Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy #SESSJ
This Search Engine Strategies session painfully addressed the issues facing the travel industry and how online marketing has helped smart marketers overcome. World Travel Holdings case study was presented highlighting 3 best practices applied in the changing economy specifically toward paid search.
Those best practices included:
- Align offer to keyword search inventory trends–in this case the trend was focused on “cheap cruises”
- Align ad messaging with intent of keyword search and conversion
- Creating a sense of urgency on ads
From a Social Media perspective, it was emphasized not to ignore what’s being said, because your brand is being discussed- good or bad. The information is out there–it’s how you capture it and how you analyze it.
Some tips included:
- Finding demographic keywords–use MSN demographic tool
- Determine what the bloggers are saying–you can search your key terms in Blog Search
- Look at your website referral traffic
The panelists encouraged getting involved and suggested:
- It’s not about being everywhere – it’s about being where the conversations are happening
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Choose the platforms with the best chance of reaching your target audience
- Start broad and narrow based on results
- Watch your analytics for incoming traffic
How do you track the conversation?
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Use URL Shorteners that track clicks
- Kl.am is the presenter’s preferred
- Ow.ly is part of Hootsuite–good graphic for stats but frames the landing page of a link
- Correlate tweet & FB updates with spikes in site traffic–use this to sell the “C Suite”
- Alerts are always useful
So what’s the ROI? The following were offered up:
- Brand recognition
- Track revenue from Social Networks
- Happy Guest that talk about their experience
- What’s the return if you are ignoring
Facebook and Twitter tips were also shared:
Online Travel Continues to Grow:
Implications for marketers were outlined:
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