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Interactive Marketing
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 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.
According to the latest customer loyalty report, the tourism and hospitality industry is going through a better phase in comparison to the recession phase that was intense just a year back. However, two factors are exerting pressure on the hospitality industry, and these are:
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.
You have been a perfect husband, a good father and a decent provider for your family. In real life you have helped people, but still when you die, you are sent directly to hell. You ask God why? And he shows you the extent of damage and deaths that were done through your affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a premier automated internet business that is carried out by many reputed bloggers and reviewers. But most of the times, when people venture into affiliate marketing; they conveniently tend to ignore the ethics that is required to support it.
Before venturing into affiliate marketing there is a set of questions that you need to ask yourself.
If any of the above questions represent a “no”, than you are doing unethical affiliate marketing. Ethics and business are cohesive factors for achieving success levels. If you have attained success due to unethical affiliate marketing, you would eventually fail; primarily due to two reasons, karma and loss of your brand name. The entire platform of trade is executed on the internet on just one word, and i.e. “trust”. If people who have been following you on your blogs and have been crediting your website as a good piece of work, then you are eventually demeaning yourself by being associated with unethical marketing.
Medicines are one of the prime examples that are being used in affiliate marketing in an unethical way. Drugs that have more side effects than curing the patient are being marketed aggressing by respected bloggers. These drugs play with the consumer emotionally by promising them instant weight loss or overnight acne cures. Some drugs cause adverse side effects like seizures, nausea and loss of consciousness and in some cases even deaths.
People have debated that if every sales person would try the product they sell, than there would be no salespersons. Well if their assumption is true that there should be official salespersons for guns and dope as well. There is no harm in affiliate marketing as long as you are ethically comfortable with the product. You would not like to get associated with murderers and scam artists in real life, than why affiliate yourself to such products online. Work ethically for your affiliate marketing, and you will have a sure shot success as your product would be genuine and would definitely help your consumer, thus increasing your sales and reputation.
In the end I can only tell this “Ensure ethical marketing and save yourself from going to hell.”
Digital technology and social media has opened up the market scenarios and have enabled marketers to succeed at high levels. On one front where the B2C marketers are achieving never attained success levels; on the other, B2B marketers are failing to optimize online efforts.
When a survey was taken for researching on B2B success, it was analyzed that 50% of them never blogged. Social media like Twitter and Facebook was not touched by 42%, and about 25% did not utilize Linkedln. Many of these B2B marketers did use of Adwords and other marketing and SEO related resources.
B2B marketers are somehow loosing the ploy of optimizing the web for generation of leads and enhancing their presence for prospective clients. The reason why most B2B marketers are struggling to find success is because of their one track ideology of revenue generation. 40% of B2B marketers have indicated generating sales opportunities as a major strategy, while 39% of survey participants were keen on traditional lead generation. Somehow B2B marketers are comparing their success with B2C marketers but are failing to gain the right momentum in online marketing.
It has been evaluated that B2B marketers are encountering problems while incorporating change in online marketing strategies. The difference between successful B2B marketers and their failing compatriot is the amount of involvement in implementation. In the survey the failing patterns of B2B marketers were evaluated and it was analyzed that 41% of B2B marketers felt that their need ended on generation of leads. Over 58% of B2B marketers met their sales team just only once during a month. Also, surprisingly there was 8% segmented B2B marketers who never met their online sales teams yet expected results.
Marketing and advertising has always been a prime mover of economic activity. They create a huge direct and indirect employment, a flow of money and initiate consumer activity that is a lifeline of any economy.
Owing to the criticality and necessity in business and revenue generation, marketing activity has mindlessly taxed the precious resources to achieve its motives and targets. The resultant is visible in the form of ruthless ecological destruction, depleting resources and energy crisis. The global concern for sustainable development has highlighted the need for going green in every sphere of human life; and that includes marketing.
Green Marketing for better future
Green marketing means deploying resources in a manner that reduces adverse impact on the environment. It incorporates processes that take care of sustainable ecological development and advancements in technology simultaneously. Digital advent is effectively helping ‘greening’ of marketing activity by changing the very fundamental methods of marketing. Green marketing can be effectuated,
• By utilizing greener mediums of marketing like internet marketing. The internet has been the key-initiator creating paper redundancy. Hitherto traditional marketing methods relied heavily on paper that gobbled a chunk of our green cover.
• By using mobile phones and cellular network to send messages directly to prospective customers. It can do away with the need of circulating pamphlets, brochures and other printed material.
• By using solar, wind and other non-conventional energy resources for illumination. It can reduce our dependence on traditional energy resources that are generated by fossil fuels or natural resources.
• By doing away with the use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials used commonly in marketing and packaging. Internet marketing can, instead, reach consumers’ homes without depending on these.
Green marketing from the core
Other than these outwardly methods of going green, the campaign will be effective and successful in a true sense only if it is incorporated at the root of every process including designing, manufacturing, marketing and waste disposal.
Internet marketing has already affected the marketing methods and strategies. More and more companies are adopting this eco-friendly method that rides on advantages offered by the internet. Consumer awareness program shall also be crucial in this aspect. Eco-aware consumers can opt for the product and methods that are less taxing on the environment. Large consumer preference for greener products will compel the manufacturers to adopt eco-friendly practices.
Times, when most marketers are having trouble getting the CEO’s understand and interested in search. Any CEO, in fact, would hardly be willing to care about search marketing, as the way he sees it are two separate subjects. SEM for him is a combination of marketing and technology, and few marketers are able to make them understand how searches are capable of affecting their business goals.
Marketers talking to CEO’s about brand awareness, search ranking and keywords hardly help, and end up as unable to break ice. Bang clear on target, and let him know and understand, if money isn’t spent here, there will be lesser products to sell and sales will eventually drop. Explain how search marketing brings in revenue at low costs, and how what you are doing will coincide with the growth of his business prospects. CEO’s are least interested in any kind of jingo, apart from the money if this can make. They need to see that searches are able to increase share holder value and help them make money.
Marketers having a direct marketing background effectively understand the relationship with sales. Search marketers will do better and help people understand and admit that the Web is the biggest direct-marketing opportunity of all time, where every move is traceable and constantly measured so that they can be improvised and optimized. This is e-commerce, you know the value of every new visitor, the conversion rates and revisit.
Most companies look at marketing as printing a brochure or going for a trade show. Make sure to help them understand that the virtual world has a concrete and a solid base, and you can look on how every person interacts on your web-site. Furthermore, make them see where they went next and how they bought from you. Let them have a direct view of this virtual exercise, and you have a perfect tool to justify every cent of the proposed marketing expenditure plan.
What every executive really wants to see is sales, leads and leads expecting to close. He is hoping to catch on the projected revenue targets at any costs, and any talk on brand awareness, positive sentiment, site traffic or ranking on search results will only put him off. If marketers can focus on relating touches that they have made to customers and sales will be the only way to persuade people to allocate funds. Set the map right so they are able to see clearly which route is more economical and valuable as well. After all, your budget level also requires sensible justification.
Web metrics systems, like the free Google Analytics to the expensive ones that help you understand the need to be passionately made use of. Search Marketing would come to be more useful if it were, eighty percent marketing and twenty percent search. If you don’t understand the marketing basis in SEM, it would be very difficult for you to show how effective your campaign would be.
