Know thy website

I'm noticing an interesting trend this week. People appear to be waking up to the importance of knowing how, or if, their website is working for them.

First, I had a call the other day from a client asking if we can put a counter on their site so they can know how many people are visiting their site. I explained to her that what she needs are website statistics, not a counter. A counter broadcasts to the world how many people have been to your website. It's the old McDonald's "10 billion served" mentality I guess. Website statistics, on the other hand, show the owner how many people are visiting, how long they're staying, what pages they're looking at, how they got to his/her site, etc...

Anybody who has a website that is charged with contributing to their livelihood, whether by selling widgets or vacations or hotel rooms, would have to be crazy not to do whatever is necessary to find out whether their site is doing its job or not – right? Well, if that's the case, I can tell you there are a lot of crazy people out there. Now don't be offended if you find yourself cast in this lot. My point is the vast majority (from my experience anyway) of website owners are mildly curious at best when it comes to viewing their stats.

In all the years I have been involved with producing websites, I have always tried to sell clients on website statistics. Yet, to my utter astonishment, virtually nobody was interested. And pay to get statistics? Forget about it! As of this week, I think we had less than a half dozen clients who actually cared enough about their web stats to pay us what we thought was a reasonable fee to get access to them. That's maybe five clients out of 50-some active web clients! How can this be? What do we need to do to get clients to understand the importance of their website statistics? I'll answer this a little later, but first let me explain a little about what to look for in a stats program.

First of all, at W.A. Fisher, we use google analytics. I really like it, and the few clients we have signed up appear to be impressed as well. We set it up on every new site we design and/or program whether the client wants to subscribe or not. I've always thought it was important for us to be able to keep track of how every site is performing whether the client was particularly interested of not. Anyway, what I want to know when I peruse web stats is: Who's coming? Where did they come from? How did they find me? What pages of my site interested them and what pages did not? And finally, is my website helping to close the deal or is it letting customers off the hook? To varying degrees, all of these questions can be answered by google analytics or another other quality stats program. I'll try to address each of these questions and how analytics answers them in a subsequent blog or blogs, but first let me get back to our dilemma of near zero interest in web stats.

After years of trying to sell the concept (and service) of website statistics, I give up.

From now on, we're giving it (google analytics) away to any client for whom we provide hosting. I'm so convinced that every web site owner should know their site's stats, I'd rather give them away than keep them all to myself. We made the announcement to our web clients yesterday. As of this afternoon, I have received nice thank you e-mails from two current analytics subscribers and daily users (who will now be getting the service for free) and one e-mail request from a client who wants to take advantage of our free stats offer. Oh, and then I also got a call this morning from a very nice woman who has noticed our Travel/Tourism Marketing Tips and wants to know if we might be able to improve her site's traffic (that she follows carefully on her stat program).

I'll take that as good Karma for tossing out the freebie!

My advice: if you don't have stats, get them. If you have them, pay attention to them. Whatever you do, know thy website!

WAF Launches new social marketing campaigns in DL

W. A. Fisher Advertising & Printing has launched two successful social media campaigns for Detroit Lakes accounts this year. The first, for the Detroit Lakes Area Tourism Bureau, was launched shortly after the first of the year and included Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr pages.

In less than two months the Facebook page has already garnered over 3,000 fans, and the fan participation on the page has really been remarkable.

The YouTube channel has tallied more than 460 video views.

W.A. Fisher also launched a new Facebook page for the Lodge on Lake Detroit which as already grown to 472 fans, with very strong fan participation as well.

Tourism associations and individual lodging properties have been among the earliest marketers to get on the social media marketing bandwagon. For good reason. Social media is the fastest growing media market with more than 175 millions users on Facebook alone. Facebook is reportedly growing at a phenomenal rate of 600,000 users per day!

Earlier considered a high school and college students' media, Facebook has since caught on with in a big with the lucrative baby boomer market as well. The number of users aged 55+ has grown by nearly 1,000% in the last year alone according to istrategylabs.com. Users aged 25-34 increased by 328% during the same period.

W. A. Fisher quickly adopted social media into our marketing mix for our clients. In the last two years, we have successfully launched social/viral campaigns for Iron Range Tourism, Giants Ridge, Minnesota Arrowhead Association, Orr/Pelican Resort Association and others.

