TBEX 2013 Toronto Where's my ROI? Campaigns & Strategies in Digital Marketing featuring, Stephen Oddo,

1. Stephen Oddo - Co-Founder, CTO, Marketing Director
Where’s my ROI?
Campaigns & Strategies in
Digital Marketing

2. What is Walks?
Walks specializes in day trips, activities and
unique experiences
Historical tours, bike rides, cooking classes, wine
tours, boat tours, gondola rides, underground
visits, volcano hikes, special access. Also ground
transport services.
Small groups: 12 max
Hand-picked experts/leaders - fluent in English
Emphasize off the beaten path, sustainable
travel, green company.

3. What is brand marketing?
Definition: The marketing practice of creating a
name, symbol or design that identifies and
differentiates a product from other products
Entrepreneur mag
Development of a personality to your company,
setting standards and following them, consistency,
develop positive reputation. Core values.
Ex: Four Seasons Quality, Luxury, Top of the line, 5*, beauty… expensive
Ex: RyanAir CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP. (or is it?), uncomfortable, fees

5. What is content marketing?
Creation of media content such as text,
photography, video or combination of these to build
a core audience, establish a brand reputation,
increase interaction/engagement: Good content
breeds good interaction, expands reach.
BRANDED content marketing, pull vs push:
‘Content that is developed or curated by a brand to
provide added consumer value such as
entertainment or education. It is designed to build
brand consideration and affinity, not sell a product or
service. It is not a paid ad, sponsorship, or product
placement.’ –Forrester Research

6. What they say…
"Blogs are the third most
influential digital resource
(31%) when making overall
purchases, behind retail
sites (56%) and brand sites
(34%).”
Technorati Digital Influence Report
Nearly half of travelers
have changed or decided
upon a trip based on what
they've read on social
media! – World travel
tourism council (WTTC)

7. Push vs. Pull Marketing

8. Setting Goals
• Everyone’s goal is to grow revenues!
• Marketing departments are looking for 1 to 1
correlation between investment and ROI as a clear,
linear relationship.
• Walks of Italy’s goals, long term marketing strategy:
– Increase PR of online properties
– Increase overall organic search results, especially via
traffic to blog
– Increase following and engagement on social media
sites
– Become an “influencer” or “authority” for Italy travel,
increase SSOV
– Leverage “indirect” marketing voice

9. Affinity & Advocacy
Corporations are people
like
sometimes

For brands and companies, affinity begets advocacy
More advocacy, more word of mouth
More word of mouth = more bookings
High word of mouth = high sales!

10. Reciprocity: The key to evergreen
• Don’t think that just because a blog review is
online, the collaboration ends there.
• Marketing team should continue to engage
bloggers: reshare, +1, like, comment, RT, pin,
rinse, repeat.
• If you invest the time in social media, social
media will work harder for you.
• Often times simply reaching out to bloggers or
influencers will result in higher engagement.

11. Direct ROI from travel blogs
$20,582.83
If your ROI analysis stops here, then I would agree that it
doesn’t seem that lucrative to work with travel bloggers.
But remember, this is just the people that clicked off their
blog.
Time to go beyond the blog!

12. 
Started working
with bloggers
Organic search results
Case Study: Walks of Italy

13. Direct hits
Case Study: Walks of Italy

14. Case Study: Walks of Italy

15. Case Study: Walks of Italy

16. Click-throughs from blogger review to walksofitaly.com.
When done right, they’re evergreen.
Case Study: Walks of Italy

17. Think outside the (blog) box
• Bloggers are more than review machines
• Content creation talent + audience/affinity
building abilities = great skill to bring to
your organization
• Utilize their skills to enhance your
marketing campaigns in other ways:
videos, photos, text, PR, product
collaboration/development, software
development, hosting, social media.

20. Final thoughts
It is not enough for companies to have a
digital department, they must become
intrinsically digital if they are to meet the
service demands of consumers”
Phillipe Baumlin. Global digital program director. Chanel
Another great ROI case study on Hawaii:
http://www.slideshare.net/rdarling/lvb-rox2011casestudy