谷歌联合创始人佩奇：乔布斯在“篡改历史”

谷歌联合创始人佩奇：乔布斯在“篡改历史”

7月12日消息，据国外媒体报道，谷歌联合创始人拉里-佩奇（Larry Page）否认谷歌尾随苹果进军手机市场，并指责苹果CEO史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）“篡改历史”。 　　

据多名苹果员工透露，在今年2月份苹果公司的一次会议上，乔布斯称谷歌“不作恶”的口号是“胡说八道”，并指责谷歌这个前盟友侵入了苹果的领地。他说，“我们没有进入搜索市场，谷歌却进入了手机市场。毫无疑问，它们想要灭掉iPhone.我们不会叫他们得逞。” 图为Google联合创始人、产品总监佩奇 　　

今年6月，乔布斯在另一个会议上又重申了这些说法。但谷歌创始人佩奇却在上周接受路透社的采访时将乔布斯的说法描述为“有点篡改历史”，并坚称Android并非是跟在iPhone后面进军手机市场。 　　佩奇说，“我们一直在努力研发Android，已经有很长时间了。我们之所以希望推出具备互联网功能以及优秀浏览器的手机，是因为市场上尚未有此类产品。我认为，说我们追随苹果的说法是根本没有道理。” 　　乔布斯于2007年1月首次发布iPhone手机，并于同年夏天正式上市。谷歌则是在11月份发布Android操作系统的，但第一款Android手机是在一年之后的2008年9月才正式面市的。但是谷歌早在2005年就收购了创业企业Android，后来的Android操作系统正是由该公司开发的。 　　

今年春天，谷歌工程副总裁维克-冈多拉（Vic Gundotra）在谷歌I/O开发者大会上表示，谷歌之所以要开发Android，是为了避免“出现一个残酷的未来：一个人、一家公司、一款设备以及一家运营商成为我们唯一的选择。” 　　但是，我们需要补充的是，史蒂夫-乔布斯是在谷歌推出自有品牌手机Nexus One后不到一个月的时间里对谷歌提出批评的。这款手机通过谷歌网店出售，谷歌以很大篇幅证明自己没有参与这款手机硬件的设计，该手机是由手机制造商宏达电生产的。但这仍意味着谷歌成为了一个手机出售者，不仅仅是一个操作系统制造商。谷歌Android主管安迪-鲁宾（Andy Rubin）认为，谷歌的网店模式将“彻底改变手机的销售方式”。 　　

但就在此后不到6个月的时间里，谷歌放弃了其网店模式。分析人士认为，这可能是迫于生产厂商和运营商的压力，因为这些企业已经推出了多款Android手机。美国最大的运营商Verizon Wireless 原本有希望通过网店为Nexus One提供服务，但最终未能成功。Nexus One已开始通过传统零售渠道销售。 　　令人感到意外的是，施密特认为Nexus One是已经彻底获得成功。施密特本月接受The Telegraph采访时表示，“一年半以前，我们试图借助Nexus One推进手机硬件业务的发展，它显然做到了。”他说，“它是如此成功，以至于我们没有必要再做第二款。我们将此视为积极信号，但是人们却批判我们。我打电话给董事会说，‘它成功了。祝贺一下-我们不干了。’” 　　

即使是在Nexus One推出之前，谷歌也一直同摩托罗拉、Verizon、宏达电和T-Mobile等企业密切合作开发Android手机。尽管谷歌将Nexus One称作“超级手机”，但最关键的区别在于这款产品是由谷歌出售的。就连谷歌开源项目主管克里斯-迪博纳（Chris DiBona）都表示，它更喜欢Verizon的Droid手机。 　　一位谷歌员工在今年3月份透露，该公司计划推出Nexus Two.但是施密特在接受媒体采访时却表示，该项目已经流产。同样是在今年3月份，乔布斯与施密特被发现在咖啡馆秘密会面。尽管施密特去年被迫从苹果董事会退出，但他似乎想让外界相信，他与乔布斯仍是好朋友。 　　

