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The world is gravitating towards tablets and smart devices. The epicenter of communication and business is gradually shifting from the the PCs & Notebooks to wireless devices – Smartphones, Tablets, Netbooks and Cell phones. This migration is reflected in the increased adoption rate of Smartphones and mobile operating systems across continents and communities. The infographic below is a simplistic depiction of Smartphone market share between 2010 – 11.
The landmark Afri-Tech digital marketing summit in Nairobi witnessed a multi-continental participation and collaboration between the pundits and the entrepreneurs. Buoyed by the response and the support from all quarters, Afri-Tech is all set to host a multi-dimensional summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event is aimed at crafting cross-functional solutions for the holistic social and economic development of Africa – in collaboration with some of the most acclaimed innovators and strategists in the fields of health, education, science & technology and digital marketing.
Video: Thebe Ikalafeng sharing his views during the Afri-Tech Nairobi summit:
The emphasis of the Afri-Tech Johannesburg summit will be on creating pro-development collaborative models between the best brains of various industry segments – singularly focused on the betterment of human lives in Africa and around the globe – The summit will witness a cross-functional expertise and collaboration in the following segments…
The program guide should be out shortly. Early bird discounts and Afri-Tech Johannesburg registration details can be found on the website.
Will be back with more details on this exciting summit…Lots to cover considering the slightly unorthodox structure of this summit.
Market is an intelligent creature and seldom gives an ear unless there is lucre at the end of the tunnel. Videos have captured the imagination of not only the viewers, but also the search engines, and that is not fortuitous. Google controls the traffic flow and business sentiments of online shoppers for almost 90% of the global transactions, and if there is not enough reason for videos to have gained dramatic prominence in the online searches, then we can stop the argument by just mentioning that the video mogul ‘YouTube’ is owned by Google – So, the second most popular search engine in the world is now coupled with the most popular search engine – That’s a heady combination for any marketer who thinks on his feet.
Let’s get to some influential numbers…
Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011
A recent jump in the viewership and registration for the Afri-Tech Nairobi 2011 drives the point home. The inclusion of the speaker’s videos on the Afri-Tech website (www.afri-tech.com) saw a jump of more than 65% in the viewership & a spike of more than 30% in the registrations.
Reasons for success
Democracy is the doorway to freedom, but unregulated democracy is chaos –and that sums up the ‘freedom of expression’ on the web. Content repurposing, unlimited duplication, mechanical content simulation – In one word ‘Spam’ is still the second nature of the web and text based content is the most abused of all the formats. While realizing the challenge of ‘authenticating the authentic content’, Google had pushed the paddle on the ‘universal search’ mechanism somewhere in 2008. This was aimed at serving the needs of the right content in the right way. The most promising part of the universal search pattern is that all the content formats have the level playing field – So, if you have an optimized video for your resort in Bermuda, then it has the same statistical probability to rank up in the search engine results as does a well researched article on the same report.
That speaks volumes about the credibility and craving for online videos in general – both from a search engine’s angle as well as a customer’s view.
In the last week, we got 3 to 4 messages from our clients with a very similar concern – “Can you please explain why the impressions have been going down on a weekly basis for the YAHOO / Bing campaign?”. Very rarely we get to hear from our clients regarding the impressions and as most of you would agree that a major point of concern is either the conversion / CTR or CPC.
So, it took some new members of our PPC team by surprise – but our clients had reasons to be concerned with some of the impressions drastically falling from 7000 to 3000. The remarkable part of the equation was that the CTR was unchanged in majority of this cases.
Here are the before and after snapshots of one of the campaigns….
After a few rounds of analysis, it was discovered that the primary reason for the low impressions in both Yahoo & adCenter is the ‘Ad Serving Shift‘ because of the Yahoo & adCenter Merger. During this transition phase, the Paid Search results on the Yahoo domain is going to be replaced by the ADCenter results. As of last week, 30% of Yahoo’s Paid advertisement was replaced with adCenter’s advertisements. Gradually, all the paid search results of Yahoo will be replaced by the AdCenter’s ADs – until Bing is ready to administer the PPC campaign for both YAHOO and MSN.
An explanation for this YAHOO / BING transition was sent out to our clients in order to make the necessary diversion of budget during the transition period.
A few simple actions will take care of this transition phase hiccups for a YAHOO / BING PPC campaign….
