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…

• Education
• Health Care
• Networking Solutions
• Banking & Finance
• Digital Marketing Strategies
• Science & Technology

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.

]]> http://www.copperbridgemedia.com/blog/afri-tech-johannesburg-summit-off-the-beaten-track/feed/ 0 http://www.copperbridgemedia.com/blog/online-video-marketing-getting-the-attention/ http://www.copperbridgemedia.com/blog/online-video-marketing-getting-the-attention/#comments Sun, 22 May 2011 12:21:46 +0000 Palash (Raj) http://www.copperbridgemedia.com/blog/?p=666 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…

• A recent eMarketer survey of the US online video landscape predicts that the volume of US video audience will climb up to 190 million by 2012 – That is approximately 88% of the entire online audience
• A much older poll by Prospectiv (2006) estimated that almost 85% of US travelers utilized internet for research
• Online Video Ads are now consumed and trusted in almost equal measure as the TV Ads
• Even Wall Street Journal is backing up its words that online Video is fast becoming the most effective online format for marketing
• A number of other reliable polls and surveys are in consensus that “Streaming video delivers nearly three times higher brand awareness and message association, and more than 100% higher purchase intent and online ad awareness than non-rich media ads.”

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.

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….

BEFORE:

AFTER:

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.

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-

• “54 percent of online business travelers and 48 percent of online leisure travelers who have web-enabled mobile devices have used the channel to look up travel-related information such as a flight’s on-time status, driving directions or hotel room information.”
• “18 percent of business travelers and 15 percent of leisure travelers researched hotel availability on their mobile devices
  in the past year.”

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.

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.

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.

• Globally, domestic business trips declined by 3.2% in 2009 while international business arrivals plunged by 7.2%
• Spending by domestic business travelers fell by 6.2% while spending by international business travelers plunged 14.6% in 2009
• Germany, United States and United Kingdom accounted for 41% of the decline in international business departures.
• The Middle East was the only region to experience moderate growth (4.6%) in business arrivals in 2009, mainly in Saudi Arabia.

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.

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.

• Websites designed in local languages are more user-friendly and has better conversion rates.
• Internet marketing in local language has proven deep impact.
• Advertises in local languages finds an easy connect with the tourists.

Keeping the above points in view,

• Travel and tourism related website should offer information in different languages.
• Information should take into consideration the cultural aspects of each region and language.
• Emails and newsletters should be drafted in regional languages, preferably.
• The staff employed by the industry should be well conversant with more than one language.

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.

1. Increased competition,                            and                                        2. Retaining loyal customers

Increased competition

As in any sector, increased number of players is creating increased competition among various segments of tourism and hospitality industry. To gain upper hand in the competition, players are offering attractive schemes and prices to the customers. This has opened various options for the customers and they are indeed trying to make the best of the money they spend. This is causing attrition of the loyal customers and they are willing to shift from old service providers to the new ones who are providing better options at the same or even less prices. The medium and small players may have to cut down on its profits in order to get the chunk of customers.

Retaining loyal customers

Increased competition has had its effect on the retention of old and loyal customers of hotel and tourism industry. It has become difficult for the medium and small operators to retain old customers. It is more difficult for them as their brand promotion and advertising budgets are often restricted and these will not guarantee effective return on investments. Though, retaining loyal customers require less effort than fetching new customers, it is equally easy to lose old customers if no proper strategies are implemented in this regard.

The solution is right here

Internet marketing is the solution that will address both of the problems, increased competition and retaining loyalty. Aggressive internet marketing strategies run with the help of experts can take the client ahead of other competitors.

Emails and newsletters are the best cost effective options to keep in touch with the old customers and keep them informed about various offers and schemes run by the client. These are also effective in reaching prospective clients and attracting them with the offers.

Internet is fast being utilized by the tourists as a medium to seek more information even before stepping out of the house. Prominent presence on the net by internet marketing and reaching out to the customers by newsletters is the solution.

This is the genre of tourist who may need consulting at any given time and at unusual places. And here is where the interactive travel counseling takes birth. Internet and mobiles are the two powerful and effective medium that can be a handy tool for interactive travel consulting.

Travel and tourism service sector still need to evolve in this aspect of tourism. Most of the agencies and tour operators often end up in drawing the tour schedule and arranging for stay and food. However, actual help may be needed in dire straits when no other source of information and guidance is available.

• Travel and tourism sector must consider setting up toll free numbers that can be reached from anywhere in the world and at any time irrespective of the time and zone a tourist is in. Providing around the clock direct contact with the agency from where the tourist started, that too in his / her native language will ease many troubles of the tourist roaming thousands of miles away.

• Making customized tourist plans and information available for internet access; and / or providing it on any portable medium like CDs and flash drives shall be very handy. Tourists can inform the agency in advance about their likely area of operation and seek maximum information about the same.

• Tourism must also collect the tourists who are willing to share their travelling experiences. Their information about the common problems faced at various areas they have recently visited may prove to be very useful interactive travel consulting source. Availability of contact numbers of previous visitors to the places where a tourist is planning to visit may be useful in seeking information in the need of the hour.

• Tour operators must also plan to setup consultation centers for the incoming tourists. Locals who had visited various places previously shall be made available to guide foreign tourists in solving problems and providing crucial information that common tour operators fail to give.

As more and more tourists are willing to trade the unbeaten path, interactive travel consulting is what is going to help them immensely. Tourism industry must gear up to for efficient interactive tourism consulting in near future.