Mobile: 11 Eye-Opener Travel Stats For

Hotel Marketers
By Hillary Bressler, Fractional CMO & Digital Marketing Consultant at
Pinch Hit Partners
7 min0 Comments


There are many stats that are interesting, some mind blowing, and some
confusing as it relates to travel marketing. But there are those stats that
are eye openers for marketers that make creative minds to say "Ah Ha",
let's try something new based on these stats. If you want your hotel to
grow, these stats could make a difference going into the year ahead if
you apply them to your marketing efforts.

 Mobile Marketing Emergency

49% of direct online bookings are now on mobile, compared to 31% in 2016.

Key Takeaway:
At the end of 2016 I told my hotel clients to drop everything and put their focus
on mobile marketing, especially if their mobile wasn't optimized well. This is
still true today. The world has gone mobile and it shouldn't come as any
surprise. Put as much effort into mobile as your staff can handle.

If you don't have a mobile-friendly website it's the first, most important step you
should take in your hotel's digital marketing strategy. Take out your smartphone
right now. Go to your hotel's website. Can you easily navigate and find the
information you need to complete the action you want visitors to take whether
that's an online reservation, click to call or important information such as
location, directions, photos and more? Follow Google's mobile-friendly best
practices. Test your site here.

The mobile site needs to be responsive and fast. Kissmetrics completed a study
that found 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and
40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. On top
of that, Kissmetrics found that a 1-second delay in page response time could
result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

