As online mar­ket­ing evolves, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns tend to focus more on what Google wants rather than on what peo­ple need. For trav­el brands to con­tin­ue being rel­e­vant, they need to lis­ten to con­sumers more and use that infor­ma­tion to present rel­e­vant con­tent and prod­ucts – espe­cial­ly to con­sumers who are in the ear­li­er stages of the buy­ing cycle.

I’ve been work­ing in the trav­el indus­try for longer than I have been work­ing in online mar­ket­ing, in fact my par­ents met while both were work­ing for an air­line, so you can say that I was born with­in the trav­el indus­try.

I remem­ber when I was a lit­tle kid and I used to look at the trav­el agency brochures, dream­ing of going to the won­der­ful des­ti­na­tions they adver­tised. Trav­el Agen­cies then used all avail­able media to inspire their con­sumers, but it doesn’t work like that any­more.

What Is Quality Content In The Travel Industry?

Ever since Bill Gates accrued the phrase “con­tent is king” we have pledged alle­giance to that rule and we’ll say it out loud to whomev­er asks.

But what is con­tent? How do we describe what qual­i­ty con­tent is?

Here’s one pret­ty good answer: Qual­i­ty con­tent is con­tent that serves the user; it answers users’ ques­tions or needs as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Real­ly, though, most of the con­tent pro­duced in the trav­el sec­tor is designed to rank well in Google and oth­er search engines. The trav­el indus­try is so clut­tered with mediocre con­tent that it’s real­ly hard to find a site that pro­duces good, con­sum­able con­tent.

Big brands have been spoiled for years by Google, because Google isn’t always able to dis­cern what qual­i­ty con­tent is. As an exam­ple, if I search for “trips to Lon­don”, the first organ­ic result I get is for “Lon­don The­atre Breaks” – not com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed, but too niche for my gener­ic search.

It’s no won­der why new gen­er­a­tions turn to mul­ti­ple media and sources for inspi­ra­tion when search­ing for trav­el.

Are Travel Brands Inspiring People With Content?

Who can say that any of the biggest brands pages are inspi­ra­tional? Let’s look at Oxford Dictionary’s def­i­n­i­tion of Inspi­ra­tion

Ide­al­ly, inspi­ra­tional con­tent should entice you to trav­el, as opposed to con­tent that pure­ly serves you only once the user has already decid­ed where and when they want to trav­el.

Let’s look at some of the biggest trav­el brands home­pages.

What do all these pages have in com­mon? They effi­cient­ly sur­face their unique sell­ing points, which is their inven­to­ry of deals, but fail to pro­vide tru­ly inspi­ra­tional con­tent. They fail to serve peo­ple who haven’t made their mind yet, the ones who in the past would go to a trav­el agency seek­ing advice from the trav­el agent to decide upon their next hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion.

With the excep­tion of a few iso­lat­ed projects, none of these big brand sites repli­cate the mag­ic that the old brochures used to cap­ture their clients’ imag­i­na­tion. Suc­cess and effi­cien­cy in cap­tur­ing search engine traf­fic has turned these pages into pure­ly trans­ac­tion­al sites leav­ing the inspi­ra­tion part to blog­gers and trav­el mag­a­zine-like web­sites.

But does this reflect their user’s behav­ior? Is the user no longer look­ing to be inspired? Accord­ing to Google’s 2013 research, it’s quite the oppo­site: 61 per­cent of users plan­ning a hol­i­day turn to the Inter­net for inspi­ra­tion, and this num­ber increas­es to 80 per­cent when it comes to plan­ning their hol­i­days.

This means trav­el brands are only touch­ing the user in the lat­est parts of the buy­ing cycle, when users have already made up their minds about where they want to go, in which case, what­ev­er con­tent they present is irrel­e­vant unless it’s a good deal for them to book.

With more than 30 per­cent of trav­el­ers watch­ing trav­el videos as a source of inspi­ra­tion, and even more turn­ing into social media to help them decide, brands now have even more tools to inspire the users and touch them in the ear­li­est phas­es of the buy­ing cycle.

Travel Content = Written + Mobile + Social + Video

In order to dis­cern what good inspi­ra­tional con­tent is, we first need to under­stand our tar­get con­sumers, their habits, and the kind of infor­ma­tion they are search­ing for online. Under­stand­ing our con­sumers’ behav­ior and their research habits is a piv­otal phase of a well-defined con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

As a start­ing point, Google talks about Gen C peo­ple in Meet Gen C: The YouTube Gen­er­a­tion:

Reach­ing con­sumers used to be a pret­ty sim­ple job, but tech­nol­o­gy has changed all that. Media con­sump­tion has frag­ment­ed; mobile devices have brought con­tent into every moment of our lives; and social media has shat­tered the old dis­tinc­tion between audi­ence and cre­ator.

A con­tent strat­e­gy that relies pure­ly on con­tent that “ranks well” is out­dat­ed and no longer suf­fi­cient.

Users don’t read any­more, nor do they stick to a sin­gle device when it comes to research. They scan through text, look at pic­tures and watch videos (if they are inter­est­ing enough). The days of 1,000 word arti­cles are long gone. We’ve known this for a while, yet we are still pro­duc­ing these arti­cles because they rank well in search.

Trav­el plan­ning nowa­days goes beyond a sin­gle screen. Users move across devices to plan their trips, search­ing across dif­fer­ent plat­forms (Google, YouTube, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, etc.) for the infor­ma­tion they need.

Gen C users are watch­ing more videos online to help them decide, not only to check a des­ti­na­tion but also to find out where to go, activ­i­ties, or even how to choose the best trip avail­able.

This also means that hav­ing a mobile-ready site is para­mount to being able to serve the new gen­er­a­tion of trav­ellers.

The Power of Envy

One of the most pow­er­ful tools we have as mar­ke­teers is envy. Put in the prop­er con­text, envy can and will move mass­es.

Show some­one hav­ing fun enjoy­ing a trip and peo­ple will be inspired to do the same. If that per­son has a large social media fol­low­ing, expect the results to mul­ti­ply ten­fold.

One of the best exam­ples we have in mar­ket­ing is the iPhone, arguably not the best smart­phone in the mar­ket, yet still a mar­ket leader. Apple has always been very wise in cre­at­ing a prod­uct that not only ful­fills the user needs but also gives the user a cer­tain sta­tus, and the long lines out­side every Apple store the days before each iPhone launch are proof of it.

So why aren’t trav­el brands using envy in trav­el more? As I men­tioned before, Google is spoil­ing them and they are con­stant­ly focus­ing on cre­at­ing con­tent that ranks well.

Takeaways

• Break those silos and embrace a con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that involves all mar­ket­ing chan­nels work­ing togeth­er.
• Go beyond key­word research. Lis­ten to what your tar­get audi­ence needs.
• Use videos, not only as a tool for inspi­ra­tion but as a way of reach­ing out to your users. Let them know you’re lis­ten­ing to their needs.
• If you don’t already have a mobile-ready site, remem­ber that about 58 per­cent of trav­el­ers start their research with a search on Google or oth­er search engines. Invest in a prop­er mobile site before con­sid­er­ing a mobile app.

How would you define a qual­i­ty con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? Tell us in the com­ments.