(1) Transition of all yahoo campaigns to Bing using transition button in yahoo dashboard.
(2) Once the transition is done, you need to tweak the AD copies as in yahoo the heading is 40 character long while in Bing it is 25 character long. For all our campaigns, we had to rewrite the heading titles to adjust the length.
(3) Readjust all the keyword match types – YAHOO and Bing have different keyword match types
(4) Finally, the most important part – Migrate all the YAHOO budget towards the Bing Campaign until the transition is complete..
The above actions would ensure that your impressions are within an acceptable range.
The concept of traveling has changed and so have the travelers. Travel and technology go hand-in-hand, with majority of the travelers relying more on the intelligence of the gadgets more than ever before. The ‘I’ in Internet no longer stands for ‘information’, but it symbolizes ‘Intelligent’. Internet as the intelligent information network, serves as the center of all planning and procurement for travel shoppers. In the middle of this increasing appetite for travel, one thing that is diminishing is the ‘attention span’ of travel shoppers. This does not only imply that travelers have very little time, but also that they are wary of being hooked on to a particular message – because of the relentless bombardment of promotional materials from all angles.
Catching the customer at the right moment and right location increases the probability of conversion in this age of non-stop marketing. As the travel shoppers move away from the static media avenues like TV, PC, LapTop etc…, the only channel of connecting to them is through their mobile devices – Mobile phone, Smart phones, iPhone, Blackberry…
Image Credit: www.burningthebacon.com
Let’s envisage a simple scenario – You are traveling towards Disneyland with your wife and four kids and you know that everyone in your battalion will be competing with each other to get the best and most number of rides - your wallet is going to get a serious dent (sure, you are putting up a brave face!). As you get nearer to the dream destination, you receive a message on your GPS / iPhone – The message is a summary of all the discounts that you can avail of inside the DisneyLand by using a promotional code which you just received inside the message. You make a quick mental calculation and suddenly the finances look upbeat – You might be able to take $500 – $700 off your final budget. That’s not bad…Mobile marketing does get a customers’ eye – with extreme targeting
Caesar’s Palace is one first big names in the hospitality segment to utilize the mobile marketing menu – by utilizing the GPS mobile app targeted at visitors. Guests at Caesar’s can get all the on-spot information on their mobile phones – restaurant hours and rates, booking facility, list of performers in The Colosseum. Visitors to Caesars Palace can opt-in for this GPS app which will provide customized discount and offers to venues in proximity to the user. So, as long as you are staying in Caesar’s, your every movement will be tracked just to give you the best offers in your current location. That’s a win-win situation for both Caesar’s and its guests.
And Caesars i s not alone in this race to tap the sentiments of customers when they are most likely to take a decision. This trend is reflected in the exponential growth of mobile marketing and advertising – it is projected to reach $50 billion by 2014 from it’s current figure of $29 billion. According to a Forrester study-
In addition to the point-of-sale persuasion ..aka Location-based marketing, Mobile devices are also being utilized to create opt-in list for future Email Marketing campaigns – Which we will be discussing in our next post.
Gone are the days when travelers referred books, maps and sought first person information wherever they went. Today’s techno-savvy travelers understand that online search is prerequisite to stepping out of the house. Not only that, most of the travelers’ very conception of traveling and tourism generates with the help of internet search and website browsing.
A new study has revealed that 34% of the travelers visit search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing for considering vacation destination alternatives and various travel options. This is followed by the websites of specific countries with 23% of the tourists browsing through them for seeking more information. The third preference is given to online travel agencies sharing 22% of tourist enquiries.
Information Sources for Tourists
Preference and Share
Increasing number of tourists believe that internet is the best source of authentic information. Easy usability, anytime availability and sheer volume of information are pulling more tourists towards internet.
Online travel planning
Most of the tourists use internet for complete travel planning from reservations to bookings and shopping. Percentage of tourists preferring online reservations has grown more than 37% since the year 2000. As people become more and more comfortable with the internet technology, the incidents of online search are destined to shoot up faster than ever. Increasing number of travel and tourism operators are putting up their online presence with interactive websites. All this has been conducive to propel more tourists out of their houses confidently armed with relevant information.
Leisure travelers thronging internet
The percentage of tourists resorting to internet and search engines is very high among leisure travelers. About 66% of leisure travelers now use internet to plan some or the other aspect of their travel. It is a great jump from 35% in the year 2000. The number of leisure travelers seeking online reservations is reported at 56%.
