The Senior Vice President of Media Contacts, a consulting firm, was tasked with the challenge of improving the marketing strategies of Air France through internet or search engine marketing (SEM). With the boom of SEM as an advertising tool, most companies are putting in funds in utilizing such medium. The Senior VP, Rob Griffin, wants to deliver the best of what Air France requires for sales development. This case study looks in-depth at the airline industry and considers all the factors in coming up with the right internet marketing strategy for Air France.
Mark Jeffery, Lisa Egli, Andy Gieraltowski, Jessica Lambert, Jason Miller, Liz Neely, Rakesh Sharma
Harvard Business Review (KEL319-PDF-ENG)
March 06, 2009
Case questions answered:
Case study questions answered in the first solution:
- Identify the key decisions that need to be made in the short run and in the long run.
- 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).
- Which publishers produce the best marketing campaign results?
- Which publishers should receive more marketing dollars? Which should receive less? Should any be eliminated?
- Which publishers would benefit from changing tactics, i.e., changing keyword, match type, and bid strategy?
- Which publishers would benefit from improved copy, i.e., improving wording in the search ad or the content on the landing page?
- Kayak Click data is not available through DoubleClick. How does Kayak compare to the other search engines? Would you recommend more or less funding for the Kayak SEM campaign?
- Write your summary recommendations on how Air France can improve their results in the future.
Case study questions answered in the second solution:
- Each row of data in the sheet named “DoubleClick” contains information related to a specific keyword for a particular search engine. In order to compare the campaign performance of different search engines, we first need to decide the metrics on which we want to compare performance. For example, if we choose revenue as such a metric, then we can say that the search engine that generates a higher revenue has a better performance than another search engine that generates lower revenue. We refer to such metrics as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Which of the variables (column names) already included in the datasheet can serve as these KPIs?
- Can you construct additional metrics using existing data that can serve as suitable KPIs (think of creating new columns by using existing data)? Please describe these additional KPIs.
- Use a pivot table to create summary metrics at the level of each search engine for all the KPIs you suggested in answering questions 1 and 2 above. Include a screenshot of the pivot table.
- Analyzing the data in the pivot table, it should be obvious that depending on the KPI you choose, a different search engine would be seen to have a better performance. Please select only three KPIs out of all the ones that are summarized in the pivot table you created in response to Question (3) above. Describe why you chose those three KPIs (Hint: think about which KPIs can provide actionable recommendations to improve overall campaign performance). Create a bubble chart using these 3 KPIs and utilize this bubble chart to suggest a strategy to improve the performance of each search engine.
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Air France Internet Marketing: Optimizing Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Kayak Sponsored Search Case Answers
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Introduction – Air France and its plan for Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Rob Griffin, Senior Vice President of Media Contacts, a consulting firm, was tasked with the challenge of improving the marketing strategies of Air France through internet or search engine marketing (SEM).
With the boom of SEM as an advertising tool, most companies are putting in funds to utilize such a medium. Griffin wants to deliver the best of what Air France requires for sales development.
This case study looks in-depth at the airline industry and considers all the factors in coming up with the right internet marketing strategy for Air France.
1. Identify the key decisions that need to be made in the short run and in the long run.
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).
3. Which publishers produce the best marketing campaign results?
To identify the publisher that produces the best marketing campaign results, we can use the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Click-through-rate% (CTR). The number of clicks generated per 100 impressions.
- Transaction Conversion Rate% (TCR). Number of transactions per 100 clicks.
- Probability of Action(PoA): CTR*TCR
- Return on Advertising Expenditure (RoA): Net revenue divided by the advertising costs.
The following table summarizes the analysis:
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