Across all industries, leadership is questioning whether creator and influencer content is moving businesses forward and making an impact on organizational goals. Most don’t consider views and likes to be proof of success and are pushing for better metrics. This shift to treating creator partnerships as an awareness channel to a performance channel is even more difficult in the travel industry, where destinations struggle to attribute bookings directly to creator/influencer content as you can in e–commerce.
The good news is that, yes – travel influencer marketing campaigns do drive travel if you are working with the right influencers, and you can measure conversion. Here are a few of the ways to measure impact beyond impressions and likes.
How Destinations are Proving Outcomes in Travel Influencer Partnerships
Brand Lift Study
Many destinations are turning to brand lift studies to see if creator content is making a difference. They may do this through a panel, by running the creator content as ads, or through surveys on creator accounts. The issue is that with organic creator content, none of it is perfect.
Consumer Panel
When using a panel to measure brand lift a group of people is asked how likely they are to visit a destination in the next 3-6 months, then shown pieces of creator content, and again asked how likely they are to visit. The problem is that the panel of people, while a close fit, are not members of the influencer/creators’ audience sp you remove the magic power of “influence”, and this is an expensive and laborious process.
Meta Ads Brand Lift Campaign
If doing a brand lift study through Meta ads, the process is straightforward. You run creator content as paid ads, and Meta asks the target audience how likely they are to visit your destination, both before and after the paid campaign is served to that audience. While helpful to see how the content performs with your target audience, you need to put a significant amount of ad spend behind the creative to prove statistical significance. Meta requires a minimum ad spend of $120K to perform a brand lift study in the United States.
Creator Account Surveys
This is the most unscientific form of a brand lift study, but it highlights how desperate brands are to show creator impact. To do this, the creator polls their audience through an IG story, asking their audience how likely they are to consider a travel destination for their next vacation before they start sharing the destination content, and then after they have shared all of their content.
This method is the most prone to error because a creator wants to prove the value of their content/audience and can easily pad the numbers by having people they know vote. It’s also important to keep in mind that not everyone who sees in-feed content watches stories, and a piece of content can have a larger unconnected reach (ie people who don’t follow the influencer) than connected reach (people who follow the influencer).
Steller Connect
Steller has stitched together third party platform data with our own proprietary software to create Steller Connect. Steller Connect connects influencer campaign content directly to travel planning tools, behaviorally triggered marketing automation to keep your destination top of mind, and booking ability when the traveler is ready. It doesn’t replace the awesome work you are already doing with influencers; it helps destination marketers measure the effectiveness of creator content on the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel by providing metrics such as:
- Number Of Itinerary Requests On The Creator’s Posts
- Number Of Itinerary Views
- Number Of People Who Started Planning Their Own Trip After Viewing
- Campaign Content
- Travel Dates Of People Who Planned A Trip
- Bookings To The Destination
These metrics, travel dates, and the average spend per party traveling to your destination can easily be combined to show the economic impact of influencer marketing campaigns on your destination. Giving marketers clear answers as to whether or not the campaign made a difference on the destination beyond impressions, reach, and likes.
Geolocation Data
Some destinations we work with use geolocation data to prove that a campaign had an impact on travel. People usually plan travel 3-6 months out, so destinations will look at the data a few months after the completion of the campaign. When it comes to influencer marketing, this greatly depends on how much of the influencers’ audiences are in the target market.
Next steps for your influencer marketing strategy.
Measurement in influencer marketing can be tough without the right tools, but the right tools will help you make influencer campaigns more effective, save you money, and drive travel for your destination.
Ready to see what data-driven influencer marketing could do for your destination? Contact us to book a free influencer partnership strategy session.