However, search patterns and preferences of leisure travelers differ while selecting an airline or accommodation. Tourists searching for these travel services prefer to visit the websites of online travel agencies (42% and 31% for airlines and accommodation, respectively). About 41% of travelers are giving more importance to the websites of reputed airlines (41%), whereas such brand-specific behavior is not observed while selecting accommodation facilities. Only 21% of tourists intentionally visited reputed lodging and hotel websites. About 13% of travelers visited Meta search engines that compare fares for selecting an airline.
These statistics fortifies the fact that internet is indispensible, rather a preferred medium for searching information about travel and tourism. More and more tourists are going online for their travel and tourism needs. It is imperative for the travel and tourism industry participants to enhance their online presence and fetch more tourist traffic to their websites.
The graph of travel industry trends for the last five years show the key travel-segment changes that are reshaping the travel industry landscape. The mid-level and economy segments have seen the most growth. On the other hand, leisure oriented groups that form the core of travelling and tourism business has shown slower growth in some phases.
Business trips and related tourism, which is an important segment of travel industry has shown a certain decline since the last year. Following data supports this fact.
However, the blame of decline in business trips is generally fixed on the advent of electronic media in business arena. Video conferences, teleconferences, video calls and online chats have vanished the distance between the people and merged the globe more smoothly as a single marketing platform that is approachable anytime from anywhere. Also, electronic media has proved effectiveness in instant communication that is turning to be the key differentiator in business success. This has curtailed the business travelling need to the bare minimum.
How can internet marketing help?
This is the most proper time to give the electronic media the dose of its own medicine. Internet technology that has applied brakes on business related travel can be successfully utilized to put life back into it and compel more businessmen to go touring.
Reach out to maximum business clients: Internet marketing can reach a large number of prospects without causing a much dent in your marketing and advertising budget. Once your target client is reached, it becomes easy to undertake various tools that will help you to understand the business travelers’ pulse and preferences.
Explain advantages: You can explain the advantages of holding a conference at a venue. Emphasis may be laid upon the facilities and business related infrastructure available at the venue, personal interaction, network buildup, mass approach, etc.
Offer discounts: To pull businessmen out of their cubicles and make them travel across, emails can be sent to offer discounts in travel, accommodation, dining and other hospitality gestures. Banner ads are effective in attracting attention to the offers.
Offer memberships: Extend memberships of your agency and hotels to the business traveler. This may entice them to undertake travelling to avail membership benefits. Special benefits may be offered to business travelers if they travel with family and without business motive. Co-relating business trip with other tourism and travel types will benefit the industry and boost the number of business trips. Internet marketing can certainly accelerate the process.
Modern day tourists ride around on technology and rely heavily on the internet for seeking information and planning tourism related activities viz. traveling, staying, shopping and dining. Extensive use of internet by the tourists makes it imperative for travel and tourism industry to up their ante and embolden their presence on the internet to reach out to maximum number of tourists.
It doesn’t need a mention that tourists belong to the multilingual fraternity spread across the globe. While planning to boost internet presence, the industry players must be careful in selecting the language that will establish an instant bond with the tourists. If travel and tourism industry is thinking in English, it must rethink in other global languages.
Tourists speak different tongue
Latest survey has revealed that 75% of the internet users browse non-English pages and 98% conduct search in their native languages. As tourism and travel industry is getting out of the shadow of recession and hogging fresh positive look, the industry needs to cater to every little need of the tourist.
Attracting foreign tourists is important for any player in travel and tourism industry. The efforts of the operators must reach not only the local tourists but also it should pull out the foreign tourist by innovative approach and strategies. Internet marketing via newsletters and emails is very effective in this respect. However, all these methods will bear more fruits if conducted in the tourists’ native language.
Verbal or otherwise, language creates an instant bond with the tourists, makes them comfortable and creates a leeway for further discussions. Not only that, while the tourists are on the go, creating interactive travel counseling in their native language can prove to be very handy. Such user friendly methods can fetch more business to the operators and satisfaction to the tourists.
Tourists are observed to have more loyalty to websites and services offered in their native languages. Industry operators must consider this aspect seriously and switch over to multilingual marketing strategy.
Keeping the above points in view,
Laying more importance on regional languages and imbibing them in every internet marketing aspect will certainly take the operators closer to the tourists and make their business more successful.
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