- Overview
- As the leisure tourism industry continues to digitize, it’s more important than ever to align online sales and marketing. Gone are the days when a billboard along a busy highway could be the main source of customer acquisition. Ticketed attractions that sell online via an e-commerce platform must also now be marketed online. This article takes a closer at the various digital marketing channels that resorts and attractions should at least consider as part of their online marketing strategy. It’s worth noting that every business is different and that, based on factors such as competitive landscape, geo, and target audience, some of these channels may perform better than others. Before getting into the details of online acquisition channels, let’s first look at the mechanics and metrics behind any solid online marketing strategy.
- Wrapping it all up
- When considering an e-commerce acquisition strategy, consider what you are measuring in terms of online marketing metrics. Among these popular channels, ask which ones seem both likely to convert and be within the team’s capabilities to execute. Diversification of immediate results and longer-term plays should also be a channel selection consideration factor. Initially, the acquisition strategy can just be a few channels. Keep in mind the involvement of the revenue manager in this entire process and as initiatives are rolled out. The revenue manager and marketing manager team working in harmony is the key to e-commerce acquisition success.
- The basics behind customer acquisition
- The optimal digital marketing strategy involves multiple acquisition channels. An acquisition channel is any tactic intended to attract “eyeballs” and drive traffic to the website, specifically to complete a purchase and generate a conversion. Before beginning an acquisition campaign, it’s important to determine the maximum that the attraction or resort is willing to pay to acquire a sale. The cost per acquisition ‘CPA,’ or customer acquisition cost, ‘CAC,’ is the amount a business pays to gain a single new customer. Factors influencing the ideal CPA include the frequency the business expects a new customer to purchase over a period of time and the likely value of their purchase, or average order value (AOV). More frequent purchases with higher AOV means a business can likely maintain a higher CPA. For example, if your overall AOV, or ticket yield per transaction, is $100 then, all things being equal, you would expect your CPA to be less than $100 in order to realize an ROI-positive campaign. If a business is savvy enough to have a measure of its average customer lifetime value (CLTV), then this can also be factored into CPA and ROI calculations. This is where pricing and revenue management intersect with marketing. All acquisition channel performance needs to be tracked, measured, monitored, and optimized in order to understand channel performance and maximize marketing spend for the resort or attraction. The marketing manager and revenue manager need to work hand-in-hand to ensure marketing dollars spent yield real results in revenue. This collaboration needs to happen with diligence and on an ongoing basis, not on a casual basis. Minor tweaks to channel allocations – or even to efforts within a channel – can alter results substantially. Anytime a new marketing effort rolls out, it should be considered experimental – a learning effort. Allocate the minimal dollars necessary to try something new and then monitor it closely. Expect some efforts to fail and some efforts to produce surprising results. Be ready to cut losses. Acquisition strategy, especially at the outset, is a moving target. The overarching goal needs to be to ultimately hit the target and be able to repeat that over and over again.