 Airbnb
No one can deny that the hotel industry has a fight on its hands when it comes
to the peer-to-peer accommodation market like Airbnb. Research firm
Phocuswright found that in 2015 one-third of U.S. travelers booked non-
traditional, home-based accommodation. That's a noteworthy jump from only 1
in 10 in 2011. Hotels are much savvier than Airbnb hosts, but could learn a
thing or two from them as well. As Airbnb's are becoming more like hotels,
hotels could become more like Airbnb.
Key Takeaway:
Airbnb build trust in their guests with pictures of their hosts and co-hosts. You
know who you are talking to. To fight this trend, hotels could create social
media content that Airbnb-proofs their business. A popular option is to show
guests that your team is available to guests. They can help create individual
vacation experience in ways that absent Airbnb operators can't manage. You
can do this by featuring their individual personalities who are part of your
social media team in the content you create for your social media accounts.
Alternative accommodation websites like Airbnb appeal to travelers looking for
authentic and unique experiences. Instead of sticking to popular attractions and
guide book-endorsed restaurants. Hotels can provide a glimpse into living like a
local. Staff can be encouraged to offer up neighborhood knowledge and give
guests advice on popular hotspots. Little touches like local microbrews and
wines in the minibar or rotating exhibits of local artwork in the lobby can add
to a distinctive and immersive experience.
Airbnb isn't just a booking engine; it's a travel community. Hosts and their
guests communicate frequently—during the research phase, once a booking is
confirmed, before arrival and throughout the stay. By using Messenger apps,
hoteliers to interact with travelers and increase meaningful connections.
 Messaging Apps
Number of mobile phone messaging app users increases 15.5% in 2017
Key Takeaway:
Be where the guests want to be. Communicate in the way your guests prefer to
communicate. And everyone likes text messaging.
Marriott Hotels is redefining the hotel visit with mobile at the center, enabling
members of its loyalty program to engage in real-time conversations with staff
before, during and after a visit through the brand.
WhatsApp Messenger has emerged, with hotels such as Barcelo Illetas Albatros
using the app to offer any-place, any-time customer service. Chinese messaging
app, WeChat, has launched their Mini Program service, allowing users to
interact with companies and complete transactions to make a hotel
reservations. Since 2015, Hyatt has been using Facebook Messenger as a tool
for serving customers at all stages from pre-booking to post-checkout.
With these apps, you want to try to answer the question of how you make the
hotel useful beyond that single trip. The way you build engagement with a guest
goes much beyond the actual stay.
 Bleisure Trips
In the U.S., 43% of business trips are "bleisure," according to Expedia Media
Solutions--people extending their business trips to have some personal
experiences in that location.
Key Takeaway:
Many business people take their spouses and families on business trips
especially in beautiful destinations. You know the kids want to go with you on
your business trip to Orlando, right? Marketers could capitalize on reaching
these guests by offering an extension or special if they stay before or after their
business trip and offer nanny services or kids clubs. Or even partner with a
local daycare so single parents can bring their kids on their business trip.
 Guests Surfing Habits
Nielsen research found that travelers spent an average of 53 days visiting 28
different websites over a period of 76 online sessions, with more than 50% of
travelers checking social media for travel tips and 95% of consumers read
reviews before booking, according to Tnooz.
Key Takeaway:
If this isn't a good argument for hotel operators that more needs to be spent on
digital and social media marketing, I don't know what is. Retargeting is vital in
order to follow these users. Marketing sure you have your best foot forward on
all of your social media platforms is more important than ever.
There is site, mobile, email, search, contextual and social retargeting. Lure
consumers back to your site with personalization and special offers. Retarget to
book more guests. You will find it is an effective, affordable way to increase
conversions and follow these travelers that spend hours and hours online and
are ready to book.
 Destination Marketing
59% of travelers begin researching their next trip between one and three
months before departure, says TripAdvisor.
Key Takeaway:
This stat proves that an aggressive local CVB and state tourism agency that
markets your destination properly is worth its weight in gold. If your CVB is
lagging, now is the time to make sure they are well funded and have a stellar
marketing team.
 Onsite Activity Bookings
Data from Phocuswright shows how 38% of tour and activity bookings are
happening on the same day or up to two days before the activity. Many of these
bookings take place in-destination, while consumers are already traveling. Only
19% of these activities were booked more than a month in advance.
Key Takeaway:
This is the time to have a better plan to introduce your onsite activities and spa
to your guests a few days before arrival via email or messenger. Greet your
guests with a sampling of your services in the lobby upon arrival. The Ritz
Carlton Miami Beach gave me a complimentary arm and hand massage as I
arrived and I ended up booking a spa treatment because of it.
 Corporate Travel Growth
Healthy corporate travel demand: Strong economies drive business activity.
Business travel is projected to grow by more than 6% in 2018 according to
Deloitte.
Key Takeaway:
One aspect to a business travel that is so important is strong a Wi-Fi
connection. Hotels tout that they have free wi-fi and preferred wi-fi, but true
business people want to know the strength of your hotel's Wi-Fi. Just like at
home your cable plan you signed up for promised up to 300Mbps of blistering
Internet speed, but reality has proven to be somewhat different. You're barely
topping 25Mbps and can't even watch Netflix. We are seeing smart Airbnb
hosts, touting their Wi-Fi speed, by even taking a screen shot of their actual
speed through sites like http://www.speedtest.net/. Not a bad idea.
 Mobile Growth
State by state, California booked the most hotels on mobile devices in 2016,
followed by Kansas, Texas, Florida and New York. States that saw the biggest
growth in mobile bookings in 2016 were Rhode Island, Vermont, Michigan,
Iowa and Indiana. (source- Hotels Combined)
Key Takeaway:
If you are in any of these states or get business from these states, this is a great
statistic to show your boss to get on the mobile bandwagon asap.
 Increasing Conversions
81% of travel shoppers will abandon their shopping carts online. According to
research from SalesCycle, travel shoppers tend to abandon their shopping carts
more often than retail or other shoppers. The average rate for abandoned
baskets across all industries is 77%, but for travel shoppers, it's 81%.
Key Takeaway
:
Imagine how much your numbers would improve if you could either land the
sale the first time or ensure that you have a second shot at landing the sale.
When a guest abandons their shopping cart, not all has to be lost. Thankfully,
there is a way to beef up your booking funnels to include second chances. In
other words, focus on booking retargeting and increasing the look to book ratio.
For example, if your customer showed interest in a booking, but left your
booking funnel before sealing the deal, you can redirect their attention back to
you on other online marketing platforms. This includes paid search ads, on-
screen prompts, retargeting and more.
This stat is also important when managing your web team. Motivate them to
decrease this percentage by improving the website, and/or increasing look to
book ratio. Your web team should give you a few goals for the year and this
should be one of them.
 Photos That Incite Hotel Envy
Around 80 million posts are shared on Instagram daily. It's one of the fastest
growing social media channels, and its appeal is undeniable. More than 25% of
millennials that participate in loyalty programs are very likely to post about a
brand in exchange for loyalty points.
Key Takeaway:
By encouraging social shares, hospitality brands can leverage social media to
build positive brand awareness and display just how much their
accommodations and activities have to offer.
Hotels working with millennial travelers should take into account the
generation's preference for "experiences over materials." Try to create unique
experiences guaranteed to create a lasting memory and to inspire a great
Instagram post. By placing beautiful objects, inspiring sayings, unique views
and cool experiences, hotels can inspire guests to take great photos for social
sharing sites like Instagram. The goal would be to increase your Instagram
posts or vie for a position in the like of these hostels.... 9 Most Instagrammable
Hotel Lobbies in The World
Whatever your budget, brands are looking to engage customers with
compelling, interactive content rooted in authentic experiences. Today's
travelers are looking for authenticity and travel marketing campaigns need to
align more closely than ever with travelers' desires in order to win their
attention. My philosophy is to keep up to date on industry stats, take some risks,
put a % of your marketing budget into these new marketing ideas and be 12-18
months ahead of the curve with the goal of digital domination of your
competition.

