Low cost airline jettisons search engine baggage The Challenge Monarch Airlines needed to determine the keywords driving the greatest volume of users to its website and obtain a broad and incisive reading of its industry to ultimately streamline online search marketing use, and save themselves time and money. The Solution “We used the Hitwise Search Intelligence™ tools to analyse the percentage of brand terms versus generic flight terms and destination terms driving traffic to flymonarch.com over the year,” says Monarch’s Catherine Kite. “We then performed the same analysis on our core competitors and on the whole commercial airline market category,” Kite says. Hitwise data gave Monarch Airlines the confidence to stop bidding on a whole portfolio of destination search terms which weren’t cost-effective enough for them. Hitwise allowed them to ensure they were not giving up keywords that were driving high traffic to their competition.

1. Commercial airline jettisons excess online baggage!
Using Hitwise Search Intelligence™, Monarch (www.flymonarch.com) gained an insightful reading
of how the low-cost airline industry employed search marketing, and used this information to
improve campaign tactics.
The Challenge
Aware from Hitwise data that on average, 40 percent of web traffic to Hitwise at work:
flymonarch.com comes from search engines, Monarch Airlines wanted to
ensure that any search term rationalization would not have a negative impact
on the volume of traffic or bookings driven by search engines. Monarch
therefore needed to determine the keywords driving the greatest volume of
users to its website and obtain a broad and incisive reading of its industry to Competitive Insights for
ultimately streamline online search marketing use, and save themselves Search Marketing
(and their customers) time and money. Industry
Travel: Commercial Airlines
The Solution
“We used the Hitwise Search Intelligence™ tools to analyze the percentage
of brand terms versus generic flight terms and destination terms driving
traffic to flymonarch.com over the year,” says Monarch’s Catherine Kite. “We
then performed the same analysis on our core competitors and on the whole “Hitwise gives us the
commercial airline market category,” Kite says. The Hitwise results
demonstrated that brand terms such as “monarch” and “monarch airlines” confidence to make
overwhelmingly represented the greatest volume-driving keywords for critical decisions on the
flymonarch.com. Similar brand dominated terms drove significant levels of
traffic to key competitors, signifying that a greater emphasis should be
direction of our search
placed on branded keywords versus generic keywords for attracting the marketing campaigns.
greatest number of users through search. Market and competitor
The Benefits level data allow us to
According to Kite, “This data gave us the confidence to stop bidding on a
whole portfolio of destination search terms which we knew weren’t cost-
fine-tune our Search
effective enough for us...” Armed with this information, Kite revealed, “…we Engine Optimization
were safe in the knowledge that we were not stepping away from high- and Pay-Per-Click
volume terms that were driving significant traffic levels to competitors”.
Looking to leverage these insights, Kite says, “The data was then ploughed campaigns.”
into our SEO work, allowing us to pick up these lower volume terms naturally
and much more cost-effectively.” Even though Monarch had metrics and data
Catherine Kite,
on-hand from their own PPC and SEO campaigns, Kite affirms the value of E-commerce and Direct
Hitwise in this major decision, saying, “…we needed to ensure we saw the Marketing Manager,
bigger picture for our market and core competitors”.
Monarch Airlines.
About Experian Hitwise
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