Places to go, people to see: Smart Trends and People Analysis
2017 was a record year in mobile. UK adults spent 1 hour 59 minutes a day on their smartphones, whilst retailers, keen to get a slice of the pie, spent 12.4% of their total spend on the channel.It also marked the launch of our Smart Trends, an insights & planning tool designed to deliver marketers with analytics from demographic audience data, contextual consumption as well as mobile activity levels in different locations.
The logical next step was to enhance the tool with more detail about the consumers at the heart of this data. When it comes to targeting, it’s not just about the physical locations consumers frequent, but the consumers behind this data. Blis has subsequently developed new analysis capabilities which unlock data around customer loyalty, audience behaviour comparison, and competitor intelligence. This allows marketers to create comprehensive user profiles which supersede those provided by traditional location data, providing the most comprehensive user profiles yet.
Sun, sea, and segmentation
The best place to put these new features to the test was in the hospitality industry. Where better to compare audience profiles, diversity, and brand affiliation on a global scale? Travel and tourism represented a $7.61 trillion contribution to the global economy in 2016, and 76.8% percent of travel expenditure was related to leisure travel. That’s a lot of hotels, shops, brands, and tourist destinations, and a lot of potential customers for marketers.
We monitored some of the biggest hotel chains in the world’s most popular tourist destinations by number of visits – New York, London, Dubai, Singapore, and Sydney – to see what insights we could glean. Some weren’t surprising – the most popular tourist attraction for hotel customers in each destination was Times Square, Big Ben, the Burj Khalifa, Marina Bay Sands and Sydney Tower respectively – but others could give marketers a lot of food for thought. The core age group of hotel guests, for example, was 26-45. As you might expect, 18-25 year under-index significantly, preferring other forms of accommodation. Amongst hotel visitors aged 26-55, females were also more heavily represented.
How people used hotels and when also differed across borders. Mobile activity in hotels was greatest in London and New York, whilst at its lowest in Singapore. A relationship between temperature and the time spent indoors suggests activity in hotels was strongly weather dependent, with those in both hotter and cooler climates taking respite from the weather indoors. This notion is further supported by the peak time indoors, which was on average 5-6pm but in Dubai hit 11pm as guests made the most of the cooler evenings and nightlife in the emirate.
Different hotel chains also gave rise to differences in behaviour. Those staying at more affordable hotels spent more on luxury activities, for example, with 50% more Hilton audiences being seen at tourist attractions than guests at the Four Seasons. Four Seasons guests, on the other hand, were 160% more likely to be seen spending their time at Fine Dining restaurants.
There’s a time and a place
Why does all this matter? By targeting audiences based on a combination of people and place analysis, marketers can make sure their messages are always optimally targeted. For marketers who want to make sure their global campaigns are planned, targeted and delivered effectively, this type of data is becoming more and more crucial – and for those aiming to achieve clear set objectives, whether for new stores or driving footfall to existing ones, behavioural data can make a huge difference between a good campaign and a great one. The competitive advantage of knowing where your consumers are and where they’re likely to go next cannot be underestimated, and by removing as much of the guesswork in marketing as possible we can make sure that well-targeted messages always reach the audiences they need to, and the return on your precious investment is always being maximised.