New Research Finds a Majority of Hotel Guests Rank Unfriendly Staff as

Most Frustrating Part of Their Stay
By Alex Shashou, President & co-founder of ALICE
2 min1 Comment

ALICE, the hotel operations platform that empowers operational
excellence and meaningful guest experiences, released new research
uncovering what factors influence hotel satisfaction and found that
almost two-thirds of guests (62 percent) with complaints said unfriendly
staff are the most frustrating part of their stay.
The "Hotels at Face Value" report, commissioned by ALICE and conducted by
third-party research firm YouGov, also revealed the changing expectations of
modern hotel guests.

Modern Hotel Guest Priorities

According to the research, when booking hotels nearly three in five (59 percent)
guests who prioritize amenities care most about high ratings and reviews, and
almost half (49 percent) prioritize friendly hotel staff - calling attention to the
need for hoteliers to ensure staff are attentive and welcoming, delivering more
favorable guest experiences to ultimately drive positive reviews.
During their stay, guests with frustrations expressed a demand for hotels to
improve their operations and guest-facing technology. When discussing the
most frustrating experiences about hotel stays:

 Nearly two in five (38 percent) said the front desk taking too long to
complete requests
 More than one-third (34 percent) said outdated technology in rooms
 Nearly one in three (31 percent) said delays in service from hotel staff

Diversity of Communication Channels

When communicating needs to hotel staff, nearly a third (32 percent) of guests
said they prefer to do so by walking up to the concierge, front desk or other staff
member directly. However, this preference is not representative of all guests, as
the research indicated hotels should provide a diversity of communication
channels. When it comes to how different generations prefer to make special
requests, nearly one in every seven (15 percent) millennials (ages 18-34) want
to text message with hotels, almost one in five (17 percent) of 35-54-year-olds
want an email survey from the hotel before they arrive, and roughly two-thirds
(66 percent) of those 55 and older prefer to call hotels directly.

"No hotel guest is the same, which is why, above all else, hoteliers must perfect
the practice of personalization and deliver tailored experiences to every single
guest. Knowing that a majority of guests pay the most attention to staff
friendliness and attentiveness, hoteliers cannot afford to forget the art of
hospitality," said Alex Shashou, President and Co-Founder of ALICE.
"Hospitality is a feeling guests get, and personalization is how it is delivered. If
hotels don't want to be viewed as a commodity, then they need to stop treating
their guests like one. The biggest brands in the world are looking across their
entire customer journey to create experiences and hotels do the same. A guest is
so much more than their reservation. Guests deserve to be treated like family.
Once they are, meaningful relationships will not only forge, but flourish."
Research Methodology
ALICE commissioned YouGov — a third party, professional research and
consulting organization — to poll the views of 1,219 adults. Fieldwork was
undertaken between December 12-13, 2018. The survey was carried out online.
The figures have been weighted and are representative of all US adults (aged
18+).
Contact
Lola Feiger
Digital Marketing
Send Email
SIMILAR STORIES
 Over Half of Americans Turn to Friends & Family to Find New
Restaurants
 The Chateaux Deer Valley Uses ALICE to Give Guest the Chance to
Experience Everything the Mountain Town Has to Offer
 Voice, Digital Signage, In-room Controls - Oh My! ALICE Leads the Way
With Industry Open API
 Nordic Choice Selects Unified Hotel Operations and SMS Messaging
Platform to Reduce the Complexity of Siloed Systems Across Their
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About ALICE

