The world of marketing is changing at a rapid pace with the onslaught of new technologies, apps and platforms. Prior to the digital revolution brands simply communicated with their audience on one or two channels, whereas today, they have to juggle multiple social media accounts, websites and blogs, in addition to traditional marketing materials such as TV, magazines or billboards. This is especially true in the tourism industry, where marketers rely heavily on advertising in all forms to attract visitors to their destinations.

Clearly, there is a lot more to handle, manage and know for marketers in our modern day, and in order to succeed, you need to know where the technology and trends are headed. Here to help you navigate these changing waters, are 3 essential marketing stats you should consider when creating your next travel campaign:

People Respond to Pictures & Videos

According to award-winning author/marketer/blogger, Jeff Bullas, visual elements, such as photos and videos, generate up to 94% higher page views. Moreover, posts with videos attract 3 times as many inbound links as plain text posts. This should come as no surprise considering the average viewer spends less than 15 seconds on a website, according to data by Tony Haile of Chartbeat.

In essence, the masses are looking for quick ways to understand a brand or story without having to read too much text. Pictures and videos offer the perfect medium for conveying the strong and cohesive marketing messages in a short time span, and with the onslaught of photo and video apps like Instagram, Pinterest, Vine and Snapchat, taking professional looking visuals is now easier than ever.

Ad Spending Is Increasing Dramatically

According to Forrester, in 2016, the average firm is expected to allocate 30% of their marketing budget to online, and this is only expected to grow to 35% by 2019. Of this marketing spend, a large amount will be focused on digital ad spending. In fact, in 2015 alone, total digital ad spending hit nearly $60 billion.

Much of this ad spending can be attributed to the many new kinds of ads marketers can engage in, whether it be Twitter and Facebook ads, or viral video campaigns. More importantly, this amount of spending shows that most companies are finding some kind of value in their spend, whether it is concrete ROI, brand recognition or awareness by their consumers.

Take, for instance, a creative digital ad campaign by the Las Vegas Tourism Board . They made an additional $110 million in tourism revenue through a digital campaign that used audio promos on Pandora digital radio. Specifically, they set up a branded radio station with music from artists that play in Vegas hotels and clubs. These ads linked to LasVegas.com, and then Pandora cross-referenced the data from users who were logged into the station with a mobile tracking location app called Placed.

According to their calculations, the campaign created a 6% increase in travel to Las Vegas among music-streaming listeners, which is equivalent to 152,462 visitors who created a return of $110 million in revenue for the city (based on the average spend per visitor in Vegas). This was digital ad spending at its most cutting-edge, and clearly the results paid off.

Most Professionals Lose Money & Time Managing Their Assets

Considering there are now more ways to advertise than ever, marketers now have an increasing backlog of information, photos, files, file types and content to manage. Keeping all this data organized isn’t easy, and actually can result in huge losses in time and money.

According to Forbes ASAP, the average executive wastes 150 hours a year searching for lost information. For someone earning $50,000 a year, this loss is equivalent to $3,842 annually. Other stats find that the average employee wastes 364 hours a year managing digital assets—that’s no small amount!

Those marketers who understand the value of their time, invest in Digital Asset Management software to help them keep their campaign assets in order and up-to-date. For travel marketers, this can result in huge gains, whether it be in time, money or ease of efficiency. Want to learn more about how we can help manage your digital content? Get in touch!