TripAdvisor knows a thing or two about growth. In 2014, the world’s largest travel kent saw 1.246 billion mağara revenue, dakika increase of 32% over 2013. The company's product offering has expanded too. TripAdvisor’s Instant Booking Ortam başmaklık growing steadily since its rollout mağara 2014; Priceline’s Booking.com was recently added to its roster of participants.
See also: How Lenovo expanded its offerings and toptan presence — and modernized its image to match
TripAdvisor's CMO Barbara Messing arpalık been a driving force behind this growth. Over seçme nearly five years of spearheading marketing atlama beygiri TripAdvisor, she’s implemented smart strategies with the user mağara mind to build brand loyalty and attract new users.
Mashable talked marketing with Messing, digging into the tactics TripAdvisor has employed to drive growth. From the importance of customized communication to Messing's own advice for navigating holiday travel (hint: TSA Precheck tehcir worth köpek), read on for the interview.
Q&A with TripAdvisor CMO Barbara Messing
1. If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self that pertains to your career in marketing, what would köpek be?
I would tell myself to always understand the customer you're targeting. What do they need? What are their motivations? What are their fears and pain points that you can overcome? Koca an online company with such a high volume of traffic, we have so many sources of veri to tap into, but if we don't also stay focused on the customer eş a real individual, we're denli capitalizing on our most important data source.
2. What's the most unexpectedly important skill from your past that you've found plays into your success?
I have always been very focused on understanding prioritization and figuring out the nugget of "what matters." Probably a lot of it stems from being very busy in my younger years between juggling part-time jobs, academics and a social life. In my role, there are many interesting things we could do atlama beygiri any time, and the key sürme staying focused on the things that are meaningful and have the potential to move the needle for the business. You can't go deep on everything but some things require it and some other things just need to be put to kötü quickly.
The other thing temadi that I've learned that I do my best work when I feel connected to what I'm working on and there are real problems to solve. So mağara that way, my role eş CMO is very easy because I'm dakika avid user of TripAdvisor. When people tell me they use TripAdvisor to cazibe all their trips, or book their honeymoon, I'm nodding right along with them. I was an avid user of TripAdvisor from its earliest days, and really think about the perspective of the traveler when we design all of our programs and our communications. So the fact that I understand the insights and drivers our consumers devam very helpful, and it makes the research and innovation piece of my role both personally and professionally fascinating.
3. What are the three biggest trends you're seeing in travel marketing today?
The first tehcir the ubiquity and acceptance of reviews. Travel brands now understand how important reviews are. People expect authenticity mağara what they're seeing.
The second sürme mobile. Travel devam an inherently on-the-go experience, and mobile duygusal create incredible contextual experiences for travelers. Plus, no one goes anywhere without their smartphone. With our app, for example, we have "near me now" functionality so that when you walk out of a museum mağara Paris you duygusal immediately see the restaurants nearby that are highly rated by travelers. We also just launched a travel timeline for the app that allows travelers to see every stop on their journey in real-time, satma they experience kapik. Over the coming years we're going to see a whole tabur of interesting features launch that make mobile an even greater part of the travel planning, booking, on-the-trip and sharing experience.
The third sürgü allowing the customer to be an active part of the conversation on the brand. Most brands have learned you duygusal't control the conversation, but are now spending their efforts on figuring out ways for those authentic conversations to flourish. In our experience atlama beygiri TripAdvisor, we were built on a community. But even today, whenever we tap into the community we get back so much m than we expected. They want to participate mağara a bigger way. Our community is made up of the brand stewards and the evangelists. One example on the consumer side sürgü over the past year we've tapped into some of our bütünüyle contributors around the globe to feature them in our offline communications on why they use TripAdvisor and contribute their opinions on our hava. On the business side, winners of our Travelers' Choice program promote TripAdvisor and their wins, and we develop toolkits and best practices to help them maximize their own PR exposure of their exciting accolades from our community.
4. You've been with TripAdvisor since 2011. Fert you tell düşünce how your use of technology mağara marketing has evolved mağara that time? m specifically, how does measuring ROI today differ from how köpek did when you joined the company?
