Travel Marketing Playbook
“By focusing on the right metrics at each stage of the customer journey, travel marketers can optimise their efforts, driving greater returns and impact from their campaigns.”
JAMES CONRAD ST JOHN FOREMAN DR LEAD, SOUTH EAST ASIA MARKETING SCIENCE, FACEBOOK 2 - Measure What Matters: Travel marketing playbook
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Contents 6
Introduction
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Understanding consumers is key to better planning
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Establish measurement frameworks that will power your effectiveness
14
Build your data and measurement framework in phases
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Your measurement toolkit by journey and phase
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Key tips for choosing metrics
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Our recommended strategy in action
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Learn more about optimising your travel campaigns on Facebook
Introduction Last year, Asia-Pacific overtook North America to become the leading digital travel market in the world. According to eMarketer, digital travel sales in Asia Pacific grew more than 21% in 2017 to reach $215.92 billion, a figure that is going to continue to grow in double digits, reflecting where consumers are increasingly spending their time. As a result of this fast-paced growth, travel brands have become much more comfortable spending their ad dollars online. But, to truly reap the rewards of digital, the travel industry can strengthen its ability to leverage the right data at the right time in the customer journey. The question we get asked frequently is: are we investing our marketing dollars in the right place? To answer this, brands need to invest in better measurement and attribution models that put the customer first and translate to real business outcomes. At Facebook, we’re dedicated to helping brands develop this capability, and that starts by having the right foundation and framework in place. Inside this playbook, you’ll learn about better aligning metrics with your specific business goals and selecting the right tools based on your priorities, resources and expertise. Plus, we share best practice tips that will help drive forward your overall data-driven marketing agenda.
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Understanding consumers is key to better planning One of the most common and effective ways to think about travel marketing is through the lens of the marketing funnel. The idea that travellers go through a distinct process when deciding to make a travel purchase, passing from inspiration, to planning and purchase is a useful model to apply when developing campaigns and measuring their performance. Here’s Facebook’s broad framework of the travel buyer’s journey
However, the path to purchase is not that straightforward. Across the various stages, people are switching between multiple devices, platforms and channels. A 2015 study found that on average people visit some 56 digital touchpoints in 116 minutes over 43 days before making up their minds.1 Newspaper/ Magazine
Television
Out-of-home/ Billboard
Radio
Laptop Mobile
What’s more, while travel marketers may spend a majority of their budgets in the inspiration, planning and purchase stages – consumer spend may extend beyond purchase. This means there’s opportunities to guide customers beyond the purchase stage – both while traveling and upon return. For marketers these behaviors have significant implications, making it harder to decide where to allocate advertising dollars. To overcome this, brands may wish to take a people-based approach to measurement, rather than a siloed view split by channel. Getting visibility into consumer behavior, and how ads on different channels and devices can drive conversions — the true path to conversion — helps marketers make informed decisions about which campaign strategies require more attention and investments.
1 – “Passive Digital Travel Research Journey” by GfK (Facebook-commissioned passive observation of digital browsing, search and app behavior of 97 people in the US ages 18–64 during the three-month period before they booked a trip), Nov 2015–May 2016. A trip was defined as leisure travel involving a flight, hotel or cruise.
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Establish measurement frameworks that will power your effectiveness Monitoring the right metrics at different stages of the customer journey can mean the difference between a campaign that delivers strong returns and one that misses the mark. The specific business goals that you are trying to achieve should be used to inform your measurement framework, providing data that will help you to optimise for impact. Today, with advances in analytics, it’s possible to better align metrics with your broader business goals. This varies greatly from player to player in the travel space. For example, a destination marketing operator looking to drive awareness will likely put greater emphasis on measuring intent, rather than driving traffic to a site, compared to an airline company looking to increase bookings. Key priorities by player and the different Facebook products applicable
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There is no one size-fits-all approach – different types of travel companies will have different priorities at different stages of the customer journey. This is what a typical destination marketing operator’s marketing priorities look like across the customer journey and our recommended strategies to help them (DMOs) achieve their goals: There are different focus areas for a DMO in each phase
Build your data and measurement framework in phases All advertisers should be empowered to understand the value of their data and their marketing spend, so that they can confidently build more successful marketing strategies. However, change doesn’t happen overnight and measurement progress should happen in stages. Beyond priorities, choosing a measurement framework also depends on the degree of resources, mind-set and expertise. At Facebook, the following are the typical stages of measurement framework development and implementation:
Stage
Stage
Stage
Set-up a strong foundation
Tailor and scale campaigns
Take a bespoke approach
Organisations at this early stage should consider focusing on the basics. This means getting comfortable testing different ad formats, creative executions and bidding strategies to learn what works well – and what doesn’t. Take those learnings and act on them agilely, with confidence.
At a more advanced stage, travel marketers should focus on building templated measurement frameworks that are proven to work. Additionally, continue testing and refining to drive incremental gains.
