Asia will Drive Future Growth in Business Travel

According to an Oxford Economics study commissioned by Amadeus: Shaping the Future of Travel, they predict that Asia-Pacific’s overnight visitor flows will nearly double the rate of that in 2002-2012 and that Asia will drive future growth in business travel.

With such compelling data, is your branded content being seen or discovered by travelers?

One of the most important channels that marketers should not overlook is “search.” Bronwyn White, director of MyTravelResearch.com, at the EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2014 said, “Search is the one constant tool that travelers use in every stage of the path to purchase.”

Kenshoo released an industry spotlight report on travel revealing that 58% leisure travelers and 64% business travelers begin by searching when planning and making travel bookings.

To make the most of “search” in your marketing mix, have you considered the following before you start your SEM campaign?

 1. Search Engines in Your Market(s)

Although Google remains to be the most popular search engine in the world, it’s not always the case in some markets in Asia. The search landscape in Asia is very different compared with that in the US and Europe. If you were covering those markets, you would have no problem investing your advertising spend on Google. However, search engines such as Baidu is now dominating in China while Naver dominates Korea. This needs to be considered if you cover these markets. This leads me to ask why it is important to do your homework and understand your market(s). PR Newswire recently published a white paper on Asian Media Landscape Series that serves as a guide for navigating through print, broadcast, online, social media and search engines in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

2. Mobile Optimization

Asia-Pacific (APAC) covers just under half the world’s share of mobile users with over 1.6 million active mobile users (unique individuals). Mobile is a key growth channel, so it is important to think about mobile optimization in your search engine marketing campaign, how they use mobile and even their mobile data plan. In the We Are Social’s Social, Digital & Mobile in APAC in 2014 report, we found that 97.3% of the total active social media users in APAC are active mobile social media users and 21% of mobile subscriptions in APAC have 3G connections, which means that not only must you be present in social media to reach your audience but you also need to think about the type of content that is suitable for your audience. For example, if you were to include multimedia assets in your content, you must factor markets that do not have fast mobile connection speed to view the videos.

3. Content Marketing and Distribution – Content is King, but Distribution is Queen! 

“Content is king”, but if not done correctly, you could waste your efforts with little outcome. In the Collective Insights from PR Newswire’s 2013 Best Practices Forum in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, it talks about how marketers and corporate communications professionals need to understand the outcomes that you are looking for. “What is your ultimate objective? Is this allowing you to get people to ultimately say yes? Will this create positive buzz about the brand?”

Brands fall into the trap of creating great content but only solely relying on their owned media channels for promotion. Last month we hosted  PR Newswire Media Coffee event /webinar and one of our speakers,  Michael Pranikoff, Global Director of Emerging Media said that according to Forrester’s report, 85% of brand marketers are publishing content but only 36% are doing it efficiently, and that we must take high performing content and give it a boost of syndication if we expect it to truly perform.

Therefore, in order to discover your content in a sea of information, you must include distribution and syndication in your strategy, otherwise you run into the risk of content not being picked up by your target audience. Don’t forget, “distribution is queen!”

Content needs to be engaging and relevant to your target audience and PR Newswire data shows that multiple multimedia elements get nearly ten times more views than text-only releases. Destination NSW Vivid Sydney 2014 Lights On is a good example of taking advantage of high value content and making it easily discoverable.

Destination NSW delivered their message in a multimedia format by blending text, video, photos and social media tools Facebook and Twitter to encourage interaction across both traditional and social media channels. They then distributed their content on PR Newswire’s network of journalists, media organizations, news agencies and online portals. They included a creative, informative and colorful video that engages their target audience to entice possible visitors to attend the festival.

This resulted in their content amplified across a vast amount of sites, including social media sites as Vimeo, DailyMotion and YouTube. It was also picked up by journalists and bloggers who wrote about the festival. A job well done.

If you factor the above into your communications strategy, then you are on the right path for desired outcomes. Here at PR Newswire we believe “Search, social and mobile media are the future, transcending paid, earned and owned media, with content driving them all.”

Joanna Yip is the Marketing Communications Manager for PR Newswire.