By Eric Taylor, Senior Analyst
Mobile has quickly emerged as a primary booking channel in the travel industry. Competition for both new and loyal travelers is fiercer than ever, and intelligently leveraging mobile is imperative to gain market share.
In my latest study released today, I describe four specific ways that travel companies can measure and optimize their call experience. Our customers that adopt these suggestions have consistently seen a 20% reduction in cost per reservation. Given the rapid adoption of smartphones, understanding calls is fast-becoming the clear path to boosting ad campaign performance on mobile.
Look no further than Starwood and Booking.com for confirmation of this. These big-name travel companies are expanding call center operations, and both plan to hire hundreds of additional staff.
But for the industry as a whole, analytical and attribution capabilities for digital call campaigns remain very limited. For comparison, think about what the early 2000s were to eCommerce— rudimentary tracking and techniques for evaluating web traffic.
At last month’s SMX East Conference in New York, presenters on the “Mobile Search Trends” panel were uniformly transfixed on the importance of phone calls as an outcome. Here are a few key facts and findings that were cited by Google’s presentation:
- There are now 40 million phone calls per month from AdWords mobile
- One-third of their entire advertiser base desires phone calls
- The phone call is the “major use case and scenario” in mobile
The big takeaway from this panel session that kicked off the conference: Phone call measurement is critical for a successful digital strategy.
-Eric
Have feedback for Eric about his study? Leave a comment below!
Marchex is a mobile advertising technology company. We provide a suite of products for businesses that depend on consumer phone calls to drive sales. Our mobile advertising platform delivers new customer phone calls to businesses, while our technology analyzes the data in these calls to improve ad campaign results.
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