ALICE is a hotel operations platform that empowers operational excellence and

meaningful guest experiences. By bringing all hotel departments together with a
single operations platform for internal communication and task management,
ALICE helps hotel staff act as a team to provide consistently excellent service.
Since the company was founded in 2013, ALICE has gained serious traction in
the industry, working with many of the world's leading hotel brands, including
Two Roads Hospitality, Dream Hotel Group, Grupo Posadas, SIXTY Hotels,
NYLO Hotels, and Leading Hotels of the World. The company acquired
concierge technology provider GoConcierge in 2017. ALICE is the Forbes
Travel Guide Brand Official Staff Technology Platform and the winner of Best
Place to Work in Hotel Technology, Best Concierge Software, Best Engineering
 & Facilities Management, Best Guest App and Top Staff Task Management &
Collaboration Platform at the 2019 HotelTechAwards.

For more information, visit https://www.aliceplatform.com.

Train Your Front Desk Team On The “5 Pillars Of Hospitality Excellence”

By Doug Kennedy, President of the Kennedy Training Network
4 min1 Comment

When a guest enters your lobby, chances are they are about to have
their first human interaction with your hotel's individual "brand." In the
past, most guests called to book by voice and then called back multiple
times prior to arrival with questions about driving directions,
transportation, area restaurants, hours of operations and the like. These
days most guests book online and then Google search for answers to
these and other pre-arrival questions.

Therefore, while I have always believed that the front desk staff played a critical
role, now more than ever they truly are the first impression makers, for better or
for worse. Chances are that hard evidence for this is available online every day
in your guest surveys and/or your online guest reviews. For example, if you take
a moment to read through your hotels 10 most recent "5 star" and also your 10
most recent "1 star" reviews, chances are the department most frequently
mentioned is front desk.
Being in the hotel training business takes me to an average of 6 hotels per
month, and since my personal passion is travel, that adds at least a dozen more
front desk registration experiences each year. Based on my experiences, it is
most often the fundamentals of hospitality excellence that are sorely lacking.

All too often when I walk up to the front desk with my luggage in hand, a jacket
over my arm and a smile on my face, I am greeted with a raised eyebrow and
nod and the question: "Checkin' in?" When they hand me the room key, I notice
that many forget to point me in the direction of the elevator. However, they
always seem to remember to give me their "Welcome speech" about what time
breakfast is served, where the fitness room is, and that I can make copies and
even send a fax from the business center. (The only problem is I get this same
speech even if I arrive at midnight, mention a very early flight out and ask for a
4am wake-up call. By the way, I have not sent a fax in at least 8 years!)

Later, when I call the front desk to decline housekeeping service or request
more coffee packets, an anonymous desk clerk picks up the phone with "Front
Desk." I have mostly given up asking about local area dining options or insider's
tips, as the most common answer is "I'm not sure, I would suggest Googling it."
When my key de-activates and I go back down to get it fixed I rarely hear any
empathy nor apology and instead am simply handed a new one then lectured not
to put it near my mobile phone, which is something I know well enough to
avoid. Finally, at the end of my stay when I stop by to get that "zero balance"
receipt I face two final questions. "Checking out?" and then "How was
everything, good?"

That being said, I also have experienced so many authentic, genuine and warm
welcomes at registration and when I do it literally makes my stay. Over the
years I even written about some of these hospitality superstars in my monthly
articles in this publication.
So, what makes the difference? Some front desk colleagues truly understand
that hospitality starts in the human heart.

