“Tough times call for creative ideas”
There was an audible gasp at Canada eConnect a few weeks back, when Tourisme Montréal, Montréal’s destination marketing organisation, announced that they were spending their 2009 budget entirely online.
Rather than indulgent risk taking, Tourisme Montréal’s decision was the result of a reduced budget forcing tough choices – where would they get best results from a more modest spend? It also reflects a strategic decision to target traveller motives, tap into emotions and intrigues – and do that in a very granular way that is both relevant and touches at travellers in multiple online places and in multiple formats.
“It is about interacting with the consumer….If we are choosing to be only on the web, we have to be everywhere”
Tourisme Montréal
Much of that spend will be going into online direct response, such as paid search marketing. However 20% will be allocated to awareness/social media meaning a very different measurement and marketing environment. Social media may involve litte in terms of media buy cost, but it certainly requires significant time to service and a new way of thinking about return on that investment.
As Carmen Ciotola, Vice President, Communication and Marketing of Tourisme Montréal explained to the CEC audience:
“What is freaking us out the most is that the 20% will be 80% of the work”
She’s right of course, but Tourisme Montréal seem well placed to lead the way to the 100% online budget leap. They appear to have a culture of online analytics running back to 1994 that has evolved in line with the sophistication of their efforts.
A strong focus on analytics, complete with an understanding of what is driving conversions and buzz means they are not making risky marketing decisions in the dark. It is how they have the data and evidence base to know that their limited resources will deliver maximum results spent only online.
They may be breaking ground, but I suspect we will soon be hearing other destinations describing TV & print as “nice to do if we had the budget.” It acknowledges the reality that travel research and purchase decisions are to a staggering degree made online.
Consumer research based on social values
Another of the reasons, at least as it seems to me, that we see a major destination from Canada tapping in so completely to social media and online marketing is that Canada has built a national strategy based on profiling and segmentation according to social values, not demographics.
One of the things that holds true online is that communities and networks of people online share common values and outlook characteristics, but may have little in common in terms of demographic factors such as age, location and income. People who share a postcode or zip code do not behave the same online.
“Brand Canada” has tried to build a solid online marketing strategy by tapping into the fact that social media allows us to tell stories and that at the heart of stories are shared experiences, personal emotions and excitement. By engaging with this, they are serving up tailored experiences that inspire action – ie conversions/a commitment to purchase – in the visitor.
Canada of course is hardly alone by trying to focus on visitor experiences and emotional factors. Many of the DMOs and national tourism bodies I speak to are taking exactly the same approach and I have featured examples from Washington DC and several others.
But what the Canadian Tourism Commission has done is build a systematic research tool , now being rolled out across the DMOs and major tourism partners like Parks Canada (an example at the Tourism VC blog here) , that offers a new way to match visitors with experiences tailored to what they are seeking.
This Explorer Quotient tool is a method of identifying visitor needs, interests, expectations and desires based on their values about travel. As Greg Klassen, vice-president of marketing with the Canadian Tourism Commission explains:
“The EQ model is unique to the industry in that it recognises and operates on social values, not demographics. Commonly held social values are in fact, much better indicators of consumer preferences – including travel consumption preferences – than demographics.” Read more in this DMO World interview with Greg Klassen.
The EQ model is based on a solid research foundation. Through adaptations of Environics Social Values model, the CTC can develop a user profile based on the reasons why people travel, including qualities of someone’s personality.
The CTC can then suggest Canadian experiences that are relevant to the traveller and consistent with the traveller’s EQ. The tool feeds back into segmentation activity and allows CTC to build a profile of travellers, and offer experiences, that are not just region based.
To create a profile travellers complete a 25 statement questionnaire dealing with travel habits and motivations. The tool includes an accuracy checker “does this sound like you?” Apparently 95% of EQ travellers say that the EQ groups partly or completely describe them.
Mine was certainly bang on!
Marketing activity then feeds into the visitor EQ type, presumably further building the visitor profle, and allowing for an ever more customised and granular marketing approach.
Tesco’s Clubcard meets travel?
So is it print on the bonfire and goodbye TV?
IF, and it’s a big if, you’re ready – then just possibly yes. Particularly if shrinking budgets force your hand.
But, I think a perquisite is a serious use of analytics and research to understand the visitor, their motivations and their online conversion behaviour.
Marketing must always be relevant – not to ourselves – but to the consumer. If your analytics data and your customer is telling you that online is the primary travel research and planning channel, then your customer is actually already giving you the answer to where should I spend?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Conference learnings, Destination research, Marketing strategy, Online customer behaviour, Research tools, Web analytics and web measurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.