(c)iStock.com/MACIEJ NOSKOWSKI
In the ‘mad men’ days of advertising and marketing, you’d typically get to the traveller through billboards, media or television advertisements placed at very strategic places or times – outside billboards featuring warm and exotic holidays to Marrakech or even Turkey strategically positioned near snow-covered airports in Glasgow.
The basic concept of marketing — where your customers are to be applies, but the difference now is that the access to information and technology that entrepreneurs and brands can leverage to communicate with their target audience more efficiently. Now, with so many customers on the move to convert the ‘captive’ to the while in transit — be it bus, tube or taxi — presents opportunities to participate with clients and gain competitive advantage.
The consumer on the go has traditionally been the target of efforts, in the expectation of catching their focus whilst outside of home. But brands are trying to proceed with these clients.
Take beacon technology as an example, which is making its way. Fox partnered with the Shazam program to use beacons on London buses as part of a promo campaign for Kung Fu Panda 3. Passengers travelling to a ‘bus’ that are currently using the program given the option and will be shown content. Not only does this campaign exemplify beacons’ potential, it also reveals how commuters can be reached by brands with articles that is timely, relevant and engaging in a discrete way. Commuting is no longer dead period for the pupil or the marketer.
Predictive analytics may prove to be much more than just an exotic advertising technique, though still in its infancy and we might soon see its adoption. Predictive analytics looks at the client’s digital footprint across cellular and internet, what they’ve done, what they are currently doing and predicting their future actions based on their habits and tendencies.
That is where knowing booking data in advance, and your client’s profile retains an great value. Knowing that your customer is travelling by minicab to London City Airport within an early morning flight to Athens, using two bits of carry-on luggage, means they may be shown airport upgrades on their mobile, emailed a ready-to-download voucher to spend at obligation, and get live queue time alarms via SMS — all en route.
The first and last impression of a vacation begins and ends with the taxi which takes you there. Thus analytics can be a weapon, turning data to provide the ideal content to the ideal customer at the ideal time so their customer can be better understood by brands, retain them and acquire new ones. And powering this customer experience is the ‘economy’ where sources of third party information could be mashed up to provide a service.
The transit market is very diverse — from business people, tourists, students, seniors — so each of those groups has different interests and lifestyles; each journeys for various functions; every selects transit for different motives; each responds to various messages so each is best reached in various ways. This diversity needs marketers work and to think in multiple, parallel channels. Complex, contextual, timely and crystal clear communication with customers in transit can be the best and efficient form of promotion yet. Indeed, this type of participation has capacity create curiosity to generate focus and if done correctly, become the new call to action in the digital world.
