Happy birthday Twitter, but still no consumer brands in top 200 accounts #brandfail?

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Social Media

Tags

content marketing, copywriting, social media, Twitetr

Sometimes it’s too easy to take cheap shots, particularly in the digital marketing world, as so many opportunities present themselves. And Twitter always provides low hanging fruit.

Regular readers know I’ve posted about this before, but I thought I’d look again at the numbers, because they always tell a story or two (excuse the pun).

Given Twitter has just “celebrated” its 9th birthday, I wanted to see if anything had changed. Mind you, getting accurate up-to-date usage data from one source is not easy. So I’ve grabbed data from a range of social media monitors. Interestingly not much has changed since the 8th birthday.

One thing this does confirm is that the world’s most popular sport continues to be “people watching“. Which is why social media is not called “business media“.

Here are the Top 100 Twitter account categories by number of followers:

Musicians/celebrities – 50
TV and movie actors/hosts – 15
Sportsmen and sports clubs – 10
Internet brands (Twitter, You Tube, etc) – 8
TV Channels – 6
Vacuous celebrities – 5
Politicians – 2
Bill Gates, the NY Times, the Dalai Lama and an Islamic Leader – 1 each

One of Australia’s most followed Twits…

There are no consumer brands in the top 200 Twitter accounts. Check the list here.

There are more inactive accounts than active:

Total monthly active accounts – that is, the user accesses their account just once per month – 288 million
Total number of accounts with no followers – 391 million
5 countries account for 50% of tweets – USA, Japan, Indonesia, UK and Brazil
Number of fake Twitter accounts – 20 million
Percentage of internet users that don’t use Twitter – 90.4%
Average number of followers per account – 208. But given the Top 200 accounts each have more than 7 million followers and around 391 million accounts have none, what does 208 even mean?

According to RJMetrics, Twitter’s rate of churn is 80%+, with only 17% of Twitter accounts sending a single tweet over the past month – though this measure has been around a while. Regardless, the churn rate is still high.

The simple fact is, Twitter is dominated by a narrow channel of publishers – as indicated by the Top 200 accounts. Businesses use Twitter, but much of the activity is almost statistically insignificant in the total scheme of users.

I post this blog on Twitter, but it’s not my “go-to” channel for industry information, though I occasionally check it out. Many of my blog readers retweet this blog because they read it via Twitter – which I obviously appreciate:)

Some of my colleagues in the PR industry use Twitter constantly in their roles, because journalists use it. They couldn’t do their job without it. Others find it very useful for “news feeds” or “alerts” on specific topics.

If you used it yesterday to discover who won the Cricket World Cup you might be confused. This was the image in my account:

Aussies win World Cup – twice in one tournament?

So it’s horses for courses. Many that use it, swear by it. But those that don’t use it, don’t feel they are missing anything.

And that’s the point – don’t panic if you’re not twittering. Your business won’t suffer as a result of not having a Twitter presence. It’s a nice-to-have, not a have-to-have. It is certainly useful in specific categories, or to help individuals build their digital profiles.

A number of clients of mine now spend less time/resources using Twitter and more on Instagram, with better results. But they are in industries where images are a key part of their business – food, wine, fashion.

I suspect, given that FOMO drives so many marketing decisions these days, companies will continue to use Twitter. Unfortunately, many won’t really understand how it benefits them, let alone the cost or ROI.

As you are probably aware dear reader, the lifeblood of Twitter is traditional media, particularly broadcast TV and newspapers (including digital versions). Without these channels promoting what is trending on Twitter, the 90% of internet users who don’t tweet, plus all those with inactive accounts, wouldn’t know to go online and check out the tweets.

Gotta go – need to Tweet this and start a conversation…

Those two marketers walk into a bar and laugh about stupid meetings…

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Meetings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

meetings

Some of you may be too young to remember this classic – Meetings Bloody Meetings – featuring John Cleese. The video is the trailer, but it appears nothing’s changed when it comes to meetings.

And here’s 10 tricks to help you look smart in a meeting – LOL.

