Case Studies and Templates

What is Marketing Technology

Marketing technology, also referred to as ‘martech’, is simply the incorporation of technology to assist in everyday digital marketing activities such as managing, creating, organising and reporting.

Martech allows marketing teams to drastically leverage and improve efficiency, timekeeping and organisation of any marketing tasks both large and small, streamlining processes and most importantly, providing clear and actionable insights. According to Forbes, one in five marketing organisations will be increasing its spending on marketing technology in 20202.

When this sector was first identified in 2011, there were roughly 150 martech platforms available. In 2018, this has grown significantly to over 7,000, and will continue to grow no doubt as consumers and technology continue to evolve.

The image below illustrates the continual growth over 7 years.

What began with a range of tools designed to better manage promotion, customer experience and marketing, has expanded exponentially, diversifying into more categories such as data, management and social & relationships. Below is a snapshot of what the martech landscape looks like today, and an indication of the demand and variety in today’s marketplace. A blur of logos, functions and categories, all striving to manage the digital marketing more efficiently. Click here to zoom in and get a better look.

The Content & Experience and Social & Relationships categories account for nearly half (47.78%) of all companies on the landscape. This demonstrates the significance of the customer and social experience, which for marketers, requires highly efficient management resources which come in the form of martech.

Tools to Boost your DMO's Marketing Activities

With such a vast array of management tools available, the challenge is finding the most effective one, and the key is really finding what works for your team and your marketing strategy. Many offer a free trial for a certain period of time so it is definitely worth trying and testing out different tools to see what fits best.

Most of the well-known platforms are very user-friendly and are designed with the user in mind, to make marketers’ jobs easier and more efficient. With this in mind, we look at a selection of what we believe to be the most useful tools to boost your DMO’s marketing activities.

New Technology

New trends in technology

Over the years we have seen constant disruption and innovation when it comes to the world of technology. While on the whole the industry seems to have hit a steady plateau, the last decade saw the introduction of many emerging technologies, and we think these main players will continue to grow and develop into the future as more companies adopt the technology and consumers become more familiar.

5G

5G networks are the new generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices. The networks will help boost the rise in Internet of Things technology further, providing the infrastructure needed to carry huge amounts of data, allowing for a smarter and more connected world. Combining cutting-edge network technology and the very latest research, 5G should offer connections that are 10x faster than current ones, with average download speeds of around 10GB/s, allowing heavy transfer of data. This will have an impact on the mix of marketing channels and travel data analytics solutions that will be developed and support the strategy of each DMO.

Mobility and Autonomous Travel

Travel continues to advance at a rapid pace and not just how we research and experience destinations, but how we get there and its impact on the environment. Without any doubts, something like Uber deciding to deliver food with drones creates shocks and sounds like the smartest thing in the world, but it is hard to see how DMOs could do the same.

However, we learn to take these examples as inspiration to investigate more and become inspired. Autonomous vehicles are surprisingly commonplace in various cities and test pilot initiatives taking place to see how driverless vehicles can transform how we travel. Many are the destinations who introduced autonomous vehicles for tourism purposes, among which Helsinki, who piloted autonomous buses around the city in 2019. Travel Massive published the list of 50 travel startups to watch in 2020 and the first one is Autoura, a company introducing autonomous vehicle itineraries for city sightseeing. Alex Bainbridge, the founder of Autoura is a DTTT Expert and hosted a workshop on micro-mobility at DTTT Campus 2019 in Oslo.

Building the right partnerships, the DMO can establish the best approach to create a great system that relying on the new trends in mobility, can revolutionise transportation across the destination. The key is to transform the way people travel around the destination from a mere way of changing place, to a real experience.

Extended Reality

Extended Reality or 'XR' encompasses the three main technologies offering new ways to engage with visitors and create more immersive digital experiences;

While these technologies are not new, we believe destinations will explore the different ways they can incorporate them into their strategy to better engage with potential visitors and offer unique and immersive experiences, for example, exploring website design and development.

