AN ONLINE MARKETING

TOOL

BADEN-

WÜRTTEMBERG

for tourism

Marketing Project MBA-IBC

Responsible team: Anna Sukacheva Carolina Villaseñor Hayko Voskanyan Dharamvir Singh A Project For: Prof. Dr. Ron Lennon

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Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................2

1. Baden-Württemberg for tourism...............................................................................................3

Best Cities to visit in Baden- Württemberg ..............................................................................4

2. Situation analysis: Online marketing and Facebook................................................................8

2.1 Online audience and trends in Europe .............................................................................8

Use of Internet for traveling .......................................................................................................10

2.2 Facebook as online marketing tool .................................................................................11

2.3 Analysis of current situation with Facebook usage. Benchmarks..................................13

3. Marketing process in general .................................................................................................17

3.1 Target audience and target markets. .............................................................................17

3.2 Differentiation and Positioning ........................................................................................17

3.3 Baden-Wurttemberg Tourism – services and offers ......................................................18

4. Facebook an online marketing tool ........................................................................................19

4.1 Facebook marketing plan ...............................................................................................19

4.2. Facebook tools to be used .................................................................................................21

4.3 Measuring effectiveness of the tools used .....................................................................22

5. Conclusions and recommendations .......................................................................................24

References.....................................................................................................................................25

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Introduction

Internet and its development brought tremendous changes in the way businesses are

done, impacting all industries and the entire world round. Based on the personal

experience, we see how it changes our behavior as customers too.

Fewer and fewer people visit offline travel agencies now, choosing to assemble their

own vacations by buying the different elements separately online. That helps people not

only to get the better price deals, but also read and share the reviews of vacation

experiences. That is why it is so important to carefully develop online presence and

strategy for businesses in travel sector.

For our marketing report we have chosen the topic of development of the region we

currently study in as a tourist destination. It is based from one hand on our interest in

the subject and belief that this region has high potential for further tourism development

and on the other hand on the exciting success stories of other cities and regions that

have managed to create absolutely another image and amazingly increase popularity as

a tourism destination. Australia can be one of such examples.

Amazing infografics about latest online influence on the travel industry (US

research based)

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1. Baden-Württemberg for tourism

Baden- Württemberg is an international state in many respects: it has mutual, political,

economic and cultural ties to various regions inside Europe and around the world. The

state was created in 1952 and covers an area of 35752 km2, making it the third largest

of the German states in terms of size. Also takes third place in terms of population,

countries such as Austria, Finland and Ireland have a smaller population than the state

in the southwest of Germany.

Baden- Württemberg: map and location

The state is rich in geographic, historical and cultural diversity. Baden-Württemberg

borders with the Alsace region of France, Switzerland, Austria, and the German states

of Hessen and Bavaria, its located in the heart of Europe.

The wealth of different historical traditions was lefts its mark, in palaces, churches,

cloisters, towns and villages. The southwest of Germany is characterized by a diverse

cultural density, its people, and its historical and political traditions.

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Thanks to its historically developed structure, the state has an immensely dense cultural

landscape whose richness lies in its regional diversity. State culture exists in the forms

capitals and residencies of Stuttgart and Karlsruhe still have some important institutions

as the State Theatre, State Gallery and State Art Gallery.

Support and encouragement of the cultural life is one of the constitutional duties of the

state and municipalities in Baden-Württemberg. Public institutions and private patrons

help keep the states cultural diversity alive.

Best Cities to visit in Baden- Württemberg

Heidelberg

This town is characterized by their university and a big romantic castle on a hill where

tourist will find world's largest wine barrel. The university dates from 1712 and has a

Student's prison. The old town is Bismarckplatz tourist can walk down the pedestrian

Hauptstrasse which is the main shopping street in Heidelberg.

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Karlsruhe

The "gateway to the Black Forest" to the south is an interesting city to visit. Karl’s

magnificent palace is now home to the Badische Landesmuseum and its legendary

collection, split into 14 departments. Some of the interesting routes that run through the

city are the Street of Democracy, the Baden Wine Road and the Bertha-Benz Memorial

Route.

