6 ways leading travel brands increase conversion

Creating digital advertising that converts isn’t always simple. There are barriers in the way, and it’s not always easy to pinpoint exactly where your advertising is going wrong.

Here are 6 methods used by leading travel brands who have succeeded in overcoming common issues in creating display advertising with great results.

Pain: Keeping branding consistent across campaigns

For many teams, having control over brand identity is a key consideration for marketers.

Something as simple as centralising your own logotypes, colour codes, font libraries, or imagery can be barriers to creativity in display advertising. What’s more, with inefficient production processes, small issues often take too long to correct; ultimately restricting creativity and effectiveness of your campaigns.

Solution: How Lonely Planet took ownership of its brand

For the Client Services team at Lonely Planet maintaining their brand identity is key.

To manage brand identity effectively, the team took ad production in-house and used the latest technology to their advantage. Without the need to code and individually position each brand element within their display advertising campaigns, they freed up time for their designers to be creative.

The ability to create visually stunning display ads with ease means the Lonely Planet ads attract the eye, and in turn increase conversion.

How could this work for my brand?

If you’re working in-house – or have an open dialogue with your production agency – you should question how you have been producing your ads up to this point.

Technology such as creative management platforms (CMP) allow you to centralise brand assets, reduce repetitive design tasks, and automate how you scale ads with assisting algorithms - ultimately increasing production speed and creativity of your campaigns.

Pain: Getting results from dynamic content

Truly effective and engaging dynamic content is the holy grail of the travel industry. If done right, it gives you the capability to serve the right ad, to the right person, at the right time - increasing ad relevance and ROI.

Yet an understanding of what it is and how best to use it is a challenge. This means many brands avoid using dynamic ads and end up using nonpersonalised, generic ads instead. Ultimately, ads that are less effective!

Solution: How Korean Air used dynamic pricing for targeted offers

Airlines have been at the forefront of dynamic advertising. They leverage data and target relevant audiences to produce personalised ads.

Korean Air uses audience targeting to know when to reach viewers at key times during the buyer journey. Particularly when they need more information or are ready to purchase. Relevant offers and dynamic pricing are then used in dynamic display ads which will show the best prices to consumers.

This type of automation works particularly well for airlines. With display advertising you can target consumers based on flight history and loyalty programmes for example.

Read more about how Korean Air uses audience targeting here.

How could this work for my brand?

Dynamic content is not as complicated as it first appears when you have the right support. These days, the solutions are out there that enable dynamic pricing, imagery, and text with ease.

If your production team - whether external or internal - argue that it is impossible without complicated coding and an army of designers, challenge them.

Pain: Finding the time for localised content

Without the power of dynamic content, brands find it difficult and time consuming to both differentiate and localise content.

Adjusted copy, creative, and language dependent on the location of your ads is now an expectation for consumers, not a luxury.

Solution: How Iberia speak to their audience, in their language

For Iberia Airlines, targeting users with static banners was not driving results. Dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) on the other hand, opened a new door of opportunities.

Running a short campaign in Spain, it used DCO to target and serve ads to specific viewers who had already been recommended by existing customers on an email campaign. Using data feeds, it presented an appropriate destination, the name, call to action, and translated copy for the individual targeted.

DCO offers both localisation and personalisation. As you may already know, being able to use customer data in an appropriate way is key for any successful DCO powered campaign.

Learn about how DCO works for Iberia here.

How could this work for my brand?

According to Phocuswright, nearly 57% of U.S travelers prefer personalised advertising based on their preferences or past behaviours.

Use this data wisely and consider how you can lift your ads to tailor to your consumers. Using customer journey data, your brand can also build hypertargeted ads. An image with a destination they have previously expressed interest in is a simple personalisation addition – DCO doesn’t have to be complicated!

Pain: Getting a clear picture of media spend and return

Understanding campaign performance is at the centre of proving success or failure. Getting an accurate understanding of exactly where and how your media budget is spent can be complex, but it doesn’t need to be.

By taking media buying in-house – or working collaboratively with an agency – marketers gain the ability to control and optimise their media-buying processes.

Solution: Kayak has moved to in-house media buying

Kayak’s in-house marketing team uses programmatic technologies to buy media for display and social. But where it succeeds is in its application of search and first party data.

Kayak uses the data to create highly-granular campaigns, which enables them to measure the return on investment across every single publisher that it’s bidding on. Dream transparency!

Discover in-house media buying with Kayak here.

How could this work for my brand?

Of course, you can onboard tech that gives you visualisation of the media buying process. But to gain a true understanding, we recommend hiring an inhouse expert who isn’t afraid of getting their hands dirty to manage your media buying strategy.

Plus, use a solution that allows for a clear and real-time view of your campaign performance. With integrated analytics every member of your team can see results across devices, browsers, domains, locations, and more.

Pain: Being creative with new formats is hard to manage

Limitations on production of creative, speed to make amendments, and the ability to be creative makes using other ad formats such as dynamic content or video unattainable for many travel brands.

Without the right technology set up, many brands are finding themselves limited to a simple static banner with an offer and call-to-action in place.

Solution: Expedia uses a range of video ads across channels

Expedia’s first hand research proves the importance of digital video – with many consumers genuinely interested in the format. Indeed, Expedia found that 62% of leisure travelers and 74% of business travelers want to see a video before making a final booking decision.

By having the right ad tech and internal skill sets to manage it, there is huge possibility for brands – like Expedia – to experiment with a range of video ads across a variety of targeted channels: from in-banner, to outstream, and social media.

Read more about video display advertising with Expedia here.

How could this work for my brand?

In-banner video is an engaging and simple addition to any ad, whether used as a background or as part of the banner animation.

Our own customer data from the past year showed clearly that CTR rates for video jumped by 18.4% compared to static banners – so what are you waiting for?

Pain: Strict design templates which are hard to change

There is a basic formula for all display advertising that equals: engaging visuals, an enticing offer, and a call to action (CTA). Yet this arrangement is everything that is wrong with display advertising today. Display advertising can mean so much more.

With the right technology, your creative team can make banners more exciting – with hyper-relevant offers, animated features, and interactive elements which will inspire consumers to dig deeper.

Solution: How GetYourGuide experimented with ‘search’ in their ads

When GetYourGuide added the HTML5 widget to their banner ads, they saw the conversion rate lift for searches (website searches/ clicks to site) from 0.21% to just over 4%.

Thanks to HTML5, they have the possibilities to experiment further. Producing static ads might be the easy option but it isn’t going to drive traffic like an engaging display ad will.

See how Bannerflow can help you with smart in-banner widgets here.

How could this work for my brand?

For your designers to individually code each element and scale these ads into different sizes, it would take weeks. At which point you can forget the creative elements that would inspire a customer to click on your ads.

Adding rich media is proven to improve banner performance and doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, each animated element you create can be easily duplicated via a creative management platform– so you can catch the viewer’s eye without prolonging design time.