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RSSIf You're Not Seen, You're Not Doing Search
Here's the reality of search marketing. It's one thing to say "we're doing search" internally -- and it's a totally different thing to have the searcher realize that yes, you're doing search. The smart thing to do here would be to give Pedota and Ontario Tourism the retraction they're looking for and say I made a mistake (which I did). But this proves too good an example of the disconnect I see all the time; managing a search campaign to budgets, not objectives. I stand by my original claim: Canadian advertisers aren't clueing into the power of search.
Nick wasn't really in a mood to share many details of the bureau's campaign, but he did share that they're were bidding on thousands of "targeted keyphrases" and were using heavy geo-targeting to focus on their prime markets (Ontario and the border states). He said that's simply "smart marketing". I can't disagree. It makes sense to target in on your best clicks first, especially if budgets are limited.
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Where's the Money Going?
But in this case, are budgets really limited? Let me share some things I was able to dig up on Ontario Tourism's site. First of all, the tourist bureau is doing print (lots of print) and TV (lots of TV). The goal? To drive people to its Web site. Full-page 4-color ads are running multiple times in over 70 dailies and weekly newspapers and 9 magazines. One 4-color full-page ad in the Toronto Star would run about $54,000 (there's a certain amount of guessing here, as print rate cards are really a mathematical exercise in confusion and frustration). Circulation of the Toronto Star is 350,000 (on an average day). An excellent conversion rate for a newspaper ad would be 0.5% That means, ideally, 1,750 people would actually visit the Ontario Tourism website. Now, I have never in my life seen a newspaper ad convert this well, but even if it did, that would be a cost per visitor of $30.85. If the ad doesn't work that well, the average cost climbs dramatically. And you pay whether or not the ad works.
What People Actually Use
Now, courtesy Yahoo Canada and a recent survey, let's look at what actual travelers cite as the most important influencers in making travel plans. Search and Web sites are tied for number one and two, used by 51% of respondents in a recent survey. Newspapers and print? Only used by 7%. But yet, only 2.1% of Canadian ad budgets get spent on search, and 42% gets spent on newspapers and magazines. I couldn't get any specific percentages for Ontario Tourism, but one only has to look at their campaign page to see that search is very likely getting only a fraction of what's going to newspapers and magazines. And don't even get me started on the TV buys.
The Search Story
So, where is Ontario Tourism in the search results? As Pedota shared, they're only geo-targeting the prime markets, and then only for a 3-month period (April through June). Only 1 of the 7 highest traffic key phrases I found (using an Ontario IP) returned an ad or an organic listing for Ontario Travel (the site also hasn't been organically optimized). More specific phrases, like Ontario Summer Vacations or Ontario Wine Getaways, did return more ads.
But by bidding on specific phrases (even thousand of "long tail" ones) and not on the more popular ones, Ontario Tourism is catching less than 10% of all the people using search to plan a vacation in Ontario. And unless you're in the top-sponsored ad locations (which few of the ads I saw were) you're actually only being seen by a small percentage of those searchers (usually 10% to 30% of them) on the results pages you do appear on. So, according to 97 out of 100 people who are using search to find the official site for Ontario Tourism, the tourism bureau is not "doing search." By the way, you could maintain top spot in Google and Yahoo for all the top traffic phrases for less than $2 per visitor. Remember, that ad in the Toronto Star cost, at a minimum, 15 times that!
Again, let's recap. What's the purpose of the campaign? To drive people to the Web site. And not just any one -- THE official Web site of Ontario Tourism, the site most people are looking for on these key phrases.
And You're Spending Your Money Where?
Is it really "smarter" to ignore 97% of the people who are actively searching online to find you, so you can spend more money running ads in newspapers for the 99.5% of people who have no interest in your site at all? And the real irony here is that if people don't click on a search ad, you don't pay! Take a fraction of that budget from the Toronto Star and blow out the geo-targeting and time parameters and go for the high-traffic phrases. After all, there might be people in Saskatchewan or Nova Scotia that are planning a trip to Ontario. Or, perhaps they're planning their trip in September, or February. If not, it's not costing you anything. Try getting the Toronto Star to offer the same pricing model!
Is this really smarter marketing? You decide. The readership of this column includes some of the smartest marketers on the planet. Blog about this and give me your opinion. Maybe I'm missing something, but I've decided I shouldn't apologize for trying to get advertisers to spend money more effectively. After all, in this case, it's really our money they're spending. At least, it would be if I were an Ontario taxpayer. Something tells me after this column, it might be a good thing I live 2000 miles away. As I said, I'm not making any friends in Ontario.
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It's nice to see you here. It's exciting to see the big ad agencies focusing on search, and online marketing over traditional offline media. (Carat has the largest billings for an independent creative agency if I remember correctly.)
