Building bridges to consumers using search engines

As the official source of tourism information, Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs/DMOs) know all about the events, the attractions, amenities, the hotels and B&Bs in the community or communities they represent. The challenge for CVBs/DMOs is how to make this fun..interesting..challenging..relaxing.. destination accessible to the consumer who is online planning to travel.

Long gone are the days of “build it and they will come” to the CVB/DMO website. The consumer is already Internet savvy, overwhelmingly when relating to travel. But along with this comes lots of clutter and distraction. By using the search engines to their advantage, by effectively marketing via search they can bring targeted visitors to their website or their Fanpage on Facebook or both and begin to woo/wow them.

Two website metrics CVB/DMOs can use to justify marketing for additional visitors.
1. Twelve communities using visitor surveys found that more than 55% of website visitors made subsequent in-person visits.
2. Requesting a travel guide as a predictor of subsequent visits is in the same 50%+ range. Estes Park CVB in Colorado reported a whopping conversion rate of 77%.

To be successful marketing online CVBs/DMOs need to build a bridge or connection to the potential consumer of their “product”. The first consideration is the “why”. Why would the consumer come to their area? family vacation, girlfriends getaway, golf outing, honeymoon….. From the “why” which defines the need being met, we can derive the “what” bridges to build and encourage the visit.

The challenge is to express their “what” in the way the consumer would look for it. And this changes by season, by what is going on. For example for skiers, Boone NC is a different destination in January than it is in June. Savannah, leading up to March 16, has a different message than it does after St Patrick’s Day. Indianapolis during this year’s Final Four versus Indianapolis next year when it is not hosting the Final Four; to generate visits the message must be timely and satisfy an expressed need/desire for the consumer.

During a recent Internet marketing conference, I met with Google and we talked about how consumers are now searching. Interesting to note that 24% use one keyword….23% use two keywords…21% use three keywords…14% use four keywords…18% use five or more – now that’s a targeted query!

So let’s take this to an example, “B&B”…that’s pretty broad but it does begin to express the focus of their interest. The consumer then adds “historic” and “family friendly” and “coastal Georgia”. We see a narrowing of interest developing. With this 6 word query, this consumer has a strong likelihood – if they find the local CVB/DMO website – to make an in-person visit. What a target for those who are optimized to match these criteria!

For those others, many are using search engine marketing to let this consumer know that the area another CVB/DMO is representing is a close match for that search…to let these consumers know about their area as the best solution or an alternative destination.

Now let’s look again at the keyword “B&B”, which the CVB/DMO industry uses quite often. Our analysis shows that how we refer to this lodging can be different than consumers, so look how much of the potential audience you could have missed by using “B&B”. Let’s look at the other ways to reference this style of lodging.

According to Google, these are the average daily clicks for these keywords across the US:
• B&B – 496 clicks
• Bed & breakfast – 382 clicks
The best of the variations is
• Bed and breakfast – 9,662 clicks
Now look at the impact if you refer to it as an “inn” the potential skyrockets to
• Inn – 21,357 clicks
Conversely refer to it as a “small hotel” and the potential plummets to 14 clicks across the entire US.

So you can see that it very much matters which keyword you optimize for and advertise with. Search engine marketing and search engine optimization is all about “mining the demand”, not “creating the demand.”

According to the authors of the National Travel Monitor, “The strategy of targeting those who are predisposed to the destination appears to hold considerable potential to increase actual visitation.”

Search engines are a powerful marketing channel for reaching those potential visitors predisposed to the destination; expressing their interest via their search queries.

New study: 95% of Clicks from Page One Search Engine Results Page

A study on the interaction search engine users have with search engine results pages was just released. It reported that the 10 websites, surveyed received more than 95% of all their non-branded natural search traffic clicks from page-one results pages.

The caveat in this survey is only the click and traffic percentages for pages one, two, and three were scored. But the data captured over three quarters was extensive; nearly nine million queries sampling enterprise-level Web sites in different verticals.

The first take away is the results were consistent across all three major engines, which is to be expected as searchers use the search engines interchangeably.

Google provided the highest average page-one click rate, with 95.8% coming from page one, compared to Yahoo at 95.2%, and Bing at an average of 95%. For perspective, in terms of overall non-brand traffic volume, Google led the way with 74.3 %, meaning that Google referred 6.7 million of the total 8.9 million queries surveyed. Yahoo and Bing were neck-and-neck at 13% of each of the remaining referred traffic.

It’s worth noting that these figures are much higher than other previous research that put page-one click rates in the 80% range.

The non-branded natural clicks by page break out:
– More than 8.5 million came from page one
– 232,000 clicks came from page two
– 180,000 came from page three

The second take away is that if you are relying on natural search,
optimization priority should continue to focus on gaining page-one visibility on Google.