This level entails significant investment and close collaboration between Facebook and your marketing team. It includes working closely with Facebook to improve measurement capabilities and trial of advanced measurement approaches.
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03
Let’s look at how a hotel brand can embark on a data-driven marketing strategy
For a hotel brand looking to start their data-driven marketing journey from scratch, we recommend doing it in phases. Begin with integrating Pixel, SDK, CRM for accurate measurement, then start experimenting with Split Tests and Conversion Lifts before eventually moving to the more advanced stage of conducting multi-cell lifts to determine if Facebook’s full funnel products drive bookings directly. Example learning agenda for typical hotel chain - based on priorities
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Your measurement toolkit by journey and phase Facebook measurement products can be applied across the entire customer journey. However, it’s important to note that each stage of the customer journey can be associated with two types of metrics – brand metrics and direct response metrics, depending on what your goals are. Brand metrics typically measure brand engagement outcomes like awareness, consideration, and intent, while direct response metrics refers to actual conversions. Here we’ve further broken down what the measurement journey should look like based on the outcomes you’re measuring for. Direct Response and Optimisation Measurement Journey
Brand Measurement and Optimisation Measurement Journey
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Key tips for choosing metrics Establish clear goals
Before embarking on your measurement journey, be clear about your objectives. Whether it is to boost conversions, drive brand awareness or consideration, it’s important to have goals that are specific, relevant, and attainable. Align your metrics to campaign objectives
Once you know why you’re running an ad, you can start working out how. We recommend defining one or two clear objectives to avoid diluting campaign efforts. Use people-based data
Use people-based data as the underlying foundation of all your campaign decisions — from setting your bid strategy to running a measurement study to optimising based on insights you learn. Shift away from relying solely on proxy metrics like clicks to more valuable methods like multi-touch attribution, all based on people. Further test to guide future strategy
Get comfortable testing different ad formats, creative executions and bidding strategies to really learn what works well – and what doesn’t. Then take those learnings and act on them agilely, with confidence. Measure holistically
Avoid acting or measuring in a silo, and think of measurement as more than as something that can only be done at a single moment in time. Think about your campaigns holistically from start to finish, objective to outcome, and across platforms, channels and publishers.
Our recommended strategy in action One hotel brand partnered with Facebook across the customer lifecycle, leveraging our various measurement products to achieve broader business goals. At the first stage of awareness, the hotel chain optimised for reach and video views to increase recall, favourability and awareness. Then, to encourage consideration, campaigns were optimised for site visits. Driving to the purchase phase, recent site visitors and people similar to recent customers were served ads that were optimised for bookings, while recent customers were excluded from this marketing to reduce wasted spend. Finally, while travellers were in destination and beyond, the loyalty message was reiterated to them in campaigns designed to drive long term engagement. Measurement framework should fit the customer lifecycle
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Learn more about optimising your travel campaigns on Facebook Travel Ads
Travel Ads can help you boost your sales or reservations, by automatically promoting relevant products from your inventory to people who are more likely to book. Split Testing
Split testing helps you test your Facebook ads and identify new best practices to inform your advertising strategy. Use Facebook split testing to learn which creative, audience, delivery and placements are best for meeting your marketing objectives. Test & Learn
Test and Learn helps you define which strategy is most effective for reaching your advertising goals across the Facebook family of apps and services. Simply choose the question you want to answer and Test and Learn will suggest the measurement test to run. The tests are simple to set up and provide clear results to help you optimize your next campaign Ads Reporting — Estimated Ad Recall Lift
Predicts how likely an ad is to increase lift in ad recall. It’s a proxy that can helps you pick winners among a set of creative assets or target audiences for a particular campaign and is correlated to ad recall lift. Brand Lift
Facebook, Nielsen and Kantar Millward Brown Brand Lift can be used across Facebook and Instagram to measure brand awareness, impact and ad recall — the metrics that ultimately help you reach your business objectives.
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Cross-Platform Brand Lift
For marketers running video ads on both TV and Facebook, Cross-Platform Brand Lift allows you to measure the brand impact of your ad campaigns on both Facebook and TV, as well as the incremental impact of both platforms working together — all in a single report. Conversion Lift
Measure the true impact Facebook ads have on real people. Use Conversion Lift to determine the incremental sales and conversions from people reached by your ads across the Facebook family of apps and services. Facebook Analytics
Get a deeper understanding of where and how people interact with your business across your website, app, Facebook Page, and more. Then, optimize and grow. Multi-touch attribution
Use people-based attribution models to understand how your campaigns drive crossdevice conversions across your media spend. Partner Sales Lift
Facebook’s Partner Lift integrations leverage vendors to measure Lift in sales using partner-based ROI measurement solutions. Other resources
https://www.facebookblueprint.com/student/activity/181816# https://www.facebook.com/iq/articles/the-future-of-marketing-people-based-planningand-measurement?ref=fbb_measure_ads https://www.facebook.com/business/news/expanding-measurement-to-more-advertisers https://www.facebook.com/business/measurement