Can’t stay – I have to get to a meeting. Avagoodweegend…

How to get rich online, by telling others how to get rich online…

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

digital, digital marketing, get rich quick, new rules of marketing, selling

Over the last couple of years, as part of my research into a book I’m writing, I’ve forced myself to attend seminars and webinars, run by those who claim to want to share their get-rich-quick secrets.

You are probably aware dear reader, there is a whole digital marketing industry dedicated to this practice. I call it:

The “how to get rich online by telling others how to get rich online” industry.

The formula is simple – offer a FREE seminar, webinar or event, that promises amazing instant wealth or life change. They are usually one-day events, but some can run to three or four days. Some even advertise tickets at a range of prices to manufacture false value into the free tickets.

The registration landing page is usually a mile long with all sorts of testimonials, videos, extra freebies and lots of calls to action. And there is always the use of terms like “new blueprint“, “new rules“, “new web paradigms“, “insider secrets” and buzzwords such as “Linkfluencer” or “lead magnets” or even the outlandish phrases like “turbo cash generators” or “home business money makers“.

The promoters also imply that media channels which always worked prior to the internet, have suddenly stopped working. According to these spruikers, all humans have miraculously changed their behaviour just because of a new technology.

But have no fear – they have the secret formulas to help you exploit that technology (the internet) to get rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Each event has the compulsory before-and-after storytellers. It’s a formula lifted straight from the weight loss industry. “I was poor, now I’m really rich – and I want to share my secrets with you.” They’ll use images to support their claims. “Here’s me in front of a busted caravan when I was poor – and here’s me in front of my Learjet now.”

I even attended one event where the poor-now-rich testimonial speaker, had more than 30 credit cards in a long plastic card holder draped around his neck like a snake. This was how poor and debt-ridden he was, before he found the miracle online marketing cure. It was great theatre. Though the snake imagery did conjure up the image of snake oil.

They also have a network of preferred suppliers – cue Deliverance music – as they are basically one big mutual-admiration society hiding under the guise of affiliates. They all have the same patter. At each of their events they cross-promote each other with claims they are the world’s highest paid copywriter, or SEO expert, etc. I heard one spruiker claim a mate of his, was “on the speed-dial of all Australia’s marketing directors“.

I’d never heard of him, so I did what we all do now – I googled his name. His website demonstrated he had never worked with any major brands, just a handful of SMEs and other entrepreneurs. He spent much of his time speaking at seminars telling people how to get rich and flogging his copywriting services.

While you attend the “event”, you are encouraged to subscribe to their get-rich-quick Plan/System/Blueprint. They even offer tiers of “membership”. This helps capture more of those whose antenna is telling them something’s not quite right. By offering a low entry point, these delegates might take the cheaper option as there is less to lose.

The presenter throws in some bright shiny digi-objects like websites to get royalty-free images, virtual assistants in third world countries that save you $thousands, customer-generating headline tools, $million dollar keyword secrets, email templates, landing page templates, ebooks, DVDs, blah, blah…

They build unbelievably false value into each of these products, so the total value of the package is more than the cost of a modest investment property in Queensland.

“But just today folks – we are offering these amazo products for just the cost of a discount bus ticket to Queensland – but only if you buy now.”

And immediately the shills in the audience leap to their feet and rush to be the first to sign up. FOMO kicks in and before you know it a bunch of sods have signed their life away. They now live in the false hope of retiring, by sitting on their butts doing nothing but using the amazing turnkey money-making machines they’ve just bought.

Sad really – but to quote David Hannum – P.T. Barnum’s competitor – “there’s a sucker born every minute“.

So the market will always be there. And an emotional appeal to people’s innate laziness – get rich while lying on the beach – will continue to resonate.

My aim is to publish the definitive book on how to get rich online by telling others how to get rich online. Hopefully this will eliminate these scammers and help the poor punters realise they actually need to work to make a living.

I wonder how will I launch the book? I know – I’ll run a free seminar…

If everyone’s a ‘thought leader’ who’s doing all the work?

