Introduction
The airline industry had long been using online service to sell tickets. Online ticket sales have continued to grow at about 10-15% every year. Air France has been among the early users of online ticket selling and has benefitted greatly from it. The airline has enjoyed some growth and respectable performance in spite of the crises within and outside the industry.
The Internet and the Airline Industry
Since the early years of the internet, the airline industry has been among the first to embrace the power of the internet. It had been among the first industries to begin selling tickets online. The impact of the internet seems to have been most heavy on travel agencies, especially those that have not gone online. Most of the services offered by travel agencies can now be availed of and done by the customers themselves. The customer can choose his own flights and airlines and even tour or vacation packages. For most of these activities, the customers have been unsupervised. Online agencies could still be of use in this area to the customers if they offer online services.
One of the key impacts of online ticket selling services that became pronounced through the years is the ability of customers to find the lowest ticket prices as possible. It opened the air industry to a wider range of customers, especially lower end ones. It (among other things) has also opened opportunities for airlines like Ryan Air and Southwest Airlines to penetrate the market and eventually dominate their respective markets.
The market has also become more segmented. Airlines not catering to the lower end market cannot anymore dictate the travel or flight package for customers to choose from. Customers can now choose and package what they want.
Rapid Adoption of E-Commerce
Consumers were quick to adapt to new technology and e-commerce only as fast as their learning curve would allow. It may seem that consumers were quick to adopt airline e-commerce services but this may be because the airline services were online ahead of everyone else. The retail industry—i.e., Amazon and Apple —seems to have been growing faster than the airline industry, causing almost instantaneous discontinuities. Convenient and easy to use technologies like smart phones also helped accelerate consumers’ adoption of new e-commerce concepts.
Uniform Approach to SEM
A uniform approach to implementing SEM among the search engines may not be suitable for any marketing campaign on the internet. Every search engine follows a different, proprietary algorithm from the others. Using the same keywords (even paid for keywords) would yield different results. The analysis in the next parts would show this. It is important the campaign should have different executions tailored for each search engine for better search engine optimization (SEO). Tables 1 and 2 in the Appendix show how differently the search engines perform.
Structure of Future SEM Campaigns
The structure of Air France’s future campaign should expand its base of search engines. It should add Kayak and (at the time of the case study) Overture. Since Overture has been acquired and absorbed by Yahoo!, Media Contacts should increase its use of Yahoo! Instead of concentrating on Google, it may want to increase placements on Yahoo! At the same time, it should expand its own network of links and sponsored sites. Aside from its own website, it should have other blogs promoting tourism and other travel activities. All texts in these blogs aim to help increase the frequency of mentions of certain keywords. So, even if it does not acquire pay-per-click keywords, they will be optimized in the search engine. The more repetition of the keywords in various sites, the higher will they appear in searches even without paying. The support blogs should all direct the users to Air France’s web or ticketing site.
In addition, Air France should have very strong presence and highly active in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. In case it sponsors any kind of event—the way JetStar sponsored Asia’s Got Talent—it can actively promote the event without much cost. Any news about the event can be posted on the social networking sites. If the event becomes very popular, Air France can increase the hits to its social networking pages and lead to hits to its website and hopefully translate to ticket purchases. It can even use these websites to raffle tickets to out-of-town events. Of course, the social networking sites ultimately aim to help optimize search engines and lead to visits to the company’s web and ticketing sites.
Other Findings
The efficiency in the use and selection of keywords is very important. As much possible, all useless keywords—those that do not yield any bookings—should not be bid or paid for. At best these keywords can be used sporadically in the various links and not placed in prominent positions. Perhaps these may also be used in secondary or seemingly insignificant blogs or links. This is easier said post campaign as the results could readily be analyzed. However, previous experiences or data findings should be used to determine which keywords to bid or pay for and which ones to avoid.
The average cost per click also went down for practically all of the search engines but most importantly for MSN Global (from $1.08 to $0.67), Overture Global ($1.06 to $0.86), and Overture US (from $1.19 to $0.60). The average cost per click was almost the same across all the search engines. Obviously, there are important differences in the way the search engines handle keyword searches. It is thus imperative to be very discriminating in the choice of keywords to pay for: They make critical differences in the overall cost and profitability.
It is important to note that Overture has been acquired by Yahoo!. It existed as a separate entity at the time the case study was prepared but is no longer accessible online as a separate search engine today. However, it may be safe to assume that the algorithms used by Overture may have been adopted by Yahoo! And many of its engineers and developers are now part of the Yahoo! Team.
Meanwhile, Table 3 in the Appendix shows the key words retained for the analysis. Note that only 205 keywords were used by users and were converted into bookings. The rest of the keywords obtained some clicks and impressions but were not converted into bookings. The usefulness of these keywords depends on the objectives of the campaign. Clearly, these keywords did not contribute anything to ticket sales. They may be useful for other purposes but may not be worth paying for. It also helps to limit the number of keywords that copywriters will have to input into the texts of ads and promo materials.
In using all of the search engines, one must keep in mind that they work differently. They have to be used differently to attain greater efficiency.
Summary and Conclusion
Consumer usage of the internet, especially with regard to booking flights has continually grown. Online bookings will continue to grow and competition in SEM and other forms of online marketing and promotion will continue to intensify. Media Contacts should also intensify its SEM efforts for Air France. However, it cannot approach its SEM as one, homogeneous effort. Thorough analyses of keywords and search engine algorithms should be done. Different search engines work differently. Different efficiencies can be accomplished if the campaign is modified according to certain peculiarities that the search engines may have.
As important as SEM, Media Contacts should also be alert to watch merging technologies and platforms. Social networking sites—like Facebook and Twitter—are fast gaining ground. These sites are not driven by SEO; rather, they have their own platforms that are exclusive to the site although they may have external links.
Appendix
Works Cited
Jeffrey, M. (n.d.). Air France Internet Marketing: Optimizing Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Kayak Sponsored Search .
Kayak. (2016). Retrieved June 13, 2016, from Kayak: https://www.kayak.com/flights
Rossini, A. (2014). The New Online Travel Consumer. EOTA. Euromonitor International. Retrieved Jun 15, 2016, from http://www.etoa.org/docs/default-source/presentations/2014-the-new-online-travel-consumer.pdf?sfvrsn=4
