TOUR3003 Destination Management and Marketing

The Google merchandise in Mountain View, California is an ecommerce store section from Google that deals with various promotions of products and services. After careful considerations, the merchandise store has opted to focus on tourism merchandise mainly targeting Australia and New Zealand. This was promoted by the fact that most of the customers that visit their site are mostly coming from Australia or New Zealand and that most of the prospective customers are often searching for Australian or New Zealand based souvenirs and products that are locally made (Ye, Feng, & Gao, 2019). There have been growing interests on various merchandise products that promote Australian Tourism with a lot of traffic being generated from different countries including Germany, New Zealand and Australia.

Digital marketing strategies are always critical on how the merchandise store will achieve its desired objectives.  The ultimate aim of any business organisation is the complete satisfaction of its intended customers. Efficient customer relationships are always important to the overall success of the organisation. By adopting digital marketing strategies, an organisation is able to establishing and maintains efficient relationships with their customers through several means. The customers are kept current on new products, trends and issues that keep emerging in this rapidly changing world. The customers are availed with several options to decide from with unlimited access (Zhang & Rajasekaran, 2020). Digital marketing strategies are often based on convenience and faster service. This promotes positive brand exposure and the customers will experience highly comfortable experiences in shopping.

Feasibility and Business Case

The Australian tourism and hospitality industry has been among the first industries to implement strategies of digital marketing. This has enabled several organizations to lead in the current trends of digital marketing. The increasing number of mobile and internet users, reduced prices in the services of digital marketing and the increasing efficiency of social media strategies are some of the reasons for the adoption and implementation of digital marketing strategies. There are several forms of digital marketing strategies that have been used by different organizations to attract customers and promote their products. One common strategy is the Google merchandise store (Hyllegard et al, 2016). This is an e-commerce category from Google that deals with Google merchandise. Google analytics can be used to obtain data that will be important in the identification of the possible future of the organization, determining the group of prospective customers and launching a marketing campaign. 

In the promotion of tourism and hospitality practices within the region, the adoption of a Google merchandise store would be very appropriate. The technique has several benefits and has indicated effectiveness I its operation. It enables the determination of the customers that contribute to the greatest sales over a period of time as well as the return customers. It is easier to determine the type of devices that is mostly used by the returning customers. Considering that tourism is a sector that attracts individuals from all over the world, the strategy also facilitates the determination of number of potential customers from each country and also the country that had the largest number of visits (Broos & Marcos Ramos, 2017).  Comparison of potential customers depending on the regions they come from, such as towns, suburbs or cities can also be carried out.

From the data analytics of the Australian Google merchandise store, the results based audience, acquisition and behaviour and conversions were determined.  The largest number of active users ever experienced in a day was recorded at 3715 users. Australia and New Zealand users made a total of 8345 and 1283 visits respectively during the selected year of analysis. In the determination of audience involvement, bounce rate, pages/sessions and the average duration of a session were the common techniques used. The impressive number of users who accessed the store from mobile devices just adds to the accessibility and indicates how receptive this digital strategy in the promotion of tourism. Several Ad word campaigns were adopted with the MIX|Txt- AW-Brand (US/ Cali) generating a revenue of up to $ 4034.77.

Souvenirs and products

1. Camphor cutting board- the camphor laurel cutting boards are handmade in Sydney and represent a valuable addition to one’s kitchen. Its natural antifungal and antimicrobial features adds on its safety for use.
2. Opals- the country is largely known for its quality opals and Sydney has been termed as the home several opal products, ranging from delicate jewelry to investment gems. Carefully set in Australian gold, a pair of opal earrings can be a treasured and special gift to a loved one (Witcomb, 2012)
3. UGG boots- this is iconic Australian footwear prepared from sheep skin of highest quality. They are comfortable and warm and have recently become a fashion statement being worn by several celebrities all over the world.
4. Akubra hat- made from rabbit fur felt, they are wide brimmed and designed to keep off the hot Australian sun. It basically has a thin leather band around the crown base. The hat is a major stable product in the country.
5. Kangaroo leather- Australia is famous for its unique and strong kangaroo leather that are technically crafted into bags, wallets, belts and other products. The leather is highly prized due to its exclusive cross fibring that enables very thin splitting without lose in weight. Its weight also makes it the strongest leather (Setiyati & Indrayanto, 2011).
6. Gold –plated eucalyptus leaf- Sydney is surrounded by several ancient eucalypt forests making the eucalyptus tree a major Australian native. The eucalypt leaves are collected and then plated into gold to develop a highly delicate and beautiful jewelry.
7. Cricket bat- cricket has for many years been an Australian national sport and thus a cricket bat would be a perfect gift for a sport enthusiast. The Kookaburra cricket bats are quite popular and have been used by several cricketing elite (Yi, 2016).
8. Emu oil- aboriginal Australians have used the emu oil as a healing ointment for several years. It is believed to act wonders on wrinkles and fine lines. It is anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and antihistamine.
9. Boomerang- this is a symbol of aboriginal Australian culture used as a hunting tool several years ago. They are painted in vibrant colors with traditional techniques of dot painting.
10. Aboriginal artwork- aboriginal Australians possess a rich artistic heritage often captured in modern and traditional artwork, displayed at several galleries (Hume, 2013).