施密特上周接受路透社采访时指出，苹果和谷歌仍然保持着iPhone的合作关系。iPhone仍然内置谷歌地图和YouTube应用，谷歌仍然是iPhone的默认搜索引擎。但谷歌工程副总裁维克-冈多拉在I/O开发者大会上的表现却表明，双方关系仍然非常紧张。 　　他在I/O开发者大会上嘲笑乔布斯和苹果在iPhone和iPad上封杀Flash的行为，并展示了最新版Android的Javascript性能优于iPad。 　　谷歌并未否认与苹果之间的紧张关系，他们只是否认追随苹果进入手机市场。

百度第二季度净利润8.37亿元同比增118%

7月22日早间消息，百度(NASDAQ：BIDU)今日发布了2010年第二季度财报。财报数据显示，百度二季度营收19.14亿元（约合2.823亿美元），环比增长48%，同比增长74.4%；净利润8.37亿元（约合1.235亿美元），环比增长74.3%，同比增长118.5%。

以下为具体的图解分析：

营收19.14亿元 再创历史新高

百度第二季度总营收19.14亿元（约合2.823亿美元），环比增长48%，同比增长74.4%，再创历史新高。

百度董事会主席兼首席执行官李彦宏表示，“百度Q2业绩表现优异，证明我们的客户基础非常扎实，公司的运营效率很高。我们将继续专注于提高用户体验，通过各种创新，使百度不断在中国互联网生态中扮演更关键的作用。”

百度首席财务官李昕晢表示，未来百度将继续投入，加强技术研发、扩大销售队伍的建设，并进一步投资网络基础设施，以推动公司未来进一步的创新和发展。

网络广告业务仍是百度营收支柱 同比增长74.5%

网络广告及营销业务仍是百度的支柱性营收来源，在总营收中的比重贴近100%。百度第二季度广告营收达19.13亿元，环比增长47.9%，同比增长74.5%。其他业务收入仅为92.7万元。

第二季度，百度共为大约25.4万家客户提供服务，较去年同期增长25.1%，户均收入达到7500元人民币，与去年同期相比增长38.9%。

艾瑞此前公布的中国第二季度搜素引擎市场数据显示，百度第二季度营收份额首次超过七成，达到70.8%，谷歌营收份额则就降为27.3%。艾瑞分析百度营收份额短期内快速增长的原因为：第一，百度专业版推广（凤巢）继09年12月全面上线以来，经历了一定过渡期，广告主逐渐接受；第二，2010年3月受谷歌事件的影响，一定程度助推了广告主对百度的信赖；第三，搜狗SOSO等二线运营商，虽推出自身的推广系统，但尚需一定时期的用户积累。

毛利近14亿元 毛利率达72.9%

百度第二季度成本5.18亿元，毛利为13.96亿元，毛利率为72.9%，是百度自2006年以来的最高点。

运营费用4.24亿元 运营费用率为22.2%

第二季度运营费用支出总额为4.24亿元，环比增长26%，同比增长53.7%。

运营费用率为22.2%，相比上个季度的26%和去年同期的25.2%均有所下降。

其中市场推广和营销费用达2.65亿元，环比增长23.5%，同比增长47.1%，占总营收的比例为13.8%。

研发费用为1.59亿元，环比增长30.4%，同比增长66.2%，占总营收的比例约为8.3%。

运营利润为9.72亿元 创历史新高

第二季度运营利润为9.72亿元人民币，环比增长83.1%，同比增长129.8%。

本季度运营利润率为50.8%也创历史新高，上个季度和去年同期分别为41%和38.5%。

其他核心数据：

第二季度净利润8.37亿元，环比增长74.3%，同比增长118.5%。

百度在2010年5月12日调整了其普通股与美国存托股票（ADSs）的兑换比率，因此2010年第二季度稀释后每存托凭证盈利为2.40元人民币；按扣除股权报酬费用前利润计算，稀释后每存托凭证盈利为2.46元人民币。

