Without a doubt, social media is now an important part of the marketing mix for organisations, big and small in any industry, but how can social media increase sales for travel companies specifically? Using real-life case studies and analytics from across our network, Digital Visitor will show how social media can generate sales for travel companies. Get some tips and advice on how you generate profit from social media (social commerce) and show a real ROI. This presentation was given at the Travolution Summit 2012 by social commerce agency, Digital Visitor. For more information about Digital Visitor's products and services, please call us on +44(0)1179 055 195, visit www.digitalvisitor.com or email info@digitalvisitor.com today

1. Using social media to increase sales
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2. What you’ll get out of this session
• What is social media ROI?
• How can social media generate
ROI?
• Real life examples and
statistics
• Tips and advice on how you
can generate ROI
• Statistics gathered from
combination of 60 clients over
past 12 months
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3. Who are Digital Visitor?
An award-winning Social Commerce Agency...
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4. Some of our clients
Work with companies of all sizes across the travel and tourism sector...
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5. Source: http://socialbaz.com/
What is social media ROI?
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6. Metrics
• Lots of discussion about this
• Metrics include;
 Site traffic  Engagement
 Conversions  Brand awareness
 Sales  Brand loyalty
 Community growth  Reduced returns/call
volumes
Any others?
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7. How do you measure other marketing
• Be careful to make sure that social media delivers what other marketing
activities do i.e;
1) PPC – traffic, enquiries
2) SEO - organic
traffic, rankings, enquiries
3) Email marketing – open and click
rates, enquiries
Source: http://www.createwanderlust.com
• Why should social media be any
different?
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8. Survey
Question: How do you measure your ROI from social media?
a) New traffic to your website?
b) New sales leads generated?
c) The number of Likes / Fans / Views?
d) Increase in brand sentiment?
e) Collection of profiling data?
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9. Results
Question: How do you measure your ROI from social media?
49%
25%
18%
6%
2%
New traffic Sales leads Like / fans / Increase Profiling
views sentiment data
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10. Strip it back to basics
Don’t over complicate it – We are going to focus on 3 common
measures of ROI that should be main drivers for social media...
Traffic Community growth Sales
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11. Traffic
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12. Measuring traffic
More quality traffic ;
1) Organic
2) Referral / social channels
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13. Organic traffic
• Content is STILL king
• Panda update favoured user
generated content and social media
• Gathering customer content is the
most sensible investment of your
time
75% of consumers don’t believe
companies tell the truth in their
advertisements
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14. What is customer content?
 Reviews and ratings
 Photos
 Videos
 Discussions
 Comments and much more...
• Enable customers to upload
text, photos , videos and ask
questions about products/services
• This will enhance SEO visibility
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15. Impact of customer content
• 75% of consumers don’t believe
companies tell the truth in their
advertisements (Yankelovich Consumer Research)
• 46% of consumers do write reviews
(Technorati.com)
• 29% of consumers consider positive
reviews as the most likely factor to make
them book a holiday online (Webcredible)
• 25-40% of people who leave a hotel
website do so to read an online review
(ReviewPro)
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16. Organic traffic
1 review = 1 organic visitor per month
‘Sandboarding at Erg Chigaga from UK’
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17. Organic traffic
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18. Proactively capture content
• Capturing content can be easy
• Ask your customers to share their
experiences
• Incentivise and get the content YOU
want e.g Bluestone
We have experienced response rates
between 10 – 30%
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19. Make it easy
• It has to be easy for the user and
for you the organisation
• Auto asking users for content
• Allow them to sign in using existing
social media profiles
In last 30 days, just under 60% of
users logged in with their social
profile.
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20. Referral / social media traffic
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21. Referral / social channels traffic
• Sharing content with social media
channels will drive traffic to your
website
Individual user profiles
Your own organisation profiles
• Make it easy for users to share
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22. Individual share
• Incorporate advanced social
sharing tools
41% of users who login with
their social profile will also
share content
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23. Organisation share
Businesses who share
content to their social
profiles can drive up to 2
times their social media
community to their website
per month
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24. How much traffic?
Organic
1 review drives 1 organic visitor per eg. 1000 reviews on your website
month can drive 12,000 visits per year
Referral / social
eg. 5000 Likes on Facebook page x 2 =
Sharing reviews to your social
10,000 visitors to your site each
channels can drive up to 2 times your
month
community per month
eg. 1000 reviews (60%) = 600
Social share
uploaded via social login
60% of users logged in with their social
profile (41%) of 600 social logins = 246
shares to Facebook*
41% of users who login with their social
profile will also share content *Average person has 245 friends so
potential audience is 61,500
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25. B2B
• This concept works for B2B companies as well
• Sharing content on LinkedIn drives traffic for B2B companies
LinkedIn drives far more traffic to
Digital Visitor’s site than any other
social channel. In fact, LinkedIn is
main driver of traffic after organic
and direct.
Across B2B clients, LinkedIn is
consistently in the top 3 referring
sites
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26. Source: http://tomfishburne.com/
Community growth
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27. Why community growth?
 Size and brand footprint
 Referral traffic
 Quality traffic
 Revenue
 Often this is what directors / MDs /
founders / investors want to see
this?
But why?
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28. Community growth benefits
• Engage quality audience / brand
advocates
 Exclusive content
 Competitions
• Drive traffic to your website
• Direct revenue
 Flash sales
 Coupons etc
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29. Quality / engagement level
• It’s not just about the numbers but you want to
create a quality audience of people who are
interested
Champneys campaign; grew Page likes by 112%
in a 6 week period and increased community
engagement with many fans sharing the news to
their friends and family on Facebook and beyond
Jersey campaign; avg 2130 people engaged
with page every week (previous campaigns this
was 918)
Betapond Facebook Competition App described
engagement as; “astronomical...the highest
ever seen through our App”
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30. Traffic referral
Champneys campaign also
increased referral traffic from
Facebook by 400%
Affordable Car Hire campaign
increased referral traffic from
Facebook by 584%
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31. Revenue / client generation
• Increase in traffic should
increase sales
• Reviews on website will
enhance
Source: http://tomfishburne.com/
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32. Revenue / client generation examples
Facebook flash sale for accommodation
provider generated £50k in revenue -
£21k of which was in the first 48 hours
of sale
45% of B2B companies have
gained a customer from using
LinkedIn (b2bsocialmediaguide.com)
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33. Summary
Ensure you set targets for your social
activity;
A. Traffic
• Using customer content on your own website
• Sharing with social media channels
B. Community growth
• Quality engaged audience
• Increase traffic to your website
C. Sales
• Increase in traffic to your website should
increase sales
• Use social community for exclusive sales and
offers Source: http://www.eloqua.com
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34. Thank you
Simon Jones
0117 9055 195
simon@digitalvisitor.com
www.digitalvisitor.com
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