Stuttgart

The city's tourism slogan is "Stuttgart offers more". Residence of the counts of

Württemberg in the 15th century, but rapid modernization after WWI and restoration

after WWII made it a technological and economic giant in Germany. Stuttgart is home to

five of the eleven state museums. The foremost of these is the Old State Gallery which

holds art dating from the 14th to 19th, but the state also offers the famous Porsche and

Mercedes-Benz museums.

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Freiburg

Wine town founded in 1120. Old Synagogue Square is one of the more important

squares in the city worth to visit, in addition, Freiburg Minster cathedral has been name

the most beautiful tower of Christianity.

Offenburg

This beautiful city is surrounded by vineyards and situated at the river Kinzig. Is near to

interesting places for excursions nearby such as Europe-City Strasbourg, wine route in

Baden, Black Forest open air museum and Europa-Park.

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Additionally to this in Baden- Württemberg one can find:

The largest lake in Germany (Bodensee or Lake Constance)

The most popular family leisure park Europa-Park

Second largest October Fest celebration held in Stuttgart

Amazing skiing resorts in the Southern part of the region

Wineries with the best German wines

Carnival held annually in the February is less by size only compares to Kologne

Well-known spa resorts of Baden-Baden

Tourism Figures

To support the decision of promoting Baden-Württemberg in Germany as a tourism

destination, there is several data that should be considered. Baden-Württemberg as a

choice of a tourism destination has increased by more than 40% in the past three

decades. In 1980, total visitors coming from other regions of Germany were counted to

7,343 million people; however in 2010 this number i ncreased to 13,178 million people.

The number of visitors coming to Baden-Württemberg from other European countries

rose from 1285 to 2892 million people. However, the most remarkable increase was in

tourists coming from Asia, which boosted from 70 to 247, almost 300%.

Incoming tourism (thousands)

1980 2000 2010

Total 9005 13399 16708

Germany 7343 11011 13178

Europe 1285 1676 2892

Asia 70 261 247

America 264 377 315

The comparison of prices between Germany and other European countries also gives

Germany a competitive advantage and a good option for value seekers: hotel prices in

Germany are relatively less expensive than in most other cities in Europe. The

average price per night in a hotel in the European Union is 104 Euros, in constrast with

Germany which is 94 Euros in average.

Hotel prices rates in Europe (2012)

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Source of Market: incoming tourism in Germany, top 10 countries (2012)

Main sources of incoming tourism in Germany are other European countries, as well as

USA and UK.

2. Situation analysis: Online marketing and Facebook

2.1 Online audience and trends in Europe

There are 2.5 billion internet users in the world currently. There will be 3.6 billion global

Internet users by 2017. Over 40% of global internet users are now based in Asia

Pacific, the second place in internet users is located in Europe with 21%. There are over

634 million websites worldwide and 2.2 billion email users worldwide.

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It is important to mention that the three top languages used on the internet in websites,

blogs and social media by users are English with 536.6 million users, Chinese with

444.9 million users and Spanish with 153.3 million users. However for our case we

suggest concentrating on the languages spoken in the top countries, which are sources

of incoming tourism for Germany: German and English.

Global Social Media Statistics

Nearly 1 out of 4 people worldwide used social networks in 2013. Facebook has over

60% penetration of all internet users globally with YouTube at around 44%, Google+

(43%) and Twitter at 35%. Facebook will account for 13% of worldwide mobile ad

revenue in 2013.

Internet Facebook usage in Europe

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Population

(2012 Est. )

Pop. %

of

World

Int-t Users,

30-June-12

Int-t

Penetration

(% Pop.)

Internet

% World

Facebook

31-Dec-12

Europe 820,918,446 11.7 % 518,512,109 63.2 % 21.6 % 250,934,000

Use of Internet for traveling

The internet plays a vital and growing role in the European travel sector. In fact, online

content is now a primary source of travel information, exceeding all other forms of

traditional media and marketing in Europe. Travel businesses are now connecting with

consumers through online marketing, social media and travel apps. Travel booking

among the incoming tourists to Germany is in 75% done using internet.

Booking channels used by incoming tourists in Germany, 2012

In addition, when travelers are taking the decision of their place of destination, the use

of social media is considered an important source.

