Overall trends in the tourism industry and advertising optimization strategies

When promoting the tourism industry, we often seem to encounter the following problems:

The money is being burned too quickly, so why don’t we see any growth in volume?

Why so few clicks?

I have invested in many channels, but the exposure and conversion are still not going up... I am so tired.

Today, we will start with the overall industry trends and give some suggestions on the problems we may encounter during the advertising process .

1. Overall Trends in the Tourism Industry

In 2018, the number of Chinese tourists is growing steadily. The bonus period of outbound tourism will gradually fade in the next two years, and the market will cultivate new consumer power and maintain existing high-quality consumer power through other means such as promotional marketing.

The penetration rate of mobile tourism users continues to increase, and mobile terminals have become an important sales channel in the tourism market.

As the bonus period fades, market promotion in the tourism industry is becoming increasingly difficult. On the one hand, due to the characteristics of tourism products, the promotion effect is slow to take effect. On the other hand, there are fewer effective promotion channels, it is difficult to gain volume, and the conversion costs remain high. These problems are becoming increasingly prominent.

The advertisements are mainly based on the nature of audience behavior, according to the interests and behavioral preferences of the industry segments, and through the use of crowd big data insight analysis technology, the audience's consumption tendencies are judged, and ultimately the user is guided and promoted to make reservations and purchases and other sales conversions.

According to relevant data statistics from iResearch Consulting in 2018, new changes in tourism user behavior are as follows.

Online travel user profile

Based on different user needs, the online travel industry is mainly divided into four categories: outbound travel, domestic travel, group travel, and self-guided travel.

Outbound Travel

The crowd is mainly young and middle-aged people, with high education, high income, high positions, economic strength, high acceptance of overseas culture, high consumption capacity, and a certain understanding of overseas products and luxury goods...

Domestic Travel

The crowd is mainly young and middle-aged people, with low income levels, ordinary positions, and weak economic strength, but they yearn for travel and leisure life, have strong consumption power, and love online shopping, videos, entertainment, etc.

Group Tours

They are mainly middle-aged and elderly people, usually retired or self-employed or private business owners, with a lot of free time and financial strength, but they are not very receptive to new things and have poor ability to use the Internet and mobile devices...

Self-guided tours

Mainly composed of young people, they are passionate about new things, have advanced consumption awareness, are relatively resistant to teams, like a free life, and are more interested in short videos...

3. Analysis of the delivery strategy

1. Crowd Strategy

Screen TA based on the above 4 different population characteristics

At the same time, combined with precise crowd targeting technology, it can effectively distinguish, capture and target the behaviors of segmented tourist groups.

2. Media Strategy

Select media based on the preferences of the target tourism groups in different market segments. It is recommended to use massive resources to attract large amounts of traffic and select high-quality and highly targeted media for precise delivery.

According to TalkingData's 2018 data, except for entertainment applications, domestic tourism users have a higher preference for mobile applications than the general public. Among them, domestic tourism users have a higher preference for real estate, personal care and beauty, communication and social networking, consulting and financial management applications.

For outbound tourists, we recommend placing advertisements in news, tools, online shopping, fashion, luxury goods, and social media.

For domestic tourists, we recommend placing ads in news, finance, practical and tool-related media.

For group tourists, we recommend entertainment, social, information and video media.

For self-guided tour groups, we recommend information, tools, entertainment, and social media.

Advertisers can also choose Hero App’s well-known and high-quality media to enhance the credibility of their travel brands, establish a positive brand image, highly expose their brand advantages, and deeply influence their target audiences.

3. Targeted strategy

In terms of delivery strategy, in addition to selecting suitable high-quality media, it is also necessary to determine matching targeting conditions.

For example, when choosing geographic targeting conditions, you need to consider the location of the person.

According to data from TalkingData and the National Bureau of Statistics, taking Beijing as an example, cities surrounding Beijing account for a large proportion of the top 10 cities for tourism to Beijing, and convenience is the primary determining factor for tourists.

However, outbound travel data shows that users in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong are more enthusiastic about outbound travel, and income level and economic development level are the primary determinants of outbound travel.

Based on this, it is recommended that advertisers carry out separate targeted advertising in major source markets, with the main focus on major source markets and the allocation to other regions gradually decreasing in scale. In terms of regional selection, for example, first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen around popular destinations, second-tier cities: provincial capitals and emerging economic cities, third- and fourth-tier cities and others.

The delivery time and period should be closely linked to the key decision-making period of users.

Targeted online time for targeted tourism groups

Working hours: CBD business district, office buildings, business buildings, subway stations, bus stations...

Rest time (weekends): shopping malls, fashion districts, shopping centers, supermarkets, residential areas, leisure clubs, cinemas, cafes

Specific requirements: days or time advertising/week

4. Display strategy

In terms of display strategy, advertisers can adopt native opening screen, which is the most effective form of high brand exposure. It can more clearly display the content and features of the product, has a high visual impact, and the click-through rate is generally 10%-15%.

Banner/interstitial is also the most widely used form of advertising to reach the target audience. Compared with Banner, the conversion rate of interstitial is 5 times higher and the number of conversions is about 4.5 times higher.

If advertisers want to achieve both brand and effect, they can also choose native information flow advertising. Compared with ordinary banners, native advertising can bring 4 times the exposure and 8 times the clicks.

4. How to optimize during the delivery process?

1. Crowd Optimization

• Detailed exploration of new users and efficient maintenance of old users.

It is recommended that advertisers can use technical means such as device number targeting to refine their advertising targets, discover new customers and effectively maintain old users, so as to avoid wasting advertising budget on users who have been exposed to the brand multiple times but have no interest in it.

• In-depth crowd mining

Discover friends from core users and bring about explosive marketing effects for brands.

It is recommended to use Lookalike technology, which can use advertisers' first-party data to expand the user population similar to the seeds through big data analysis and machine learning based on a small number of seed users, thereby helping advertisers to obtain more target audiences.

2. Optimization of directional conditions

During the advertising process, advertisers need to have a very good understanding of their target users so that they can continuously optimize targeted tags for different dimensions (population, region, behavior, etc.) and track marketing more accurately to user scenarios.

3. Optimize in stages

During the entire delivery process from exposure, clicks, browsing to final transaction, many advertisers may encounter problems such as low ad exposure, low ad clicks, and high traffic loss. Problems in each link may be caused by more than one influencing factor. For example, low exposure may be due to various factors such as low bids, narrow targeting, short delivery time period, low material CTR, etc., which ultimately lead to low ad exposure.

At this time, it is also necessary to analyze the key data in the delivery process , such as the landing page browsing data. In general, you can consider and optimize from the aspects of materials, copywriting, and audience targeting. According to different scenarios and audiences, use corresponding materials and copywriting, and optimize the target audience targeting labels.

For similar problems, you can use the same logic to work backwards and make adjustments, and observe whether the optimized results are improved. If not, you need to find out the key influencing factors and then further optimize and adjust patiently.

It should be noted that when discovering problems during data analysis and troubleshooting, it is recommended to start from three levels: planning level troubleshooting, advertising level troubleshooting, and operation level troubleshooting. The following is an example

The above are the optimization strategies for advertising in the tourism industry.

Source: ADHUB Junyun Technology