One of the most important things about Internet Marketing is measuring success. What is the value of your Web site? For most tourism businesses, keeping track of sales that are generated from their web site can be as simple as asking your guests how they heard about you, when they register.
There is a clear financial value to registrations or sales. But what about measuring other things. After all, a caller or emailer may be really excited about our offer, but may not be able to be our guest this year. One of the things I like to ask workshop attendees is:
What is the value of each of your desired “Calls to Action”
- each email inquiry?
- each completed check availability form?
- each telephone call?
- each booking?
- each email newsletter subscription?
- each feed subscription?
- each new facebook fan?
Once you have attributed a value to each of these items, start tracking how many desired actions you are able to generate from your Web site. Be sure to track where your Web site visitors are coming from and which marketing tactics are leading to these actions.
Google Analytics is a very good free tool for measuring how well your web site achieves some of these goals. By using your assigned dollar values for your desired calls to action, and matching each to a specific web page, analytics can help you attribute a financial benefit to the actions your web site visitors take.
For measuring other offline actions, keep a notepad and paper near the phone and be sure to have your front line staff note where each inquiry originates. Incidentally, if you attribute a dollar value to some of these items, be sure that your staff are encouraging those who inquire to follow through on one or more of your desired actions.
For example in our office, everyone who calls may not register, but those who don’t register may be interested in getting our email newsletter or joining our Facebook group. Asking for these actions, from those who don’t book today, helps us create value from their inquiry – leading to a potential future sale.
A spreadsheet can also be used to summarize the economic benefits that your Web site provides for your business.
Over time, by measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) that you are getting from your online marketing tactics you will make better informed decisions about allocating your marketing dollars and understand the value of your Web presence.
