While the school year may be starting, it doesn’t necessarily mean travelling is over along with the summer. As many students may have to fly to schools across the country, so will their parents. When these individuals need travel information, they will often refer to mobile sites and applications, says a recent study.
According to comScore, a consulting agency, almost 40 million consumers accessed either travel websites or applications from smartphones during July 2012. This is 37 percent of the smartphone population.
The companies that saw the most visitors were TripAdvisor with 6.7 million viewers. Expedia brought in 6 million visitors, while Southwest Airlines gained 4.1 million visitors. Southwest was the top airline application.
In addition, the study broke down each app’s user demographic by gender. According to the report, TripAdvisor’s users were 49.5 percent male and 50.5 percent female, while Expedia’s were 45 percent male and 55 percent female. The highest female demographic went to Disney Parks and Travel while the second highest went to Travelocity. The highest male population went to Delta Airlines with Hilton Hotels in second.
This rise in mobile usage may be why MarketingEvolution, another consultant, has released a white paper advising marketing companies and businesses to allocate roughly 7 percent of their budget to mobile marketing to gain the best return on investment.
Currently, most marketers give less than one percent to the growing sector.
In addition, the source states that the mobile marketing is projected to grow over 10 percent in the next four years in smartphones only. This doesn’t include tablets which are steadily increasing as well.
Travel companies should not only increase their mobile marketing efforts, but also conduct targeted internet marketing campaigns toward their leading demographics, whether they be male or female. In order to properly do this, companies may want to partner with an experienced digital advertising company.