Smart Marketing on the Social Web

is the title of a recent blog post by Seth Godin and as usual, when I read Godin, I start to think, I can’t help it!

He talks about marketing not being the same as, but much more than, advertising, which I thought everyone would know by now but it seems some people apparently still don’t. To get back to the question, the product obviously comes after marketing and he cites the example of the Prius.

Now, this gets me to the issue at hand, namely that destination marketing is one of the hardest disciplines in marketing! Why, you ask? Because in almost all cases – Dubai being one well known exception – the “product” is a given. The destination exists, often has for decades or centuries or more and can’t be significantly changed to suit the marketer. You play the hand your dealt and that’s why it’s more challenging than the so often hyped packaged goods marketing for example, or vehicles or almost any product. If research shows that your soap has to smell a certain way, be a certain color and shape your product guys will produce and deliver it that way. Try that with your resort, well maybe you can add or improve some infrastructure but it essence you’re still left with the given basics.

So, destination marketing experts should really be the ones who get the accolades and I wonder why they so often aren’t. Just watch how many marketers from the DMO world cross over to other industries based on their track record and compare that with the reverse. You’ll be surprised at the imbalance. What I’ve noticed over the years, is that a large number who face the challenge of destination marketing leave the industry after a few years.

What’s this got to do with the web, you ask? Well, similar principles apply when you hire a web marketer or an interactive agency. It pays to check if they truly understand the particular challenges they face and whether they have the right experience or not.

as reported here and elsewhere, NYC & Company has launched a new site and it takes a fresh approach to market the Big Apple.
The site design is on the hip side and a departure from the norm which for a city like New York is understandable and valid.

The key elements for me are these:

NYCgo.com includes information in nine foreign languages and will feature user-generated content such as personal profiles, user ratings and reviews, and peer-to-peer recommendations.

In addition, thanks to partnerships with Travelocity and OpenTable, NYCgo.com will be transactional so that visitors can book hotels, flights, car rentals, vacation packages and restaurant reservations directly from the Web site, thereby facilitating travel bookings with convenience, according to city officials.

The site makes use of interactive tools to give the user a voice and it has integrated commercial partners to allow more of a one-stop functionality. For a major city the inclusion of restaurant reservations is for me a must.

I like where they are going with this. Others should move in the same direction and focus on the customer experience and convenience and not politically correct supplier relationships.

TripIt Opens API, Third-Party Devs Pounce; Travel Sites Lag reads the headline in MarketingVOX today. What struck me most is the last part “Travel Sites Lag”. The same thing can be said about the API’s already available and being developed by the new innovators for travel planning like Tripbase, Uptake, Travelmuse as well as others and DMOs.

At last week’s Canada-e-Connect conference, I made a strong plea in my presentation for exactly such integration and co-operation in what is fast becoming the new focal point in online travel, the research and planning process that preceeds the actual booking. This is where 95% of the activity happens and it’s about much more than search, the present pre-occupation by the online players. It’s in this space, which PhoCusWright has termed the “Perfect Storm” where the most exciting developments will occur over the next few years. Today’s online travel consumers demand no less than a vastly improved experience in the pre-trip phase, an experience that integrates social media, social networks, UGC, etc. all the elements that need to be integrated to offer this improved experience.

For destinations – which are at the core of the planning process – this has important implications. Rather than trying to develop all this themselves, which most of them are not capable of doing anyway as part of their web development, new and forward looking partnerships need to be developed with the innovators who are already working on making it happen. The travel industry today still lives in too many silos without enough cross communications.

The conversation which is happening among the traveling public as consumers needs to start happening in the industry itself and that goes beyond the usual good will expressed at conferences but in the strategic planning and day-to-day tactics the various players deploy on a permanent basis. As the wisdom of crowd effect is important in the public at large, it can and should be applied more within the industry itself.

as so often, Seth Godin in this last post on Brands, social, clutter and the sundae is spot on about the latest craze, using social network sites like Facebook and Twitter as a corporate marketing tools. I especially like his comment comparing “Twitter making Dell a million dollars” – which would be chump change for that company anyway, with “the phone company made Dell a billion dollars – more than chump change! It’s about the difference between a marketing medium and a connecting medium. So, before you jump on this bandwagon, think about what else you can do to make your marketing relevant and effective.

OK, web 2.0 is now officially part of the mainstream, as the Wall Street Journal reveals The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World!

So, the CMOs in companies of all sizes will now embrace social media, social networks, blogs etc. and know how to effectively deal with all things 2.0? Not so fast, I still have my doubts that this is the reality. There is still too much one way communication going on and attempts to control the message rather than enter the conversation, too many calls for traditional bottom line measurements of ROI and effectiveness when engaging in the social sphere. The recent stories about disappointing results of social media advertising have shown that the old yard sticks don’t apply in this new web 2.0 environment of customer empowerment, combine with low tolerance for marketing speak. One old marketing principle still applies – present the right message, to the right audience at the right moment. When people are engaged in social networks and social media that is usually not the right moment. Those are not secrets, just comment sense marketing.