截止2010年6月30日，百度期末现金及存款为59.13亿元。

业绩预期：

百度预计第三季度的营业收入将介于22亿人民币和22.6亿元人民币之间，比去年同期增长72%至77%。(

谷歌退场：失血不止再次后撤

2010年6月30日，在ICP牌照到期的一个关键的时间点之前，谷歌再次选择了以博客的形式来宣布自己的处理方式。6月28日，谷歌在中国留守的绝大多数员工依然只能通过这样的博客来分析猜测自己未来的命运。 　　“之前，我们一直对公司在中国的发展抱有幻想，这次我们感觉真的不太好。”谷歌中国的一位员工告诉《中国经营报》记者。 　　

7月2日，由Google.cn跳转到的Google.com.hk搜索部分受限。 　　无限凄凉 再次后撤 　　上述员工所说的感觉不好，是因为ICP牌照。6月25日，北京市通信管理局公布了《ICP许可证年检不合格名单》，这个名单上有800家左右企业。其中北京飞翔人信息技术有限公司申请的“京ICP证050124号”在这份不合格的“黑名单”上。在中国因为对外资企业开展互联网业务存在限制，所以这家自然人独资的企业是谷歌获得ICP牌照的合作伙伴。这个消息在当天谷歌中国内部就已经有一些人得知。 　　6月28日，在国家测绘局发放的互联网地图牌照名单中，谷歌也“遇难”，这意味着谷歌不能再向中国用户提供地图和谷歌卫星(Google earth)服务。 　　而在此之前的一次会议上，谷歌中国现任掌门人、全球副总裁刘允向公司内部的管理层传达了“自谋出路”的意思，“他那一次的表态让我们觉得很凄凉，等了那么久，看来没有转机了。”谷歌中国的一位员工说，如无意外，谷歌真正退出中国的倒计时已经开始。 　　然而，即使事已至此，谷歌总部依然没有给谷歌中国任何清晰的指示，“我们得到的信息跟外界得到的一样，就是28日的博客。” 　　他所指的博客，就是谷歌公司高级副总裁、首席法律官大卫·德拉蒙德于28日发的博客，文中称，“我们与中国政府官员的对话清楚地表明，他们认为重新定向是不可接受的。没有ICP牌照的话，我们不能经营Google.cn这样的商业网站。” 　　3月23日，德拉蒙德也是通过博客的形式公开发表声明，宣布停止对谷歌中国搜索服务进行“过滤审查”，将搜索服务由中国内地转至香港之后——用户如果输入Google.cn，将自动转跳到Google.com.hk。然而，在ICP的年检中，谷歌的这种做法被中国的主管部门否定，因而进入“黑名单”。 　　

谷歌补救的做法是，当网民登录Google.cn，他们看到的是一个不能使用的搜索框，并附有文字：“我们已移至Google.com.hk”，“请收藏我们的新网址”。而用户无论点击该页面的任意一处，都将被跳转至谷歌香港的页面——这一次的改变等于又后退了一步，从自动跳转到手动跳转。但在这一网站的首页上，并没有按照规定，在页面的最下方注明“ICP号”。 　　谷歌这个补救方案极富有创造性，并以此方案重新向主管部门提出ICP牌照续期申请。但能否通过？结果难料。在采访中，有的被采访人士认为，谷歌的让步，可能会得到主管部门的认同，因而获得ICP牌照的可能性很大。也有人士认为，无论是自动跳转还是手动跳转，都是跳向不对搜索结果进行审查的Google.com.hk，所以主管部门不会接受谷歌的“变通”。 　　失血不止 不做了断 　　其实，谷歌并没有下定结束中国事业的决心。谷歌在北京地区注册的与谷歌中国有关的公司共四家：北京谷翔信息技术有限公司(合资公司)、谷歌信息技术(中国)有限公司(外国法人独资)、双击软件技术方案(北京)有限公司(外国法人独资)、咕果信息技术(上海)有限公司北京分公司。截止到6月30日，这几家公司均已完成2009年年检。 　　这个信息传达出谷歌并不想切断在中国的一切。如果保留公司，保留从Google.cn到Google.com.hk跳转，谷歌就可以继续为中国用户服务，也可以继续向中国的客户销售互联网广告。 　　

