Interview with Ivan Imhoff, online strategy and marketing consultant

EFT Berlin 2006 Special: By EyeforTravel.com Correspondent

CGC is the illustration that you cannot put your eggs in one basket, says Ivan Imhoff, online strategy and marketing consultant.

“It targets different users in different stages of their product/brand research phase. It is a complimentary tool that allows companies to diversify their marketing expenditure and reach a broader range of consumers,” he says.

“CGC is at its infancy, that you can target user like other marketing tools is yet to be proven, some have and more will learn, but to date, targeting natural search other than branded keywords isn’t obvious,” Imhoff says. “If not part of an integrated and calculate strategic road map, it will probably be poorly done and a waste of time and money. But because it is young and fresh you need to go through the learning curve and come out the other end all the wiser.”

In an interview with EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta, Imhoff spoke about balancing sales and marketing strategy, search marketing etc. Excerpts:

What major developments have you witnessed as far as balancing sales and marketing strategy across all channels is concerned?

This will depend on the companies, traditional hotel companies still lag far behind the airline companies and 3rd party distributors, obviously.

But in hotel companies I will risk to say that, in general they haven’t, they haven’t truly developed an integrated strategy across online and offline channels, nor amongst the online marketing channels themselves. Many hotel companies want to do brand development, but use tactical activities to do it. Legacy systems, absence of data consolidation or even two way data management do not simplify the exercise. All the more, internal structures are still quite conflicting, not knowing who should take the lead or where ownership resides. The end result is a lack of integrated strategy, knowing what activity has what objective.  It is still a bit, the old meeting the new and requiring still a bit more evolution.

How do you ensure that online and offline marketing efforts complement each other? What is critical in planning such initiatives?

Data, time and experience. Data is required to know your customers and their historical buying behavior, geographical location, average spend, lead times, etc, but that in itself says nothing. Time, because you need to understand that today, companies have people that buy  their  products, others that are aware of their products, others that have heard of their  brand and others that don’t know your brand. Brands need to  address them all over time, so that these potential customers eventually all know and buy from your brand. You need experience, a bit of “savoir faire” because each company is different and finding the right chemical mix to fuse together offline and online strategy and implement the right priorities is a delicate one.

The first step in an integrated strategy is to quantify the potential the people/customers/future customers have. Then implement a strategy, allocate resource and have a priority plan to address the overall idea of getting people that least know you or your brand and take them down a path, in time, that will lead them to your products. Depending on the affinity these different segments have with your products and brand, it will take more time and marketing communication to get them to you. But only by doing this in a solid strategy can you ensure the healthy and profitable flow of customers and the development of your brand and its values. What is critical to this success is internal cohesion of decision makers and a very strict line of priorities.

With more companies advertising on search engines, bid prices rising and there being saturation of high-volume keywords, in this scenario, what according to you is the key to search marketing?

Would a Marriott or Radisson brand want to bid on “hotel London”? The answer is “no” if you thought “yes”, I would love to hear your take. Regardless, the reason I believe it is a mistake is that these two brands are 4 star properties. 90 percent of queries for “London hotel” are from people that will buy 3 star properties and below.

Volume keywords are generally not quality keywords. The trend, the direction of all this is specialization, targeting and keyword management. The level of effort is increasing exponentially to manage international large scale PPC campaigns. The new rules and remuneration guidelines from search engines do not encourage search agencies to help with PPC either, which by the way is a reason for them to refocus on natural search, their profit margins on PPC are shrinking… quickly.

There are solutions to maximizing and spreading your efforts on PPC and still do it at a good, not great ROI. But this requires more specialized resources, experimentation, and in many cases requires that big travel companies flex some of their trademark and brand utilization guidelines to work with certain affiliates and partners. Many companies prefer the old way, bid hard on the big words, other take for the hills and go back to offline, others yet do other online campaigns, but they are not sure for what or why.

Travel meta-search engines say from a supplier perspective it’s all about incremental customers, no point re-cycling a branded customer back to a brand site at a cost. What is your viewpoint?

It sounds like a search for legitimacy and personal meaning. Of course that is what they would say, it is the only way to substantiate the business model. My first question is define and quantify your incremental contribution. That is a trick question, you can’t, you can estimate and guess at best. I had heard of branded customers but really never thought they existed. In the US, people have over 9 travel related loyalty cards, in the UK 4 or 5. Meta search engines, depending on which ones can be excellent in increasing your product and brand reach, it is but another tool in your arsenal. But they are playing on a crowded field, and one that does not promote your brand.

So the answer, at least for me, is simple: If the commissions you pay to them, if that cost of sale is higher than another online marketing channel that has higher brand value, should you not be marketing on those channels yourself to capture those sales?

On pay per click advertising you had stated that over the next 9-15 months the outlook is reasonably positive. Do you still think so?

Yes, it is harder, it is more resource intensive, but, if you make the right decisions in terms of financials, branding, financial allocations and people combined with excellent marketing offers and customer booking pattern intelligence. It works.

You recently decided to move on from Hilton. What is going to be your focus going forward?

The Internet and travel marketing and distribution sector is a passion, but large companies are still too slow with too many internal organisational conflicts and struggles. Online marketing is still the wild wild west where those people that are risk takers can rattle competitors cages.

I now independently search for projects that are challenging, where a sense of business urgency allows for marketing innovation, outside the box thinking and hardcore strategy planning. Online is the only place where you can redefine your business practices over night and make headlines for new ideas. I enjoy the concept of building bigger and better mouse traps, its all about conversion, making profits and having fun doing it, while at the same time bringing an outside perspectives to companies where the head doesn’t know what tune the feet are dancing to.