It doesn't take a ton of computer skill or marketing know how to start a successful social marketing campaign, so some lodging properties with limited budgets may want to try setting up their own pages. However, if you want to get off to a fast start, you may want to consider hiring a social media consultant. At W.A. Fisher, we generally set up the campaigns for our clients and then hand over the keys within a matter of weeks or even days. This allows our clients to take control over their sites while keeping out-of-pocket expenses to a minimum. We have provided ongoing campaign management for a handful of larger clients.

So, if you haven't taken the social media plunge just yet, what are you waiting for?

Happy blogging!

Pay by the click, not the impression

My last post raised the argument that given just one media to choose for travel/tourism marketing, I would choose sponsored listings or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. That post further discussed how PPC ads tend to give the lowest cost per inquiry as compared to other media.

The second part of my argument is about as simple as it gets: it is better to pay by the click rather than paying by the impression.

Nearly all media is priced based on a cost per impression. The more people that will see your ad, the more expensive that ad will be. Just look at the cost of advertising on the Super Bowl. Whether one person actually buys your product, calls your business or visits your site as a result of seeing your ad is irrelevant. In the case of niche publications, the number of impressions may be low, but the cost per impression is raised to a premium because the audience is that much more likely (in theory) to buy your product assuming you're picking the right publications. Basically you are asked to pay a premium for being relevant to the publication's audience.

Now look at google adwords. Millions of people may see your ad, but you only pay for those people who actually click on your ad and visit your site. In a very real way, this represents a certain level of guaranteed success. Of course, getting a visitor to your site is not the same as getting that visitor to book a room or schedule a vacation, but what other media is going to guarantee you a specific number of inquiries? The answer is not many.

And, what about paying a premium rate for being relevant to the audience? Not with adwords (or Bing or Yahoo!). You actually pay less per click the more relevant your content is to the keyword(s) being searched. What other media gives you a discount for providing ads that are highly relevant for their readers or viewers? The answer is none - at least not that I am aware of.

So, while PPC may not have the sex appeal of TV or the creative splash of a good full-page magazine ad, when you need every marketing nickel to count, my money would be on PPC.

The best media for travel/tourism

There are so many media alternatives available for travel/tourism marketing, it makes me wonder - what if I had to recommend just one? Would I go with the high impact of TV, the niche approach of travel magazines, behaviorally targeted banner ads, e-blasts, SEO? Well, for my money I would go with sponsored search listings or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

As it turns out, this apparent oversimplification is not really too far off the mark for some clients. Many of our tourism clients such as smaller resorts or outfitters don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a mix of travel shows, print publications and online ads. They may have $5,000 or less to spend on advertising in a given year. For those clients, I would seriously consider putting all my eggs in the PPC basket.

In this and in following articles, I will explain why PPC is arguably the best media buy going for travel/tourism marketers.

First of all, look at your cost per inquiry. The cost per inquiry (CPI) is the cost of your media purchase divided by the number of people who respond to your ad in that medium. To even begin to measure this cost in most traditional media would require a fairly sophisticated system in place to determine which ads are generating which inquiries. For example, you may use tracking telephone numbers or fake extension numbers, or you may purchase several web domains to track web hits generated by specific ads or publications.

Assuming you can get across the tracking hurdle, you are probably in for a bit of a shock. The pure and simple fact is that most traditional media such as magazines and TV do not usually generate as many inquiries as you might like to think. Now, before I get any publishers out there too upset, let me add that you shouldn't necessarily measure the worth of advertising purely by your cost per inquiry. However, when every nickel you spend on advertising counts, cost per inquiry is very close to the bottom line.

To make matters worse (for print publishers anyway) the number of inquiries from travel magazines appears to have dramatically dropped over the last couple years. As a result, the CPI has risen sharply. In 2009, the travel magazine CPI for one of our tourism clients rose to $5.67 - more than four times the previous year. Average CPI for banner ads was more stable, but was still relatively high at about $3.50 per inquiry. Meanwhile, our CPI for a google adwords campaign came in at $1.06.