自从3月23日之后，谷歌的多位资深工程师已经跳槽，谷歌中国工程研究院副院长王劲、技术总监郑子斌都加盟百度，谷歌图片搜索创始人朱会灿加入腾讯，谷歌中国工程研究院副院长、谷歌全球工程总监刘骏也已离职。“有本事的就早点撤。现在再走，找工作处于劣势了。”谷歌内部员工告诉记者，刘允的这次表态，使得更多的人在考虑离职的问题。 　　员工的流失是一方面，外部的经营环境也变得对谷歌越来越不利。除了百度的大举进军，搜狐搜狗、网易有道、腾讯搜搜都纷纷参战，分食谷歌身后市场。他们从瓦解谷歌的代理商入手，到2010年6月中旬，27家谷歌中国代理商，除搜狗签约其中几家外，大部分由网易和腾讯瓜分。 　　很有意思，谷歌却从未对中国事务做一个了断，给出一个撤退方式，而是在用各种方式试探着中国政府的底线，而每一次都以其首席法律官大卫·德拉蒙德的博客来公布自己的决定，而不是以公司总部或中国公司的正式声明的形式。 　　如果说1月其博客第一次表示将会退出中国，那是一次挑衅和试探。而第二次在3月份表示将网站跳转至香港，那是一次威胁。那么，这一次则多少有点被动，有些无奈，不再是主观意志的退撤。 　　谷歌始终选择这种非正式的方式宣布，一直是想给自己留条后路。而中国官方也很乐意这种“隔空对话”的形式。在28日谷歌新的博客发表之后，29日，外交部发言人秦刚举行例行记者会时表示，中国政府鼓励互联网的发展，同时依法管理互联网。在中国经营的外国互联网公司要遵守中国的法律和有关规定，中方有关部门也将依照中国的法律和有关规定处理有关问题。 　　

7月1日，Google.cn依然是那个不能使用的搜索框，这样一个页面，还能维持多久？从主动撤退，到“被后退”，这已经不是谷歌单方面意图可以决定的了。 　　

资料 　　什么是ICP经营许可证？ 　　ICP经营许可证是指各地通信管理部门核发的《中华人民共和国电信与信息服务业务经营许可证》即ICP证，是通过互联网向上网用户有偿提供信息或者网页制作等服务活动。经营性ICP经营的内容主要是网上广告、代制作网页、有偿提供特定信息内容、电子商务及其他网上应用服务。国家对经营性ICP实行许可证制度。各公司必须办理ICP许可证。ICP证是网站经营的许可证，根据国家《互联网管理办法》规定，经营性网站必须办理ICP证，否则就属于非法经营。

优秀设计团队必需的四种成员

本文转载自Billwang 原文作者为Michael Rooler，翻译者为：Pave.dow，Windsor

百度2010一季度净利润4.8亿元 同比增长165%

百度一季度净利润4.8亿元 同比增长165%

随着GOOGLE4月份推出大陆搜索引擎市场，百度第二季度的日子会更加好过；

比较两个数字：

BAIDU第一季度：营收1.896亿美元 净利润7040万美元

百度(NASDAQ：BIDU)今日发布了2010年第一季度财报。财报数据显示，百度一季度营收12.94亿元（约合1.896亿美元），环比增长2.6%，同比增长59.6%；运营利润5.3亿元（约合7780万美元），环比增长14.9%，同比增长167.4%，净利润4.8亿元（约合7040万美元），同比增长165.3%。

以下为具体图解分析：

营收12.94亿元 创历史新高

百度一季度总营收12.94亿元人民币，环比增长2.6%，同比增长59.6%。

百度称凤巢营收表现超过预期，百度CEO李彦宏表示，“尽管春节长假对我们第一季度的业绩产生季节性影响，但公司营收再创历史新高，利润增长强劲。特别值得一提的是凤巢，其表现之好甚至超越了我们自己原来的预期，凤巢提供的各种投放管理工具受到企业客户的广泛欢迎，客户也通过凤巢享受到更好的投资回报。展望未来，我们的工作重点是进一步教育市场，让中国更多企业从百度搜索营销中受益。”

