In the rapidly evolving luxury market, consumers and their changing tastes are driving brands to adapt their marketing approach. Every brand has internal marketing materials and guidelines (or they should) defining what “luxury” means to them and what it means to their customers. These definitions are based on heritage, but should also be measured against the modern luxury consumer landscape.

Across social media, many brands have invested in promotional messages, influencer programs, and content production, however, despite its cost-effective power to build an audience, authentic and well-crafted community management still remains an untapped resource.

As marketers try to quantify and justify the returns on the investment in a social presence, they shouldn’t concentrate on vanity metrics, such as followers or impressions. Instead, they should and do look to engagement. Likes, comments, shares, private messages and click through rate, all present a better view of how your social pages are working for your brand. More than that, the conversations about your company, whether on your pages or in the vast socialsphere give you a more comprehensive picture as to what people think about their experience with your organization. By investing in community management and interacting with your audience, you are able to join or create these conversations, and give your brand not only a voice, but a personality.

Our industry has always been plagued by controversy over social media privacy settings, especially its real-world implications. Thanks to being primed by pop culture and real life, we all knew this was going to happen eventually. You know the classic “Has technology gone too far?” trope, but now we’re seeing it more prevalently in all aspects of our lives – security issues, political influences, Black Mirror episodes, etc. It’s hard not to worry about the consequences of a technology boom like the one we’ve had in the past ten years. Now with social media’s technological ramifications looming over our quotidian lives, we’re getting closer and closer to the world of Black Mirror.

Ashes to ashes, dust to snapstreaks.

While a eulogy might be premature, it’s safe to say 2018 has been a whirlwind for the popular social channel Snapchat. In February, the app rolled out a controversial update to a majority of its users. An update that, to say the least, was very unpopular among the vast global userbase the app had built in the 5 years it has been live.

Boasting 187 million daily active users worldwide at the end of 2017, Snapchat was touted as one of the most important social networks among its younger audience. It is a platform for individuals to both connect directly with their friends and consume media via the app’s branded “Discover” stories. Users share short (up to 10 second) photos and videos – or “snaps” —with their friends, either directly or through the ‘stories’ feature. Living for either the duration of the snap, or 24 hours, respectively, snaps provided an authentic way to both share and view authentic views into friend’s daily lives.

Today, Facebook announced the arrival of Trip Consideration targeting.

Facebook’s [already available] Dynamic ads for travel allow us to reach potential travelers – users who are likely to take a trip. Meaning, if a user was perusing hotels/flights but didn’t book a trip, Dynamic ads for travel let us target these users with relevant ads based on their specific dates, destinations or other trip details.

So with the addition of Trip Consideration targeting, our capabilities ah go a bit further – now we have the ability to target users who have expressed intent to travel, but have yet to choose a location. We can now intersect these users earlier in their trip planning process and delivering them the right message with the right creative. This drives users with the intent to travel into your purchase funnel.

Trip Consideration targeting can be layered in with existing targeting options and is available across Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network.

We know (on average) 43 days pass between the users decision to travel and the decision on where to go. Research also shows that users are spending more time travel-planning on their mobile devices, while also demanding personalization. “From inspiration to booking, mobile has become more important.”

So what does this really mean? “Mom” is interested in booking a family trip for Christmas break and browses travel-related pages, but hasn’t decided on a specific destination. At this point, we can push ads to “mom” promoting hotel or flight packages.

If you’re looking to drive users into your travel funnel with Trip Consideration or Dynamic Travel ads, reach out.