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Nowadays the power of the customer has increased and businesses must advocate for

the consumer, especially now with promotion of online community members rate

reviews containing reviewer identity information more positively. Social media allows

greater sharing of personal travel experiences online, including images and descriptions

of places and experiences.

This way of interchange information between people facilitates the sharing of opinions

and recommendations amongst friends and relatives. 52% of Facebook users stated

that seeing friends’ vacation pictures inspired them to book a trip to that particular place

according to a 2011 survey by Skyscanner. 34% of European travelers reported that

their travel decision was influenced by the opinion of someone they only know online.

2.2 Facebook as online marketing tool

Social media has changed the way organizations do business online from 2000 to now;

companies are now creating departments separated from traditional marketing

department in order to develop this emerging area. Social media is becoming

increasingly accepted mode of communication for the Internet audience; the most

visited social network is Facebook, founded in 2004 and with over 600 million users and

presence in over 70 countries (Carlson, 2011; Techtree News Staff, 2008).

Facebook users can bui ld their own profile and write anything they want on, user appear

in the news-feed status, and every single friend is able to see them. Facebook

communities are the most relevant for marketers, through these communities,

marketers are able to identify consumer tastes and likes, which is essential for create

market segmentation and targeting and positioning strategies.

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Marketers can gain valuable information on community members’ profiles and from the

news feed statements that users post on their walls and pages (Casteleyn, Mottart, &

Rutten, 2009).

Popular Facebook tools via which marketing objectives can be achieved are:

• Facebook profile: A strong profile of the organization can be established on Facebook

with its vision and mission statement stated and clearly defined.

• Facebook groups: The following are the most important aspects that can be used to

attract consumers: the name of the group, the group topic and image of the group.

• Business/Fan pages: Fans will receive updates from the company as new information

is posted. The organization can regularly post information on the business/fan page on

upcoming events, articles, games, blogs, podcasts, videos and links.

• Sharing events: The organization can advertise its upcoming events on Facebook.

• Social ads and polls: Social ads can be placed on Facebook according to the age,

sex, location, workplaces and education level of the users. Polls can also be organized

on Facebook to obtain valuable feedback from users.

The main benefit of Facebook is the lower marketing costs in terms of financial and

workforce; social networking sites are a way for companies to market their businesses

and reduce their costs.

Moreover, the emergence of Facebook as a marketing platform has ushered a new era

of personalized and directed advertising. Facebook advertising has consequently grown

in popularity, Facebook offers a thorough and competitive tariff system, charging

advertisers for a per-click or a per-impression model.

Facebook is an excellent direct-response marketing platform, which can provide

immediate and direct answers to marketing questions and problems within the least

time period.

Through the interaction with customers, organizations can gain valuable insights and

feedback about existing and potential products and services.

While utilizing Facebook as a marketing tool will take extra effort, the payoff wi ll prove

its worth. The interaction will be one-on-one, and the network won’t be built overnight.

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2.3 Analysis of current situation with Facebook usage.

Benchmarks.

Analyzing market and benchmarking can give us better idea of where are we currently

with our online marketing strategy.

Current situation for the Baden-Württemberg Tourism is as follows:

Web-site for Baden-Württemberg Tourism http://www.tourism-bw.com/ has

Facebook Follow icons, which are already good visible. However this is only for

the German version of the web-site. In English version the icon also exists, but it

transfers you to the German language Facebook page

Facebook page itself. Wir sind Sueden - Baden-Württemberg (We are South –

Baden-Württemberg). Page has the same branding, uses Facebook built-in apps

At the same time the page of our chosen region has only 5,7 K likes and only 97

people talking about it

There is no version of the page in other language except German

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The Facebook Place connected to the page is Baden-Württemberg Tourism

company physical address in Stuttgart which is the reason of such low number of

people been there (49 only)

Low level of likes and shares, no custom applications used.

Benchmarks

We chose several key benchmarks for comparison.

Dein Bayern – Your Bavaria.

Bavaria is the largest and neighboring region to Baden-Württemberg. Climate and

recreation possibilities are also very wide. Munich is the main city of the region, while

the most famous attraction is October Fest held annually in Munich in September-

October.