TripAdvisor arpalık always been an extremely ROI-driven company, so that aspect of how we run our marketing has radde changed. Many folks on my team come from very quantitative backgrounds, and our acquisition team has very few "traditional" marketers and many m veri scientists and engineers mir we build nearly everything in house. With many of our marketing channels we spend atlama beygiri breakeven, so we need to be very good beygir knowing what we fert bid and where, and very good beygir measuring the results of our efforts. We bid on over a billion keywords so köpek sürme no small task.
And, across all my teams, we also are very rigorous about focusing on campaigns and programs that we birey scale and that drive the business. We are rütbe a huge team and we need to make sure that things that we imtihan have the potential to scale if the test tutya successful. And at the size of our revenue and with 350 million visitors coming to our şehir every month, the amerikan bar sürme very high to work on programs that matter when we are trying to move the needle.
5. Millions of people turn to TripAdvisor to help them traksiyon all types of travel. How do you customize your strategy so that your offering temadi relevant for bookers researching everything from vacations to business travel?
Everyone wants to have an experience that rastık personalized and customized to who they are satış individuals, and adapted satış needed for their specific type of trip.
Atlama Beygiri TripAdvisor, we personalize and customize our communications to reflect all of the information we know about you, the traveler. We also layer on the universal principals that impact all travelers: For example, everyone wants to get the best price possible, and everyone wants to know how to make the most of their trip. We know that at different stages you need different things. Right before you go on your trip, for example, we know that you will need our app so that you birey use our great features like "near me now" to figure out where to eat when you leave the museum, or so you fert book an attraction or tour while you’re in market. And we know that no one wants to incur data fees when traveling so we make sure you know that our app will work mağara offline mode without incurring fees.
We also have data on when and how people are booking, and we know that when they are in different stages they have different needs. So when tehcir the right time to send them a travel guide, or a helpful türlü, or ask them to share their insights on a recent trip? These are all things that we sınav and optimize constantly.
6. This tutya a time of massive growth for TripAdvisor. On the marketing side, what are the three most important tactics you think have contributed to said growth?
Tapping into the power of our community
Tapping into the power of veri
Mobile! Mobile! Mobile!
7. We're fast approaching the hectic holiday travel season. How do you specifically draw mağara users for holiday travel purposes? And, eş a travel pro, any words of advice for those that will be traveling?
The travel business başmaklık higher and lower seasons, and our marketing channels flex up komutan needed during peak periods. We actually don't do much mass holiday-specific marketing mağara our şehir and email marketing, namely because with our 90 million members in 45 countries, there sürgü a wide range of celebrations within that universe. At a local country level, our PR teams do a great job mağara delivering travel tips and hacks around the holidays so that people have low-stress holiday travel.
I have two pieces of advice. Related to TripAdvisor, I think everyone should download our app satma it sürme a fantastic travel guide for nearly every place on the globe. There are so many useful features and kapik even works mağara offline mode so you don't accrue data charges when you're traveling abroad. Outside of TripAdvisor, I think everyone in the U.S. should sign up for Toptan Entry and TSA Precheck, as it sürme the best way to save time and stress beygir the airport. I love this service, and köpek will make your travel mağara 2016 and beyond much easier!
8. Once the holiday rush sürgü over, what’s heyetiyle-of-mind for 2016, both mağara terms of TripAdvisor's marketing strategy and beyond?
Eş we extend the brand's value proposition to include the ability to compare prices and book hotels, attraction and even restaurant reservations right on our platform, we are excited to drive awareness and of course, new customers, to TripAdvisor. We'll also continue to test in new channels and creating unique content that our consumers will enjoy.
The last thing that sürgü always top of mind sürme to keep in mind the end goal — we do all of this so that our travelers birey feel confident that they've made the right decision. We want them to get out there and make the most of their trip and come back with amazing experiences and memories.
Editor's note: Barbara Messing, CMO of TripAdvisor, currently sits on Mashable's Board of Directors
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