Mr Zen Ltd

Many people have asked us what effect the downturn in the economy will have on online marketing in the Travel Industry. As our business is purely focussed on online marketing for the Travel Industry, we have been thinking about it too.

Marketing Spend

Typically, marketing spend is an area which demands greater scrutiny when heading into uncertain times, but of course you can't simply cut back the budgets, or you'll take an even smaller piece of a shrinking pie. So how do you balance cost?

Our approach would always be to fall back to what you know - make sure measurement is in place across all of your marketing disciplines (off line included) and focus on those items that are really delivering return on investment.

Paid Search

Paid search is a good starting point - make sure that the terms that really drive traffic are still delivering a good CPA, and keep them up there against your competitors. Cut back on underperforming terms.

eMail Marketing

Use your database - eMail marketing is amazingly effective - use your existing database wisely to make sure that your existing clients and your enquirers book with you, not your competitors. This is simple, and cheap!

Closed User Groups

Drive offers through closed user groups - if your business is relying on delivering revenue from Fixed Assets, or your profit is all in the last few passengers - make sure that you are filling your allocations, transportation and hotel beds, but not teaching your clients to book late and pick up cheap deals. Closed user groups, special registrations for email and intercompany deals are a great way of picking up those last few crucial bookings...

Invest in Analytics

If you can't measure return on investment, you might as well throw money away. Measurement comes across online and offline disciplines and involves a number of techniques from call logging, web analytics, campaign tracking software and so on.

Conclusion

We at Mr Zen are agreed that during these harder times, we will all have to work that little bit harder to make our marketing spend stretch that little bit further - we'd be happy to talk to you about how we can work harder for you...