网络广告业务仍是百度营收支柱 同比增长59.7%

在线广告业务仍是百度的支柱性营收来源，在总营收中的比重贴近100%，第一季度广告营收达12.93亿元，环比增长2.7%，同比增长59.7%。其他业务收入仅为51.9万元，相比上一季度的59.3万元有所下滑，相比去年同期的51.8万元略微增长。

第一季度，百度共为大约22.1万家客户提供服务，较去年同期增长19.5%，户均收入达到5900元人民币，与去年同期相比增长34.1%。

毛利同比增长32.3% 毛利率达67%

百度第一季度成本4.26亿元，相比去年同期的3.22亿元环比增长32.33%，相比上一季度的4.53亿元环比小幅下滑5.78%。

第一季度毛利为8.68亿元，毛利率为67%，相比上个季度的64.1%和去年同期的60.3%均有所增加。

运营费用3.37亿元 运营费用率为26%

第一季度运营费用支出总额为3.37亿元，环比下滑2.7%，同比增长16.1%。

运营费用率为26%，相比上个季度的27.5%和去年同期的35.8%均有所下降。

其中市场推广和营销费用达2.15亿元，环比下滑3.2%，同比增长5%，占总营收的比例为16.6%。

研发费用为1.22亿元，环比下滑1.8%，同比增长42.6%，占总营收的比例约为9.4%。

运营利润为5.31亿元创历史新高

第一季度运营利润为5.31亿元人民币，环比增长14.9%，同比增长167.4%。

本季度运营利润率为41%创历史新高，上个季度和去年同期分别为36.7%和24.5%。

其他核心数据：

第一季度净利润4.8亿元，同比增长165.3%。

截止2010年3月31日，百度期末现金及存款为49.1亿元。

业绩预期：

百度预计第二季营收约为18.3亿元-18.7亿元，同比增长67%-70%

Measuring The Success (ROI) of Your Search Engine Marketing

One of the most successful and challenging things about marketing on the internet is that the impact of your marketing efforts is measurable. While critical to your initiative, the measurement of true return on investment (ROI) for the lodging industry is a complex exercise since the results manifest themselves across multiple channels. What further compounds the complexity of measuring these results is that often a website that is being marketed and the actual booking engine where the transaction is closed may be on different servers. In this article, we explain the challenges of measuring search engine marketing results and some solutions for accurately tracking your investment returns.

The Challenge of Measuring ROI

It is very challenging to measure the true ROI generated from your SEM efforts. In many cases, visitors leave your website and go to a branded booking engine or stand-alone booking engine to complete the purchase rather than booking directly on the hotel site. Most of the time, the purchasing cycle is closed on a different server and not on the server where your hotel website is hosted. While you can find out the total revenue booked through your site, it’s quite difficult to do sophisticated tracking, such as key word conversions, organic and paid conversions, unless you embed tracking codes in the back-end on booking engine pages.

Figure 1 below illustrates the typical marketing and booking scenarios for the lodging industry. Specifically, any search engine marketing campaign can result in bookings on any of the following channels:

• Internet Booking Engine – Most easily measured
• Phone Reservations – Not measured in most hotels (in our experience)
• Group Bookings – Harder to measure
• Secondary Channels – Bookings on 3rd party channels such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.

In order to get a complete picture of your return on investment for an online marketing campaign, our recommendation is to track each of the above channels. In the following sections of this article, we will discuss how each of these channels can be measured effectively.

Figure 1 Channels Impacted by Online Marketing Efforts

Internet Booking Engines

Internet booking engines are a direct channel for your online marketing efforts, and are one of the easiest channels to measure the return on investment and sources. The internet booking engine may or may not be hosted on the same server as the website which is being marketed. In either case, most booking engine reports will be able to show the actual bookings received via the website that is being marketed. Make sure that you assign a special code in your booking engine for all reservations coming from your website and for any online marketing campaigns that you may conduct such as banner ads, email marketing, etc.