Google Ads Keywords

1. Opals & Opal jewelry
2. 100% pure Australian emu oil
3. Range Boomerangs Australia
4. Aboriginal memorials artwork
5. The cricket shop: home to kookaburra bats
6. Real leaf jewelry
7. Strength and durability: kangaroo leather
8. Hat store- iconic Akubra hats
9. UGG authentic boots and footwear
10. Antibacterial Camphor cutting boards

Google Ads promotional campaigns

Brand names are increasingly becoming highly competitive in the tourism industry. Aggressive bidding on brand names increases the cost per click on the site that requires paying. The different brands that promote various products are registered at Google with focus being on maximizing the quality score of the selected keywords (Lee, 2011).

Remarketing the search ads

The visitors on the site do not always book on the first attempt. They can visit several sites and make comparisons before coming to a conclusion.  The prospect adding remarketing lists to the Google Ads campaigns can make bids higher if they have visited the site and have already familiarized themselves.

Sustainable practices to be included in this digital marketing

Adopt a call-to action in the Identification of target audience. Both the potential and existing customers always desire to identify themselves with the organisations whenever there is communication. Proper interaction with customers will help in understanding what they want and will help the organisation come up with the appropriate strategies and improvement in the customer experience (Neale et al, 2014). Call-to-action enables customers to do whatever the organisation wants them to do, such as downloading, signing up, making purchases etc. Having in place a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will help the organisation to acquire visibility. It also improves the digital marketing campaign. Having the site on the first pages of Google ensure conversations with the customers (Halligan & Shah, 2014)

Conclusion

Digital marketing is fast gaining ground in several industries across the globe.  The tourism industry was among the first industry to adopt digital marketing. It helps the tourism sector to be up top in the results of various search engines.  Google merchandise store are latest techniques of digital marketing that have been used in both Australia and New Zealand tourism industry (Weller & Calcott, 2012). Google has been on the forefront in informing organisations to make the shopping experience highly streamlined for its intended customers. Google has been promoting the adoption of shopping ads and have kept releasing more features. Google merchandising leads to highly qualified traffic and clicks. It ensures that the organisation only pays for the clicks that they want. The technique will also lead to an improved user experience that leads to improved conversion rates. Better rates of conversion imply that the tourism sector in the two countries will be improved with more interested customers (Fox, 2012).

References

Broos, S., & Marcos Ramos, J. (2017). Google, Google Shopping and Amazon: The Importance of Competing Business Models and Two-Sided Intermediaries in Defining Relevant Markets. The Antitrust Bulletin, 62(2).

Fox, V. (2012). Marketing in the Age of Google, Revised and Updated: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy. John Wiley & Sons.

Halligan, B., & Shah, D. (2014). Inbound marketing: get found using Google, social media, and blogs. John Wiley & Sons.

Hume, D. (2013). Tourism art and souvenirs: The material culture of tourism. Routledge.

Hyllegard, K. H., Ogle, J. P., Yan, R. N., & Kissell, K. (2016). Consumer response to exterior atmospherics at a university-branded merchandise store. Fashion and Textiles, 3(1), 1-17.

Lee, M. (2011). Google ads and the blindspot debate. Media, Culture & Society, 33(3), 433-447.

Neale, L., Treiblmaier, H., Henderson, V., Hunter, L., Hudson, K., & Murphy, J. (2014). The Google online marketing challenge and research opportunities. Journal of Marketing Education, 31(1), 76-85.

Rajasekaran, R. (2015)An Exploratory Data Analysis of The Google Merchandise Store to Discover Factors Impact Revenue.

Setiyati, E. A., & Indrayanto, A. (2011). Outsourced souvenirs: An investigation towards authenticity anxiety and tourists purchase behavior. International Journal on Social Science, Economics and Art, 1(3), 196-201.

Weller, B., & Calcott, L. (2012). The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords: Create Versatile and Powerful Marketing and Advertising Campaigns. Apress.

Witcomb, A. (2012). Using souvenirs to rethink how we tell histories of migration. Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories, 36-50.

Ye, Z., Feng, A., & Gao, H. (2019, November). Prediction of Customer Purchasing Power of Google Merchandise Store. In International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (pp. 839-852). Springer, Cham.

Yi, L. I. (2016). Souvenirs Innovative Design Based on Australian Aboriginal Art. Packaging Engineering.

Zhang, S., & Rajasekaran, R. (2020). Exploratory Data Analysis, Descriptive and Predictive Analytics Approach For Improving Google Merchandise Store Revenue Based on Google Analytics Data.

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