Last week I was speaking at a conference for the World Market Trade Expo. The event was held at the CTICC and I must say that it was great to see the venue so busy again.
I was asked to talk more about data in the travel industry. Here are three main points I want to share with you.
To access data, you must have data.
The first-party data wave has been, and we can see that now we are entering a marketing era where if you wish to access data, you’re going to need your own.
I’m talking about how online media giants like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn are using API integrations into CRM systems to customer events between your data systems and their data systems to provide us with better conversion rates.
A year ago, I spoke about how Google and Facebook conversion rates are declining thanks to privacy restriction laws. Now, APIs are connecting with businesses to give easy access to big databases like Facebook and Google. It’s a simple way to get powerful information. Of course, this assumes you’re savvy enough to have your business on CRM software that handles this integration.
I foresee more products landing on the market that will allow us to gain incredible access to data-driven value resources without needing to access the data, as long as we have the data ourselves. Engage with these platforms.
So if you haven’t yet done so, it’s time to get your CRM in order.
Your customer will assault and evade your best marketing strategy.
Customers do not want to be funneled, or fall into a channel, dislike being segmented, don’t want to tell you how they found you, and hate completing your survey (even if you ask nicely).
They live in the moment, are emotional, and are erratic. Even if you create the best journey, they will butcher it, starting on one end, jumping to the middle of another journey, then back to the beginning of your competition leads funnels, then opting out of all communications, only to complain to customer service that no one replied to their messages and finally buy your product online late one Friday night.
I have clients whose customers behave and follow the journey, and I have clients whose customers will start and finish three journeys in parallel within minutes. You cannot build your marketing strategy on something as flimsy as this. You need a different approach.
This is where I believe we need to switch up the customer centricity conversation a bit, and start it with one important question.
What do we sell?
Then, ask why it matters to our customers and why it should matter to them. If you’re smart, you’ve realised that I am now starting to build a customer-centric content structure for a business that is business-focused, not customer-focused. And if you’re more competent, you’ll know that we can build data triggers all over that content because, as a business, we collect data around what we sell. We can use that to trigger unique personalised experiences for our prospects and customers.
Customers can jump all over that plan and follow any journey they like, they will always end up in the same place – ready to buy what we sell.
If they don’t, it’s because they’re not our customer.
Stop chasing customers and start chasing business.
Embrace Marketing Technology (Martech).
Finally, the data shows in our Insight 2024 report that businesses are not adopting marketing technology enough to be ready to engage a digital ecosystem efficiently. It is becoming increasingly important to embed the technology necessary for marketers to engage the digital world you wish to engage in successfully.
The current trend is to outsource the tech ownership to the agency. This is a wildly inefficient and small-minded approach to data and technology. Bringing the technology in-house means you can still outsource the service, but you can monitor the work better, you own the data, it can be integrated and synced into your systems, and you can integrate the technology into other marketing processes to simplify and automate.
The advertising API and CRM example I shared earlier is a simple case example. Without the right internal marketing tech, your business will be excluded from this ecosystem.
Another example is that Google has launched AI advertising tools like PMAX for Travel Ads and specialised AI drive ads for the travel industry, and to take part; you will need a pipeline of rates data synced to your Google Business Profile (at least this is how the current beta works). This technology is available to many in the industry, but most are not connected to what Google positions as the future of AI Advertising.
Excited for it all
I’m excited about the shifts AI, Automation and the constantly changing consumer demands are bringing to the digital marketing landscape. I believe we’re in a time where great partnerships will be formed and we will see the landscape of digital marketing evolve again. Bringing more specialised fields, more sophisticated technologies, safer data infrastructure and better customer experiences.
It’s a good time to be in digital.