As we can see, page has 155 K likes and about 3,5 K people talking about it, holding

one of the top positions in German Facebook statistics by places.

Heidelberg 4 you

Heidelberg is an old, but rather small city in the North of Baden-Württemberg region.

The most important tourist attraction is the Heidelberg castle.

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The page of just one small city has 66K likes, has application for events, is connected to

the Place page.

Tirol – Herz der Alpen. Tirol – the heart of Alps.

Tirol is the federal land in the Western part of Austria, one of the key tourism regions in

Austria.

Page has 145 K likes and more than 4K people talking about it. It is also within the top

places according the German Facebook statistics.

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Considering all the attractions that it has to offer we are quite sure that Baden-

Württemberg is not using the possibilities of Facebook as marketing tool sufficiently. So

in the next chapter of our report we will talk about possible ways to improve this

situation.

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3. Marketing process in general

3.1 Target audience and target markets.

Market segments for tourism industry are based on socio-demographic (age, income,

family status), geographical (country of origin) factors and behavior (reasons for

travelling).

We can define our target audience as follows:

Geographical origin: Germany, European Union, US and UK

Age: 30-45

Family status: families with and without children

Income: medium income

So our target audience can be defined as families or small groups of travelers aged 30+

with medium income coming both from Germany, other EU countries and US. The

reason of choosing this target audience is on the one hand the statistical data from the

tourism industry of Germany and from another hand – the specifics of the tourism

attractions of the region (medium price, many quiet, family oriented attractions, green

tourism).

3.2 Differentiation and Positioning

To differentiate our products we have to choose certain unique characteristics that we

can offer to our customers. Those characteristics from another hand have to be required

by our customers.

Currently web-page positions Baden-Württemberg as “The sunny side of Germany”.

After careful analysis of the regional specifics we can suggest to use following

differentiating points for the region tourism development:

Location. Region is located in the heart of Europe, bordering with France,

Switzerland, Austria. Easily reachable, it has excellent transport connection,

wonderful nature, good weather conditions

Reasonable price. Region offers excellent value for money ratio: according to

the statistical data for tourism the level of service and customer satisfaction are

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one the highest positions for Germany, while price level is considerably lower

compared especially with the neighboring countries like France and Switzerland

Variety of attractions. As we already described in the first chapter, region has

amazing variety of attractions to offer. Analyzing them, we can discover that they

are especially suitable for our target audience.

So we can position the region in terms of tourism as the best way to discover Germany

based on variety of touristic attractions, reasonable price and excellent location.

3.3 Baden-Wurttemberg Tourism – services and offers

Detailed information about cities, places, services and activities offered by the

region

Possibility to book hotels, buy services and tickets for the events directly from the

web-site

Direct contacts of service providers from the web-site

Special offers available only directly from the web-site (in cooperation with

service providers)

Help and advisory services regarding tourist possibilities in Baden-Wurttemberg

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4. Facebook an online marketing tool

4.1 Facebook marketing plan

After figuring out our target audience and analyzing our market position and

benchmarks we have to set up the goals for the Facebook marketing and create our

Facebook strategy.

It is very important to set all the goals in SMART format, so that they will be specific,

measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bounded. In our case, however we don’t

have all the inputs available to do that. That is why we will mention the key goals

without exact figures, while we understand that in reality it is very crucial for future

measurement of the results of our actions.

Goals:

Increase number of pages fans (likes)

Increase engagement of users

Increase reach

Increase WEB page visits conversion/sales

Strategy:

Multilanguage page content

100% answered feedbacks, questions and suggestions

Increase popularity of posts (in terms of likes, comments and shares) by posting

interesting and relevant content

Custom application: to attract new groups of customers and interact better with

existing ones

Cooperation with related communities, pages and businesses in Facebook

Targeted Facebook advertising: Side bar and News feed ads

Steps to reach the goals and fulfill the strategy:

