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Case Study
Low cost airline jettisons search engine baggage
“Hitwise gives us the confidence to make critical decisions on the direction of our search marketing campaigns. Market and competitor level data allow us to fine-tune our Search Engine Optimisation and Pay-Per-Click campaigns.”
Catherine Kite, E-commerce and Direct Marketing Manager, Monarch Airlines.
Using Hitwise Search Intelligence™, Monarch gained an insightful reading of how the low-cost airline industry employed search marketing, and used this information to improve campaign tactics.
The Challenge
Aware from Hitwise data that on average, 40 percent of web traffic to flymonarch.com comes from search engines, Monarch Airlines wanted to ensure that any search term rationalisation would not have a negative impact on the volume of traffic or bookings driven by search engines. Monarch therefore needed to determine the keywords driving the greatest volume of users to its website and obtain a broad and incisive reading of its industry to ultimately streamline online search marketing use, and save themselves (and their customers) time and money.
The Solution
“We used the Hitwise Search Intelligence™ tools to analyse the percentage of brand terms versus generic flight terms and destination terms driving traffic to flymonarch.com over the year,” says Monarch’s Catherine Kite. “We then performed the same analysis on our core competitors and on the whole commercial airline market category,” Kite says.
The Hitwise results demonstrated that brand terms such as 'monarch' and 'monarch airlines' overwhelmingly represented the greatest volume-driving keywords for flymonarch.com.
Similar brand dominated terms drove significant levels of traffic to key competitors, signifying that a greater emphasis should be placed on branded keywords versus generic keywords for attracting the greatest number of users through search.
The Benefits
According to Kite, “This data gave us the confidence to stop bidding on a whole portfolio of destination search terms which we knew weren’t cost-effective enough for us...” Armed with this information, Kite revealed, “…we were safe in the knowledge that we were not stepping away from high-volume terms that were driving significant traffic levels to competitors”.
Looking to leverage these insights, Kite says, “The data was then ploughed into our SEO work, allowing us to pick up these lower volume terms naturally and much more costeffectively.” Even though Monarch had metrics and data onhand from their own PPC and SEO campaigns, Kite affirms the value of Hitwise in this major decision, saying, “…we needed to ensure we saw the bigger picture for our market and core competitors”.