Needless to say, the client agreed to double the adwords budget for the following year!

Watch for my next posts which will dig deeper into the benefits of PPC advertising.

Can Customers Find Your Business on GPS?

Travelers are increasingly using Global Positioning Systems during their trips to find information including lodging, restaurants, activities and attractions. These locations are collectively referred to as Points of Interest or POIs.

GPS is available in two basic forms: stand-alone devices such as Garmin, Magellan and Tom Tom and mobile devices such as cell phones and smartphones. Stand alone devices have the data such as hotel addresses and whatnot loaded onto them. Cell phones and smartphones connect to this data via the internet. With either type of device a traveler can pinpoint their own location to within several meters and search for POIs by category, and the device will show them POIs that are near their present location. Smartphones such as Apple's IPhone appear to be eclipsing the stand alone devices because they can pretty much the same GPS functions plus full internet access, phone, texting etc... for a similar cost.

It is difficult to pin down the number numbers of such devices that are out there, but here are a few statistics to consider.

There are more than 150 million cell phones with GPS capability.

40% of smartphone owners use the devices for turn by turn directions while on a trip.

80% of IPhone owners use the devices for turn by turn directions while on a trip.

By 2013, there will be 300 million smartphone users.

So, the opportunity exists to sell lodging, restaurants etc... to millions of travelers while they are on the road.

The problem right now is that the devices are only as accurate as the data they are drawing from. If your hotel is not in the database, or not under the correct category or has the wrong address, potential customers cannot find you. This is quite common.

There are essentially three companies that manage separate POI databases that feed nearly all the GPS devices in the country.

W.A. Fisher Interactive can help our clients make sure their businesses show up in the correct locations, under the correct categories, with the correct contact information to give them an advantage in reaching travelers to increase sales.

Optimizing Websites for Mobile Users

The number of people using cell phones and smart phones for accessing the internet is growing rapidly. According to the Pew Center, "use of the Internet on mobile devices has grown sharply from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2009". The study further finds that 32% of Americans have used a cellular or smart phone to access the internet for e-mailing, instant-messaging or information seeking which represents a growth of 73% growth in the 16 month interval between surveys.

The problem is most websites, including most travel/tourism sites, are not designed for or optimized for use on such devices. These sites are likely to display poorly, be very difficult to navigate or not display some content at all. As a result, the user is likely to search elsewhere for the information.

To view how your site appears on various mobile devices, you can find emulators online such as this dotMobi site: http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php

W. A. Fisher Interactive can optimize websites for use on mobile devices to ensure our clients don't miss out on significant sales to users of such devices. After optimization, the web site essentially reads what browser is calling up the site and displays the content accordingly. On a desktop device, the user sees the regular full-screen web site, but on a mobile device, they would be redirected automatically to a separate site that has been designed for the most common mobile screen sizes and browsers.

Social Networking Sites Present Marketing Opportunities

Social networking websites are by far the fastest growing media segment, presenting advertisers with entirely new and innovative ways to reach potential customers and communicate with current customers.

Facebook and myspace, the two most popular social networking sites, had more than 2 billion combined visits in January of 09!

The micro-blogging site, Twitter, is quickly gaining ground with more than 55 million visits. See the attached chart.

With this volume of traffic, it is small wonder that advertisers are clamoring to reach this lucrative market.

The basic idea is get as many people as possible to follow your, tweets, blogs and facebook pages and to share them with their networks of friends. Social sites are beginning to compete with search engines as a primary means of finding information online. Travel and entertainment are particularly popular categories of information to share through these networks.

W. A. Fisher Advertising & Printing has created extensive social/viral campaigns for clients including Iron Range Tourism, for which we have created a number of local spokespersons to focus on a particular market segment. One of the tricks to social marketing is not to come across as a corporate sales pitch, but rather as an individual with a shared interest.

Our volunteer spokespeople are local people that have a passion the outdoors, golf, ATVing, skiing, etc... Ideally, they will write and submit all their own content and may incorporate videos, how-to demonstrations, tips, trail conditions or whatever their followers or "friends" wish to see.

The Iron Range Tourism social campaign has been very effective in expanding the client's reach in various niche markets at a relatively low cost.