Blockchain

We have discussed Blockchain previously, however it appears that the technology is still largely untapped within the DMO space. Blockchain technology can support consumer spending power, making tourism revenue good by creating a visitor spending ecosystem which is tilted towards small businesses through local coins or loyalty based rewards.

Distributed networks built on blockchain can also help increase security and protection of hoteliers from having rates reduced and their bottom line shredded away. All in all, blockchain can redefine the transaction, currency, ownership and wealth generated by tourism, in addition to offering the visitor more personalised services.

Dark Web

The Dark Web is a part of the Internet that cannot be found through common search engines because it is based on darknets, hidden networks that can be accessed only through custom software which obscures and modifies the identity of the computer that is connecting to it. In this way, the identity of the user who browses the Dark Web is always hidden.

This principle has inevitably brought to the creation of dark websites in which you can buy illegal products - mostly but not exclusively drugs, guns, counterfeit products like money, passports, credit card numbers and all sorts of subscription credentials hacked from service providers like Netflix and the likes. According to a research by the King’s College in London4 performed in 2015; of 2,723 analysed dark web listings, 57% hosted illicit material. In 2019, further research by the University of Surrey revealed that 60% of all dark web listings could harm an enterprise, among which, through espionage and distribution of malware.

That said, there is also a positive connotation of the dark web, even though the majority of dark websites sell illegal services. Internet nowadays is becoming less and less transparent. Anywhere - from search engines to news websites - our data is tracked and collected to create our profile in order to provide us with the most relevant information and advertising as possible. This data is then sold to companies, whose ultimate goal is to make profits by selling us products and services. This lack of transparency and trust on the web has led to the creation of systems to by-pass the cookies and data collection. One of these is, indeed, the Dark Web. But it is not only for data matters that people want to surf the web anonymously. Another reason is government censorship in less democratic countries, where watching the news from foreign channels is prohibited.

Recent is a positive example in this regard: the BBC decided to make its news site available on the dark web through the TOR network, one of the darknets described earlier. Any website accessed through the TOR network is unable to locate and identify the user who accesses it. Therefore, in countries in which government surveillance and censorship are strong, like China, Iran and Vietnam, users can access the BBC’s news website through the dark web. It is a great example of freedom of the press.

Artificial intelligence

According to Forbes, spending on AI-based marketing technology (martech) solutions is projected to reach $52.2B by 2021 and “top-performing companies are more than twice as likely to be using AI for marketing (28% vs. 12%), according to Adobe’s latest Digital Intelligence Briefing.

In today’s world, the key to future success for any brand is all about the customer experience and the answer to maximising the customer experience as much as possible is, personalisation. While digital has evolved and marketers strategies have successfully evolved along with it, there are some capabilities that can be achieved only through artificial intelligence. It allows companies to analyse and correlate vast amounts of data from a plethora of sources, utilise data in the most efficient way, and identify patterns to make predictions for future activities. In terms of the visitor, it successfully delivers personalised information and recommendations plus virtual assistance to ensure a seamless experience throughout the whole visitor journey.

AI and machine learning should be seen as an ‘enabler’ for digital marketers to fulfil marketing objectives more efficiently and effectively, and the graph below demonstrates the variety of activities and opportunities for which companies can use AI.

Technology Enhanced Experiences

Technology has changed the way we live and travel. The travel industry specifically has changed in the way consumers research, book and experience destinations, enabling them to always be connected and find the services that are most suited for them. With the rise of customer centricity and the emergence of technologies, tourism experiences have become increasingly driven, co-created and facilitated by social and mobile technologies. With its massive potential of implementation throughout the entire customer journey, pre/during/post travel, technology has been transforming the nature of contemporary tourism experiences.

Companies have now started to use artificial intelligence and big data to create personalised offers for consumers based on their profile and preference, therefore marketing has evolved from ‘push’ to ‘pull’, targeting consumers in a more precise way and avoiding general big-budget campaigns.

