Destination marketers have been pushed into a new era of digital engagement. Today, we see a surge in streaming and on-demand television, increased reliance on smartphones for research, and more frequent connections via social media.
Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) must adapt swiftly to stay ahead of this dynamic environment. This has given rise to digital transformation— a term that has transitioned from a buzzword to a tangible goal. Digital transformation involves leveraging digital technologies to innovate or enhance processes, culture, and experiences to meet evolving demands.
As the digital marketing landscape evolves, destination marketers are continually challenged to reassess their skills and capabilities. While some early adopters are already excelling in this new landscape, others struggle to keep pace.
As consumer expectations evolve, you must leverage the power of tourism technology, digital marketing, and data and insights to deliver relevant, real-time messages at scale — whenever and wherever consumers are ready for them.
You have to:
- Be a helpful travel resource: Build a data-driven strategy fueled by assistance, modernizing to become more relevant across the customer experience and the traveler's path to purchase.
- Meet Them where they are online: Having a strong and strategic online presence gives your destination the chance to meet consumers where they spend their timet, helping to move someone along the path to purchase. Meeting them where they are gets your brand in the game to be chosen, not just seen.
- Speed is key: Deliver a speedy, frictionless yet engaging experience that consumers expect in this day and age.
If consumers benefit, destinations benefit. But they’re struggling to put it all into practice. Find out how you can be there, be helpful, and be quick to meet and exceed these ever-changing customer expectations with the Simpleview Digital Maturity Model.
The Simpleview Digital Maturity Model
Google recently worked with the Boston Consulting Group to carry out an in-depth study of businesses to identify what drives data-driven marketing maturity. Their results showed various capabilities that were key to top performance and delivering on what today’s consumers expect from brands.
We’ve taken it one step further and incorporated these capabilities into our own assessment model to meet the needs of leisure and brand destination marketers using the following five dimensions.
The Simpleview Digital Maturity Model is a free resource for Simpleview clients to measure their performance in five key digital dimensions.
Organization and Culture
The capability to improve decision-making and results by working collaboratively across teams and specialized partners (agencies, vendors, etc). How your DMO manages the people, processes, and strategic planning for data-driven marketing and digital transformation, including:
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Business structure
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Funding
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Executive sponsorship
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Culture
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Strategy and planning
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And more
Data and Measurement
How your DMO uses and manages the data that drives marketing. This includes analytics, data governance, tracking capabilities, and more. We also assess your capability to accurately measure and value customer touchpoints to identify, understand, and influence the most valuable audiences throughout the traveler's path to purchase.
Creative and UX
The capability to deliver attention-driving, intuitive, and creative experiences across digital touchpoints. How your DMO uses creative and design to balance the intent of their marketing with the visitors' overall experience, including:
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Content (copy/video)
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User experience
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A/B testing
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Personalization
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And more
Digital Marketing
How your DMO leverages digital marketing strategies including channel management, audience targeting, and more. The capability to reach and deliver across all inventory types and digital channels to meet the audience where they are.
Marketing Technology
How your DMO manages the infrastructure and technology pieces of the marketing tech stack. For example:
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Innovation
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CRM
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CMS
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Marketing automation, AI, chat, business intelligence tools
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And more
See Where Your DMO Stands
The Simpleview Digital Maturity Model will also show you where you stand in each category.
Level 1: Aspiring
Your marketing campaigns use mainly external data and direct buys with limited (if any) links to sales, conversions, and economic impact. Due to this, your marketing risks becoming digitally “blind” to consumers. The biggest focus in this stage is establishing trust in data, organizational alignment, and collaboration around data-driven marketing.
Level 2: Emerging
You likely use some owned data in automated marketing, with single-channel optimization and testing. The focus for destinations at this stage should be getting comfortable with the access to data that was started in the previous stage to gain more alignment of key performance indicators (KPI) across teams, agencies, and partners. Attention should be given to adopting a test-and-learn philosophy and documenting processes.
Here we start to see the focus tip from organizational alignment to a focus on technology and sharing data across teams.
Level 3: Accelerating
Your data is more integrated and activated across digital channels with a demonstrated link to return on investment (ROI), bookings, and arrivals. Similar to emerging, we see a lot of DMOs in this stage.
This is where the DMO really starts to fire on all cylinders as data is not only shared across the organization but is used to produce better results tied to revenue and how your marketing efforts are making an impact on the overall visitor economy.
Areas of focus here should be on integrating platforms and data sets with an emphasis on activation across channels, agencies and partners, and teams. This is typically where technology and digital become a larger focus as you move to provide a more personalized and connected user experience.
Level 4: Best-in-class
You have achieved dynamic execution across multiple channels, optimized toward individual customer business outcomes, and your visitor economy. Best-in-class marketers ensure the data that the organization collects is connected and flows across cross-functional teams including web, CRM, e-commerce, brand, and performance marketing. All while supported by an informed legal team (data privacy).
