very least become more difficult than before.
Since the dawn of the internet, the number of competitor websites has increased exponentially and includes big brands like TripAdvisor and the like. No longer are people seeing advertisements only in their newspapers, or when the TV is on, but they are bombarded on their mobile phones, email, tablets, and the websites they visit. The only differentiation the consumer sees is price.
He’s struggled with using AdWords, Facebook, and other online methods as a means of achieving his desired results, and come to the conclusion that if you give the client too many choices, they will avoid making one.
My question is, “What is traditional marketing?” Marketing used to be just print, until radio came along. Then television was introduced followed by the internet. Why do we draw the line and separate out digital marketing as not being traditional? Is it because it’s still fairly new? When you think about it, compared to print marketing, which is centuries old, radio and TV are also still pretty young in their lifespan.
To me, marketing is marketing. There are just more channels now than there have ever been, and more will come along in the future. The real problem is not that there are too many channels, but which combination of channels will give you the desired result.
This is the hard part and where a lot of travel agencies refuse to tackle. You no longer have a captive audience on a couple of platforms anymore. You need to tailor your marketing to fit where your clients are already hanging out.
They may be on Twitter but not Facebook, or Pinterest but not Instagram. They may love getting updates via email, or send anything not from their contact list to the spam folder.
The main takeaway here is the same as it’s always been in marketing (both traditional and non-traditional), you need to differentiate yourself from your competitors no matter which channel you use. Provide the value no one else does and price won’t be the only factor the client has left to compare.
Then use the 80/20 rule to segment the 20% of clients that bring you 80% of your revenue and find out which channels (or combination of channels) you can use to effectively market to them.
Read the full article here:
Is traditional marketing for travel dead?
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