Air France – Search Engine Marketing (sem) Campaigns
Essay Preview: Air France – Search Engine Marketing (sem) Campaigns
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The business background information of Air France and its interactive marketing strategies has stressed that the company would like to increase its business on a global perspective.  The management was focusing on the growth of the market share in specific to United States air travel market. The usage of online booking has been proven with a continuous growing figure that consumers were more favorable to arrange their travel schedules through online, such as booking flights and hotels. As the investment on search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns was the future direction and the spending on search advertising was also growing, evaluating the tactics should be taken into consideration in order to maintain a positive revenue and profit returns and keep the cost minimized. Based on this consideration, Media Contacts would have to formulate a feasible marketing plan to fulfil the business needs of Air France. A summary of SEM indicators of the search engine platforms has shown the overall performance (Table 1.). As illustrated in the article, these three search engine platforms have their own matching algorithm. Yahoo-US has the highest Return on Ad Dollar (ROA), while Google-US generated most of the net revenue, yet the return of ROA was listed in the second place. The strategies should be based on the ROA and made investment plan tailored more on particular search engine platforms accordingly. From existing data set provided by DoubleClick, the average of return on Ad dollar spent was varies on three major search engines, namely, Google, Microsoft MSN and Yahoo!. The keyword used to search under the same campaign named “Air France Branded” has been shown differently (Table 2.). For instance, “air france us” generated the average of ROA is 23080.96% at Google US; while ranking the first at Yahoo US is “airfrance.us” with average of ROA on 11479.22%. With reference to pivot table (Table 3.), the campaign entitled “Geo Targeted San Francisco” gained positive ROA on Google US in average of 352.55%. Alternatively, it was found that campaign entitled “Geo Targeted DC” with ROA in average of 8634.21%. It was agreed that Media Contacts should consider dropping and adding particular keywords with tailor-made campaigns applied to different search engine platforms. Four variables would be taken account on the KPIs, including, Return on Ad Dollar Spent, Total Volume of Bookings, Average Revenue Per Booking, and Probability of Booking. Data showing from Table 4. indicated that the campaigns had to be discontinued with negative Return on Ad Dollar Spent and zero probability of booking. Distinctive advantage of using Kayak is the platform focusing on travel products with searching booking availabilities on airlines and hotels. The forecast described from the article has been mentioned that the company was starting to boost the sales volume on monthly basis. The Kayak data provided is one-week performance. However, the data is relatively limited without any information on keyword and campaign like DoubleClick Data in details.  By comparing average cost per click, Kayak data showed that the result is $1.26 which lower than the main three search engine platforms with over two dollars per click. (Table 5.).  In addition, the average revenue per booking is $1106.38 in which higher the amount that Google- Global, Google-US and MSN-US.  The overall performance of Kayak could be considered as one of the marketing strategies in the next planning.
Table 1. Publisher NameSum of AmountSum of ClicksSum of ImpressionsSum of Net RevenueSum of Return on Ad Dollar SpentSum of Total CostSum of Total Volume of BookingsSum of Trans. Conv. %Yahoo – US882288.9545598933345836091.136570.1046197.826621161.30Google – US1745481.819210938556891391841.202530.43353640.601550859.05Overture – Global430084.76089917898727365788.842480.0264295.86372130.35Google – Global929549.8728951808326808603.091843.34120946.71797170.04MSN – Global145524.2511217139979133363.891054.2712160.36129112.20Overture – US347433.2511932317062488205457.18803.88141976.0728962.73MSN – US181549.810808170120165451.31115.7316098.4914071.68Grand Total4661912.55512849418686743906596.6315397.77755315.9239392567.34Table 2. Publisher NameCampaignKeywordAverage of Return on Ad Dollar SpentAverage of Avg. Cost per ClickGoogle – USAir France Brandedair france us23080.96%$0.43airfrance us18522.01%$0.15airfrance website18170.19%$0.99airfrance14720.73%$0.23airfrance.com11528.83%$0.29book airfrance11091.67%$1.50airfrance.us10711.51%$0.28airfrance airlines8571.86%$0.51air france com6829.43%$0.31airfrance usa6626.33%$0.26air france website5340.00%$0.36airfrance com4463.60%$0.43air france usa4364.49%$0.43[air france]3767.43%$0.44airfrance tickets3740.07%$0.89airfrance airline3644.98%$0.53air france airlines2869.21%$0.43airfrance fr2232.50%$0.22air france site2019.86%$0.37book air france1945.35%$1.53air france airline1525.14%$1.01air france deal471.57%$1.77air france434.61%$1.93air france germany261.01%$2.87air france uk161.23%$2.71airfrance.com/us137.28%$0.74flight to paris63.36%$2.71air france italy-10.42%$4.08air france ticket-40.69%$2.28air france spain-100.00%$1.07airfrance uk-100.00%$1.14air france deals-100.00%$2.56airfrance italy-100.00%$0.40air france ca-100.00%$1.55airfrance.ca-100.00%$0.42airfrance site-100.00%$0.88air france fr-100.00%$1.37airfrance deals-100.00%$0.96Air France Branded Total4537.49%$1.08Google – US Total4537.49%$1.08Yahoo – USAir France Brandedairfrance.us11479.22%$0.36airfrance,com9722.22%$0.15air france travel8106.29%$1.41airfrance.com3375.94%$0.87airfrance2761.57%$0.79air france airline1534.30%$0.52airfrance us1365.16%$0.57flight to paris1096.91%$1.14airfrance tickets715.18%$1.12french airline389.27%$0.89air france flights paris-100.00%$1.37air france co uk-100.00%$0.15book airfrance-100.00%$0.28air france webpage-100.00%$0.33airfrance.ca-100.00%$0.52air france website-100.00%$0.41airfrance.uk-100.00%$0.13air france,com-100.00%$0.40airfrance uk-100.00%$1.16airframce-100.00%$0.13air france flights-100.00%$1.22air france italy-100.00%$0.13airfrance.co.uk-100.00%$0.14airfrance ca-100.00%$0.50airfrance.com/us-100.00%$1.26air france luxury flights-100.00%$4.40air france fr-100.00%$0.42air france germany-100.00%$0.21air france usa-100.00%$0.36air france site-100.00%$0.27airfrance com-100.00%$0.71airfrance deal-100.00%$0.83Air France Branded Total1245.69%$0.72Yahoo – US Total1245.69%$0.72Grand Total3049.41%$0.92