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Kent Schnepp
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Schnepp is chief strategy officer for the search engine marketing firm
EngineWorks Incorporated, which is based in Portland, Oregon.
Additionally, the West Hills, California-based
Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association, which sponsored the
webinar, is developing a booking engine so consumers can book boutique
hotels in one place.
Schnepp’s strategies are:
1. Assess your company’s current SEM strategy and opportunity.
“Search engine marketing isn’t a silver bullet that
will work for everyone’s marketing campaign,” he said. “When you
consider what your online marketing strategy looks like, don’t
necessarily rely on what other people in your industry are doing. Every
SEM campaign should be customized.”
Therefore, hoteliers need to assess the current
traffic to their Web sites from search engines and how much of that
traffic converts to customers. Figure out what each conversion is worth
by multiplying the hotel’s average daily rate by the average length of
stay. Then determine the average cost per conversion or target cost per
conversion.
2. Generate seed keywords and phrases central to your company’s business and offerings.
To generate seed keywords, look at your site and the
keywords you’re already using in your Internet copy, such as “Belize
resorts.” Then, note the keywords and phrases in a spreadsheet and look
at the number of searches being conducted on those keywords during a
period of time. Give the keyword an objective score to determine how
important it is to your site.
Also, determine the competitiveness of those keywords.
For example, when one searches for “Belize hotels,” there are more than
9 million results, whereas a search for “Belize vacations” produces
about 877,000 results. “Belize vacations” in general is going to be a
less competitive search term than “Belize hotels.”
3. Expand your keyword list.
Google provides keyword list tools, such as “Wonder
Wheel,” which is a visual representation the number of searches on
specific keywords and phrases. And several other services, such as Word
Tracker and Dogpile, can help with this. KeywordDiscovery.com is a tool
that is useful for going after international business, such as the
European market.
4. Select your final keyword list.
To determine which keywords are most important to
keep, figure out what the conversion rate likely will be on those
keywords. Productive keywords have a high rate of search-engine traffic.
“For example, I would leverage ‘Belize luxury resorts’
over ‘Belize resorts,’” Schnepp said. “There’s more traffic that will
convert at a higher rate.”
5. Analyze your competition and develop a strategy.
Use services such as SpyFu, KeywordSpy and Google, which list competitors’ paid and organic search rankings.
Then determine which online marketing channels are
going to be most effective for the hotel company’s marketing campaign,
including search engine optimization, paid search marketing and display
ads, and social media marketing. SEO, which is labor intensive but
typically less expensive than paid search marketing, can help companies
obtain higher organic search engine rankings. Paid search marketing and
Internet display ads should be run simultaneously to achieve immediate
results.
6. Become a great writer.
“Whether it’s SEO, paid search or social media
marketing, you have to write effective ad copy,” Schnepp said. “You
can’t just go in and manipulate your Web site; it’s providing content
that’s useful to someone.”
7. Track everything.
Track your Web site’s organic rankings, page views,
traffic from search engines and time spent on the site. Also, track the
bounce rate, which is when customers search for a keyword, visited the
company’s Web site, then leave it. Track how you were able to get
eyeballs on the new promotion, including impressions from display ads or
paid search campaigns.
8. Test and optimize your campaigns’ performances.
When you’re looking at your traffic and success
metrics, any good search campaign will run multivariant tests on the ad
copy and landing pages. Once the data is segmented and companies
determine which ads are performing at a better rate, they can fine-tune
their marketing campaigns.
“You can make your marketing dollars stretch as much as possible,” Schnepp said.
9. Continually education yourself about search engine marketing techniques.
There are several useful Web sites to learn about
search engine marketing, including new technologies and methods in the
field. Engineworks.com publishes a daily blog about the industry, and
SearchEngineLand.com is a good resource, too.
10. Repeat steps one through 10.
Hoteliers must continually assess, track and test
their search keywords to achieve higher rankings and conversions for
their marketing campaigns.
