Growth Lessons: Hyper Growth Strategies from Traveloka

Introduction

Businesses today are enveloped with all kinds of dynamic elements. To survive in this ever-changing environment, it is essential to implement hyper-growth strategies with the help of the right marketing stack. Aurora Maryse, the head of Marketing Technology, Traveloka shares some hyperlocal growth strategies from a marketing technology perspective that helped Traveloka grow.

Technology is an irreplaceable part of today’s businesses. If you fail to recognise the importance of technology for your business, you are already fighting a lost battle. The south-eastern economies are emerging markets that are lucrative for entrepreneurs who want to start a business. Aurora joined Traveloka with a vision to make it one of the world’s largest technology company.

What is Traveloka?

Traveloka is a technology company that focuses on empowering people. With Traveloka, people can easily discover the world in which they live. Traveloka is known for providing a wide range of services related to travel and lifestyle experiences. The app makes use of the human-centred technological solution. Back in 2015, the company was a leader in the Indonesian market’s flight business and started with its hotel business. The app is a one-stop solution for all travel and lifestyle needs.

Traveloka’s primary focus is to provide the best user experience to the customers. For people working at Traveloka, understanding the problems faced by the users during their travel journey is an essential aspect of the business. Every problem that a customer encounters is a business opportunity to come up with innovative solutions. Currently, Traveloka has about 3000 employees and is operating in 7 countries, including India.

From a flight method search company, Traveloka has grown to become an experience discovery platform.

Growth Lessons from Traveloka

There are several key takeaways that a business can draw from the journey of Traveloka. Some of the critical growth lessons from the company are:

1. Embrace the uncertainty and know what matters

A growing business or a tech start-up must find the correct marketing technique that works for the company. Scott Brinker, a thought leader in marketing technology, conducted a survey to look at what kind of marketing technologies companies are using these days. About 70% of the companies were involved in these five things:

• Research and recommend marketing technology products
• Act as an administrator of the marketing technology products or solution
• Train employees and help them understand the usage of marketing technology products
• Integrate marketing technology products
• Monitor data quality within marketing technology products

Companies are not too much into performing data privacy as well as compliance reviews. Companies need to understand if they implement old technologies or new ones in scaling the business.

There are about 7000 marketing technologies, but businesses need to identify which ones are working for them.

2. Design for the future, ship for the foreseeable future

Retargeting is an essential aspect of growing the business. According to Martec’s Law, technology changes exponentially; however, the companies change logarithmically. Organisations are a combination of people and processes, and this slows down the rate of change. Throughout the organisational journey, it is crucial to have a long-term view in place.

The three major elements of a long-view plan are:

• Survive
• Enable
• Innovate

Surviving the rapid expansion in business categories is extremely important. Even when you are in your survival mode, thinking about the future is vital. A business should always come up with strategies that take it closer to the future. Companies should focus on closing the technological gap more strategically.

3. Structure follows strategy

Companies have an excellent collaboration between the marketing and the technology team. Campaigns are led by the marketing teams and guided by IT in most cases. At Traveloka, specific technology categories are owned by marketing, but they work closely with the technology team.

To bring in a structure and then develop a strategy, planning your workforce requirement is essential. At Traveloka, around 40 people work on travel technologies. As a business, you need to identify who your superheroes are. Today, businesses need an effective analytics capability to grow as campaign measurement is vital. Companies need more data analysts and data engineers to drive this growth. Once you give structure to working, you will move on to the next thought of what should be built next.

4. Marketing technology is everybody’s responsibility.

Business goals are a result of collaborative efforts. The entire marketing technology initiative cannot be driven by just one small team. You should find a mechanism of sharing the responsibility of implementing marketing technologies. Traveloka divided the duties into various groups or teams ranging from data, product, core platform, etc.

Conclusion

Everyone doesn’t need to be a product or a marketing manager to contribute to building marketing technologies. It is essential to understand the relationship between development, marketing and technology.