The innovators have been using web 2.0 effectively for a number of years now and while the mainstream of corporate marketers are catching up, these companies, usually small and nimble, are already moving to the next phase of the web – the smart web, where semantics are added into the mix, data talks to data and the web becomes an ever more useful tool making it easier for the empowered and connected consumer to stay informed about products and services that are relevant to them and to make smart decisions about them. While web 2.0 is now established, welcome to web 3.0

Forrester Research Gets It Wrong By Saying Corporate Blogs Aren’t Trusted says this post, referred to by Forrester’s own social media guru Jeremiah Owyang. The arguments for these blogs are interesting and valid. I still feel that it’s a discussion among insiders and not mainstream marketers, many of whom still show difficulty in how to cope with this new environment. The suggestions made in the post about blogging strategies are good but let’s be honest, how many companies are following them? The reasons why the public – as opposed to the experts – rank company blogs lower is probably because they perceive them as just another PR tool and without having statistical evidence available, my own guess would be that many of these are just that – another tool in the marketing arsenal. That’s just not what will hack it in the social media / networking arena.

People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it reads the headline of post in Groundswell, based on a survey Forrester conducted in Q2 this year with over 5000 people that according to their note, are as representative as possible of the US online adult population.

Company blogs came in last with only 16% who read them saying they trust them as an information source. At the other end, in first place with 77% trusting them, are “email from people you know”. This shows, that the personal or social network has become the most trusted source of advice and information for a large number of people on the web. It also shows a high level of resistance to the attempts by companies to use these networks as marketing tools. Any attempt at trying to control or influence the conversation is suspect and likely ineffective.

On a more positive note, the trust level increases to 24% among people who regularly read blogs, and 39% among those who blog themselves.

What this tells me, is that the more familiar people are with blogs and the various types that exist and are able to distinguish among them the higher the credibility gets. It’s also telling that a large number of the general public are probably still not as familiar with the whole blogosphere as those of us who are very close to the subject and personally involved in it. For marketers, the challenge to reach their audience in this new world remains as complex as ever.

I really love that item #3 title and question in trendwatching.com’s December 2008 Trend Briefing as it deals with the latest developments in customer reviews and comments and has a great post from TripAdvisor’s – Management Response – feature. It is still amazing to me that not more companies are actively engaged and remain stuck in the Feedback 1.0, or should we say “denial” mode, or at best in 2.0 where they at least listen.

This last line in the article just about sums it up best:

Whatever you do in 2009, don’t wait until bad times really come knocking to kick-start the inevitable co-creation lovefest (you’ve had since 1999 to prepare!)

During the recent conference I had the opportunity to talk to some companies that were not presenting at the Travel Innovation Summit or on Center Stage but offer innovative solutions that have already, or will in future, appear on our radar screens:

Is a site that offers a trip planning tool based on personal preferences. This is the direction sites have to go as the attention clearly shifts to the process that takes place prior to the actual booking and where the experience still too often disappoints. Tripbase takes a shot at improving this. It’s not perfect as the results often don’t change enough when preferences are adjusted but no site I’ve come across so far offers the perfect solution.

Another one is

Founded by former Expedia Europe executives, TVtrip provide professionally produced hotel videos which are by now an essential part of any trip decision, especially for leisure trips with an extended stay. Who wants to end up in a dump for the most precious days of the year? They are expanding rapidly across with properties across the globe and with the right partnerships to drive traffic could become a player in this segment.

The tag line of

is “Empowering the frequent flyer” and expertflyer certainly delivers on that, based on a demo I received from their CEO, Chris Lopinto. This is a very useful tool for the road – or should we say Air – warriors out there who hold a gazillion frequent flyer miles and want to make the best use of them for upgrades and flights. The site has real time tracking of seat availability for miles upgrades and live seat maps so you can view which seats remain available. Of course, the data can also be accessed and viewed on mobile phones, essential when you’re on the road. Looks like worth the price of admission to me, although I no longer really qualify based on my limited flying nowadays!

Last but by no means least there is

they have morphed from what initially was a restaurant booking service to a technology provider for all kinds of ancillary services that provide incremental revenue to a range of companies as diverse as Amtrak, KLM, Air Canada, Mastercard and Priceline. With major companies focusing on their core business, this seems the type of solution that has a strong position in the marketplace by delivering the platform necessary to maximize customer value.

These companies are just a few more examples of how the travel industry is undergoing constant change by having innovators adding value, or eliminating friction in what still is often an inefficient market full of complexities in the access to and distribution of services to a huge audience of increasingly savvy travelers. Exciting to be part of it and observe who will be the winners in the next phase of the web.

is the title of this excellent article in AdvertisingAge by Marta Strickland. It outlines in non-tech terms what the next phase on web technology is about and how it will improve the relevance of marketing. We already see some of the semantic web in action in travel on sites like UpTake an innovator in the travel planning and research phase where 95% of the action happens prior to the actual transaction and where the industry needs to get a lot better to make a much improved process a reality for today’s web savvy online travel buyers.

There’s going to be a lot of action in this space and the Travel Innovation Summit at last week’s PhoCusWright conference featured a number of companies that are active in this arena with innovative approaches that deserve the attention of the industry at large.