1. Create pages in two languages - German and English – based on target

audience preferences

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2. Analyze previously posted content as well as benchmarks and market in terms of

engagement and popularity. Based on this, we can decide, what kind of content

is most appealing for our customers and most suitable to reach our goals

3. Assign a person responsible for interaction with customers: answering questions,

reacting on feedbacks

4. Assign a person responsible for page content. The person should create a plan

and calendar for content updates, benchmark and brainstorm possible content

options and ideas to choose the right and best ones; decide how often and in

what form the page content should be updated

5. Organize regular contests and recognize top contributor fans in order to increase

fans activity and interaction

6. Gather customer opinions and preferences by creating polls

7. Provide discounts for services to customers, who contribute to the Facebook

page

8. Award on a regular basis the most active users or those giving high evaluations

and recommendations on the Facebook page

9. Use the Timeline feature of Facebook to tell about the history of the region

10. Merge the Facebook page itself with the Place Page. Currently our page in terms

of place uses the physical address of Baden-Wurttemberg Tourism company,

while we suggest using the Baden-Wurttemberg region Place page, which has

already about 15 K likes and more than 19K visits.

11. Create Facebook Custom application to enable people do booking hotels, tickets,

trips and other services; to notify them about coming events in the region

12. Search and choose the related communities, groups, and business pages in

Facebook to cooperate with. Examples of communities are travelers interested in

family and green tourism in Europe; examples of business pages are tourist

pages of cities in Baden-Wurttemberg or Europa Park. Mutual likes, exchange of

information and content posting can help all sides achieve the goals and make

more business. Liking and commenting related pages also increases visibility of

the brand and business in Facebook.

13. Targeted advertising in Facebook. Having decided our target audience we can

create the targeted Ads and make it visible only within our target group.

Considering our goals and budget limitations we will be able to decide which

types of Facebook ads to use: Side bar ads are better to create brand awareness

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and cheaper, while News Feed ads are more effective to increase customer

interaction and cost more

14. Use the Facebook Ad Exchange option with the aim to increase the Likes and

total interaction with our page

4.2. Facebook tools to be used

1. FacebookSearch – to find people, groups, places and Pages that share same

interests and might be interested in our services or in partnerships with us . It is

possible to join the groups and pages, that are related to our company, product.

Presence there can help to attract new people to our page.

2. Facebook Ads. With Facebook we can specifically target certain locations and

audiences to promote our business. Currently it is possible to target ads by

customer locations, demographics, interests and behaviors.

3. Facebook Places. A location based functionality of Facebook: visiting certain

place user can check-in from his or her mobile device there, while all of his/her

friends will see this activity, which can serve as a promotion of this place.

4. Facebook Apps. Custom Application is a tool that enables additional features and

possibilities. In our case one of the interesting options that can be enabled via

this tool is hotels or services booking. Apps are also convenient for mobile users,

which increase in quantity each day.

5. Facebook Questions and Polls – to create short customer questionnaires and

polls, which will help us to get customer feedback, opinions, preferences and

increase engagement.

6. Facebook Contests

7. Facebook Events

8. Facebook Communities

9. Facebook Insights. Using statistical information offered by this tool we can

understand our current audience better, which will help first to set and then to

accurately modify if needed our Facebook marketing plan. The tool will be also

used to measure the results of our efforts.

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4.3 Measuring effectiveness of the tools used

Measuring effectiveness and results of our efforts is absolutely important to understand

whether we are on track with our plans, is invested time and money giving us the

desired results, which tools are working and which are not. And based on this continue

or correct certain activities in business.

Facebook Insights is a Facebook analytical dashboard. With the means of Facebook

Insights you can track the activity on your page, number of comments , which posts are

working the best. With the possibility to dive deeper in the statistical data we can also

find out which of the posts or activities have the highest results specifically for our target

audience. Accordingly, Facebook Insights will be one of the first and most important

measurement tools for us.

Likes. Increase of likes was one of the goals set within the marketing plan. Number of

page likes is easily done by Facebook Insights, however it is important also to analyze

which of our actions created better results in terms of Likes increase and which did not

work good. For example if certain type of content like videos attracts more likes, it is the

sign to post more content of this type and vice versa.

