WARC Strategy Report // Forrester Report on Gen Z Travelers // Notebook LM

In this episode of Traditional Tourism Insights we discuss the WARC strategy report, highlighting significant gaps in evaluating creative ideas and campaign effectiveness. Emphasizing the critical role of understanding consumer motivations beyond demographics, he underscores the value of human insights in an AI-driven world. Key points include the importance of authenticity, particularly for engaging Gen Z and Millennials, and the powerful impact of influencer marketing. We also introduce Google's NotebookLM as a potent tool for research and data analysis while ensuring privacy and enhancing marketers' expertise.

00:00 Welcome to Traditional Tourism Insights
00:49 Eye-Opening Industry Insights from WARC Report
02:26 The Importance of Understanding Travelers
03:47 Balancing Immediate Results with Long-Term Success
05:20 Adapting to Changing Marketing Trends
06:22 The Power of Influencer Marketing
06:56 Creating Authentic Content
07:36 Tips for Engaging Travel Content
08:14 The Power of TikTok in Marketing
08:55 Introducing Notebook LM
09:17 Using Notebook LM for Research
10:07 Notebook LM Features and Benefits
11:47 Maximizing Marketing Strategies with Notebook LM
12:46 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

Pat: 0:13

Hello, and welcome to Traditional Tourism Insights, a podcast by Digital Relativity. I'm your host, Pat Strader, founder and CEO of Digital Relativity, with 25 years of experience in travel and tourism marketing. I invite you to join me each episode for a quick look at industry trends, research, emerging technologies, and more. And real talk on what works, what doesn't, and why. Grab a coffee, a beer, or a cocktail. There is no judgment here. Let's have some fun with an honest and irreverent look into the nitty gritty of travel and tourism marketing. I've been spending a little bit of time going over a recently published strategy report from WARC. This surveyed a thousand global strategists, and what it reveals about our industry is a little eye opening. Get this, you guys. 22 percent feel that they do not understand how to evaluate creative ideas effectively. For measuring campaign effectiveness, that number is at 29 percent that feel that they can accurately evaluate. Results of the campaign. This disconnect isn't just a statistic. It reveals real marketing dollars that aren't working as hard as they should be, frankly. And it really concerns me because I know how hard you work to promote your destinations, your experiences, your services. And when there's a gap between strategy and understanding. We risk campaigns that don't deliver the results that you need and expect. And today's competitive travel market, we just simply can't afford that type of inefficiency. So part of the problem lies in how the travel and tourism industry approaches strategy, quite honestly. We have digital strategists, we have content strategists, we have experiential strategies, and all these different specialized pieces. But as noted in this report, we're creating jigsaw pieces without really seeing the big picture of how they all fit together. This fragmentation makes it harder to achieve goals. often leads to disconnected campaigns and potentially confuses your visitors. Mark Ritson is a noted marketing expert and emphasizes that successful marketing starts with understanding the consumer. Not just surface level demographics, but really understanding what makes travelers choose one destination, one experience over another. And when we get vague insights about travelers, the kinds that you could Literally apply to anyone. That's when things start to get a little sideways. One of the things that I think is important to note is that we need to look beyond our screens, if you will, just to really truly understand what motivates travel decisions. So having conversations with visitors, just really paying attention to these insights that can help us create messages that actually resonate with your target audience. Yes, AI and new technologies are changing everything in marketing, but here's what matters. While AI can help analyze data, automate tasks, it cannot replace the human understanding that makes travel marketing work. You cannot fully grasp why people connect with certain destinations or what makes them share their experiences with others. And in fact, as technology advances, these human insights become even more valuable. Trust your instincts, rely on the data, trust your instincts. And what I'm seeing is a concerning trend in our industry. And, and that is, you know, when budgets get tight, it's really tempting to focus on quick wins. While our goals are to put heads in beds, if you will, book tours, et cetera. It's really about creating experiences that turn those first time visitors into advocates who will come back year after year, bring others with them, and tell people about their experience. So, just keep in mind that your potential visitors aren't just looking for a place to stay or things to do, they're looking for experiences that mean something to them. They want to discover places that they can connect with others. And share these experiences. And when our marketing strategies tap into these deeper motivations, that's when we see really impressive results. Higher booking rates, longer stays, more word of mouth recommendations. And the key is to find that balance between immediate results and long term success. It's all about creating those campaigns that don't just drive bookings, that's ultimately a primary goal, but they build lasting connections with travelers. Because in travel and tourism, these human connections, these memorable moments, That's what brings people back. So let's start a conversation about how we can bridge these gaps with marketing strategy. How can we create campaigns that truly resonate with target travelers, deliver measurable results. And because when strategy works, everybody wins. Your organization, your community, and more importantly, your visitors. The travel and tourism industry and how we market is changing rapidly. We've talked about this, you know, and we all see it every day. And I came across a recent report from Forrester that has some really great information to stay ahead of the curve here and to help us understand how younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials are interacting with our ads. These digital natives, they spend hours each week scrolling through their feeds. Where sponsored content, it blends seamlessly with organic posts. And this presents a challenge and an opportunity. And the