Get Smart about Visual Storytelling: Drive Bookings with Intelligent Content
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Joined by special guests Felix Laboy, CEO of WayBlazer, and Christopher Regalado, CEO & Founder of RevMar Digital, we take the content marketing conversation to the next level and explore how you can use more personalized, intelligent visual content to improve your marketing performance.
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Get Smart about Visual Storytelling: Drive Bookings with Intelligent Content
- 1. Copyright © 2016 Leonardo Worldwide Corporation Technical Difficulties? Contact Citrix GoToWebinar 1-800-263-6317 support@citrixonline.com Drive Bookings with Intelligent Content April 21st, 2016 Darlene Rondeau, VP, Best Practices, Online Merchandising, Leonardo Felix Laboy, CEO, WayBlazer Christopher Regalado, CEO & Founder, RevMar Digital Technical Difficulties? Contact Citrix GoToWebinar 1-800-263-6317 support@citrixonline.com
- 2. Darlene Rondeau Vice-President, Best Practices, Online Merchandising Leonardo @darlenerondeau
- 5. Christopher Regalado Founder & CEO RevMar Digital linkedin.com/in/chrisregalado
- 6. My content isn’t very personalized because:
- 7. We have drawn pictures for 32,000 years but have only written for 5,000 Travelers want to see the experience they can expect at your property We process visuals 60,000 times faster than text Why Visual Storytelling Matters #LeoWebinar
- 8. MIT neuroscientists find the brain can identify images seen in as little as 13 milliseconds Sephora found that Pinterest followers spend 15x more than its Facebook fans Imagine how much more effective hotel marketers can be by adding local content, recommendations & insights in context? In the Blink of an Eye #LeoWebinar
- 10. The ART in Artificial “The ability for a computer system to understand natural language— the unstructured written information that accounts for the bulk of information produced and consumed by humans” Artificial Intelligence #LeoWebinar
- 11. High Quality Content AI for Travel Intelligent Content #LeoWebinar
- 12. Key Steps in Personalizing Travel Hotel Recommendations Identifying and ranking of the best hotels Images Showing relevant photos to engage Insights Including key hotel information, unbiased 3rd party references and reviews Local Area Knowledge Providing restaurant, activities, event recommendations #LeoWebinar
- 13. Intelligent Content Couple Romantic Winter • Warm and friendly service • Walk everywhere • Ski concierge on-site • Hot tubs on property Vail, Co 2 Adults 0 Kids 1 Room January 5 January 8 Existing AI Enabled #LeoWebinar
- 14. Intelligent Images Existing Vail, Co 2 Adults 2 Kids 1 Room August 5 August 8 AI Enabled Kids Family Summer • Warm and friendly service • Walk everywhere • Mini golf & activities next door • Heated outdoor pool #LeoWebinar
- 15. Bringing This to Life Segment user base into trip types Business Family 2 Adults 0 Kids Couple Winter SnowSolo Couple Extract concepts from every image, review, description and local area attractions Match segments and concepts for each traveler and trip type from search query Connect traveler to hotel through image and content December Winter #LeoWebinar
- 16. The Right Image & Content to the Right User, at the Right Time 2 Adults 0 Kids Winter 2 Adults 2 Kids Summer #LeoWebinar
- 17. Key Takeaways It has arrived It’s logical and emotional It’s going to get easier It converts #LeoWebinar
- 18. Christopher Regalado Founder & CEO RevMar Digital linkedin.com/in/chrisregalado
- 19. Be crystal clear on goals Generate revenue at lowest possible cost of acquisition Don’t just stop at demographics o e.g. who they are; gender, age, income Incorporate psychographics to mold guest personas o e.g. why they buy; hobbies, values, lifestyle Multiple personas within primary buyer for different reasons and time periods Create a campaign with targeted content & storytelling Implement strategy across social, mobile, email & desktop Personalizing Marketing – The Challenges #LeoWebinar
- 20. Focus on rich media, photos, videos and 360° virtual Use guest generated content o more organic and less filtered Content should inspire a buying decision Social Media and Mobile #LeoWebinar
- 21. Obtain more info about guests with interviews via email, online or on- site surveys and by looking at web analytics Now that you know your guests, cater promotions to them Measure effectiveness o # of clicks, views, bounce rates, and ultimately bookings o Consider running an A/B version of the promo for deeper dive If not working….. o Initial offer was discounted room, but found that it had no actual value to that persona; values quality over price, family time & relaxation o Instead offer upgrade and more expensive room with jetted tub, more space, a credit to offsite/onsite activity and a spa treatment Personalized Offers #LeoWebinar
