Say aoom! art of online marketing blog

One of the biggest marketing myths is that you need a big marketing budget to run an effective campaign or get the best results. Enter online marketing – and its various tools – and interesting, marketing budget (or the lack of) is still listed as the most common marketing challenge.

While online marketing has become a mainstream part of the marketing mix, most of the marketing discussions are focused around search marketing and whatever the latest marketing buzz is (in case you are wondering, the current hot favourite is social media marketing).

Ok, so this is hardly a surprising situation given search engines and social media websites make up some of the most heavily trafficked sites in the world.  What is interesting though is affiliate marketing – a well entrenched, proven form of pay for performance style online marketing distribution – hardly gets a look in mentioned. While it does, affiliate marketing doesn’t inspire the level of fervour that search marketing does. In fact, there is hardly any marketing buzz or fanfare surrounding affiliate marketing.

The fascination with travel is about discovery of the unknown and sharing that experience with people. These qualities make travel a hot topic for discussion in many social media networks. This is one of the reasons why social media marketing has gained particular relevance to the travel and hotel industry. It is one of the biggest buzz words in hotel marketing at the moment with most hotels thinking about how best to utilise it.

Art of Online Marketing (aoom) Consultancy has been appointed a 5 month contract with Webjet. Managing Director of aoom, Chloe Lim, will join Webjet with a focus on marketing and Webjet's expanded hotel operations.  Art of Online Marketing ( aoom) consultancy is very excited to be able to support Webjet in its marketing efforts and its expanded hotel operations. For more information, please see eTravelBlackboard

There's often a mix of nostalgia and excitement as we head towards the end of December. Nostalgia as we look back at the year and wrap up the year that was. Excitement as we embrace what the New Year will bring. So, with the rapid changes in 2010 driven by mobile, social media and search marketing, what should online businesses and online marketers expect in 2011?  

Want to know what topics were most talked about in 2010? Twitter just released their top trends for 2010. It seems we were captivated by the Gulf oil spill and the FIFA World Cup while Apple products dominated technology.

Yet another day with yet another change from search engine giant Google. Google Preview was recently launched with the introduction of an additional magnifying glass next to each search result on Google. Google Preview essentially offers users an ability to preview a website's content without needing to click onto the webiste - its really a "mini preview".

So how will this change impact search engine marketing?

Social media marketing is hot.

It’s the biggest buzz in marketing at the moment with every business looking to try its hand at it. Trying is well and good – but how do you avoid making mistakes and hence optimising results during that process?

Here’s a list of the top 9 social media marketing sins to watch out for.  

Change is in the air.

After a challenging 24 months, innovation and technology updates are moving in cracking pace as if making up for lost time. Much like how zero commission on airfares changed the dynamics in the travel industry and internet created a new breed of super travel retailers (Online Travel Agencies like Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz), there are 5 trends that are shaping huge changes in the way travel is marketed.

If one of the sure signs of industry maturity is the growth of specialist, outsource services, then SEO marketing must have stepped into adulthood, growing from a mysterious marketing tactic to a critical part of a marketing mix.

As a result, increasingly more companies are growing in-house SEO expertise. Alongside that, another phenomenon is brewing. There are also more companies outsourcing their organic search portfolio to external SEO agencies.

 Every now and then, there are intense discussions on why travellers and consumers are choosing to book with online travel intermediaries or how third party intermediaries are eroding a hotel's brand. There are numerous debates and various reasons thrown up.

A simple and apparent reason that contributes heavily to this market dynamic, which interestingly is seldom mentioned, is how incredibly challenging it can sometimes be to make a hotel reservation online via a hotel website.

Given that a hotel website is an extension of the hotel’s business, provides important hotel information to existing and potential customers and is an avenue to allow consumers to book a hotel at all hours of the day, hotels must ensure that they have a website that is well-presented with friendly navigation, useful information and good ecommerce capability so that users can book online easily.