July 10, 2024
VERB Interactive, a prominent player in the digital marketing space, has built a reputation for delivering 360-degree marketing solutions for its clients, which range from ferry services to destination marketing organizations (DMOs). In a recent episode of Digital Nova Scotia’s podcast All Hands on Tech Katie Langton, Marketing Technology Strategist at VERB Interactive, shared insights into the company’s holistic approach to tourism and hospitality marketing.
VERB was founded in 2004 in Halifax and has more than 250 team members across Canada and in the US. The company prioritizes clients over contracts, and as a result, many of their clients have been with VERB for more than 18 years, including including Nassau Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
“We’ve been doing their holistic marketing, from website to social to SEO, for years now,” she said, adding, “So, we have that solid foundation of clients that have been with us forever.”
“We call them partners in the end because we want to help them succeed digitally. And that’s our commitment to anyone who works with us.”
VERB’s journey began with creating outstanding websites and gradually expanded to include a proprietary app designed to integrate various booking engines and applications used by clients. Their comprehensive service portfolio now includes website development, social media management, search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, marketing technology, and customer relationship management (CRM).
A key aspect of VERB’s strategy is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance efficiency and creativity. Langton described the implementation of AI-assisted caption writing within their social scheduling platform, which offers pre-generated caption options based on user input.
“You click your AI assist, it gives you three caption options and then, you know, our team can take a snippet more like molded to the voice and tone of what they want to post and then it just helps elevate that voice a little bit more,” she explained.
VERB also places significant emphasis on data management and CRM to personalize customer interactions. With the depreciation of third-party cookies, first-party data has become crucial, said Langton.
“All of this is snowballing into the importance of having a CRM and having your marketing contacts kind of up to snuff,” Langton noted. “So we’re making sure that our tracking is in place, we’re making sure that we can identify personas that we could a) retarget really specifically with ads, or we could pop in some personalization on the website to kind of help that personalization and that touch with your consumer.”
The discussion also touched on the evolving role of influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC), travel perks offered by the company to its employees and much more. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your episodes or here!