According to research conducted by Hubspot, organizations that blog get:

• 97% more inbound links to their website (improving search rankings)
• 55% more website visitors

Are you blogging yet?

Presentations by the following executives…with a lot of good research data to follow:

• Krista Pappas, Microsoft Bing Travel
• Gary Jackson, Google Travel
• Anne Payne, BeDynamic
• Yen Lee, Uptake

Yen Lee of Uptake – “The Long, Fat Tail of Search”

Numbers that really matter

• 73% of consumers search before they make a booking
• They search an average of 10 times
• 86% of leads are generated by organic search (there IS a free lunch)
• Typical travel search is 3.1 keywords
  • It’s becoming more specific: was ‘chicago’…then ‘chicago hotels’…now it may be ‘chicago family hotels’
  • (this means they give us more context now)
  • Always tailor unique content to consumer preferences

Krista Pappas of Microsoft – “Maximizing SEM In a Tough Travel Economy”

• Read more…

Even the most careful marketing plans can lead to disaster without real market feedback. The best marketers – online and off – test different variables of their campaigns to make them much more effective and reduce the risk of failure.

How to get 500+ opinions for under $100

Google AdWords provides great ROI for selling things, but it’s also an exceptional (and underrated) marketing research tool.

Read more…

Brian points out an eye-opening study recently conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation for Cone.  According to the online survey, 93% of social media users thought companies should be using social networks.

What do these people want from a company engaging in social media networks?  The top three responses were Problem Solve (43%), Solicit Feedback (41%) and Provide new ways to interact with brand (37%).

If you’re thinking about getting involved in social media, hopefully this will give you some direction on the path to take.  Clearly, your potential customers want to interact with you – but they’re not looking for another sales pitch.