What are
they key differences in the digital marketing mix
between Luxury and Travel
industries?
The differences between the Travel and Luxury Industry digital Marketing mix, in my opinion, are:
The Luxury Industry brands normally do not use the online selling (exception for private sale events) versus Travel Industry where 93 % of brands offer booking online and for which nearly half of the bookings are made online. Some Luxury Brands began to organize online sales during the past year, and therefore have significantly boosted their Digital IQ.
Highly profit-generating online bookings are the reason why the Travel Industry Brands tend to invest more into “internet search” on key-word or key-term basis, and this the one of the industry’s main traffic drivers, and the cost of this service is growing fast each year. On the contrary more than half of the brands in Luxury Industry still do not purchase search terms on Google and Bing. However, they probably should pay more attention to the ‘paid search’ as, according to the report, 66 % of the Luxury brands’ customers do the online research before buying offline; therefore bad online communication could affect the purchase offline.
Many ‘old-fashioned’ Watch & Jewelry brands (Prada, Dior, Cartier and Rolex) snob the Internet and do not Invest in Digital Communication due to ‘This all internet thing will go away’ attitude. Furthermore, none of the 72 Luxury brand users that were investigated employ users’ reviews versus the 9 % of brands in Travel Industry, which helped them to raise the traffic to their sites by 24 %. The majority of the Luxury industry representatives still do not realize the growing influence of social platforms, as most of the brands still favor directing traffic to their marketing microsites rather than to well-populated social media platforms; although, 90% of them have their own facebook pages. Luxury brands also have stronger presence on Twitter.
Travel Industry brands seem to adopt better the iPhone and Mobile marketing strategy, as 56 % of brands host a mobile site and 48 % offer at least one iPhone application; On the contrary, just 5 brands in Luxury Industry offer a commerce-enabled mobile experience. Only 7 brands in the study have mobile-enabled sites. The exception is iPhone applications, as Luxury and mobile have become synonymous, and almost 2 in 5 luxury brands have developed a marketing application for the platform, but still not proposing applications for iPad (except for 5 Luxury Brands).
Travel Industry participants, in particular the Hospitality Industry brands, have to monitor the reviews on their own site AND on the third-party review Internet sites, such as TripAdvisor or Yelp. They must ‘dive in’ with ‘listen, react, and engage’ strategy on the social media sites. Luxury brands do not have the same monitoring strategy.
Emails are the powerful tools to attract the customer which is largely used by the Travel Industry players: 63 % of consumers who receive email from a travel supplier are more likely to purchase from the brand, online games are also used, for example for airlines to win a ticket or a trip for a travel company. Emails are rarely used as a digital Marketing tool by Luxury brands: for example, 9 brands, including Rolex and Manolo Blahnik, do not offer email option on their brand sites. 11 of the brands that allowed sign-up did not email within the two-month period when data was collected. Only half of the brands email to their customers more than once within the two-month period.
From the
reports and reading, how do the top 3 Digital IQ
companies view social media?
Top Brands for Travel Industry
Delta Airline ( score: 168 Genius )
Southwest Airline (score: 165 Genius)
American AIRLINES (score: 158 Genius)
All three of them have strong presence on social network sites as Facebook or Twitter in term of likes, posts, responsiveness to the comments, online booking, etc. They take into consideration the fact that the major traffic nowadays comes from social network Internet sites and not from the micro company’s Internet sites. They also employ a powerful email strategy. For example, American Airlines is averaging almost five emails a week! Delta uses Twitter to monitor customer service issues and complaints 24/7, employing its @Delta and @DeltaAssist accounts. Its mobile footprint includes commerce functionality across its mobile iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. All three applications enable customers to quickly book reservations, monitor flight status, check in, and generate an electronic boarding pass.
Top Brands for Travel Industry.
COACH Shoes & Leathergoods (score: 171 Genius)
RALPH LAUREN (score: 167 Genius)
LOUIS VUITTON (score: 167 Genius)
Coach is extremely ‘Digital Marketing’ oriented. It has a very strong presence on Facebook with a nearly one million (!) friends and is one of the few brands to launch a Foursquare promotion featuring the opening of its first men’s store in New York. The brand also employs an Internet site that offers all major e-commerce tools and has a strong Twitter following, The Poppy Project added a new dimension to the Coach handbag line attracting a younger consumers, as in 2009 Coach launched a more affordable handbag line and accompanied it with blog promotions and gift cards. Ralph Lauren launches various mobile applications, is famous for its shoppable children’s book, has a strong Facebook ‘likes rating’. LV attracts customers by personalized products, colorful stylish digital campaigns, and global social media strong presence.