23 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Marketing, Thought Leadership

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

content marketing, digital amrketing, Thought Leadership

It used to be simple. Certain people were regarded as experts, because well, they were.

They’d tasted blood. Their years of hands-on experience included documented successes (and failures) – proof of their expertise. Their writings, speeches or interviews helped educate others via real life case studies, anecdotes, examples and advice. Their business achievements and industry wisdom were regarded as testimony to their expertise.

David Ogilvy – advertising expert

In the advertising world, my old boss David Ogilvy was one, along with Claude Hopkins, Leo Burnett and the like.

Most experts gained their wisdom through setbacks and failure – not just success. Hence the adage: always sail with mariners who have been shipwrecked, for they know where the reefs are.

But the digital marketing world has devalued expertise – now you just have to publish something online and you automatically call yourself a thought leader. Others don’t call you a thought leader – you anoint yourself. Expertise or experience are not criteria for being a thought leader.

After all, the term “thought leader” is much softer than “expert” – so it is easier to claim thought leadership without as much proof as one who claims to be an expert.

Curiously there is no definition in any dictionary that I can find for “thought leader”. Wikopinion suggests the following – though it’s inaccurate as it claims thought leaders are recognised in their field, yet so many self-anointed thought leaders aren’t even known, let alone recognised:

“A thought leader is an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded. The term was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the Booz & Co magazine Strategy & Business, and used to designate interview subjects for that magazine who had business ideas which merited attention.”

The McKinsey Quarterly, founded in 1964 is regarded as one of the earliest thought leadership publications. Shell started using thought leadership in consumer markets in 1973. And many regarded the founders of companies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Lever Brothers or Apple for example, as experts – or thought leaders.

So who do we blame for the rise in the thought leadership industry – because it is an industry? The answer is simple – it’s the content marketers – those recently self-anointed experts (I mean thought leaders) who are creating the infobesity epidemic.

There’s even a term “thought leadership marketing“. It refers to the process of trying to attract customers in the B2B markets, by publishing content that positions you as having expertise in a specific area – regardless of whether you do or not. Then when prospects are searching online, they may see your content and even read/view it and consequently get in touch.

The real issue is that so much of the thought leadership content is “manufactured expertise” published purely for the purpose of lead generation. It’s designed for the seller not for the buyer. Anyone can publish “thought leadership” content – and sadly anyone does.

I call it the the Faux Knowledge Conundrum – content is published specifically for the purpose of lead generation – it’s designed to suit the seller not the buyer. The whole notion of expertise has been turned upside down.

Traditional experts provide their expertise for the benefit of the business segment in which they worked. Their expertise helped the buyer (and the market) – via seminars, books, articles and other education channels – some paid and some free.

Now people/companies use Faux Knowledge delivered under the guise of Content Marketing and positioned as Thought Leadership for the sole purpose of making money for themselves, rather than contributing to the body of expertise in the community in which they work.

So if everyone’s publishing content in the quest to be a thought leader, who’s doing all the work? Do you really believe the mantra that you don’t have to sell anything anymore – just churn out Faux Knowledge and the punters will kick down your door?

Yes the sales cycle has evolved – buyers can learn more about what they want to buy before contacting sellers. Hence the growth in content marketing – to try to be found online as buyers search.

But you only have to look at the quality of the content being published to realise how shallow the pool of expertise really is among alleged thought leaders. It’s hardly ankle-deep.

Yet if you can optimise your content to be found by those seeking information about it, you can get away with your thought leader positioning. That is until you have to prove yourself.

And that’s the emerging flip-side to the growth in thought leadership. Supplier churn rates are rising in B2B markets. Ironically companies are firing the alleged thought leaders because of their lack of expertise. Then those companies go back to the market to find real experts to fix the problems created by the thought leaders.

The digital marketing industry is a typical example. I’ve even considered starting a brand called Cyber-Vacuumers – specialising in cleaning up the digital mess left by the thought leaders. According to my experienced colleagues, these days they are being hired to “fix and repair” more often than they are to start new projects. I even had a call for help last Saturday.