Today’s travellers are hyper-connected and make fast decisions enabled by channels and platforms that supply them with a variety of products and services according to their preferences.

Pre-trip Experiences and Co-Creation

As we mentioned in Chapter 2, The Visitor Cycle, technology has enabled DMOs and travel providers to connect with the visitor at every stage throughout the customer journey; Pre-travel, During travel and Post travel.

From social media inspiration to in-destination promotions and VR pre-experiences, destination marketers now have the opportunity to be present at every part of the journey, ready to connect with actively engaged visitors to enhance their trip and create memorable moments at any stage. Most interestingly for destination marketing organisations, digital technologies open up unprecedented opportunities to create virtual pre-trip experiences that provide authentic insights into the destination and support the decision-making process.

In addition to this, it is important to consider that consumers now play a crucial role in co-creating their own experiences, and technology is the main driving force behind this. The many different digital channels and platforms available are key to engaging consumers and building an emotional connection that enables the co-creation of meaningful relationships and experiences, adding value to the overall visitation.

In today's world where experiences are front and centre in tourism, DMOs must harness the power of co- creation to support in enhancing existing experiences and in the development of new immersive ones. For example, engaging with visitors on social media or being present and responsive via online chat if visitors have any questions.

Tourism Thailand features a variety of tools, such as videos, images and user-generated stories that particularly enhance the virtual pre-travel phase by inspiring, pre-living experiences and encouraging individuals to come to Thailand.

In addition, Thailand provides a unique platform for customer-to-customer interaction by encouraging tourists to share their stories afterwards for future tourists online. By doing so, consumers can engage in a virtual space that allows them to emotionally engage and pre- and post-experience the destination online.

Benefits of Experience Co-Creation

• Creation of more personalised experiences.
• Added value to the visitor experience through the delivery of timely and relevant information.
• Higher levels of engagement with experiences and content.
• Richer insights into visitor behaviour to help shape future communications.

On-Site Technology Enhanced Experiences

This section refers to ways that technology can support and enhance the visitor experience while in- destination and today, there have never been more opportunities thanks to technology and constant connection via our smartphones.

The graph above shows that among consumers who research in-destination activities and experiences online, the majority do it before booking flights or hotels, followed by those who research while in- destination. It is useful for DMOs to understand the visitors' behaviour at key points throughout the journey: as shown in the graph, there are more opportunities to try and reach visitors' that did not research in- destination activities at all, in addition to those that did while in-destination.

The key is being visible to visitors with relevant and inspiring information rather than waiting for them to seek it out, and given the growing competitiveness in the tourism landscape, DMOs can now rely primarily on digital technologies as tools to enhance visitor experiences. Through the usage of different technologies, destination offerings can be augmented and extended, thereby creating new and unique experiences that bridge the online and offline experience seamlessly.

A number of different technologies come into play when tourists are in the destination. Mobile technologies and their ability to access and retrieve information at any point and time, open up ample opportunities to create highly engaging experiences. Above all, unprecedented access to a multitude of smartphone and tablet apps offer ideal platforms for DMOs to deliver digitally enhanced experiences to visitors in an efficient and engaging way.

We have previously mentioned ways to enhance the visitor experience while in-destination and they are all through the power of technology. Ultimately, any service or function that will improve the visitor experience and add value in some way, whether that be delivering content that may inspire an unplanned trip or answering a question about an experience.

Enhancing the Visitor Experience Through Technology

Chatbots - Highly responsive form of communication offering useful sources of information available exactly when needed.

Social media interaction - Being present and interacting with visitors across social media such as liking tagged posts, asking to share pictures and replying to comments, successfully creates a dialogue that strengthens the connection between the visitor and the destination.

Gamification - Successful use of gamification serves a great purpose of enhancing interaction and engagement, creating more memorable experiences for your visitors.