At KTN we have just launched a new front desk staff certification program that
allows colleagues to become Certified in the Heart of Hospitality. The logo is a
heart held up by the five fingers of a hand, with each finger representing one of
these Five Pillars of Hospitality Excellence which I hope you will share with
your front desk team at your next pre-shift meeting or stand-up training.

 Properly Welcome Guests.

Understand that with all of the stress of travel these days, chances are we
are seeing the worst side of even the nicest personalities. Yet when we
make it our job to bring out the best in others, it brings out the best in
ourselves and we have a lot more fun! Be sure to properly welcome them
upon arrival with a phrase such as "Good afternoon, welcome to the
brand X hotel. How may I assist you today?" Deliver this with eye
contact and a genuine smile, it is contagious. Tailor your "welcome
script" to the guest story playing out in front of you.
 Telephone Hospitality Excellence.
Convey hospitality and enthusiasm in your tone of voice by "stepping
into character" like an actor on a stage. Speak slowly and articulate,
which means to pause between words and not run them all together as if
one syllable. Always provide your name when you answer to show
confidence. For answering questions or assisting, ask for and use the
caller's name. Supervise transferred calls and introduce both parties. End
calls by offering additional assistance, thanking the caller and restating
the hotel name.
 Know Your Product; Voluntarily Mention Key Details.
Be in the "guest experience business" and not the "room rental business."
Be prepared to thoroughly answer frequently asked questions. Voluntarily
offer "local insider's tips" such as where the locals eat, actual "rush hour"
travel times and "off the beaten path" attractions.
 Welcome and Resolve Guest Complaints.
Understand that no matter where a problem occurs in the hotel, chances
are it will be reported to the front desk. Since the worst complaint is the
one that is never mentioned, we should welcome them! (Otherwise the
un-reported complaint will surely end up posted online.) First, let guests
vent their frustration and validate their emotional distress. Next, show
 empathy and apologize. Finally, after resolving the issue follow-up to
ensure their satisfaction.
 Fond Farewell at Departure.
While reception is a first impression, the front desk departure
conversation is a chance for a lasting "last" impression. Solicit feedback
with sincerity. Encourage online reviews when feedback is positive. For
regular guests, offer return reservations to secure more direct bookings.
Offer assistance with transportation or driving shortcuts during rush hour.
Conclude the conversation with eye contact, a smile and a fond farewell.

If you take time to train your front desk team on these "5 Pillars Of Hospitality
Excellence," not only will they create more positive memories for your guests
but they will have a lot more fun in doing so.

Going Beyond Transactions: ‘Conversational Commerce’ and its Impact on

the Travel and Hospitality Industry
Coined by Uber’s Chris Messina, consumer demand for digital-centric
interactions with hotel and travel brands is on the rise
By Alan Young, President of Puzzle Partner Ltd.
4 min0 Comments
It's 2019, and I would argue that there have never been more marketing-
related "buzzwords" battling it out for conversational real-estate across
thought leadership articles, webinars, white papers and more. Whether
it's agile marketing, catering to the 'age of the consumer,' hyper-
personalization, or the mobile age — there are plenty of commerce-
related silos to get lost in as industry leaders seek out the trends and
methods which can best benefit their respective brand and industry. This
brings us to one of the latest terms, which was coined by Uber's Chris
Messina in 2015 — conversational commerce.

In layman's terms, conversational commerce is represented by

consumers interacting with businesses through popular messaging and
chat apps, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, or even
through voice-activated assistants such as Alexa or Google Echo. As
we've watched the rapid growth of the mobile journey over the last few
years, this market shift comes as no surprise. Modern consumers, while
still expecting access to high-touch service models, have an evident
penchant for digital communications and self-service. Simply put, mobile
devices have become the predominant device of choice across
generations, and represent an opportunity for instant, convenience-
driven interactions with brands. The gradual evolution to text-based
commerce seems like a natural step for hotels and travel brands, with
modern consumers effectively leading the charge.

