In this new mobile-first world, content consumption happens at all times of day, and in all different places – whether it be on a train as part of your daily commute, while waiting in the lunch queue, or in bed while unwinding from your day. Marketers need to adapt fast, and travel and tourism marketers in particular, are well positioned to plant the seeds of far-off destinations while their next potential guest is in the bedroom glued to their mobile or tablet.
Why? Well let’s look at some Outbrain data.
Consumption of summer travel content on mobile and tablets peaks at 7am and 11pm across the millions of recommendations being made every day on Outbrain’s network of publishers.
That means your potential customer either just woke from a dream or is about to fall into one.
Now, any travel marketer worth their salt is familiar with Google’s five stages of travel, and it all starts with a dream.
So your mobile content can either serve as a continuation of that dream or it can be so good that it sparks the consumer to actually have a dream about a specific destination or adventure.
Either way, planting the travel seed early enough with great content in order to enter the buyer’s dream stage of travel planning is critical for an effective travel content marketing strategy. According to a Google/Ipsos study, when respondents were asked what kind of travel content they consumed on their mobiles, 28% said they were looking to compare prices, 27% looked for holiday ideas/reviews, and 21% looked for travel promotions and deals.
Travel Dreaming Is All Year Round and begins online.
In the US for instance, 37% travelers think about vacation planning once a month, and 17% think about it at least once a week. Outbrain’s UK data shows that consumption of travel content really heats up between May and Sept – not a big surprise really that summer travel is everyone’s favorite topic.
That’s right. Your potential customers are about to go on a frenzy of reading and watching travel content. Will you be there to catch their eye with great content?
If you can figure out how to match your content to their mobile consumption patterns at 7am or 11pm you’ll be at an advantage over your competitors who may not be thinking about the time of day when planning their content calendars.
Creating travel content that’s best consumed on mobile right before someone goes to sleep or right when they wake up is no easy task, but as long as you’re focusing on creating content that’s dream-worthy I’m confident you’ll have a leg up over those who settle for mediocrity in their content marketing.
Here are five brands doing an amazing job of creating dream-worthy content on their own travel content hubs:
- Marriot’s Travel Brilliantly and Meeting’s Imagined
- AirBnB’s City Guides
- WestJet Magazine
- Virgin America’s Flyer Feed
Hat tip to Michael Brenner of Marketing Insider Group for this list of 99 Amazing Content Marketing Hub Examples.
So, what’s it going to be? Will your travel content be good enough to spark a dream?
If you’ve seen great examples of travel content (or just have a great summer travel recommendation) I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Check out more articles by Will Fleiss on the Outbrain content marketing blog, and for more UK insights on travel related content check Outbrain’s dedicated travel page.
This advertisement feature is brought to you by Outbrain, sponsors of the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Publishing and Platforms hub