Geo-targeting/Proximity marketing - Allows destinations to target visitors when in specific areas of the destination. It's a great way of adding value to the experience by informing visitors of new attractions, lesser known locations, providing recommendations or promotional offers.

QR codes - QR codes are a popular way of connecting to the digital world, particularly prominent in China and with platforms such as WeChat. QR codes prompt discovery. Placing QR codes in or around attractions triggers travellers to connect and realise there is something of interest waiting in the online world.

Digital Transformation

How to Digitally Transform Your DMO

Digital transformation refers to integrating digital organisation-wide in order to optimise processes, leverage results and ultimately deliver the best possible value to your customers in today's digital and highly competitive world.

The #DTTT is the industry leader in digital transformation for Destinations. We have a proven methodology which looks at twelve key aspects of any DMO to get a concrete understanding of what is working and not, and where opportunities present themselves. All this, with a view to absolute alignment throughout the organisation.

This is the key to transforming your DMO from the inside out, particularly when it comes to digital transformation. Our all encompassing twelve point methodology, takes a long-term, holistic view, examining every aspect to re-build organisations around their visitors’ needs and how industry and DMOs can better respond to gain the competitive edge needed in the future.

This starts with three key areas:

Organisational - Starting with the organisation itself, we work with DMOs to become glass box brands, to transform inward to out.

Strategic - A global vision, an acute understanding of macro trends and a long-term view underpins the strategic process.

Tactical - Strategic development is translated directly through the process into planning, structuring and delivery as needed.

For this to be successful, you need to ensure your objectives are realistic and actionable within your current capabilities. There is no point embarking on a transformation project of this nature if the objectives are not realistic for your organisation. It is also important to note that change takes time, and this should be factored into every stage of the project.

Here's what to consider when starting out your transformation project;

Design Led Approach

Design Thinking is at the core of our methods and approach and we apply it throughout everything we do. The #DTTT has crafted the Destination Transformation process in order to maximise the full potential of Design to bring everyone on board, going through key stages of Design Thinking, in person and remotely.

Agile Change Management

A rigorous transformation approach has to be taken in order to bring change in an agile way. This process might take up to a year, if not more, because it involves multiple teams and disciplines. At the #DTTT we designed agile change management to empower collaboration, transparency and productivity.

The Right Tools

Integrating the right tools for effective management and collaboration enables you to follow a structured process of change, facilitating successful communication across the board and the identification of actionable goals. These tools not only enhance productivity but ease the communication process in the team. We explain about them in this paragraph.

If you are interested in Digital Transformation for your DMO, contact us or set an appointment for an evaluation.

Tips to Enhance Digital Transformation

• Review your current digital strategy and be critical. Identify what is working, what is not working and where there are opportunities or gaps to explore.
• Pursue what works for your brand, one size does not fit all.
• Start from the inside out. In order for your digital transformation to thrive, your whole team needs to be on board. This may require a culture shift but this is extremely important to achieve your long-term goal.
• New ways of working and adopting new technology will take time - don’t expect results overnight. Collaboration, communication and agile working are key.
• Create a digital roadmap. Ensure you have a clear vision and goals for your transformation and don’t forget the customer experience should be at the heart of everything.
  

Workplace Technology

Workplaces have consistently evolved over the last 50 years with the progression of technological advances. Technology itself has been the driver of many changes in the workplace, starting with the office space.

What once needed to be an office with individual cubicles or enclosed spaces due to the high volume of telephone calls, is now a more open space due to the introduction of email as the main means of communication. Many physical resources such as document binders and filing cabinets, have gradually disappeared from the workplace in large part due to technology advancements. Today, the workplace can be entirely virtual, triggering the emergence of remote jobs through time.

Technology has pretty much taken over our personal and professional lives, a timeline of just about a decade, and we are now fully connected to the Internet of Things, 24/7, able to respond to work emails on the commute to work, after hours and even on holiday, establishing an always-on, hyper-connected world.