One way I always assess digital service suppliers to ensure I won’t need a cyber-vacuumer, is to ask them to share their failures with me. Those who claim they have none are never contracted. They obviously haven’t tried hard enough or are telling digi-porkies.

I better get back to work. I love writing my blog, but I also want to make money. Hmm there’s an idea. Position myself as a thought leader on “how to be a thought leader” by writing thought leadership blogs on how to be a thought leader and promote them via thought leadership marketing – there has to be money in that. Who knows, I might even become an expert!

I better tag this post under “thought leadership”…

Infobesity – the growing digital marketing epidemic…

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

a dvertising, branding, content marketing, copywriting, digital marketing, Sitecore

I run a copywriting (or should that be called content marketing) training course. It’s called “I type therefore I am…. a copywriter“.

In it, I demonstrate why most people are unable to write persuasively, or descriptively. It’s not their fault. It’s in their DNA. They write from their point of view, not their reader’s point of view.

And the education system has also let them down. People are no longer taught grammar, or even how to structure sentences. And almost none are shown the Flesch Reading Ease tools to help them edit their copy.

You see it every day dear reader. And yesterday I saw it again in one of the publications notorious for appalling writing – the free ebook. These are usually written by self-proclaimed “influencers” or companies trying to flog you a point of view that suits their sales objectives.

This one was published by Sitecore – apparently a very successful business – so you’d think they’d know better.

I received an email with the subject line: Your journey to personalisation – whitepaper.

I opened the message because the subject line was so bad. Am I getting a train ticket to some town named ‘personalisation‘? Any marketing message that starts with “your journey” immediately radiates a body odour that reeks of BS.

And when did “journey” become such a ridiculous part of the vernacular? It’s like people who offer to “reach out to you” – I immediately think stranger-danger. I don’t want to be groped thank you.

The copy in the email says:

“Goodbye, Digital Marketing. But what’s next?

Many marketers realise that we’ve come to the end of the Digital Marketing era. They know that digital is not just a tactic or a channel. Examine how you use digital today. Consumers are the same, but they now use digital to enhance their life, their real-world experiences, from working and shopping to sleeping and eating, even finding a partner, and everything in between. In fact, it’s beginning to be hard to see where digital stops and the real world begins.”

Hands-up those readers who realise we are at the end of the digital era? I mean do they really expect us to believe this rubbish? But it goes on…

“Examine how you use digital today?” Digital is not a noun. It’s not a product. With regards to marketing it’s an adjective.

The body odour got worse…

“They want a new relationship with you. They expect experiences they personally value—connected, distinct, enduring experiences. No one wants to be “marketed at” or stuck in a mass group. You should know all customers as individuals, and you need to deliver these experiences whenever and wherever they want them, since your customers don’t recognise the boundaries between channels. We’re entering the Experience Marketing era.”

Hands-up if your customers are swamping you with messages asking for a new relationship with you? Or if you believe we are entering the “Experience Marketing era”?

And as for people not wanting to be stuck in a mass group – it’s one of the single most powerful human emotions – to feel part of a group. WTF is Facebook but a very large tribe?

So I calmly downloaded the white paper. And then it really started.

Here’s the opening sentence, sorry paragraph. Well it is a sentence and a paragraph in one – it’s 50 words long!!!

“Marketers have been at the forefront of the digital revolution, and although it’s been a tough (but fascinating) journey, most marketers feel now as if they understand and are getting results from digital marketing, and many organisations have changed dramatically over the past few years to accommodate the digital consumer.”

While Flesch should be applied to larger volumes of copy, this sentence-paragraph has the lowest score I’ve ever seen – 2.1 – which means it’s close to incomprehensible. Not that any reader needs Flesch to tell them that. While the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level suggest you’ll need a double PhD and 25 years of education to understand it – 25.3.

And what pray tell is a digital consumer? Every person on the planet spends more “offline” than they do “online”. Yes we all use digital channels to buy stuff – whoop de woo. We weren’t labelled “analogue consumers” before the internet, so why manufacture digital labels?

