It's a great end to the week for Propellernet. The sun is shining and we've bagged our second CIMTIG Travel Marketing Award! Last night, the third CIMTIG Travel Marketing Awards took place at the very glamorous and contemporary Ballroom, in the Intercontinental London Park Lane Hotel. Our Travel Team Captain, Rachel and New Biz Director, Stefan attended the awards, which aim to demonstrate marketing excellence in travel, and reward and raise the standards across the industry. With this in mind, it was music to our ears when the crown of 'Best Use of Search Engine Optimisation' was awarded to us (for the second year running!), for our 'Villas in Tuscany' campaign for To Tuscany. The judges were particularly impressed with our "innovative approach" and "impressive search engine positional jumps" for the search term 'villas in Tuscany'. Back in 2010 our 'Flourishing Families Campaign' for Sovereign Luxury Holidays also earned us recognition for innovation in SEO,...

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The big news in the travel industry this week was that the official star ratings for hotels is expected to be superseded by online review scores. According to John Penrose, the Tourism Minister, the current system is out of date and does not accurately reflect holidaymakers' concerns. "We are going to be publishing our tourism strategy next month and in that we back a consumer-led system like Trip Advisor rather than traditional star-rating systems." - Source: Independent.co.uk Despite the fact that the move is expected to be resisted by hoteliers, many of whom have spoken out about review sites in the wake of the TripAdvisor row, I agree with the minister. Read the rest of this entry...

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On the 14th April 2010 something big erupted in the travel industry, or as one of our clients called it: an ashtrocity! The Icelandic volcano, called Eyjafjallajökull, ejected volcanic ash to heights in excess of 30,000ft and few could have predicted the chaos and millions of pounds it would cost the travel industry and the economy. With huge amounts of ash in the atmosphere, controlled airspace in the UK was shut down for fear of damage to the aircraft engines. By the 17th April, there was a no fly zone in the airspace of more than 25 countries. This resulted in the largest air traffic shut-down since World War II and caused millions of passengers to be stranded not only in Europe, but across the world. Airspace was closed for six days; a decision which was later criticised by most airlines who were suffering huge financial losses. According to Giovanni Bisignani, the Director General of The Air Transport Association, the ash crisis cost the airline industry up to £130...

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As a leading online and social marketing agency, customer insight is at the heart of everything we do.  Using our unique revenue potential model and persona insight tool as part of a strategic planning phase, we identify the most lucrative keyword areas and ensure we build a holistic view of our clients’ brand, their customers and their journey. How does this influence how we create an online PR campaign? Persona insight is a crucial part of our strategic planning phase and shapes our clients’ overall marketing strategy, but it also determines so much more in terms of online PR. Our online targets, the tone of voice we use, what content we create and what messages we put into a campaign are all determined by the results of the Persona Insight research.  So before we develop any content for online we always conduct a media audit and evaluate this back to our client objectives and targets.  This ensures the content we produce for online not only captures the attention and...

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Whether it's PPC marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing or natural search driving traffic to your website, your landing page is critical to the campaign performance - and it's your big opportunity to engage with a potential customer. So why do so many sites get it so wrong, and what are the most important things to remember? What's wrong with my landing page you ask? Well firstly, you have to realise everyone uses the internet differently - so don't try to pigeon hole all users in the same place.  Some users scan a whole page within a few seconds of landing on a site, while others focus on a block of text and read carefully - it all depends on the visitor. With this in mind there are 6 things worth considering to ensure your landing page is optimised to its full potential: Read the rest of this entry...

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