The third take away is that until this page one placement is achieved, paid search provides a targeted, sure-fire means to deliver your message on page one.

Study: iCrossing, “The Importance of Page-One Visibility”, February 2010

More than 75% Small to Medium-size Businesses Advertise Online

The downturn in the economy has accelerated the pace of online advertising for local advertisers. This has been captured by The Kelsey Group, a consultancy.

For the first time since 1999, when The Kelsey Group began tracking the advertising behaviors of small and medium-sized businesses through their Local Commerce Monitor study, the penetration of digital/online media has exceeded that of traditional media among Small to Medium-size Business advertisers.

The percentage of SMBs using digital/online media increased from 73 percent in August 2008 to 77 percent in August 2009, while that of traditional media decreased from 74 percent to 69 percent. Compare today’s digital/online penetration with LCM’s findings in 1999, when only 17 percent of Small to Medium-size Businesses were using the Web to advertise or promote their businesses

The Long Tail of Search is getting longer

As consumers become more experienced with search and number of websites, videos, etc that Google indexes into its search grows exponentially, consumers are now making more detailed queries.

The consumer no longer searches for cars, but now adds make, model, location and even price to get closer to an actionable result.

Or in the case of travel the search is not just Hilton Head, but condo, oceanfront, near golf, traveling with teenagers. This delivers a more manageable 3,390 results in Google.

Hitwise has recently released its research into this trend and is reporting, the length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, have increased 9 percent between February 2009 and February 2008.

Searches of eight or more words increased 20 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries — those averaging one to four words long — have decreased 2 percent.

Searches of two words comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.47 percent of all queries.

Hitwise - Percentage of US Clicks by Number of Keywords, Feb 2009

Blurring Boundaries Brand Advertising and Direct Marketing

Those of us who have been engaged in online advertising and marketing have long believed that direct marketing via search engines and on websites can deliver brand messaging as well as response.

This position has now received further support from a new executive brief by IBM Global Business Services, based on an in-depth study by the Institute’s research team, reports that to compete in the new era of advertising will require a fundamental change in media companies’ capabilities.

Introducing the study, the authors say that the distinctions between advertising and marketing have blurred, as new forms of communication combine the ROI-characteristics of direct marketing with the brand characteristics of traditional advertising.

To adapt and succeed, says the report, companies must move beyond traditional advertising to combine granularity of targeting and measurement with cross-platform integration, greater insights, open collaboration and digital processes.

The study identifies four primary trends that are blurring the boundaries between traditional brand advertising and direct marketing:
• Consumer adoption of new distribution formats – Consumer behavior has changed forever: They are more digital-savvy, willing to provide personal information in return for perceived value, and increasingly ready for permission-based advertising.
• A shift in advertiser spending – Spending is moving from traditional advertising toward measurable, interactive marketing. Combined with spending contraction in the new economic environment, this requires smarter advertising, and doing more with less.
• Digital migration of platforms – Traditional boundaries are fading, creating opportunities for innovative business models for content platforms.
• Emergence of new capabilities – Moves, by both new entrants and existing players, are driving new types of industry innovation, challenging existing business models and accelerating the pace of change.

This combined with the transition of the consumer from audience to participant

It all starts with the domain name

The domain name RealEstateSearch.com is being sold. This is a high quality domain name. So, let’s look at what impact a domain name like that would have on ranking in Google. And, how you could leverage your investment.

According to the Google Adwords traffic estimator, consumers type the keywords in this domain name “real estate search” 9 million times each month into the Google search.

If you bought these keywords, this would result in roughly 240,000 consumer visits each month to your website nationally. Based on the cost of keywords, this would be quite an investment.

So the question becomes how does Google “natural” or “organic” search handle the domain name “realestatesearch.com”?

Recently at a search marketing meeting the discussion was about SEO. Google engineers confirmed that Google does look at the domain name keywords as it factors the relevance of the match.

Google places the exact match site nearly always at the top or at least in the top 10 of search results. Type in the keywords from your own domain name and you will see this demonstrated.

For those who understand “subdomains”, this would also work if the consumer typed in “Boise real estate search” and the domain was localized using subdomains; so the domain name would read: boise.realestatesearch.com.

There would be no argument that being at the top of the search result is one of the challenges of search engine optimization. Because, 89% of Google clicks occur on that first page.

So with the right search engine optimization you can feel good that you made it to page one. Let me close by telling you what research into actual search records showed could happen if you made it to the top spot. You could experience as much as a 1,400% in traffic by ranking #1.

My counsel is to pick your domain name carefully so to match the keywords your targeted audience would most likely be using. And use more than one domain name to target your potential clients more specifically.