Marketing is considered by many as a game of guessing, hoping, finger crossing and watching to see if there is a result, never really ever knowing what the return on investment truly is. The good news is, as the online pay per click model is being adopted by more and more channels, ROI for both intuitive and intentional marketing can well and truly finally be measured. Let's look at how to measure the returns and where the opportunities lie.
Search Engine Marketing or Price Per Click
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a very simple model where by you pay per click (PPC) for a set of keywords/search terms and the price per click is determined by how popular the search term is that you are targeting. A per day and per month budget can be set.
As a tourism operator, you may have been advised that in addition to giving the best possible service to your customers and ensuring that you love up your agents, you also need to ensure your online presence is attractive to both your clientele and Google. Just how important Google is to most businesses is interesting, a bit scary and is about to get even greater.
An accommodation provider has a long 'to-do' list to promote themselves online:
Get an attractive website that guests like and ensure it is properly built to please Google.
Add an online booking engine and integrated channel management to ensure that you are listed on major OTAs.
Spend time on your website each month to optimise it so Google ranks you well.
Mobile is offering the biggest shift and growth opportunity we have seen since the birth of the world-wide-web. Twenty percent of travel is researched via a mobile device and surveys indicate that this number will grow to 50 percent in just over a year.
And, distinguishing the difference between a mobile specific site, a responsive site and an app is important, as these are different.
Apps are custom-made applications that your customers need to download onto their smart phone to use.
Mobile websites are accessed on the web browser of a mobile phone. Learning the different types of mobile sites available along with the pros and cons of each can help you confidently choose the best option for your business.
1."Honey I shrunk the website": This mobile site is a copy of your...
OK, so it wasn't exactly a time travel experience, but compared to daily life in New Zealand, my recent two-week trip to California felt like a 'back to the future' experience, minus the DeLorean.
We've all read the statistics in both articles and through insights from Google that mobile usage is escalating at a rapid pace. We know it, talk about it, write blogs about it, and at Tomahawk we build only responsive websites or mobile-specific sites. But to actually witness and experience first-hand the explosion of mobile use in just one year in California is nothing short of astonishing.
Never far from hand, the "young 'uns" were snapping photos, poring over emails, Facebook and review sites even my 76-year-old parents were using their phones for directions, visiting review...
Last month I wrote about how sexy Trip Advisor's newly-launched search and book functionality is which is already proving popular with the travellers. This month they have announced yet another new feature - it is called TripAdvisor Connect.
At Tomahawk, we are thrilled that our booking engine ResBook is one of the chosen booking engines that TripAdvisor will be including in their initial Trip Advisor Connect launch. 210 booking engines from 48 countries worldwide were chosen for the the initial launch.
TripAdvisor Connect allows properties to have their own booking engine button on their listing page instead of just the Online Travel Agents (OTA) big fat buttons which lure bookings to their own sites. But before you jump to the conclusion that this is the...
Will Google's new Hotel Finder or TripAdvisor's recently upgraded rate comparison metasearch be the ultimate travel search and book website?
In my humble opinion, TripAdvisor's is certainly the current winner. Their new functionality is just damn sexy and makes the customer experience enjoyable while giving the confidence to book appropriately.
Why I love it
TripAdvisor offers superior functionality that allows you to search not only on existing customer reviews but also on price and type of travel, for example business travel, family or romance.
And then it gets even better and makes the experience personal with their integrated TripAdvisor Friends functionality. Throughout your search it allows you to see if any of your Facebook friends have...