- 22. For SEO, build your story with great copywriting Combine short/long tailed keywords blended seamlessly into your story telling If needed, hire a pro who can capture and convey your story using those keywords Opportunity to reduce cost of acquisition & bounce rates In position to improve conversion, transactions & revenue Personalized Content & SEO #LeoWebinar
- 23. Clients was using the hotel’s proximity to major attractions as their main selling point o Ranking well o 34% bounce rate o Low engagement They weren’t telling their story to differentiate them from all other hotels in the area Solution o Created buying persona to tell story of how their property is family friendly, great for kids to have fun while mom can relax while attending these attractions nearby o Traffic decreased 3%, but net impact was higher quality o Bounce rate reduced to 29% o Session duration increased by 8% o Conversion rate increased ~30% A Noteworthy Example #LeoWebinar
- 24. Manage both revenue & marketing strategies for independent clients and on average o 265%+ in website revenue o Importantly, commissionable revenue was redirected from OTAs to hotel direct channels o Went from sub 30% in net revenue to more than 65% in hotel contribution over 2 year period Results #LeoWebinar
- 25. Tailor content to your guests o Know who they are o Where they’re browsing buying from (mobile, social, desktop) Desktop shoppers o Use a combo of photos, videos and rich descriptions to convey your story o Your narrative can be longer here Mobile shoppers o Spend less time on one page and look for instant gratification Target & personalize your website Personalize SEO o Reduce your cost of acquisition and subsequent bounce rate, increase visitor time and page views, improve your conversion, transactions and ultimately make more money Advice for Other Hoteliers #LeoWebinar
- 26. Key Takeaways Dig deeper Determine your story and design a persona based campaign around it Right time, right message to fill during need periods Marketing & revenue side by side with emphasis on communication #LeoWebinar
- 27. Based on today’s content, will you attend future webinars?
- 29. About Leonardo Invitations to upcoming webinars Recording of this webinar. Share it with your colleagues It’s a Wrap #LeoWebinar
Editor's Notes
- I’m not sure how to get started It’s too time consuming Not convinced it’ll generate more direct bookings - Not sure how to target my multiple audiences
- As Darlene introduced earlier AI continues to evolve and become smarter, effective and applicable to a variety of industries. Companies big and small have begun adapting AI in general and cognitive computing in particular to their business needs. Their goal is to create machines that augment human intelligence and that can interact with us in a human way. Augmenting human intelligence is at the heart of this new way of computing. Up to this point computers provided tools that let us do things better or faster—they help us with tasks we were already doing. Cognitive computing, on the other hand, can help us do things we hadn’t thought of doing before. For the first time, machines can comprehend and extract semantic knowledge from any unstructured data resource, including: -Research papers -Technical, business and news articles -Books and essays -Personal blog articles, reviews, tweets and social media posts Images and photos To interpret information like a person, the cognitive computer breaks down each sentence into its syntactic structure. It looks at the relationships of words and phrases and their context within the whole document. It then looks for relationships with other words and phrases from other documents available to it. This ability to absorb knowledge like a human helps the computer answer human questions, posed in natural language, with truly human-sounding answers. The objective is to understand the intent of the user’s question and use that understanding to develop logical responses, draw inferences, generate potential answers, and settle on the best response backed up with source information. The thing that makes cognitive computing really different is that it isn’t a pre-programmed answer machine—it’s a learning machine with the ability to deduce the answer itself.
