Key Takeaways from Connecting the Dots Between Tourism Marketing and Real World Impact with Mobile Location Data

The following provides NYSTIA Marketing Analyst Ryan Maercklein’s insights and takeaways from the April 26th Connecting the Dots Between Tourism Marketing and Real World Impact with Mobile Location Data webinar presented by Near. We would like to thank Near for sharing this information with us. 

During this informative presentation, three main topics were introduced and explained relating to tourism marketing with mobile location data. The first was audience creation, specifically its possibilities and how it can be done. Second, they covered audience activation, that is how to take the audience you just created and reach them through different media channels. And lastly, they explained campaign measurement, how to evaluate who saw an advertisement, and the conversions it led to. 

1. Creating an Audience: Using device IDs and mobile tracking, it’s possible to put together a dataset with specific parameters that allow you to segment audiences based on behaviors and interests.
1. For instance, using this data you can create an audience subset consisting only of people who frequent coffee shops, go golfing, or any other metric you have listed. 
2. There is also the involvement of intersectionality such as an audience focused on people taking road trips that also frequent fast food restaurants; the more focused the audience specifications, the more targeted and likely effective your marketing campaign will be.
2. Buying Media: There are a variety of ways to buy media whether that be through a demand-side platform (DSP), through CTV, or on social media.
1. Some of the common uses of this data in media buying involve:
1. Retargeting previous tourists.
2. Promoting events or destinations to individuals that have expressed interest in the topic.
3. Showcasing experiences to in-market tourists.
4. Dynamic location which involves marketing to the consumers that live within a certain distance of your destination.
3. Measuring Attribution: Measuring attribution is simply determining the effectiveness of your advertisements by monitoring the conversion of those who saw your ads to those who showed up to your destination or bought your product offering. 
1. One way in which many destinations implement this is by using UTM parameters. This is a snippet of code added to the end of your advertisement’s landing page URL that allows you to track where the user is coming from. Having this information, you can begin to focus your ad spend on media channels that produce the most conversions.
2. Another way to measure attribution is to use Google Tag Manager. This enables you to place a pixel that captures information from the individual interacting with your ad such as a timestamp and page URL. These are helpful in determining how long the audience took between seeing the ad and becoming a consumer of your product or service as well as what pages they were coming from.