We have segmented the key performance indicators (KPIs) for tracking online marketing efforts into different categories depending on the goals and the level of sophistication of the user.

1. Simple Conversion Tracking

The KPIs for the simplest form of tracking can give an overall snapshot of whether your SEM efforts are working or not. This tracking is ideal for senior management and non-technical front-line/management staff. Simple conversion tracking provides an overall idea about the return on investment from the marketing activity without going into a lot of detail about the search engines or keywords used to find the hotels. Figure 2 illustrates the concepts behind simple conversion tracking.

Indicators For Simple Conversion Tracking:

1. Visitors: Is my search marketing working? Is my site traffic continuing to increase taking into account seasonality. Look at a year-on-year comparison.

2. Page Views: Is my site attracting the right kind of visitors? Is the site sticky?

3. Click-Throughs to Booking Engine: How many people went into my booking page to check rates? Several marketing sources, both internal at the hotel and external agencies will regard this as the true measure of the success of their campaigns. Once you have gotten the consumer to check out your rates, the marketing campaign has been successful. At this point, the responsibility for conversion shifts from Marketing into Revenue Management and has a strong bearing on whether the hotel has rooms, if the rates are competitive with the market, and if the booking engine is easy to use.

4. Actual Revenue Generated – the bottom line. This may be available from your website analytics software if the pixels from the tracking software are embedded in your booking engine. Or, the same report should be available from the booking engine reports and can be tracked for most brands and booking engines in the market.

Figure 2: Conversion Tracking

2. Advanced Conversion Tracking

The next level of detail in analyzing the website analytics report involves understanding the source of visitors coming to your website. This will enable you to determine the effectiveness of different search engines and referral directories as well as the keywords that are being targeted. The main KPIs to review are:

1. Search Terms – What people type in the search engines to get to your website

2. Referring Search Engines and Directories – Which search engines and directories are most effective in driving visitors to your site

3. Feeder Market – What are your feeder markets where visitors are coming from

4. Visitors by Campaigns: SEO, PPC, Banners, Emails – Which campaigns are most effective in driving visitors to your website

Advanced tracking should be done at two levels on your website – one for the total visitor traffic to your website and then for the visits that result in confirmed reservations. If the tracking software pixels are not embedded in the booking engine, the next best thing to analyzing confirmed reservations is to understand these KPIs for the visitors going into your booking engine. Analyzing visitors going into your booking engine, although not as ideal as tracking actual confirmed reservations behavior, gives you a very good measure of the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns.

3. Sophisticated Conversion Tracking

The next level of sophistication in analyzing your website analytics report comes from understanding the click-through path of the visitors to your site and gaining a better understanding of which pages on your website are most effective and which pages result in consumers getting turned off. The main goal of tracking these metrics is to understand how to improve the content and navigation flow on your website to maximize conversion.

Some main KPIs to monitor include:

• Click through path for confirmed reservations or click-through to booking engine
• Exit pages of your website
• Entrance pages of the website

4. Phone Tracking

In our experience with over 500 lodging industry clients, a significant amount of conversion for your online marketing efforts happens offline – on the phone. The ratio between online to offline conversion varies, but we have observed that for every one reservation generated online, there are between 2X to 7X the reservations generated on the phone. The actual ratio depends on the brand of the hotel and the market segment that the hotel operates in. In general, the conversion ratio is close to 2X for branded upscale segment hotels and closer to 7X for luxury, high ADR independent resorts. The online to offline conversion also varies if the hotel is pushing a lot of marketing packages which typically generate more questions. One rational explanation for such high offline conversion vs. other industries is that we are in the services business and guests still want to talk to a live person before they book accommodations. Of course, repeat clients are more likely to book online.