Our physiology hasn’t changed. Our emotional reasons for buying haven’t changed. We just have access to fast order forms when we buy online. Not that we need order forms, or to fill in our delivery details, when we shop in retail stores. We just pay for our goods and walk away with them.

I tried to read further but the second sentence-paragraph was 37 words, while the third sentence-paragraph was 51 words long – obviously been written by a content marketer.

This graph demonstrates why infobesity is now a digital epidemic:

The blue line is the trend in volume of incomprehensible content being published online by brands – usually by their content marketers.

The orange line represents the trend in people qualified as journalists or copywriters who are publishing content online. In the last decade there has been no increase in the number of people undertaking tertiary education to become writers.

But there has been an exponential growth in marketing content – created (or in modern vernacular, curated) by people without the skills to do so.

Anyone can type crap – and sadly, anyone does.

Just because a person can type, doesn’t automatically make them a copywriter – or a content marketer.

The temperature’s dropped in Sydney yesterday. I need kindling to light a fire – where’s that ebook…

Amazing new WOM technology creates sales…

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

content marketing, digital marketing, Ole Lynggaard, social media, word of mouse, word of mouth

In this over-hyped digital marketing world in which we live, it’s always good to discover something that really works, rather than claims to really work.

During the recent Summer holidays my family took a cruise with Royal Caribbean Cruises. We even broke a couple records while cruising the South Pacific. My son was the first into the medical centre, within 18 hours of departing Sydney, after a girl accidentally glassed him in the face with a plastic cup (long story). It resulted in gluing and stitching so he couldn’t do any water activities for the first week.

While I broke the record for the fastest face-plant on a Flowrider, as I again attempted to relive my youth. Though my enthusiastic efforts did motivate a couple 70 year old blokes to have a go as well.

Click here to view the video.

On return lots of people asked us “how was the cruise” because as you probably know dear reader, everyone has a horror cruise story. Well here’s what happened. My bride used the amazing technology called her voice. In social situations with our real friends and family, she shared the stories of our holiday and how much we enjoyed ourselves.

Her content obviously engaged with our friends, because already some of them and my family, have booked eight suites on the same ship next Summer. That’s sixteen people who are cruising on the back of my bride’s engaging word-of-mouth content marketing.

Bloody amazing this new technology.

And here’s another example. Regular readers will know one of the reasons my blood pressure occasionally hiccups, is my bride’s loyalty to Ole Lynggaard. As a result of her wearing her Ole jewelry, dozens of other brides have asked her “where did you get those?” (I feel a Singo jingle coming on).

My bride then uses the same technology – her voice – to share the news that she bought the jewelery at Ole Lynggaard. Consequently a number of her friends have now bought Ole’s jewelery (and who knows how many of their friends?). Obviously her content marketing is working.

And at least three husbands have joined my support group – MWBLO – men whose brides love Ole. We share our war stories and enjoy a drink or three together.

But imagine if this word-of-mouth stuff takes off online? Before you know it there will be new buzzwords – word-of-mouse comes to mind sooo easily.

You can see it now – people will post images on Instagram and Facebook. They’ll share their content with their online friends, who will Like the posts. But the friends won’t have to ask “where did you get those?” because there will be a link to the website within the post!

There will be seminars, webinars and a whole new breed of experts. Thought leaders will appear along with influencers – or is that WOMfluencers – on LinkedIn?

Gotta luv technology – what’s old is new again, again.

I’m off to tell my friends about it…

The awesomeness that’s reinforcing negative perceptions of marketers…

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, branding, content marketing, copywriting, digital marketing, social media, St George bank

Yes folks, the excitement is building as another retailer prepares to amaze the world with its awesomeness.

It’s almost as exciting as car sale events. Notice how car dealers no longer have sales? They have “sales events“. WTF – do customers need to buy tickets to buy a car?