As far as the poor guys at Ontario Tourism... I kind of feel for the poor guys... Us smart and overburdened SEM people aren't perfect - even though we know what to do. Heck, my companies lead generation is dependent on online marketing... and they have two people -my boss and I focus on managing a couple of sites SEM (well over $1 million annually)... and managing outsourcing SEO, content writing etc...
And I'm motivated for the cold hard cash that comes in... :)
The guys in Ontario have so much to learn - and "it's just a job"....
Gord, the people you are going to have to convince, I think, are the senior management at Ontario Tourism to give up their outdated preconceived notions... let their people like Nick handle the SEM the real way... and send Nick to some of the SES conferences to watch Gord speak... :)
Great piece. Speaking from inside the agency world I agree that it's a no-brainer to pull dollars from offline media (print, as you say, in some cases, and other mediums in other cases) and apply to them to the hand-raisers in search. Keep fighting the good fight.
-Bill
Awesome advice for Ontario Tourism and any other travel marketer, and despite the confrontational approach, that was really what I wanted to generate here!
Your Google trends analysis was interesting, but let me show you another. You'll have to copy and paste the following links. The first shows the search trends for key phrases, "travel deals", "travel packages", and "last minute travel" for the U.S, and the second link shows the same key phrases for Canada. Compare these to yours.
What you will see is that both Americans and Canadians search first for packages, deals, and last minute travel, and as one might expect, these terms spike in the winter months, but the winter spike is more pronounced in Canada.
In addition to what you have suggested, I would suggest that Tourism Ontario would be wise to look into these search key phrases since most travelers, from my experience, search first for deals first, and then destinations.
Regarding their spend in the Toronto Star (or the Sun or Globe & Mail), not many Canadians (or Americans read them) and there is a lot of money spent in those publications for U.S and other destinations.
Safe travels and good searching!
David Miranda Recognitionmarketing.blogspot.com
http://www.google.com/trends?q=travel+deals%2C+travel+packages%2C+last+minute+travel&ctab=0&geo=US&geor=all&date=all&sort=0
http://www.google.com/trends?q=travel+deals%2C+travel+packages%2C+last+minute+travel&ctab=0&geo=CA&geor=all&date=all&sort=0
This is an excellent article and I am glad you maintain your position. The arguments you used to support the position are text-book perfect. As a side note though, having managed another Official Provincial Tourism PPC program (HelloBC.com) over the last few months, I can say that your cost per click estimate for Ontario Tourism for all travel-related terms at $2.00 may be wrong. It may go as low as $0.30, (if done right of course) which would make this case analysis even better.
Please continue to hit them between the eyes. I am a strong supporter of changing old thinking patterns and I think your strategy is the best option we have at getting the job done. You may not be making friends in Ontario but you stimulate passion in every one of us.
Nevertheless, as agency folk we aren't privy to all the day-in and day-out client side issues that undoubtedly affect their ability to do online marketing well (in our opinion). We've all seen how politics, turnover, legacy management, etc slow the evolution and that's only part of it.
Kudos to Nick for his comment and honesty, you took him to the mat and he is a gentleman about it - providing us with more insight to a situation that I'm sure many if not most advertisers are in. Trying and improving a little more each day. So much of the online marketing dialogue is amongst those of us on the "sell" side, it's refreshing to get some insight from those who fund the work we do.
Thanks for your thoughts. I'm more than happy to meet Nick (and will follow up to do so, although I'll probably take your advice about a public place). Perhaps you're right about my lack of professionalism, but as Dan Perry says in an earlier comment, if this is what it takes to open eyes, than so be it. Believe me, I've spent the better part of my life trying to fight "traditional" thinking that's keeping marketers from smarter marketing. I've found the only way that works is hitting them between the eyes. And I'm past apologizing for it. Was I unduely hard on Ontario Tourism? Probably. Did I get the point across? I think so. Will others take note. I hope so. Wishy washy (also known as being professional) doesn't really cut it when you're changing old thinking patterns. And that was the intention of this column.
The first article was fine, but this follow up as a justification of your stance was in my opinion long on facts and useful information and lacking in tact and professionalism.
In our (Ontario Tourism) defense, we've never claimed to be the best at search, from both tactical and strategic points of view, but we're improving. Our campaign does include all but one of the top keyphrases you mention. And while managing to objectives is a noble pursuit, we do work within the reality of budgetary restraints. I suppose by the time you did your searches, we had already hit our daily maximums for those terms.
I would venture to guess that those larger client-side companies at the vanguard (eBay and Dell come to mind) are staffed with people devoted to nothing but search armed with hefty search budgets, rather than a small team trying to balance search, display, email, site content, etc. But we're in the game and we'll continue to be there in an increasingly intelligent way, and we'll continue to improve.
Thanks for the dialogue. Much appreciated. I look forward to meeting you one day.
Nick