Marketing Mobile Travel with Facebook #2

AXSES launches Hotel and Travel Specials/Packages for Mobile Websites Marketing!

Our previous study of social media hotel marketing for mobile demonstrates that Fan Specials can be an effective part of the marketing mix.

Offering a hotel special to Facebook fans gets a significant response, but we ran into hurdles linking desktop users to a mobile website, TravelOnTheGo.mobi.

The problems revealed with the study #1 were:

1. A mobile display looks a bit lost on a desktop and does not take advantage of the full screen. It was dissonant to desktop users but it did have merit.

2. The landing page for our ads (travelonthego.mobi) did not show specials. The guest was required to visit a hotel site, but they did not know which had specials. For those looking for specials it was a waste of time!

Solution to problem #2 


A. Banners
Add specials to the landing page of the mobile site. We did this in two stages; on the home page we serve up a rotating banner that displays all specials for which we have a Mobile Page. The banner gets attention and travelers can click on a rotation and go directly to the .mobi special page and book it with our hand-held booking engine.

B. Lists

For travelers who want a list of all special, we created a new page that lists all specials. As the offers grow, we will add categories and some other navigation and search features.

With that done, we are still left with the problem #1.

Solution to problem #1

A. Advertise to mobile users only
Only show the advertisement to Facebook fans who are  engaging with their mobiles (about 25%). Unfortunately, Facebook does not offer an option to show ads to mobile user, at this point. Also it will mean that we are restricting the ads to 25% of our potential market. We really want to display the ad to all our market. 75% of our potential fans are not using their mobile when accessing their Fan pages. Many have mobiles and can be interested in getting specials delivered to their smartphones.

B. Create an online landing page
It makes sense to link potential guests to a site that explains what the special holiday advertisements are all about and offers them the special when they next use their smartphone. 

There are a couple of options for the landing page:

1. Link to a Facebook fan page that offers them the explanation and the offer

2. Link to a non-mobile site that does this

We decided to do both and to do a split test to see which performs best. We suspect that the Fan page will win, but there are some constraints on the design and we want to evaluate the Fan page against an optimized landing page.

We also want to know how the new specials-enhanced .mobi site will perform.

Will direct links to the .mobi site that has specials advertised on the two landing pages be valid? We did have fans who “Liked” this original TravelOnTheGo.mobi site so we want to see if the "Likes" will increase now that we have specials and a more apparent action! Also some of the users will be on mobiles, so in both cases, we will link to the mobile site. We will implement this adv. immediately, while we we build the online web pages and do the split test.

Tracking

It is vital that we track these approaches carefully. We use Google analytics extensively on our sites, but this is not real time. For the test, we will also use Clicky analytics. Clicky tells us instantly when a user visits a target page, where they come from, what links they came from and what they did. It measures clicks, downloads and video views at the instant they use it. Clicky is very useful for measuring split tests and immediate results.

The ads will be the same ads we used previously, which were very successful in getting attention and clicks.

Watch out for the results in our next blog!

The result and analysis will be put to good use in building winning strategies for Hotel and Travel Marketing. We have strength in 3 important, related areas:


1. First Facebook Bookings app for direct Hotel and Travel Bookings and Branding
2. Mobile strategy for Direct Hotel Bookings
3. Using Facebook to market Hotels and Travel

We believe social media is going to be one of the most important travel marketing channels. We intend to be a leader in providing know-how and technology for hotels and travel companies. Our focus is building a hotel-owned system for direct marketing and and direct bookings using social media mobile.

Facebook leads in social media and has a mobile platform that complements AXSES arcResbookings.com and AXSES SmartphoneTraveller.com marketing platform.


Keep tuned in for breaking news!

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Previous blog  http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2011/04/facebook-travel-ads.html

Realted links 

New York Times: AXSES Facebook app & amp; Mobile Marketing featured in New York Times
http://bit.ly/nytimes-facebook
 

FAN Special for Hotel Mobile Marketing:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smartphonetraveller-Reach-5-billion-mobiles/179886612057757

AXSES SmartphoneTraveller Strategies
http://smartphonetraveller.com 


Put your hotel brand and Bookings On Facebook
http://arcresbookings.com




Video illustrations of this blog:

EXISTING TRAVELONTHEGO.MOBI CLIENTS UPGRADED!

In harmony with the present Special Offer, all existing clients have been upgraded to Specials & Packages on their mobile sites. Please   "Like" us on  SmartPhoneTravellers' Facebook Page if you wish this upgrade to be continuous.

Conclusion see blog http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2011/05/advertising-your-mobile-travel-site-on.html