It’s like job titles. Nobody sells anything any more. You cannot find a sales person. Everyone’s a Business Development Manager – or BDM for the buzzword brigade. What I don’t understand is that if every sales person is now a manager and nobody has responsibility for selling, who’s doing all the work?

What does a BDM manage? Certainly not any staff. And in some cases not many sales!

But here’s what I’m so excited about – you may have seen similar things in your local shopping centre. That’s right dear reader – are you ready to start something awesome???

This utter drivel is a full shop-front sign at my local shopping mall – it blocks the whole front of the store.

What was the writer smoking? This “message to a mall” folks, is to announce the amazing occurrence of a St George bank opening a branch in that particular location.

“How awesome is that” I hear you scream!

It’s no wonder the public has no respect for advertising and marketing types. We rank second last on the ethics and honesty rankings – just below real estate agents and one above car salesmen. Or should that be Car BDMs?

And the reason they don’t trust marketers is everywhere. We marketers don’t just talk rubbish, we pay money to have it printed on giant outdoor posters – and published online and in print and on TV…

I wonder the job title of the person who approved this crap: Business Development Manager? Customer Engagement Manager? Customer Experience Manager? Maybe it was the Content Marketing Manager’s fault?

Who knows – or cares? Certainly St George doesn’t care what people think of them. How else can you explain them believing the opening of a bank branch is the start of something awesome.

Maybe I’m judging them harshly. Could they have invented some sort of wearable banking technology – a fitness app that allows me to save money and pay my bills with every stride, and it also tells the time?

Where’s my sleeping bag! I’m going to camp outside the store to be the first in line to get a piece of this awesomeness. And the first to post it on social media – #awesome.

Secret newspaper business helps marketers make money…

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Customer Service, Marketing, Media

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

advertising, branding, marketing, press advertising, travel advertising

Further to my recent posts about print channels and the travel industry, I’d thought I’d share how newspapers are partnering with marketers to make more money for both parties.

Most newspapers now offer advertising in both printed and digital versions. Some publishers also package ads in email newsletters or to mobile phone subscribers too. But one Australian publisher has got smart and gone back to the future.

It is partnering with advertisers and sharing in the profits from the advertisements – like they did decades ago before the invention of television.

The publisher works with the marketers to get the most profitable advertisement by giving the marketer free media space. The marketer creates a number of ads and tests the different versions. They are run at no cost.

All orders are tracked via a specific telephone number or landing page URL. Though many ads do not have a web address – the only way to buy is the telephone. Yes dear reader, there are still many companies making money without websites.

The reason is simple – a website can add another (time-consuming and attention-distracting) step to the sales process and therefore reduce the number of people who proceed to buying. The website interferes with the sales process.

But back to the ads – the results are transparent to both parties as it’s in their interest to maximise them for mutual benefit – given they share the profits.

Typical ad using a phone number as the main response device

This has been so successful the publisher has a special division just for direct response advertisers. Unfortunately media buying companies won’t recommend this type of advertising to their clients because the media agency doesn’t earn a commission on it, despite its obvious worth to the marketers.

The publisher has partnered with travel agents, cruise lines and marketers of financial investment products, health products, education products and more.

The benefit to the marketer is they only have to use a minimum of two channels to get the sale – newspaper and telephone or website. It’s a very cost-effective way to leverage the press channel and determine its worth. Particularly in the specialist lift-out sections like travel.

I don’t understand why more publishers don’t do the same. Or maybe my cynical side does. It’s because many publications, both print and digital versions, don’t deliver the results advertisers require, but they aren’t brave enough to prove otherwise.

It wouldn’t be hard to get new business – just run an ad offering FREE ads to advertisers. I suspect the phone would ring off the hook.

But they better get a move on. If they don’t start being more innovative in their offering, the door is wide open for one of those little companies like Google to step in and create new business partnerships with advertisers.

I’m off to read the newspaper over a cuppa – who knows I might find a great holiday deal…

Which online travel agents will survive?