This is why for DMOs, it's important to be visible to your audience, ready and waiting for them to engage, shifting away from the traditional marketing process of promoting a campaign or advert, and waiting for your audience to respond.

Improving Productivity Through Technology

Over the last decade, the progression of technology has not only changed the physical spaces in which we work today, but it has transformed our systems and processes across the board from internal communications to marketing management.

We have explored the world of martech, and the many different tools available to facilitate anything from remote collaboration to digital reporting at the click of a button, minimising hours of laborious admin and streamlining processes that enable your team to optimise daily business operations in the most effective, efficient and coherent way.

Technology for Agile Working

The past few years have seen a total transformation of the workplace, both in terms of how we work and the tools that enable us to work better. The importance of choosing the right tech has shifted from IT departments to marketing teams as the need for nimble, user-centric, collaborative and adaptive tools has taken precedence in delivering effective results.

Today, we continue to work more agile and collaboratively, and in response to this, collaboration tools and systems are consistently being developed and evolved to facilitate this way of working in the digital world. Among the vast range of tools DMOs should be looking at to transform, the right tools central to driving future success should focus on four key areas:

• Collaborate
• Communicate
• Collect ideas
• Creative thinking

Using the right tools will enable you to effectively collaborate internally and externally, with your team, other departments, and partners outside the organisation.

Asana is an extremely user-friendly management platform that allows you to track, communicate and manage daily tasks and projects. It is at the core of everything that we do and is our task and project management tool that helps us to create a structured workflow and enables us to collaborate internally, with our experts and clients. We use Asana to structure our events, client projects, marketing, content and editorial planning and build teams within Asana to organise, plan and deliver each of these. Within each team, we work on a project basis, mapping out the tasks and deliverables that we will work on each month or during the course of the project.

MURAL is a digital brainstorming and collaboration tool, another essential tool for us, especially when working out ideas for the Think Tank and working with our destination clients. We are advocates of moving brainstorming and visual thinking online, allowing for remote collaboration of teams and with our clients. When working on specific projects with clients, we use Mural to brainstorm ideas, concepts and strategies in a virtual space. This allows us to conceptualise ideas, user journeys or strategic developments, working together, commenting and discussing things directly in Mural. For us, this is a great opportunity to work more creatively and share outcomes in a visual way.

And last but, in our opinion, most important, is Design Thinking, which we are going to cover more extensively in Chapter 12. Exploration and Innovation, the last chapter of the Transformation Series.

Contrary to its name, Design Thinking isn’t just for designers. Design Thinking is a mindset that helps you improve the current experience of people you serve, your users, and can also be referred to as ‘human centred design’. Once you start ideating in this way, who knows what you may come up with!

Design thinking focuses on the experience of people and aims to improve it. It is a way of looking for smart and effective solutions to everyday problems.

Today's world of destination marketing is in constant change and you do not want to get left behind. From the ever-changing traveller and increasing number of technology, tools and channels available, to the uncertainties of the evolving world around us, we are faced with both challenges to overcome and opportunities to be explored.

For Digital Marketers, the biggest challenge is the increasing need of having to think about how to create a true omnichannel visitor journey, connecting content, relationships and engagement with users at every point of the experience. Add to that, keeping up with rising consumer expectations, who continue to raise the bar and have become fully accustomed to receiving personalised, real-time information in an instant.

Throughout this chapter, we have highlighted a wide range of technology and tools, exploring their application in tourism demonstrated by real examples from the industry and looking beyond.

So what is the key to keeping up with the pace and breaking through the noise?

• Keep alert to new tech trends across the board and always pay attention to what would work for your target audience.
• Look outside the industry for inspiration, you never know what could come from it.
• Experiment and don't be scared if it doesn't work, provided this works with your team and budgets.
• There are many different tools and channels available, make sure to use what works for your team and your organisation.
• Always, always, always keep the visitor experience front and centre.
  

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