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Press Releases
DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE SEARCH ENGINE
MARKETING (SEM) STRATEGY
PARSIPPANY, NJ, November 28, 2005 - In our previous white paper, I talked about managing your SEM costs, I listed three critical steps to consider when you develop your marketing strategy, these are:
- Set realistic goals & expectations base your expectation on your overall site traffic, traffic to specific pages. Pages that will produce sales and availability requests as well as actual bookings and can be traced as a direct result of your investment.
- Know what proven applications are available to achieve each of your expectations.
- Know how to measure your results and how to place a dollar value on your returns.
The next few paragraphs describe some strategic planning techniques that have worked well for us and our hotel clients. Your first step is to sort out your SEM marketing budget items from your other marketing expenses. The most important difference between these expenses is the accountability of your online marketing compared to other more traditional marketing practices.
When budgeting for Search Engine Marketing your projected costs have to be in synch with your expectations. For example, if you expect 25% of your room sales to come from the Internet, you need a comparable share of your marketing investment. To make as accurate an estimate as possible be sure you know what percentage of your sales were online in the past, so you can determine how many room nights or what percentage of increase to expect.
By looking at your potential revenue return, you can begin to set your goals and expectations. Your most important goal is, of course, your Internet Marketing bottom-line ROI. What you need to consider in this process, so not to be surprised or disappointed, is knowing exactly what information your can measure from search engine optimization, email broadcasts and managed advertising such as pay per click. Search engine optimization will generate more traffic to your website, but the conversion rate is measured by industry averages. On the other hand, email programs and pay per click campaigns will track the search engine and keyword source of the shopper and in some applications the conversion rate from looker to booker. The final step in setting your goals and expectation is to compare industry averages to what internal data you have on your own website traffic, direct and indirect sales derived from your online distribution and group or meeting proposals. Adjust your goal up or down depending on where you match up with industry averages. Sample expectations might be (1) increase the website traffic by 20% over the next twelve months (2) Increase the conversion rate by 10% (3) Conservative ROI goal is 8:1 (4) 100% of the monthly pay per click budget spend with an average conversion rate of 30% of click through traffic. Of course, how you maintain your rates and availability on your Internet booking channel is crucial to exceeding your goal.
Now that you have set the parameters of your strategic goals, let's consider what tools and services are available to achieve these goals. There are as many online services to facilitate in-house marketing management as there are outsourcing services, so the initial decision is whether to attempt to manage your own Internet programs or to outsource. Most hotels and hotel companies do find it easier to contract a reliable, skilled service and manage their results as compared to maintaining the salary required for the right level of talent required in-house to manage all facets of Internet marketing. Always be wary when a website developer is offering marketing services or an Internet booking engine vendor is adding marketing to their services. Each of these services demand very distinct skills.
For online services, you can search the internet and sort through each services length of time in business, client base, pricing and most important inclusive 24/7 support. To find the right Internet Marketing services supplier, look at comparable hotel sites in different markets and scroll to the bottom of the page to see who is managing marketing, not who is the web designer. Or ask your friends and associates who they use for these services. Ask the marketing service for references, sample reports and their estimate on return based on your level of investment. When you contract an Internet marketing service you cannot go six months only to find out their services don't produce. These people become your marketing arm for the most important marketing and sales channel available to you today. The last tip in finding the right service is simple "Don't always go for the lowest bid because a cheap service will cost you in the end".
Once your goals are set and you have decided on how you will manage your Internet marketing you need to know how you are going to measure your success. You actually have three sources of data to draw from: (1) Your webmaster for website traffic (2) Your Internet marketing service for website traffic by search engine, links, emails and other sources as well as pay per click "bid gap" results, bookings, phone calls, emails and other precise results (3) Your booking channel results from such sources as the merchant sites, your brand site, web or email sourced phone calls and emails. For you overall Internet strategic results you need to aggregate data from all sources and measure the over ROI. This includes comparing your direct service costs, merchant discounts, brand booking and marketing fees and any additional advertising costs to your direct and indirect online sales.
This ROI analysis is important to your strategy, but you also need to look at the long term potential of your Internet strategy. You need to keep up with new channels and declining channels. This is the kind of information your Internet Marketing Service should provide or your in-house manager should stay on top of. The Internet offers a dynamic and accountable marketing channel and it is still growing. Consider the best way to market online to your market segments such as families, business travelers, young vacationers, group and meeting planners and so on. Observe what the brand or larger competitors in your market are doing.
When you set your strategy, don't hesitate to make changes as you go because I can assure you the Internet will be making changes from month to month. A good Internet strategy can grow your business exponentially or you can watch your business decline equally as fast.
About Lodging Interactive
Lodging Interactive is a leading provider of Internet Marketing Services to the travel and lodging industries. The company provides a portfolio of effective Internet Marketing Services to hundreds of hotels, resorts, timeshares and bed and breakfasts worldwide. We also offer hotelBLAST.com, a self-service email marketing system and MyWebsitePromotions.com, a self-service online promotions marketing system.
Lodging Interactive clients include branded properties such as Marriott, Sheraton, Hilton, Radisson, Crowne Plaza Hotels, Doubletree Hotels, Candlewood Suites, Best Western, Wyndham Hotels plus numerous independent properties. The company is headquartered in Parsippany, NJ and can be reached at 973-402-4970 or by visiting its website at www.LodgingInteractive.com or www.MyWebsitePromotions.com
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