challenge is this. While younger audiences are more tolerant of ads that are integrated into their feeds, According to this study from Forrester, only 22 percent of Gen Z and Millennials trust social media ads. I don't think that that's shocking news to anybody. Uh, but as a result, they've become expert ad blockers. They tune out anything that feels inauthentic to them. So where's the opportunity? Influencer marketing! Everybody loves talking about this, right? But influencer marketing is, is an incredibly powerful tool to reach These younger audiences, they trust recommendations from their favorite creators. Almost half of the younger consumers pay attention to sponsored influencer content. Interesting, right? That's more than double the rate of olds like me. But here's the key. Authenticity is paramount to this. Work with influencers who genuinely align with your brand. Resonate with your audience. Ditch the generic ad reads. And create content that feels real, relatable, and engaging. I've been using Duolingo as an example quite a bit in some other talks that I've been giving, but You know, with Duolingo's TikTok, I mean, they've really just mailed it with their meme worthy. They're using humor, some really interesting examples there and beyond influencer marketing, authenticity needs to be woven into every aspect. Of your overarching strategy. So show the real side of travel, embrace the UGC, the user generated content that everybody loves so much and tell stories that resonate with your audience. So here's some tips on how to make this happen. Embrace the UGC. Encourage travelers to share their experiences good and bad. See lots of you doing this already. Show the real side of travel. Go beyond these picture perfect, pixel perfect as well as picture perfect Instagram feeds and really showcase the authentic moments, the cultural opportunities. Just show what it's really like to visit. Where you are. Tell compelling stories, connect with your audience on an emotional level by sharing stories that resonate with them. Earth shattering. I know. If you're using TikTok, be playful and be creative. And again, we're seeing some really fun and innovative ways that people are utilizing TikTok in the short form video format with humor, relatable situations, and even little unexpected twists. But remember, we're not just selling. Flights and hotels and cabin stays and things like that. We're still in the opportunity to explore and to connect and to create lifelong memories. So let's shift our mindset from hard selling to relationship building. Be storytellers. Not just advertisers today is tech spotlight. We are going to be looking at notebook LN. This has been around for a bit. It is a Google product, but this is a really fascinating tool. This, this changing how we can handle research. And analysis, and I just like to quickly break down what makes it special and how it can help us in the travel and tourism industry. At its core, Notebook LM is like having a research assistant who can read and understand everything that you can feed it. You can pipe in websites, you can upload PDFs of research reports, of campaign results. Notebook All different types of source material that you can provide here, and it helps make sense of the research. So, we have folders full of reports, surveys, market research. Well, you can upload these into Notebook LN. You can analyze it, and again, these can be Google Docs, webpages, and instead of spending hours reading through everything, you can simply ask it questions, and get some really powerful insights. Thanks. A recent feature that was released with Notebook LM and really kind of reignited some of the conversations about this really fascinating tool is that you can now create what they're calling audio overviews. And so let's say, for example, you uploaded a PDF of a research report, it can give you a podcast style audio recording that you can listen to and can pull out the highlights. So, I personally find it really useful for quickly learning information by just being able to listen to it. But there's lots of other things that you can do with this. You can upload visitor surveys, tourism reports. Competitive analysis, campaign results, all these different types of things. You know, the information that you are uploading to notebook LM is not training their language model, but I still would encourage you to err on the side of safety here. Do not upload any PII's. Anything that has personal information in there, I would strongly encourage you not to utilize those types of data. But again, you can take your campaign results, upload them, you can ask it questions, and have conversations. So it's really great for analyzing campaign results. Again, uploading those reports, you can ask it what worked well, what could be improved. It can also spot patterns and suggest adjustments to the campaigns. Really interesting stuff. Just have some conversations with it and I think you'll see what I'm talking about. But Notebook LM isn't just about finding information, it's about making these connections. So, it may notice that guests who book certain activities tend to stay longer. Or that specific marketing messages resonate better with particular audience segments. Think of this as a tool that can help you save time on research, it can help you spot trends you might miss, it can help you make data driven decisions, and just really, frankly, improve your overall marketing strategies. The key is to ask good questions, and instead of getting lost, when you ask the good questions, you can focus on what matters. Creating better experiences for your guests, more effective marketing campaigns, and more. And again, I'm going to reiterate this, NotebookLM doesn't replace your expertise, it simply enhances it. It becomes an efficiency tool. You still need to use your industry knowledge and experience, but layer this tool on top of it, and it can help you work smarter, make better informed decisions. That's all for today's episode. I hope that you found one small piece of information to help you along your marketing journey. If you have any questions, a topic that you'd like to hear covered, or a great example of travel and tourism marketing in the wild, I'd love to hear from you. Just drop me an email. TTI at DigitalRelativity. com. That's TTI at DigitalRelativity. com. Or you can text 209 300 5017. That's 209 300 5017. Or message me on x at pat straighter I'm your host pat straighter signing off and I invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts And join us next time as we continue to explore the future travel and tourism market