There are several technologies available to track phone call conversions. At the simplest level, you can assign a unique number for your marketing campaigns and your website so that all calls on the unique numbers can be traced back to the campaigns. Make sure that those numbers do not end up in your marketing collateral. More sophisticated tools, such as the one shown below, will not only track calls from different campaigns, but can track by keywords and search engines. In addition, these tools provide the capability to record phone calls and measure actual conversion.

The main KPIs for offline phone tracking conversion are:

1. Campaign Tracking
2. Search Engine Tracking
3. Keyword Tracking
4. Actual Conversion – audio recording

Depending on your aggressiveness and your marketing budget, you may choose to operate at the simplest level where there is a unique number assigned to your website or at the most sophisticated level where you understand the source of the call as well as determine the conversion. Typically, we have observed a 30-50% conversion rate on the phone leads generated by online marketing campaigns.

5. Group Bookings

Group bookings apply only to hotels that promote group business specifically targeted at weddings, meeting planners, etc. We have found that hotels will generate significant amount of group business through online marketing efforts. Most group business leads will either call or fill out an information request (RFP) online. We recommend that all hotels targeting group business should create a form online on their website that visitors can fill out. You can track group business requests by monitoring how many group business requests you get from the website. There are tracking tools that will allow you to determine the total requests received online as well as categorize the leads by weddings, meeting planners, etc. Figure 3 shows a sample website form to be filled out by visitors interested in group business and a sample tracking report for group bookings received through the website.

Figure 3 Group RFP Tracking Tools

6. Tracking Secondary Conversion

Consumers tend to compare hotel rates while searching online. On average, a consumer will search four online websites prior to making a reservation. We have found in our experience that online marketing campaigns will have a secondary impact on the reservations received from other channels such as 3rd party websites – Expedia, Travelocity, etc. This effect is significantly magnified if the hotel does not maintain rate parity or offers better value on other online channels.

One case study for a 4-star independent hotel in Silicon Valley clearly illustrates the impact of online marketing efforts on secondary channels. Even though the website traffic had doubled in the first 3 months of being marketed, the online reservations stayed flat. When looking at other channel reports, the hotel observed that the reservations from a major 3rd party website had increased 1.5X during the same period. When we looked at the rates, we found the rates on the 3rd party channel to be about $20 lower than the rates on their own website. Our hypothesis was that more consumers found the hotel’s website after their marketing efforts began, but actually booked the hotel on the 3rd party website since the rates were lower. The analysis was confirmed after the hotel created rate parity between different channels. There was a drop in the 3rd party channel reservations back to the previous level and the website’s online reservations showed a corresponding increase reflecting the increased online marketing activity and increased visitor traffic to the website.

This is a great example of where the impact was measurable because of rate disconnect between channels. However, it is generally complicated to measure secondary conversions. Our recommendation to hoteliers is to look at online reservations as a whole to measure the overall impact of marketing programs.

Final Insights

In summary, measuring the true return on investment of your online marketing programs can be very complex. The measurement of ROI is complicated because consumers end up using multiple channels to close sales.

Here are the top 10 recommendations for tracking the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns:

1. Review and monitor all channels – online and offline – for complete tracking, including the hotel website booking engine, phone reservations, group bookings, and secondary conversion on 3rd party channels.
2. Define what KPIs work for your product/ service while measuring success of your SEM efforts
3. Track website analytics at the simplest level by Visitors, Page Views, Click-Throughs to Booking Engine, and Actual Revenue Generated
4. More advanced users should track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by tracking the Search Terms, Referring Search Engines and Directories, Feeder Market, and Visitors by Campaigns – SEO, PPC, Banners, Emails
5. For sophisticated users, our recommendation is to track the conversion paths, entrance pages and website exit pages
6. Track offline conversion by placing unique phone numbers, codes and trackable phone numbers
7. For group booking, use RFP tracking and phone tracking systems to track complete conversion
8. Train your front desk and sales force to ask callers how they heard about the hotel when answering phone calls
9. Make sure to assign rate codes in your front desk management system for every offer and campaign promoted online
10. Monitor secondary channels and overall changes in reservations as a result of online marketing campaigns and not just the booking engine revenue

from:blog.milestoneinternet.com/…/