Brand campaigns and technologies like programmatic may be less mature in the Asia Pacific, and to promote them you need a mascot!

Ahead of the Asia Pacific Summit (June 15-16), EyeforTravel has been hearing some digital marketing ideas and tips which we’d like to share.

1. Brand marketing needs more focus than direct response

From a digital standpoint APAC is a performance driven market.

So the digital efforts of transactional travel firms tend to be more strongly geared towards direct response marketing rather than harder-to measure brand campaigns. By contrast, in US and European markets, while direct response marketing remains important, efforts to define broader metrics that contribute to overall brand lift are intensifying.

One of the reasons for this stronger focus on ROI is that local firms often don’t have as deep pockets as international players. Another is that Asian consumers tend to be more price-conscious than Western counterparts. It is also especially true in travel where the cost of customer acquisition is high – about two to three times more than it is in US or European markets.

For this reason there is growing recognition that branding efforts are crucial, especially for aggregators because of the high cost of paid search. Aggregators rely mostly on SEO and retention mechanisms like email subscription, mobile app installs and Facebook likes.

Max Kraynov, chief executive of JetRadar stresses that you have to start from scratch and be creative in both offline and online campaigns. “It’s not just about throwing a budget of $50 million dollars at Google Ad Words, for example, and expecting to see the money roll in,” he says.

2.  Programmatic technologies are maturing  

According to a Magna Global Programmatic 2015 roadmap for growth two APAC markets fall within the top four programmatic spenders. Japan and China lag just the UK and US, which remains the largest market by far.

In 2017, however, Raj Beri, chief operating officer at technology firm Adadyn, believes that technologies like programmatic will start to gain traction more widely in Asia, which is also seen as a growth opportunity for US-based firms.

Last year, for example, New York-based Tremor Video, a premium video market place, snapped up TVN Australia, a provider of programmatic solutions to nine markets in the APAC region (including Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore).  Shortly after the acquisition Greg Smith, Head of International Programmatic at Tremor Video, said he was looking “forward to taking advantage of the growing opportunities in APAC.”

According to eMarketer, the market will be worth $56bn in 2017, surpassing comparable spend in North America where the market today is already more mature.

3. The digital product life cycle is shorter but the product must ‘tick’

Although Asian firms like to see investments sweating, this doesn’t mean they are more risk averse. In Western markets, brands spending longer watching, waiting and reviewing a digital product before hopping aboard – usually when everybody else does too. In Asia, the converse is true.  “The time from a user being introduced to a technology to the point when they embrace it is much shorter,” says Beri. 

A word of warning though, is that the digital product must also ‘tick’. Hit your target audience accurately with a product that they like and Asian consumers will become your biggest brand advocates. Miss it and, quite simply, you won’t survive.

On this score, Kraynov says examining the Asian-style mascot is a useful exercise. In Japan, for example – one of the notoriously toughest markets for international players to crack – there is a mascot for just about everything – from cities to neighbourhoods, TV stations and airlines.

He isn’t saying an actual mascot is necessary – though JetRadar is working on one – but it’s about ‘getting’ to grips with “the mentality of the market”.

Join us at EyeforTravel’s Asia Pacific Summit to hear more from leading travel brands in region (June 15-16)