Summary
Car parking, retail and other non-aeronautical services are now key revenue streams for airports.
Competition from unofficial car park websites was pushing Manchester Airport Car Parks (MACP) out of the search engine top results, reducing market share and impacting on sales. Losing market share to unofficial websites is a growing problem for online brands in all sectors.
Ambergreen was appointed to create a search marketing campaign that would stop the erosion of MACPs market share, control competition and firmly establish its re-launched website as a robust distribution channel and revenue stream.
In one month of going live, revenue doubled. And in one year sales trebled and MACPs market share increased by 2%. Over the last 12 months, Ambergreen has delivered an average return on investment of 9:1.
Challenge
Manchester Airport is the UK’s third largest airport handling 20 million passengers a year, offering direct flights to over 180 destinations worldwide by over 90 airlines. 3,168,000 cars use MACP annually and 8,679 daily.
In 2004 the Manchester Airport website was re-launched allowing passengers to book flights, holidays, hotels and foreign currency as part of a strategy to create a new revenue stream for the airport.
At launch, competition from unofficial car parks serving Manchester Airport was squeezing the official site down the search engines, diverting valuable sales and undermining the site’s primary aim to deliver increased revenues.
Ambergreen was tasked with increasing online market share, controlling competition, increasing the number of online booking and generating the best possible return on investment
Solution
As one of the top search marketing companies in the UK, with an international reputation for online travel search marketing, Ambergreen was an obvious choice for this campaign.
Ambergreen is a full service agency and its specialist pay per click team created a targeted campaign on Google to increase market share and generate online sales in line with MACPs business model.
MACP has a very defined target market, making it imperative that the campaign was highly targeted, thoroughly researched and closely linked to MACP business objectives.
Ambergreen conducted intensive research of the MACP market to ensure complete focus and avoid any wastage or inefficiency. This analysis exposed the size of the market and the critical key words that would deliver maximum return on investment within a tightly controlled budget.
Ambergreen’s skilled use of PPC allowed it to manipulate the campaign to hit strategic targets that would ensure the site was highly responsive to seasonal fluctuations and could sustain consistently high return on investment, even improving sales out with peak seasons while making absolutely certain that demand did not outstrip capacity.
Results
The results of this campaign were instantaneous. Within one month online bookings had doubled and after 12 months revenue had trebled and market share increased by 2%.
On average over the entire period of the campaign the return on investment has been 9:1. For every £1 MACP spent, Ambergreen has generated £9 revenue.
Clive Tilley, Head of Marketing at Manchester Airport explains: “More and more people are taking advantage of the benefits of booking through the web. The work we’ve done in re-designing the site combined with Ambergreen’s search marketing campaign has had an extraordinary impact on bookings.”
Another important benefit has been for MACP to build a closer relationship with customers, something that was not possible before. Although many customers’ experience of the airport begins and ends in the car park, traditionally MACP had no relationship with customers and all customer data was gathered by the airport.
Through the internet MACP has been able to build a direct one to one relationship with its customers and improve customer experience introducing cross selling and providing information about other airport services including executive lounges, tax and duty free sales.
An opt in function has also allowed MACP to introduce an email campaign informing customers of relevant new services such as the new check in kiosks. This all helps the customer to know more about the airport and has integrated MACP more closely with the main airport.
The PPC campaign certainly succeeded in its objectives to increase market share, control competition, increase revenue and deliver a strong return on investment. But it’s achievements have gone far beyond that, integrating car parks with the airport, building one to one relationships with customers and creating a powerful new revenue stream for the Manchester Airports Group.
Over the entire period of the campaign the return on investment has been 9:1 with October 2005 peaking at 15:1.
