2009 Indiana Tourism Summit Wrapup – Online Marketing – Santhana Naidu

Welcome to our 2009 Indiana Tourism Summit wrapup post about Online Marketing, preseneted by Santhana Naidu.

Our director, Amy, calls Santhana Naidu one of our secret weapons. Santhana is the Director of Online Marketing and Analytics at Williams Randall Marketing, our agency of record. His expertise in analytics and online marketing has been a tremendous help to us in the past year that we’ve worked with Williams Randall.

Santhana brought up several points about why it’s important to spend marketing dollars online

• Online Marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to most traditional mediums
• Accountability for advertiers
• Nearly all aspects of campaigns can be tracked, tested and optimized
• The internet is used throughout the purchase funnel in the tourism industry and is the most powerful tool in prompting people to take a trip
• Search is used by 6 in 10 travelers
• Just under 30% of people are influenced to book based on online advertising - I’ll repeat that: Nearly 30% of people are influenced to book based on online advertising!

Santhana talked in detail about many of these items as well as these four important types of internet advertising:

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
2. Display Advertising
3. Cost Per Lead programs
4. Mobile Marketing

While all four types of online marketing are important, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Display Advertising help give you the most qualified leads. Mobile marketing is certainly on the rise now, but we’re still in the beginning stages of mobile marketing.

Santhana’s presentation is below:

Santhana Naidu is the Director of Online Marketing & Analytics at Williams Randall Marketing. Since joining Williams Randall in 2003, he has been responsible for driving the strategy and development of marketing analytics programs and online marketing campaigns for several clients. Santhana has worked on related projects for BMW, Volvo, Harrison College (formerly Indiana Business College) and Indiana Tourism and currently manages a $3 million online advertising budget for a variety of clients.