How Technology Can Help You Find and “Own” Your Own Guests?
I get questions all the time, practically every day from Hoteliers, Airbnb Hosts, Property Owners, and Vacation Rental Property Managers about how they can find guests using other means than Google and OTA's. It's been challenging to find would-be-guests given the noise and marketing spend of the "big guys".
In recent years and months, there have been several companies that have launched to deliver greater capabilities in identifying would-be-guests and compelling them to book directly. Space Agent (spaceagent.io) delivers the capability to identify would-be guests before they enter the shopping funnel, which is done by mining data from the open web, user activity and content interests across Social Media channels, observing an individual's affinity for certain pieces of content until they demonstrate a "signal" that they are preparing to take an action. The Guest Book (theguestbook.com) delivers "cash-back" and other offers that can compel a would-be-guest to book direct. FlipTo (flip.to) launched to provide more insights from prior guests, a sort of peer review system to give the real scoop on the property or destination, features, amenities and stories from their experience, inspiring would-be guests to stay with a Flip.to participating property. These are just a few of the companies that are working to solve this piece of the puzzle, but the quest to seek-out guests, provide the means and reason to compel them to go directly to the source, is attracting other service and technology providers.
Significant advancements in machine learning and data science have helped companies like Space Agent to identify individuals or group of individuals (audiences) that are beginning to research events, destinations, activities and other related content that can indicate they are forming an intent to travel. The consumption and interaction with specific content is interpreted by machines, which then starts to deliver marketing and ad content to those individuals at the right time, ensuring they "get the message" about your product, service or destination. Mining Social Media Channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc) for this sort of engagement, prior to an individual starting to search OTA's or Google, can lead to increased engagement; attracting these individuals to your brand, product or service.
Once the audience is identified and an advertisement/marketing message is sent to them through Social Media Channels, the machine then interprets the level of engagement and interaction and finds ways to optimize it. To continue the cycle it can then send more messages to those individuals ensuring they are reminded about your product, service or destination. This latter concept is traditionally known as retargeting but it's important to understand, unlike traditional retargeting, retargeting done by the machine learning applications additionally benefit from gathering meaningful audiences into the funnel initially – ultimately resulting in greater returns for all phases of the campaigns.
The point is, these new and emerging platforms provide a level or sophistication that until recently were only available to large companies with huge marketing budgets. Today, whether you're a Homeowner or Host or a Property Manager or Hotel looking for more guests, accessing this level of sophistication is now possible for everyone.
A more dated or traditional approach is creating an ad asset using one of the Social Media Channels Ad Platform and attempting to select from the myriad of options the platforms provide.
The challenge with this is that the platforms have different or competing priorities with views being a major goal of the platforms. I would argue merely looking for or trying to garner views is a flawed approach in isolation. I would suggest striving for clicks and conversions versus views despite the cost differences. Some would argue that the "view" is a means to an end. The counter to that would be that the Platforms have numerous areas where they display ads that are proven to be ineffective for conversions, therefore waste precious marketing dollars. Also, the targeting could be to individuals that may no longer be relevant to the target set you're looking for. For example, if I was checking out Cabo for a trip for my family six months ago I may not be interested in Cabo anymore, while Social Media Targeting may still include me because I (no matter when) was once upon a time interested.
Some still think that merely posting content is how to best use Social Media Channels. This approach can be great at encouraging engagement and a way to establishing relationships with interested individuals, but organic reach is difficult. To build an effective sales or lead generation program, I suggest focusing on advertising while maintaining a healthy balance of other content surrounding your business or property on an ongoing basis to compliment any visitors to your company's Social Profile.
It's important to note, however, I always suggest using a marketing mix rather than one approach. I continue to investigate emerging solutions to understand how they may be beneficial to our collective businesses and industry.
