We’ve supercharged our Web Page Ads with a powerful new feature – Go here* for a quick demo
Since we introduced the Web Page Ad four years ago, we’ve watched the concept catch on all over the Internet. Who can resist an ad that functions as a virtual web site, sometimes even surpassing advertisers’ own web sites in terms of content and capabilities? Now we’ve added a powerful new feature, Web Page Ad Marketing Management, which allows advertisers to administer and update their CulturalTravels.com listings from one convenient online location. By clicking on the paper clip icon they’ll now find at the bottom of their Web Page Ads and logging in, they’ll reach a console that allows them to track ad views and click-through rates, update their Cultural Travels description, list and update their current trips, view profiles of travelers who’ve made queries and see the data travel agents see when they query Cultural Travels about an operator.
*To see a demonstration of this new feature, go to: www.Travelwebs.net/WebAdDemo Click on the paper clip. When the log-on page comes up, enter demo in the password space. You’ll immediately be taken to the demonstration CT Web Page Ad Marketing Management console. All of the features are self-explanatory and you’ll quickly be able to see how much power and convenience they give our advertisers.
A one-word definition of our advertising philosophy: Empowerment
As you read the items above and below this one, a pattern becomes clear: Successful marketing depends on being able to get good, relevant information and use it in a way that’s both helpful to end users and profitable to your enterprise. It used to be that only very big companies with deep pockets could afford sophisticated marketing research and campaigns. But the Internet and quickly advancing, relatively inexpensive computer technology have empowered small businesses to compete in arenas they would have never dared enter even five years ago. It’s possible to project a presence on the Internet that is all out of proportion to your actual size. Visitors to your web site are far more likely to be impressed by content and attitude than by how big they think you are. Somebody from outer space wouldn’t be able to tell how big General Motors is by visiting its web site, but would certainly learn quickly how it deals with its customers. As you look to find, define and defend your niche, take advantage of tools that can help you: Web Page Ads, the blogosphere, targeted e-mail and portal sites like Cultural Travels.
You read it here: Keep your eye on the blogosphere
“Blogs” (the word comes from a shortening of “web logs”) are personal web sites that reflect the passions and preoccupations of their owners. There are hundreds of thousands of them on the Internet now and their themes range from comic books and rare diseases to teen angst and travel. Travel blogs, especially ones that cover solo and small-group trekking by people in their 20s, are growing in number. Considering that they appeal to a younger demographic that’s increasingly shying away from such traditional media as newspapers and network TV, keep blogs on your mental radar – they may become a big factor in how you’ll influence potential clients three, five or 10 years from now. To see what travel blogs look like, here are two useful URLs: www.travelblog.org links to a database of travel bloggers. Next is a recent Forbes report on travel blogs at www.forbes.com/technology/2003/10/02/cx_cv_1002blog.html We’ll keep our eye on blogs, too, and report to you from time to time how they might fit in with or affect your marketing strategy
Method No. 32,987 for screwing travelers, Reason. No. 32,987 for using travel agents
Remember the joke about the guy who kills his parents then asks for the court’s mercy because he’s now an orphan? You gotta hand it to anybody who can look you straight in the face while he’s putting the screws to you. Case in point: Northwestern Airlines recently tacked on fees for travel agent GDS bookings ($3.75 per one-way ticket, $7.50 per non-stop), apparently in an effort to stanch its tide of red ink. Northwestern so angered travel agents, business travelers and GDS that it was forced to withdraw the add-on charges. Not to worry, though: Unfazed by having its hand in the cookie jar slapped, Northwestern immediately adopted American’s call center-terminal counter fees shifting the burden to the traveler directly.( American Airlines recently announced a $5-per-ticket fee on call center bookings and a $10-per-ticket fee on airline counter sales.) Moral of the story: If you have to pay a fee to book an airline ticket, or to stand in line at an airline counter, you may as well get the value added services a travel agent offers and pay them instead. Travel agents are the only people standing between the traveling public and the airline rip-off artists.
- Oy vey: IDC reports that the volume of e-mail sent worldwide last year amounted to 1 exabyte. How much is that? It’s 1 billion gigabytes (or 1 trillion megabytes). North America alone generates 31 billion e-mails daily. Unfortunately, 38% of them (almost 12 billion) are junk mail – spam.
- The Pew Internet & American Life Project (PIP) reports that search engine use ranks behind only e-mail as the most frequent online activity by Internet users. PIP says that 87% of the 1,400 people it interviewed who use search engines say they find the information they’re looking for “most of the time.” Google (used by 47% of respondents) was the most popular search engine, followed by Yahoo (26%) and MSN (7%) and AOL (5%).
- Fifty-one percent of Americans online hooked up to the Internet via broadband connections (DSL, cable, T1) in July, says Nielsen/NetRatings, the first time the 50%+ milestone has been reached. Narrowband – the old 56K dial-up modems – continues to decline, now accounting for 49% of all Internet connections vs. 62% only 14 months ago.