If you're already feeling apprehensive of this digital-centric approach to

modern commerce — consider the following:
 78% of your customers would rather communicate with your business via
text over any other method
 Text messages have a 98% open rate
 The average college student spends about 94 minutes per day texting, and
the average adult spends 23 hours a week texting
  32% of recipients respond to SMS offers, with texted coupons redeemed
ten times more often than traditional coupons
 29% of people who receive SMS marketing click on links in messages
they receive and 47% of those go on to make a purchase (that's almost a
14% conversion rate)
 66% of all consumers surveyed rank messaging overall as their preferred
channel for contacting a company
 71% of consumers say that text messaging is very or extremely effective
for engaging with a brand
Essentially, conversational commerce acts as an extension of the existing
customer service model. For example, if your hotel or travel brand has only has
one method of customer service and communication (i.e., via phone), you're
likely less equipped to respond (adequately) to an influx of customer queries,
complaints/concerns, orders, etc. With the new inclusion of apps and chatbots,
brands are broadening their net to 'catch' those interactions — prospective and
current customers can engage via phone, email, website form, message app/text
or, in some cases, in-person. Ultimately, their 'path to engagement' is up to
them, giving customers increased autonomy over their experience.
Considering 82% of consumers say that a poor customer service experience
would significantly impact their future decision to continue to do business with
a company, the ability to meet consumers where they are and exercise a hyper-
responsive customer service approach becomes paramount.

Conversational commerce gives consumers a choice. Choice is precisely what

today's consumers are looking for. Not only regarding communications, but
how, where and what they purchase. There is now a need to chat with staff, ask
questions, get personalized recommendations and even click to purchase all
within an app or mobile platform. On the business side of things, the
messenger-based chat can be spearheaded by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
supported by Machine Learning (ML) for automated messages, or by a
company representative — or in some cases, a seamless mix of both. By this, I
mean a thoughtful hybrid of 'bots' and human agents to deliver a compelling,
conversational e-commerce experience.

Companies can now cater to the entire path to purchase without ever leaving the
messaging app — from initial queries, customer service issues and personalized
recommendations, to order confirmations, payment details, shopping
notifications and more. This allows for a more seamless and, more importantly,
convenient consumer interaction. Further, we must remember that the less
'perceived barriers' to purchase, the more likely a consumer is to make that
purchase.

In short, the easier a company makes it for a consumer to buy their product, the
better. By conceptualizing the entire consumer conversation/relationship within
one platform (in this case, a messaging solution) and not complicating that
process with additional platforms, windows or touch-points, the more
frictionless the purchase process becomes. Rather than 'toggling' back and forth
between a message window, broken links, endless click-throughs and web
pages, consumers can benefit from the level of instantaneous, attentive service
that they would receive in person, from a dedicated sales associate. In this way,
conversational commerce allows for brands to expand their online relationship
with consumers beyond the transaction itself, to embody something more
holistic, responsive and personalized.

Not only that - but through the ongoing implementation of a more digital-
focused commerce experience, companies are helping to reduce their
operational/administrative load on staff. Rather than being burdened with an
influx of consumer inquiries across various platforms and touch-points, the
process is simplified and further streamlined by AI technology. Like the benefit
of a hotel property replacing its legacy PMS with a modern platform, innovative
technology helps to reduce traditional customer service grievances and free up
staff to create a more relevant, personalized experience. In fact, by 2020 at least
60% of organizations are predicted to use artificial intelligence to support
digital commerce. Further, 30% of digital commerce revenue growth will be
attributable to artificial intelligence technologies, such as those that power
conversational commerce. Statistics like this help to make a rather compelling
case for digital-centric conversational commerce in the hospitality and travel
space, don't you think?

Effective Marketing Strategies for the Hospitality Industry

By Paul Bates, Head of Digital Marketing at Paper-Research
3 min0 Comments

The hospitality industry is legendary for its low profit margins and high
level of competition, and never was this so true as it is now. With so
many small businesses going under in the first year, small businesses in
the hospitality industry must look to differentiating themselves via
marketing, and larger businesses, though they still have more wiggle
room, must make every marketing dollar count.

