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December 4, 2009 – 4:56 am

Any good businessman already knows the power of word of mouth but do they really understand how valuable it is and how more valuable it becomes in the Internet age?

Friends still play an really important role in influencing consumers. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place.

- Manage Smarter, September 2009

and

A March 2009 study by Knowledge Networks, for example, found that between 10% and 24% of US social media users turned to social networks when making purchase decisions about various categories of products and services.

- eMarketer, October 2009

So in the age of Social Network – your customers are already talking about it – even if you cant see it.  You need to get out there are talk to them.  Build your brand. Build your network. Build your circle of influence.

After all – are we not all consumers? Don’t we ask our friends for advice on products / services that we are looking at purchasing? Why should your customers be any different?

October 19, 2009 – 6:00 pm

For the last few months we’ve been working with lead Motorcoach and Tour Companies in designing a new Tours module in TravelManager.

GPN Coach Tours TravelManager Tours 2.0 – Next Generation of Tours

Now that we have some of our users live with Tours on their website and with more to following in the coming weeks it’s a pretty exciting time for Tours. However this is just the starting point over the coming months we want to help more of our existing and new users to get up and running.

If you’re listing your Tours as PDF’s on your website, you’re missing a huge opportunity with the search engines. They love content and by using Tours in TravelManager you get to leverage that content to drive more traffic to your website.

Sample Tour TravelManager TravelManager Tours 2.0 – Next Generation of Tours

Our goal is bring new and innovative features to TravelManager that will really help sell and promote your Tours. For us this means really listening to your feedback and sharing ideas on how to market your Tours more effectively. Search Engines, Social Networks are potential growth areas for your business, let us help you get the most out of these.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Eamonn

October 2, 2009 – 8:30 am

With the increasing number of ways for customers to express their opinion about your product or service there’s a new trend to monitor sentiment on the Internet. Basically it’s about tracking whether the crowds opinion is positive or negative in blogs, social networks, news articles, online forums etc.

good and bad egg The next wave of online marketing? Listening

Good and Bad Sentiment Online

What does this mean for the Motorcoach industry? Well not a whole lot at the moment, but there’s an opportunity here to get and stay ahead of your competitors by starting to invest in your online reputation.

This is more than optimizing your website for search engines and more about really listening to what’s being said about your company good and bad. In fact as often is the case with dealing with traditional customer complaints, dealing with the negative effectively can often turn into a positive experience for the disgruntled customer.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share my experiences about Twitter and similar tools you can use to manage your online reputation.

Regards,

Eamonn

*Data mining and connecting with services like Facebook and Twitter will be part of TravelManager in 2010 to help our users connect with new customers and retain existing ones.

Don’t just take my word for it! Recent Article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/technology/internet/24emotion.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

September 27, 2009 – 11:59 am

It’s very easy to setup an online advertisement campaign but unfortunately it’s not so easy to manage and insure you’re getting value for money.

They’re are a lot of companies paying too much per click and not enough time tracking the value of the clicks. Remember Google only started Adwords in Oct 2000 with about 350 customers, but by 2007 they had over 1m advertisers. Worse still the benefit of an level playing field Adwords brought to advertising is being eroded with large national brokers massively out spending local operators (often paying too much themselves!!!).

Wasting Dollars on Poor Adwords Campaigns Is Google Adwords worth it?

Wasting dollars by not tracking online advertisement conversions?

The industry needs to get back to connecting with their customers and leveraging the Internet as a more than a just a lead generator to a customer service and relationship management tool.

The Internet is maturing and so should our attitude to how we use it to grow revenues.

Regards,

Eamonn


**By using the TravelManager quotation widget on your website you can traffic all sources of leads generated (from multiple locations). So before starting a campaign make sure you have a way to track the source of leads and their conversions.
September 17, 2009 – 10:24 am

The TravelManager application (rather cleverly called “TM App”) is now available to download for FREE from the Apple App Store.

So this marks another first for TravelManager. The FIRST iPhone application available to download.

More features and functionality will be added over time – so if you want to stay ahead of the competition keep your feedback coming.

Regards

Dean

September 14, 2009 – 3:49 pm

So now that you’ve created a Facebook page it’s time to start promoting it. This can be done several ways:

Picture 8 Getting Fans to your Facebook Page

Irish Coaches Facebook Page

1)   Paid Advertisement

2)   Inviting Friends to become a Fan of your page

3)   Promoting your page off Facebook

We’re going to try all 3 techniques to see how effective they are and we’re going to share the results over the coming months.

social media marketing Getting Fans to your Facebook Page

Social Media Marketing

Paid Advertisement:

This is probably the fastest way to get your page out there and infront of your target audience. It involves creating a advertisement that will be listed on facebook users pages that fit your profile. So for example you can have you advertisement displayed to specific age ranges, genders, countries etc.

You can pay per impression (number of times you’re advert is displayed) or pay per click (like Google Adwords). For the initial campaign Irish Coaches are going to use pay-per-click.

Inviting Friends to become a Fan:

One thing that has annoyed a lot of people promoting businesses on Facebook is that you can’t invite people directly to become a fan of your page. They have to be a friend and then you can use the “Suggest to Friends” facility to promote your page.

This means that you won’t be able to start sending invites to all your customers or mailing lists, rather you have to either become friends on facebook or promote your page without using Facebook.

Promoting your page off Facebook:

What I mean by this is NOT using Facebook to promote your Facebook page. This has surprized a lot of people that Facebook is quite restrictive on helping you to promote your page. Apart from inviting your friends to become fans or by adding a “Badge” (link from your website) they’re is very few other tools you can use.

Regards,

Eamonn

**Useful Diagram:

sales funnel Facebook Getting Fans to your Facebook Page

Sales Funnel using Facebook

September 7, 2009 – 9:41 am

Microsoft have put together a rather interesting video which showcases some of the technology that they think will be around in the year 2019 – so only 10 short years away icon wink How Microsoft sees technology in 2019

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

As people become more accustomed to technology and as technology lowers the barriers to entry for new entrants in many markets its critical for businesses to be aware of “whats possible” now and in the near future so they may make the necessary decisions now and not when its too late.

Whats your thoughts on some of the technology in this video?

Dean

August 27, 2009 – 10:07 am

Over the coming couple of months we will be launching a new area on this site call TravelManager Labs and it will showcase some of the interesting things we (and others on the Internet) are working on in video and demo format.

Keep an eye out for the link (Ill also post here icon wink TravelManager Labs launching soon. )

Regards

Dean