Social media has become an important marketing tool for destination marketing organizations.
It is an increasingly valuable means of sharing information and experiences while travelling (Munar & Jacobsen 2014), thus creating word-of-mouth about travel destinations and experiences. A great deal of decisions to travel to a destination comes from friends or relatives, and the role of social media is also in the increase when making travel decisions (Pike 2016).
Also, social media has given new and vast number of possibilities for companies, but also destinations to practice marketing and implement campaigns. It is widely known among practitioners that destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have their role in marketing, while trying to attract more visitors to a destination (Pike & Page 2014). Therefore, DMOs also have their role in marketing the destinations of today via social media channels.
The pace of social media has accelerated in recent years and changing forms. When travelers post their pictures and comments of their holiday in social media, this poses challenges in demonstrating value for DMOs as they lose control of brand image in social media to user-generated content (Pike 2016.) Also, Morgan, Hastings & Pritchard (2012) suggest that DMOs no longer can control the destination story or its image with social media, but rather it is the consumer who has the control. As a result of the rapid change and increased consumption in social media and other digital marketing channels today, making accessing information possible regardless of place and time, also the customer behavior and customer purchase journeys have changed dramatically, as the consumers are moving unsystematically along the purchase journey (Järvinen 2016).
Within the emergence of social media, practitioners in DMOs have gradually understood the importance of social media marketing and its measurement. According to prior research, however, there are no standardized methods for DMOs to measure marketing effectiveness.
Nevertheless, it is vital for destination marketers to know what to emphasize in social media marketing and what actions would result in the best financial benefits and more visitors to the destination. According to Agostino & Sidorova (2016), the performance metrics are difficult to measure due to their fragmented nature. It is not clear, which forms of social media should be measured and in what ways. Furthermore, Pike (2016) states that not enough research is
done to control the results of destination marketing around the world. Also, there is inadequacy in the evaluation of online activities implemented in destination marketing organizations.
DMOs tend to evaluate “what can be measured instead of what should be measured”, meaning that marketing tactics are not chosen according to social media marketing strategy, but rather according to a tool that is easy to acquire and use. (Morgan et al 2012, 75.) However, the question is how marketing practitioners know what kind of marketing is effective in terms of financial value. How do they measure social media marketing, and what brings the best results, the biggest audience in social media and possibly the biggest turnover to the destinations?
Therefore, it is vital for destination marketers to understand, what kind of financial value their actions create when doing social media marketing. This is also because destination marketing organizations are typically funded by public sector. Destination marketing organizations have pressure to demonstrate the extra value they create with their marketing activities. If they fail in proving the extra value, it is possible that the marketing budgets will be diminished (Morgan et al. 2012.) Furthermore, organizations need the allocation of budgets increasingly to digital marketing (Järvinen 2016). The same is likely to apply to destination marketing organizations when they must be able to prove the value of social media in destination marketing.
The idea for this thesis generated from the author’s interest in digital and social media marketing. First, an expert in the field was discussed with about the idea for the master’s thesis topic. Consequently, the topic itself was formulated with the thesis supervisor. The author has experience already in sales processes, however, an interest in developing knowledge in marketing and its measurement made the author to choose the topic.
1.2 Aims and scope of the study
Previous research has been made to explore the possibilities of social media marketing in increasing brand awareness, customer engagement and customer loyalty (Chan & Denizci Guillet 2011). Previous studies concern specifically promotion, product distribution, communication, management, and research (Leung, Law, van Hoof & Buhalis 2013).
However, there is not much research on investigating the social media effectiveness implemented in marketing management (Morgan et al. 2012). Therefore, a need exists to demonstrate the financial value of social media in the field of tourism. Also, when the financial value can be measured, it is easier to prove its value to partners and stakeholders. In addition
to this, there is a need for case studies focusing on qualitative aspects concerning the effects of social media (Zeng & Gerritsen 2014.) When it comes to the aspects of social media relating to owned, paid or earned media, in earlier research, there is also less focus on company’s effort (e.g. marketer-generated content) in owned social media (Goh, Heng, Lin 2013). So far, most research has concentrated on earned social media in customer-centric focus, whereas in some research, the attempt has been made to measure the effect of product characteristics (Ayeh, Leung, Au & Law 2012; Chang, Chou, Wu, Wu 2018).
