Important Information from PPC (pay-per-click) Campaign when Optimizing the Web Site
Technological advancements in the contemporary have revolutionized how businesses contact their activities and operations. Since the dawn of the 21st century, enterprises have been striving to implement technology to help smoothen all operations. Notably, most organizations have developed their own websites, where most of their activities are carried out. Through this modern approach, various institutions can expand their entities to market their services and products in the global market. By owning these websites, organizations have the privilege of advertising in the online market, thus reaching a broader market (Šerić, Gil-Saura & Ruiz-Molina, 2014). The benefits of search engines and websites cannot be overstated. For instance, they help the business to expand its boundaries so as to reach more customers. This helps them to grow in revenues while using fewer resources. At the same time, search engines in these websites allow the customers to acquire the products and services from the comfort of their homes. For any business to compete effectively in the modern market, technology plays a central role in it. Southern Sun has always been at the forefront in implementing advanced technology to help them run the operations.
Background of the Organization and Analysis of the Issues
The Southern Sun is African’s leading group of hotels located in South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Tanzania, Seychelles, and Mozambique. Its services range from restaurants, accommodation, conferences and meeting halls, and transport. The group has over 40 years of experience in the hospitality industry, and its objective is to continue expansion in Africa and the Middle East as well as build a portfolio of successful hotel brands. To maintain its successful brand and achieve its objectives, the group has acknowledged the importance of digital marketing to reach a wider range of customers. They, therefore, had set up a website and invested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The excellent SEO strategy ensured good organic search engine rankings.
In 2006, the organization launched an updated website with detailed hotel’s information, well-planned information architecture, effective navigation, and an appealing outlook. The well-planned redesign was essential in gaining more bookings and gain a competitive advantage in the hotel industry. Equally, there was a need to move with the market and new and emerging technologies such as improved navigation that improved customers’ experience on the website. With the new website, Southern Sun’s objective was to increase the rate of bookings online and take advantage of international travelers and business-travel customers in their locations. Unfortunately, Southern Sun lost its organic search engine ranking in their previous website as with any website redesign. The loss of SEO ranking could be attributed to missing pages, content changes, and changes in protocol and domain of the website URL.
Websites attract traffic if the landing page has relevant content. However, the redesign needs SEO specialist to add and update the most recent information on the page. Thus, if the content is edited, keywords also change, and the website will not rank. In addition, Protocol and domain changes such as protocol change from http to https and introduction of subdomain such as www interfere with the ranking of the website on search engine. The web designer of the new Southern Sun website needed to put into consideration these important aspects of website redesigning and mitigate the loss in the redesigning process. The new website will take some time to achieve or even improve its previous Search Engine rankings. This could take at least three months before it begins getting substantial traffic. As a result, Southern Sun possibly lost bookings by potential clients due to its invisibility on the search engine. At the same time, it will achieve its original objective of attracting international tourists and business-travel clients.
Due to the potential losses as a result of low SEO ranking, Southern Sun had to think of innovating and unique of generating booking leads in their new website. The new strategy has to:
- Ensure a steady flow of bookings in their website despite low SEO rankings
- Generate traffic for analytics on customer purchasing behaviors and feedback
iii. Received significant traffic that will create trust from search engines and, therefore, achieve a high ranking on the Search Engine Results pages (SERP)
Important Information from PPC (pay-per-click) Campaign when Optimizing the Web Site
The split campaign gave the results suggesting that Southern Sun was more trusted in the local market than abroad. For the campaign components that included the Southern Sun brand, it was likely that the advertisement would get a click in the local target population. This explains why the local market posted a return on investment of 780% compared to 430% internationally. This information is of critical use in designing the search engine optimization. It implies that Southern Sun should focus its marketing campaign on creating a local South African brand first to establish its roots before embarking on an international market exploration. Embracing this strategy means that the hotel can establish its brand first and create a reputable name that can pierce the international market. This is a plausible possibility given its competitive advantage on PPC, as suggested by high-click results occasioned by local phrases in the keywords.
Another important piece of information is the discovery that offline marketing was largely about creating a need, while the search marketing campaign is more about meeting already existing needs. This information suggests of important strengths of each of these two marketing strategies that the hotel can exploit. In optimizing the web page, Quirk needs to pay more attention to landing pages, which proved more effective in attracting bookings at a rate of 3.45% compared to 0.38% of the search marketing campaign. It can also be noted that having phrases with local places such as “Cape Town hotels” would add significantly when optimizing the page.
Why does a PPC campaign give instant traffic while SEO does not?
PPC’s main strength is the fact that it drives traffic to your website instantly. The issue with this campaign strategy is that PPC can be designed in a focused way by specifying when your audience should see your ads, the location to be targeted, and even the devices that the ads should target. This is made possible by the multiple features available at the PPC strategy that allow selecting as many factors as possible in focusing your campaign instead of SEO (Kritzinger & Weideman, 2017). Normally, search engines take time to index the content before ranking it. Additionally, if using blogs, it would take considerable time before they pick given the problem of acquiring backlinks and email outreach that accompany such.
Importance of landing pages in a PPC campaign
Landing pages are essential in PPC campaigns, given the fact that search marketing largely involves solving an already existing need. This is Google’s focus because the engine wants to show the ads right to the people who are most likely interested in them because they want their needs solved. Another importance of a landing page is that, unlike the main website, the landing page does not have much but focused information that directs visitors to take action (Szymanski & Lininski, 2018). The likelihood of conversion of a click to filling the action form or calling the office is high. There is also an advantage of increasing conversations between the brand and the traffic in the sense that the marketer includes spaces for the visitor to include email and other contact information. The important insights needed from a PPC campaign are only possible if the campaign integrates landing pages. The page allows the marketer to identify the most effective marketing channel, the appropriate message that appeals to the traffic. Quirk can include a lead capture page, sales page, thank you page, and finally, an unsubscribe page to give the visitor freedom of opting out for the Southern Sun.
Conclusion
The modern era has witnessed some incredible advancement in technology. These advancements have helped businesses around the world to expand by reaching more customers through online advertising. Notably, business entities have taken advantage of these to improve their service delivery and attracting. In the wake of these technological advancements, websites, search engines, and pay-per-click campaigns are essential in promoting the usage of the company’s information on the website. For instance, Southern Sun has enjoyed an increase in customer base with the numbers growing to 780% and 430% domestically and internationally, respectively. This implies that the locals here trust the brand to use the services it offers. The increased traffic on the website’s search engines indicates that more customers find its services satisfactory. There are numerous advantages of having a website that allows consumers to navigate the organization’s services, including booking the hotel services online.