The Case for Every Brand Being a Travel Brand: Part 1
As much as I’d like to say quite literally every business should have a wanderlust filled Instagram (I’m convinced it makes the world a happier place) there’s an actual conversation to be had about the travel industry’s $7.1 trillion global output in 2016 and what that means for your brand.
The ventures who both survive the fierce competition and succeed to win over their audiences are case study worthy for any business or industry. From backpackers to the luxury seeking highbrow, their customers are as far ranging and discerning as you can get leaving companies scrambling to understand who they’re speaking to and their quickly evolving desires.
With both the industry and the topic of branding being heftier than the oversized luggage we all try to squeeze by the airlines, I’ll be coming back each week with another edition of this article to address the aspects that make travel brands an interesting model for businesses worldwide.
Let’s begin:
1. Trust is Everything
Something that fintech hopes to conquer and that haunts the food industry, trust is a subject that Airbnb & rideshare apps have managed to address head on without subtlety. Making reviews central, keeping user/host information transparent but protected, and trackability are the core of their products. On the flipside airlines leave us hoping and praying that they won’t lose our luggage, haven’t overbooked, and they’ve maintained their planes to the highest of standards, so it’s no surprise that passenger traffic is anticipated to slow in 2017. How can we replicate that sense of safety the former provides?
Reviews
Your business may not have a product or service that allows for comforting features to dominate, but every category of service or product is reviewed somewhere somehow on the world wide web and potential customers are reading about it.
84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Take hotels & restaurants as a simpler example. They are some of the most active responders to critics on review websites such as Yelp & TripAdvisor, and for good reason. According to a 2016 Consumer Review Survey, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Even if your only ratings exist through a site such as the employee reviewed Glassdoor, Facebook, or independent researchers BestCompany.com, people will find it. When is the last time you searched your business’s name followed by keyword “reviews”? You might be surprised at what’s out there for potential customers to rely on.
Don’t have an online review presence yet? Get testimonials from real customers and make them easy to find, but better yet help them engage with you on these third party sites. Fewer people want the risk of traveling to a hotel that no one’s ever heard of than the one with a few bad reviews mixed in from obviously grumpy guests. The same applies to your business, so don’t be afraid to invite all reviews. It might even be a moment for your brand voice to shine via your customer service.
Influencer Marketing
A strategy for both new businesses lacking earned trust or businesses hoping to repair it can also include influencer marketing. Hotels and reward credit cards alike have embraced the influencer, aligning with notable bloggers such as Julia Engel to be brand ambassadors of sorts.
What your brand lacks in customer affinity a true influencer, i.e. a social media or blogging rockstar, will have in heaps and bounds. Their followers are familiar with them on a social level that can be difficult for businesses to replicate authentically so you can elect to “collaborate with”, aka hire, these influencers to recommend or appear with your products.
A few words of warning: Influencer marketing tends to be more complicated than it sounds.
Whereas tracking ROI from efforts put into review sites is becoming simpler with new technologies, tracking the true return on a sometimes hefty price tag of an influencer can be tricky. Plus, there’s a fine balance between the disclosure that satisfies FTC recommendations and the credibility influencers need to maintain. Ultimately be sure that the influencer and their audience are a consistent culture fit for your brand, otherwise, users may be more skeptical than trusting that your product fits the vision they have for themselves.
Simplicity
Due to the nature of travel, the industry invests in creating a sense of clarity for their travelers. For you, this begins with clarifying what your business provides customers.
The biggest mistake I see companies making too often is not being crystal clear about what their product or service is. I’ll easily get buried in bullet points of features and benefits but find myself left without a clue as to what they wanted me to adopt in the first place. If everyone is fighting to offer improvements or differentiation, it can get complicated fast. Concise messaging and great design (see Away Luggage) can streamline these issues since one thing holds true in creating trust:
Simplicity creates a shorter mountain of faith for users to climb.
That point goes hand-in-hand with ease of use. It goes without saying that usability in a mobile world has hurt slower moving titans of the travel — i.e. airlines – as well as the failed startups who forgot to make the newest technology easier for us to implement. It’s hard to trust something that feels too complicated and leaves users feeling like there are too many unknown elements.
Quality
Quality alone is a dense topic to broach as it involves deeper aspects of the business beyond branding but directly affects the brand. What I think we can safely refer to here is the perceived quality of your product, which doesn’t necessarily coincide with paying for the most expensive ingredients available. I promise it’s not as shady as it sounds.
If I go to a motel with rust in the bathtub and dingy paint, there’s a good chance I’m checking for bedbugs under the mattress and keeping my bag off the floor. Walking into a crisp clean room, on the other hand, I’m quick to dump my bag and jump at full speed onto the bed without thinking twice.
Your presentation both in person and online is what customers are actually buying into.
That crisp hotel room didn’t guarantee they used 800 thread count sheets, but it did give me a sense of safety. If anything around your product’s experience, including but not limited to the shop, logo, copy, website, etc., are looking dingy or dated around the edges, customers are going to take a harsher look and potentially assume there are issues. A quality visual brand can’t stand on a poor structure either since a failing piece of technology will send customers running, but a fantastic product deserves a fresh set of sheets at the least.
Trust isn’t Everything
Establishing visible reviews, dipping your toes into influencer marketing, simplifying your product, and upping your quality might make a business owner remark with sarcasm,“Oh, is that all?” With travel and other businesses alike already spread thin, this is when having a team members who are well versed in your company goals are essential. After all, refining these details can help them build more faith in your business as well.
Still feel like your team is maxed out? It may be a great time to bring on a versatile consultant to help alleviate some of this workload pressure.
Travel businesses worldwide have found stellar solutions to conquering these elements of trust so I’d love to hear how travel related brands have earned your confidence.