As a lot of prior research has concerned the traveler’s point of view (Munar 2012), this thesis focuses on supplier’s perspective. Destination marketing can be implemented in various levels, namely in local, regional or national level (Buhalis 2000; Mariani, Mura & di Felice 2018), so in this thesis, the focus is on destination marketing organizations operating in regional level across Finland. This kind of research has been implemented in some countries, like Italy (Mariani, Mura & Di Felice 2015), but not in Finland. In addition to this, Usakli, Koc &
Sönmez (2017) have investigated the usage of social media marketing tools of DMOs in several European countries by implementing content analysis.
The goal of the thesis is to investigate how social media marketing is planned and measured, as well as to know how the financial value of social media marketing is utilized in DMOs.
Furthermore, a purpose of the study is to improve knowledge in how social media marketing is utilized in DMOs’ decision-making. Therefore, the research questions of the thesis are:
• How is social media marketing planned and measured in DMOs and why?
• How is the financial value considered and measured in social media marketing in DMOs?
• How is social media marketing utilized in decision-making?
The results of the thesis will contribute to current knowledge regarding measurement as well as the implementation of financial value of social media marketing. With the help of this study, destination managers will get insights into measurement and financial value of social media marketing in destinations and perhaps do benchmarking. In this thesis, the focus of the study is mainly on owned media, referring to the content that the DMOs produce themselves, as well as paid media, referring to the content that the DMO buys from a partner. Previous research on social media in tourism and hospitality has concentrated mainly on Facebook and Twitter
(Stankov, Lazic, & Dragicevic 2010; Hays, Page & Buhalis 2013; Jabreel, Moreno, & Huertas 2016; Mariani et al. 2018), because they have usually been the most utilized social media platforms by tourism organizations. However, results of the study by Usakli et al. (2017) show that Instagram and Facebook posts of DMOs create higher levels of customer engagement compared to Twitter and YouTube posts (Usakli et al. 2017). Therefore, the focus of this study is on Facebook and Instagram as marketing channels. They are used especially in B2C marketing in DMOs.
1.3 Key concepts
social media marketing Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, 61 defines social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. With the help of social media, users generate and share content in social network sites interactively, in the form of visual, narrative, or audio content (Munar 2010). When travelling, with social media tourists can tell about their real-time experiences online (Munar & Jacobssen 2010).
Social media marketing, on the contrary, is one of the marketing tools applied in digital marketing context. The advantage of social media is the possibility to do marketing in a cost-effective way. The challenge of social media marketing, on the other hand is the difficulty of engaging audiences when they are interacting with their networks (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick 2012.) Therefore, the knowledge of well-functioning advertising techniques is important.
DMO The main tasks of the destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are to manage the tourism system, to improve the destination attractiveness, and to enhance the destination performance and marketing effectiveness (Soteriades 2012), and thus, to attract more visitors to a destination (Pike & Page 2014). Destination marketing organizations are typically funded by nations, states, and cities.
Various stakeholders in the destination may have differing interests,
making it more challenging to make decisions concerning destination marketing (Morgan et al. 2012).
social media
marketing measurement Social media metrics and analytics are commonly utilized to measure the success of social media marketing (Peters, Chen, Kaplan, Ognibeni & Pauwels 2013). The most established evaluation techniques in digital marketing are KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). ROI (return on investment) is commonly used to evaluate the financial effects of marketing actions.
However, there are no unified methods for marketing measurement, even though attempts have been made to develop different kinds of measurement techniques. (Agostino & Sidorova 2016.)
1.4 Structure
This paper consists of sections based on structural guidelines typical of similar types of studies.
After the background and introduction to the study, the paper will proceed to theory section, introducing the reader the theoretical concepts and previous research. First, the role of destination marketing will be discussed, with a special focus on the differences compared to corporate marketing. Second, the concept of social media marketing, and its effects on marketing as such will be discussed. As social media marketing has its several forms; the concepts of paid, owned and earned media will be discussed in the following chapter. Third, how social media marketing has affected tourism sector and previous research concerning it will be covered. Fourth, the role of branding in social media marketing will be introduced. Last, in the theory part of the thesis the current state of measuring social media marketing and financial value will be discussed from the point of view of previous research. The methodological section of the study includes introducing the research methods – referring to semi-structured theme interviews as a research method, leading to analysis and findings, which are compared to the theory in the theoretical conclusions section. Finally, managerial implications, research ethics and suggestions for further research are presented at the end of the thesis.
2 MEASUREMENT AND FINANCIAL VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA