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Emergency Marketing Response
- The SARS Outbreak and Toronto Based Clients
by Jim Hedger, SEO Manager
May 7th, 2003
The panic was real. Even before the World Health Organization issued its
now rescinded advisory against unnecessary travel to Toronto, the media
had hyped fears of SARS into plague-like proportions leading to significant
declines in tourism and travel to Toronto. Conventions were cancelled, hotel
rooms left vacant and empty seats at Jays games told the story of millions
of dollars suddenly withdrawn from the downtown economy. Businesses based
on providing services to tourists or other businesses experienced an immediate
loss of revenue and are expecting to continue losing money until public
perceptions change and visitors return to the city.
StepForth has two clients from the Toronto region that depend on tourism
and travel to Toronto. Both Escape
Tours and Parris
Concierge are small businesses, employing a total of six full time staff
and less than ten part time staff. Neither company can afford a large advertising
budget and neither company could afford to sit still while the economic
foundation of their businesses collapsed beneath their feet.
Fortunately, these clients know each other and have done business together
on several occasions in the past. When Katherine Parris called StepForth
early into the crisis, we immediately recommended a solution that would
potentially benefit both businesses while distancing them from keyword phrases
that mentioned the word “Toronto”.
The first part of our solution was to suggest that the two businesses start
working closer together by sharing client lists, helping each other generate
leads, and increasing the number cross-referrals between the companies.
For us, this was the easy part. The more difficult part would be to position
the two companies high on search engines for keyword phrases that had no
reference to the city of Toronto. That required a little more than just
good thoughts, it required good, hard work.
Escape Tours is a small but busy company offering personalized tours of
Toronto and the surrounding areas. As each tour is designed to meet the
needs of specific clients, Escape Tours offers trips to several other areas
around Ontario and Quebec. Having benefited for almost a year from Top10
listings under the keyword phrase “Toronto Tours”, Escape Tours
owner Aurelija was starting to worry that people would not be interested
in taking tours of a city that had been (wrongly) fingered as the leading
distribution point for SARS. Realizing that one of Toronto’s attractions
is also the world’s longest continuous road, (Yonge Street) we recommended
the business begin to promote tourism destinations outside of the Toronto
area. A quick reoptimization effort on a Friday evening resulted in a number
of rapid gains at Google under keyword phrases relating to other tourism
destinations Escape Tours could serve. While it is still too early to determine
if this effort has helped the core business, we are happy to report that
our client is now in the Top20 under keyword phrases that do not relate
to Toronto, while retaining her already strong placements under keyword
phrases that do relate to Toronto.
Parris Concierge was a more difficult challenge. Run by Katherine Parris,
Parris Concierge offers a wide array of services to the business community
and their guests. Having strong listings at Overture and Google under a
wide variety of Toronto related keyword phrases had proven to be extremely
beneficial to the company as Toronto is the hub of business and communications
in Canada. After hearing of two major professional conventions withdrawing
their plans to hold their meetings in Toronto, Katherine also began to worry
about the economic underpinnings of her business. To redefine the focus
of Katherine’s search engine promotion, we had to examine other facets
of her business and try to determine what other services she might offer
and where the client base would come from. After studying different client
needs with Katherine, we decided to focus on services in Toronto but to
find a number of keyword phrases that could be used that did not reflect
Toronto. With a 5-Million person potential market, the thinking is that
by offering services people need on a daily basis or for special occasions,
Katherine should be able to bridge the gap until such time as prosperity
returns to the Toronto tourism scene.
It is still too early to fully judge the results of these campaigns. We
have successfully placed the clients’ websites in the Top10 under
keyword phrases that are not directly associated with the city name, “Toronto”,
ironically, achieving these results just after the WHO rescinded its warning
on travel to Toronto. While keyword phrases such as “Kingston Tours”, “Ottawa
Tours”, and even “Montreal Tours” are not as heavily searched
as our original target phrase, “Toronto Tours”, it is our expectation
that Escape will see more business from these other keyword phrases than
they would from the now-tainted original. As for Parris Concierge, business
is business and the need for Katherine’s services will most likely
bounce back fairly quickly as Toronto is the sixth largest city in North
America and the business center of Canada. Just in case, we achieved Top10
placements under several other keyword phrases relating to services Parris
Concierge can facilitate but not related to the city of Toronto. Perhaps
the best measure of success is that both Escape Tours and Toronto Concierge
report that the phones are ringing again, but how many of these inquiries
will pan out to be paying clients will not be known for several weeks.
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