Air France Internet Marketing Optimizing Google Yahoo MSN and Kayak Sponsored Search Case Solution

1. Identify the key decisions that need to be made in the short run and in the long run.

i. Short-Term Decisions

One of the major short-term decisions that need to be made in evaluating how to maximize the ROI on search engine marketing campaigns, travel aggregator websites, and keyword bids. Through this, the KPIs need to be developed which would help in understanding the campaign performance based on a search engine, keywords, keyword group, and bid strategy. 

Another short-term decision was to assess the impact of keyword-based targeting and examine the best strategy for keywords. This means that they needed to determine the optimal quantity of bidding for branded keywords and invest in SEO for utilizing unbranded keywords and improving the indexing on the search engines. Also, the sponsored searches on search engines and travel aggregators are a short-term decision that Air France needs to make to develop an optimal mix and allocate resources to maximize the return. Therefore, it means devising an SEO strategy that would help Air France to reduce the cost-per-click through the search volume. Also, improve the revenue per transaction and in turn, improve the net revenue of the campaigns.  

ii. Long-Term Decisions

ROI Maximization is one of the key long-term decisions. The decisions are taken in the short term also relate to this long-term objective. This includes planning future campaigns and the usage of different search engines. It also includes reviewing past performance to identify levelers like keywords which will help in optimizing future campaigns. Furthermore, deciding whether to use a uniform strategy across search engines or a different strategy for each SEM tool. 

Another long-term objective is to capture the market share in the US. This includes deciding how to use geo-targeting and keywords specific to the US like “Flights to New York” to improve sales volume in the US market. 

A third long-term objective is driving international growth. This demanded an assessment of the consumer attitudes and behaviors that differ across different countries that could help in improving customer conversion. 

2. Do a brief SWOT analysis of Air France as it applied to their online campaign (i.e., do not focus on the airline business and competition per se).

i. SWOT Analysis of Air France

The brief SWOT analysis of Air France is based on its online marketing activities rather than its activities as an airline service provider. 

3. Which publishers produce the best marketing campaign results?

The following table includes calculations based on Exhibit 6 of the case study:

Yahoo US offers the least average cost per click. However, when looking at the sum of net revenue, Google US is the most effective platform, although its average cost per click is the highest. Furthermore, while MSN Global’s click-through rate is the highest, it generates the lowest revenue. Cost per booking is the least with Kayak which also offers the best transaction conversion rate. IT also offers the highest ROA. Kayak is therefore the best performing platform because of offers the best results across three categories of metrics. 

Therefore, the best publishers include Google US because of the high revenue. MSN global also produced good marketing results, however, the sum of net revenue is the lowest. However, because of the high click-through rate, it could be contributing to influencing consumer behavior towards making the purchase decision. Kayak is the best, however; it needs to be combined with other platforms because the good performance at Kayak might be the result of consumer behavior being influenced over a range of different touchpoints. 

Overture US seems to be the worst performer, although its click-through rate is on the lower side. Therefore, a combination of Yahoo, Google US, Google Global, Kayak, MSN Global would be best. 

4. Which publishers should receive more marketing dollars? Which should receive less? Should any be eliminated?

Based on the table above, Overture US should be eliminated. However, Overture Global can be retained because of a low average cost per click and a medium-level profit. Although since it is not the best performer in any of the categories and has the least click-through rate, it should receive the least marketing dollars.