About HomeAway :-
HomeAway, an online holiday rental parent brand , based out in Austin, Texas in 2005. The company offers more than 1 million home rentals for vacation across 190 countries. The travelers who are looking for alternatives to hotels, such as cabins, condos, castles, villas , farmhouses can be the customers of parent brand and its subsidiaries. This tree has portfolio of branches as VRBO.com, Vacationrental.com, OwnersDirect.co.uk, Homelidays.com and many more, serving in different parts of the world.
HomeAway’s Business Objective :-
With the common objective of growth and profitability, HomeAway has some specific objectives to be fulfilled via digital marketing.
- They opted Web Analytics as their medium to measure visits in order to convert into inquiries of the listed properties on website.
- They optimized their keyword selection to figure out the impact of paid search and displaying campaigns to visitors.
Both the objectives clearly states the company’s objective to understand the impact of different marketing channels in order to enhance theirs sales and visitor’s traffic to their website.
HomeAway’s Approach :-
HomeAway partnered with Google to on board the evidence based-approach with Data-driven attribution. It means they assigned a different credit ratings to every customer interaction such as clicks or displays which happen before converting into sale. This helps them to understand the customer behavior and preferences in selecting type of listed property.
Secondly, they budgeted their marketing investments towards identifying the right set of keywords to see the effectiveness of the Google Analytics Model Comparison Tool Report. The report helps them in deciding the right keywords to display the campaigns on top.
Results Achieved By HomeAway :-
With the first test drive itself, response seemed overwhelming . HomeAway financials clearly showing the impact of the undertaken program .
- HomeAway was able to identify 20 keywords to test with its initial budgeted marketing investment of USD 6000. Therefore they strategically decided to put more money into digital marketing space.
- More importantly, their financials bar raised by 23% towards more conversion, drive a dramatic change in the profitability of the industry .
Learnings :-
The key learning message from Homaway case study for every business is to keep an eye open on changing trends across business and allocating the money into right marketing channels can quickly enhance the profitability of the business. Web Analytics and Search engine marketing can really boast the business especially in online space.
Very good Karun, case study is well presented.