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, branding, customer service, digital marketing, Flight Centre, marketing, travel

By way of background, apart from consulting to a number of travel agency brands, 5 star hotel groups, tourism destinations, government tourism authorities, cruise lines, airlines, loyalty clubs, resorts and even a travel magazine, I’ve also owned a retail travel agency in Sydney, an online cruise business and a holiday cottage. So I understand a tad about the category.

And it’s starting to smell like 1999 – again. I’ve written about this before, but for those old enough to remember the great dot-con, chaos reigned in 1999 just before the stock market crash. Brands were spending a fortune to get people to visit their websites – and mostly failing – as history proved.

I was working in New York and one hopeful dot-com darling was standing on a street corner with a suitcase full of business cards with his URL printed on them. His marketing tactic was to stuff them into as many people’s hands as possible. Search engines weren’t very sophisticated, so the tactic of soliciting people in the street was the cheapest option – yes it’s true dear reader.

The travel industry is one that has been seriously disrupted by technology – particularly the internet. But while many new online brands have opened to provide all sorts of travel services, there appear to be clouds forming on the horizon for purely online travel services.

You only have to watch an hour of television to see the signs. Trivago, Webjet, Hotels Combined, Hotels.com, Expedia, Trip Advisor et al are spending a fortune on television advertising to get people to go to their websites. The reason is simple. It’s generally cheaper to use broadcast media than online advertising to generate new customers in highly competitive consumer categories.

And ask their marketing people, if they could only use one media channel what would it be – the answer is television.

The cost to buy clicks from generic travel search terms is hugely expensive. Consequently the travel and tourism category is the third largest revenue earner for Google. And as online travel companies have very thin margins, they must find the cheapest ways to acquire customers, or go broke. So they need traditional media to generate leads and brand awareness.

Another reason the travel brands are struggling is the churn rate of customers who shop online for the cheapest flight, hotel or tours. These customers aren’t as loyal as customers of bricks n mortar agents, because they have no personal relationship with an agent.

They’re more like the old Yellow Pages shoppers – always chasing the cheapest price. So they flit between aggregators with no feeling of loyalty to any of them. Many online travel services have become nothing more than classified advertisers of commodities – rooms, flights, etc. Their brands have very little intrinsic value.

Another issue for online travelers is the lack of support available when something goes wrong. They have no humans to turn to for assistance, just websites. Most online travel services do everything they can to avoid providing human beings for customer service. It’s one reason the retail travel agents aren’t disappearing as quickly as predicted.

I was recently interviewing a senior marketer at Flight Centre – one of the world’s most successful travel agencies – both online and in the high street. They continue to open new retail stores around the world.

They ran an experiment whereby they rang customers who had booked their travel on the Flight Centre website, not via a physical travel agent. The customers were pleasantly surprised and thankful to receive a personal call.

But the real insight that Flight Centre discovered was that more than 50% of the customers had incorrect visas or out of date passports – simple facts the customers wouldn’t have discovered until they arrived at customs on the first day of their holiday.

You booked your travel online didn’t you – FOOL!

This insight will help Flight Centre revise the content on their website, but it highlighted the continuing problem of the web. It’s a DIY culture – and most users cannot – do it themselves that is. If you’re not a travel expert, how will you know you even require a visa, the validity requirements for your passport, the vaccinations you need? The list is endless when traveling to exotic locations.

But there’s an even bigger elephant in the travel agency. And it’s called Google – the search engine that benefits so much from the travel industry. It seems Google is getting into the travel business. And to say that the industry is nervous is an understatement.

Imagine if Google set up in competition to you, using all its knowledge about the search behaviour in your industry, not to mentioned its bottomless money pit? Frightening really.

I need to have a quiet respite and plan what to do in case of Google. I wonder what deals there are to get away to an isolated retreat or resort?

Better check on Google – oh sh*t…

The Malcolm Auld Blog

~ Marketing Musings and More…

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Those two marketers walk into a bar and laugh about stupid meetings…

How to get rich online, by telling others how to get rich online…

If everyone’s a ‘thought leader’ who’s doing all the work?

Secret newspaper business helps marketers make money…

Which online travel agents will survive?

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