Travel industry is booming and marketing is playing a crucial role in the development of this industry. Advertisements have been the backbone and an integral part of this industry. Whether its B2B or B2C, advertisements have been effective in reaching larger audiences leveraging new digital technologies and travel management tools. This includes various digital marketing techniques and tools like display advertising, print advertising, social media advertising, paid search advertising, native advertising, outdoor advertising, broadcast advertising, etc. Marketers in the travel industry are harnessing these advertisements and launching various strategies to generate more revenue from this industry and to be on cutting edge in the competition.

Advertising History Timeline

The infographic above clearly interprets the evolution of the advertising industry and the various advertising platforms.

“Marketing survives on constant innovation and it’s also the main factor that drives evolution.”
Tweet This! Although there have been many advancements in advertisements, it has been found that segments like email marketing and display advertisements have always caught the eyes of marketers for their marketing objectives and hence generating revenues. Email marketing still works provided it is blended with automation, hence modern marketers are leveraging on different email automation techniques to target their customers and generate leads for them.

Display Advertising Is at Par with Email Marketing

Email marketing works good but with modern digital advancements in marketing, display advertising is proving to be a dominant one and adding much value owing to visuals that appeal and grab attention at the first place. Display advertising works best when these are localized according to a marketplace and can provide with maximum exposure. In addition, the relevancy feature improves the response from audience. This is the reason why display advertising has become a popular practice in digital marketing today. The visual and targeting capabilities of display ads offer many benefits to a business, that spans from visibility to brand awareness.

“Display ads and email marketing combined can work wonders and they can benefit businesses in many ways. So, ignoring it will only be a fool man’s deal.”

5 Reasons Why Display Advertising Is as Important as Email Marketing in the Travel Industry

Display advertising has become the primary tool of marketers in the travel industry too and they are leveraging the power of display advertising in their email campaigns. Let’s learn more about how display advertising is revolutionizing the travel industry and revamping how people are planning and managing their corporate or business travel effectively.

1. Display Ads Are Visually Appealing

Images speak louder than words and it has been found that email campaigns with images or other rich media elements have greater chances of conversion. Display advertising attracts the online audience on a website, social media platform, or any other digital medium and makes them take a specific call to action, which is the ultimate goal of every marketer. The rich media advertisements like text, image, or video may encourage the user to click-through to a landing page and take a final call to action i.e., closing a deal or making a purchase.

Display or graphics create an engaging and eye-catching ad which can target the right audience and wrap it together in a funnel that generates results. With display ads, travel companies can convey more easily about their travel technologies and features that may assist corporations in their effective travel management.

2. DISPLAY ADS INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS

The visuals of display ads increase the chances of customer engagement along with brand awareness and thus benefit the businesses. Rich media ads include interactive elements, such as video, audio, and clickable elements. These ads include a call to action right within the ad itself. In case of PPC ads, users need to read the text on the ad and then click through to a landing page to learn more about the business and its offer. The clickable elements can be utilized effectively while promoting a travel tech feature by travel management companies.

3. DISPLAY ADS FOLLOW A TARGETED APPROACH

Marketing is vast and all the marketing activities will be in vain if the ads are not targeted to the right audience when using online advertising. It is always advisable to target the people most relevant to your business. Pubsites can prove to be the best platform for promoting these ads as they are industry domain-specific. For example, the ads related to companies in travel industry serves the marketers’ objective better when it is targeted and posted on travel pubsites. In addition, search marketing techniques like SEM, SEO are always there to enhance the targeting initiatives. Marketers can also facilitate themselves by creating specific parameters for their display ads like prioritizing the sites they appear on, geographic area they fall in, and demographics of the place or market they appeal to. Targeted ads perform better and hence marketers can maximize their spend.

4. DISPLAY ADS PROVIDE USEFUL INSIGHTS AND DATA

Display ads perform better in delivering customers insights and intent data which help marketers know their audience/clients better. Marketers can analyze these intent data or insights and measure their marketing activities using tools like Google Analytics, Facebook analytics, etc. to track their performance. With the help of these insights, marketers can have an overview of exactly how many times their ads have been clicked. This further helps travel marketers to organize their marketing activities and take action on their marketing campaigns according to the outcomes and results. This also helps in tracking their investment to ensure they are getting the most out of it.

5. AUGMENTED CONVERSION RATES IN TRAVEL TECH COMPANIES

The advantage to online displays is that with its features like targeted audience and customer-centric approach marketers can measure its real-time impact leveraging on the analytics. According to business audience marketing firm Bizo, display advertising helps improve market response considerably. Studies show that targeted displays by travel tech companies boost conversion rates for them enormously. In addition, displays help them to improve sales for their businesses and hence generate revenue. This can definitely provide the travel companies with a greater number of clients converted and more revenue generated with such loyal clients.

Case Study on Display Ads

Title: CHEAPFLIGHTS “DRAG DROP AND GO”

Cheapflights image-based search function - Drag, Drop and Go assists people to find flights for worldwide events and summits.

The case study below illustrates how the travel site got a 95% click-through rate to the site with a quirky interactive banner search campaign.

Summary

Cheapflights web banner worked as flights search tool.
Users dragged image of the articles on page of interest into the banner to get the right ticket.
Engagement rate: 145% higher than the benchmark for other digital campaigns.

CHALLENGE: Business people travel around the globe to attend conferences and meetings, experience business events, etc.

According to the UK report, 45% of live music audiences were music tourists and there were 9.5 million music tourists in the UK alone.

To target these people, Cheapflights introduced a web banner ad that worked as an easy tool to search flights simply by dragging the image of the ‘articles or blogs’ the user is reading into the banner to get the right ticket.

SOLUTION: The functionality was launched in banner ads in news websites of the Guardian, Telegraph, Mirror, and NME.com.

A business person reading an article or blog on upcoming event or summit can drag the image accompanying the article or blog, drop it in the accompanying Cheapflights banner ad and immediately get flight prices for the next summit.

Another example, a tech enthusiast can drag an image of the tech launch event, drop it into the site's ad banner and seamlessly find the best flight price to go to the destination where the event will be held.

Once the image has been dropped, it is captured and analyzed to establish if the photo shows a conference, event, or summit.

This information or insight is then fed to ticket sale services, such as Ticketmaster, to find out when and where is the next summit or event.

The Cheapflights API is then used to search for the best flights to that event from the user's location. Flight search results are then sent back and displayed in the banner.

Cheapflights.co.uk Managing Director Andrew Shelton said: "We're taking our 'Smart Search. Made Simple' concept to the next level by bringing our simple flight search to our media partners' readers.”

RESULTS

Engagement rate: 145% higher than the benchmark for other digital campaigns.
92% clicked through to the Cheapflights site.

Conclusion

Business travel is mainly driven by well-optimized corporate travel management solutions along with constant innovations in business travel solutions. Corporate travel companies can benefit a lot if they revamp their marketing strategies, making the best use of modern travel technologies. With a perfect blend of email marketing automation and targeted display advertising utilized in their marketing campaigns, marketers can convert their potential prospects into loyal clients because there is always a market for those who can sell.