Where to find new customers online? SEO vs. Social Media

How and where to search and find new customers has been and will be a marketer’s quest since marketers exist. Cost of acquisition of new customers varies and in some cases (name Groupon) can be what makes or breaks a company/hotel etc. So like all good marketers, we’ve studied the impact of search engines, social media and reviews to find what works best to bring new guest.

We’ve given the sites two qualities, either they introduce new customers to a hotel or they are a step on the way of someone who was already searching for the hotel. While both have value, this article is about finding new customers. We’ve covered the real source of hotel bookings and what sites refer most bookings earlier which was purely based on quantity. Here we’re looking at quality.

Enjoy this little infographic for the results of the survey.

The information is based on the booking path of over 10,000 bookings what we tracked was if the site had been visited before seeing the hotel’s website or after seeing the hotel’s website.

Summary and where to market for new customers

What this shows is how search engines are used for their purpose: finding websites while social media sites are a source of discovering new information.

Hotel marketers should find ways to advertise on Tripadvisor and social media sites to reach new guests while using tools such as Google’s Remarketing and adwords to reach guests that are still shopping for hotels through search engines.

by Tony Loeb

Pingback: Where hotels should get new guests [INFOGRAPHIC] - Hotel Marketing Blog - Mirarmedia by Martin Soler | Hotel Marketing Blog - Mirarmedia by Martin Soler
Namrita

explains why branded keywords do so well on Search Engines!

http://www.wihphotel.com/mag/author/tonywihp/ Tony Loeb

Hello Namrita,

We’ve recently published a review that might answer your question: http://www.wihphotel.com/mag/2011/hotel-distribution-and-the-billboard-effect/

Tell me if it does. If not, let me know and I’ll try to write a new review that fully cover the Brand Keywords subject.

http://www.nuttakorn.net Nuttakorn Rattanachaisit

Can you disclose the methodology? I believe that searchers use different query in different stage of seeking information. Do bookings attribute from only last click measurement?

http://www.wihphotel.com/mag/author/tonywihp/ Tony Loeb

Dear Nuttakorn,

That’s a very interesting question and the answer is: We do not look only at the last click. We always look at the whole booking path. You can see an article here that give you some informations or various results we’ve found: http://www.wihphotel.com/mag/2011/top-referring-sites-for-hotels/

For this article, the idea was to look at the “decision point” where the user has finally picked his hotel. So even here, we’re not looking at the last clicked website/keyword/source. We’re searching for the “decision point” in the booking path.

Pingback: Where to find new customers online? SEO vs. Social Media | Awesome Infographics | Scoop.it
Pingback: Where to find new customers online? SEO vs. Social Media | MarketingHits | Scoop.it
Pingback: Where to find new customers online? SEO vs. Social Media | Internet Marketing Strategy 2.0 | Scoop.it
Pingback: Online Reputation and Social Media Management for Hotels: Recommended Readings of the week– September 9th | ReviewPro