- It is now possible to take what we’ve learned about AI/cognitive computing to deliver fast, accurate, personal recommendations and apply it to the travel industry. Over the last few years, there has been much effort around improving the content for your hotel online. With these new intelligent engagement capabilities, customers can now interact with hotel or travel company websites and apps in more meaningful ways. We thus are entering an age of intelligent content. (use animation) High quality content, now must become intelligent content Personalization is key, consumers are interested in specifics, what is important to them, not to the masses. As an example, The Me-Me Generation (millennials) will be the first to demand perfect personalization, challenging brands to know them better than they know themselves** **http://futurefoundation.net/expedia/
- At WayBlazer, we see there are four core components to personalizing travel. These start even before the guests arrive on property and before they even click book on your website. We start viewing personalization as critical as soon as a traveler lands on your website. As travelers no longer seek souvenirs, they covet unique experiences, why not start to personalize as soon as you know a bit about them and begin to build a complete experience from start of booking through to the end of the stay. Understanding where travelers are going, who they are going with and maybe even why they are traveling, can yield important insights about what information to display on a site. For todays purpose, we are going to focus on images and insights (use animation) Travel marketers can use this AI technology to help travelers fashion a more personalized travel plan and allow them to book with greater confidence. By combining natural language processing and machine learning, travelers can request specific trip characteristics and be presented with a set of results that best match. Let’s see how this would work
- Let’s start with an example of a trip to Vail Colorado. We can say I’m looking to take a trip with my wife for a romantic ski trip together and are going for a long weekend. Currently if I did a search on an OTA, brand site or even went to the hotel directly, the Evergreen Lodge may be a viable option. The photo displays the front of the hotel and (use animation) the site description may say something fairly generic. Now if artificial intelligence was applied in this case, (use animation) the main photo would show a relevant picture, perhaps a couple together. Notice that because I am searching for December, the photo is a winter scene with snow and skis. (use animation) Now the content should also change, reflecting the fact it’s two adults traveling. Technology is able to tell a few things overall, (use animation) it’s a couple traveling, (use animation) a romantic trip and (use animation) it’s winter time. Let’s try another example
- Now what about if I’m going back to Vail Colorado. We can say I’m looking to take a trip with my wife and my two kids. We all want to stay together and are going for a long weekend, but this time during the summer. The Evergreen Lodge may be still a viable option. The photo displays the front of the hotel and (use animation) the site description may say something fairly generic, still the same with a different trip purpose, number of people and time of year. Now if again, if artificial intelligence was applied in this case, (use animation) the main photo would show a relevant picture, perhaps a family or kids. Notice that because I am searching for August, the photo is a summer scene with outdoor activities (and short sleeves and shorts). (use animation) Now the content should also change, reflecting the fact it’s a family coming to visit. As the search shows, (use animation) it’s a kids traveling, (use animation) a family trip and (use animation) it’s summer time. Let’s try another example
- For nearly each hotel, there are many types of guests and travelers, coming to visit for various purposes. (use animation), the means a hotel can start to personalize the online experience by segmenting the typical travelers into groups, business, couple, family, solo (use animation), next understanding what the images, reviews, content and local area information mean and tagging them such as a snow photo means winter (use animation), understanding how users communicate trip type and search query to match concepts is necessary, 2 adults can usually mean a couple (as opposed to a kids and family trip) (use animation), these photos and details can then be matched to display relevant and personalized content Showing more relevant images to the individual consumer increased the click through rate by 40.18% - ExactTarget
- By showing the right image, right content to the traveler when they are in the consideration time period, will yield many benefits. As was quoted by Skift “It is important to use ‘images to tell a compelling story that shows the consumer how staying at your hotel will help make their trip a success’”. For travel marketers, by applying AI and new technology, you can improve your hotels: Engagement Direct bookings Customer trust Perceived value And lastly brand loyalty
- Artificial intelligence is here and it’s making an impact on travel and hospitality. Customers and travelers are looking for those engaging, relevant and personalized experiences which can now be delivered online through this new technology. WayBlazer is a travel company leveraging Artificial Intelligence and IBM Watson to help every traveler find the perfect hotel. WayBlazer delivers this technology to travel companies via API or rapidly deployable, hosted platform. If you would like more information on AI and the future of travel, please visit our website where you can download a whitepaper providing an deeper look at this technology and its application to our industry. Please reach out to continue the conversation.
- For a mobile and social user you should focus on rich media, photos, videos, 360° virtual tours to capture their attention immediately and be sure to keep them engaged on your ad so they ultimately share that content or make a buying decision. How? An example? As an example, you know locals tend to visit either on weekends or other travel periods so you create a "Stay-cation" offer using the correct travel and booking periods which includes an attractive discount and value add but the promo doesn't really take off.
- Revenue management and marketing should work alongside each other to tell your hotel’s story If you're coming from a brand, it’s important that the flow of communication from marketing and revenue is clear so messaging is consistent Demographics tell us where guests come from, their age, gender, etc., but psychographics let us dig deeper and tell us “who” guests are, so we can better target what makes them buy Know who your guests are and where they’re browsing from (mobile, desktop, social) so you can tailor your content to them For desktop shoppers, you can use a combination of photos, videos and text to convey your story (and the length of that story can be longer) but mobile users tend to spend less time on one page and look for instant gratification If you target and personalize your website and SEO, you'll reduce your cost of acquisition and subsequent bounce rate, increase visitor time and page views, improve your conversion, transactions and ultimately make more revenue