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.