Engagement measuring. As we already decided increase of engagement will be one

the goals for the Facebook marketing plan. Engagement means activity of users

towards our page in terms of writing to the Timeline, commenting, sharing, uploading

photos or videos, mentioning our page. To understand our progress towards the goal

we should measure how the interaction of our customers with our Facebook page

develops over the time. This will include such important indicator as People talking

about This. Engagement can be measured using Facebook Insights.

Total number of Likes and People Talking About This are the only metrics that are

visible to any user coming to our page and thus are the indicators of how popular and

successful the page is. That is why it is extremely important to track them.

Reach. Total reach is the number of unique people who have seen any content

associated with your page during certain period of time. The development of total reach

over the time can be also tracked via Facebook Insights.

Link-tracking. This tool will help us understand which of the links work better and lead

more traffic to the web-site and impact the sales.

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Demographics. Using Facebook Insights you can understand the demographical

breakdown of your audience by age, gender, country and city of origin, etc. Based on

this data you can understand whether your chosen target audience is the one who

actually visits, likes and interacts with your page. If it not the same – it is the sign to

correct your previous decisions.

FacebookAd measurement: click activity. You can monitor how effective your ad

campaign is and make further advertising decisions based on it using Facebook Ad

reports. For the paid Facebook advertisements we would suggest the cost per click

payment

Monitoring

Besides measuring the results of the efforts we do it is highly important to constantly do

social media monitoring. It is about listening to the conversations, identifying their tones

of voice, reacting in the proper way. It is important both to hear our supporters that can

spread positive word of mouth about us, and detractors – those can easily endanger all

our actions with spreading negative opinions.

Monitoring is also about responding to customer needs, jumping into conversations in

the most proper way. Hearing your customer will results in knowing and understanding

your customer better, be on track of the latest trends.

Monitoring can be realized in many different ways: it can be done manually, using

keywords, tags, as well as with the help of special paid software.

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5. Conclusions and recommendations Facebook is really powerful and crucially important tool for majority of businesses

nowadays. It has big amount of tools and possibilities, however it is a very dynamic and

constantly changing instrument. For a business it means that it is not enough to ensure

presence in Facebook creating a page, profile or community, but also to constantly, on

a daily basis support, develop and control its performance. Without support and

development it can bring more harm than value, while accurate, thoughtful approach

can help to achieve fantastic results, especially compared with the amount of

investments.

Based on the example we covered in this report, we can see how even having created a

good Facebook page means nothing until you put significant efforts in getting to know

your audience and their needs better, constantly listen to it, which in online world

means 24/7. Together with this, there is a need of permanent monitoring and making

use of latest possibilities, new tools and trends, which can be valuable for your market.

All of this requires significant efforts, however is definitely worth doing, because as we

saw in the beginning of the report social media and first of all Facebook are already

playing one of the key roles in consumer decision making process. So there is no other

option for business in travelling sector else than to use this tool and if the business

wants to succeed – it has to do it effectively.

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References

1. Lennon, Ron. „Marketing Management“ MBA-IBC. University of Applied Science

Offenburg, Germany. Lectures December 2013 and May 2014

2. Amy Porterfield, Phyllis Khare, Andrea Vahl. Facebook Marketing All in One, 2nd

Edition

3. Internet world stats: Usage and population statistics. (2012). Internet users in the

world: Distribution by world regions. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm;

accessed 30th May 2014

4. Skyscanner Travel Trends Report 2012

6. German National Tourist Board, Incoming Tourism Germany, Edition 2013

7. Facebook pages in Germany rating http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-

statistics/germany

8. Facebook tools for tourism: http://www.travelagewest.com/Travel-News/Travel-

Agent-Tools/Social-Media-Tools-for-Travel-Agents/#.U3OAfsXEZ8M

9. Offenburg city: http://www.offenburg.de/?langid=2

10. Freiburg city http://www.freiburg.de/pb/,Len/225923.html

11. Karlsruhe city http://www.karlsruhe-tourismus.de/

12. Stuttgart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart#Landmarks.2C_sights_and_culture

13. Heidelberg http://www.e-heidelberg.com/attractions/

14. Australia as tourism destination http://www.tnooz.com/article/in-a-qa-tourism-

australia-reveals-the-secrets-of-its-facebook-dominance/