Technology, Loyalty, Creativity

Much of the future of hospitality marketing lies in three major areas:
technology, customer loyalty, creativity, and new concepts in the business
model. Other aspects of traditional marketing such as flyering and television are
still somewhat effective, but, as stated by Patricia Mitchell, Head of Marketing
at SolidEssay, many businesses have found they are not as cost-effective as
other sources of customer attention.

Creativity
Creativity used to be thought of as not so much a marketing concept as fodder
for marketing: the business stakeholders came up with new business ideas, and
the marketing team based advertisements around them. Now, however,
restaurants like Pret a Manger have made a mark in the market by combining
advertising with the restaurant's concept itself. Pret is an advertising concept
that is built into the restaurant design, using large outdoor display windows to
highlight its unique concept of stocking sandwiches and entrees like a grocery
store, but creating a restaurant experience for customers inside. The stores are
placed in high-traffic urban areas, letting the location and design of the store
itself advertise the clever concept to passers-by. Concepts that are creative
enough to serve as marketing strategies themselves allow each aspect of the
restaurant to multitask. A store design such as Pret's is one example; other
strategies have included gimmicks that spread through word of mouth, such
as Ed Debevic'srude waiters. Making the restaurant concept its own
advertisement is not easy, but it is a very cost-effective marketing strategy.

Technology
Most hospitality professionals would rather do their core job than worry about
the company website. Like it or not, however, most hospitality businesses need
an online presence, a mobile presence, and a leadership that is in touch with
how to make the most of viral technology that can spread the word about the
establishment . According to Michael Wright, Content Marketing Director
at ConfidentWriters, content is king on websites of all kinds, and this is also
true for hospitality home sites. Having the marketing team focus on building a
website is a better use of resources than traditional advertising in some markets.

Mobile is quickly becoming more important than desktop strategies, and—

surprisingly to some in the industry—video has become a very effective way to
spread publicity about a business. If the marketing team can attach a hotel or
restaurant to a video that goes viral, they have scored a major coup for
comparatively little money; a fun YouTube video is far less costly to produce
than a television commercial and, if done well, can have far greater reach.

Loyalty
Some of the above technological techniques can help build that very old-
fashioned staple of a successful business: customer loyalty. Yes, a repeat
customer already knows the business exists. However, with so many businesses
in the market and so much content on the web, part of marketing job is now
connected to making sure that previous customers who have had good
experiences are reminded of them. Therefore, technology must not just be used;
it must be maximized through personalization. Allow customers to take surveys,
and insert their names and favorite menu items they have ordered in a
customized group email. Personalization of social media and email content
experiences for customers are part of making customers remember the business
—and more important, they should also feel remembered by the business.

Finally, nothing adds to loyalty, enhances creativity, and maximizes technology

like a great customer experience. Your best marketing strategy, once initial
customers have been attracted, is to ensure satisfaction in every element of
service. Content may be king, but especially with yelpers lurking around every
corner, word of mouth is still one of the best drivers of sustained business in the
industry.
 Brand Building: a More Cost-Effective Way to Raise Your Company’s
Profile?
By Stuart Pallister, Head of Academic Editorial Content at Ecole hôtelière
de Lausanne
6 min0 Comments

When Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen finished their studies at Ecole
hôteliere de Lausanne in 2008 they went on to set up HouseTrip, an
alternative accommodation start-up which would compete head-to-head
with Airbnb and other online travel agencies.
Initially the couple had just a laptop, an internet connection and an idea. They
went literally from zero to annual revenues of 100 million dollars within just
five years or so. Junjun takes up the story. "We were still in school, doing our
second internships. We were in London and wanted to go to Scotland but we
were students so didn't want to spend too much money. So we wanted to rent an
apartment in a nice, traditional Scottish house. We did find one
through craigslistbut the logistics part was very painful because we needed to
contact the owner by phone and arrange payment by bank transfer. So it was
just really painful."
They had - by chance - stumbled upon a gap in the market and wondered
why it was that although online travel agencies like Expedia and
Booking.com focused on hotel bookings, no one was providing similar
services for holiday homes. "We said, 'look, no one has done it. Let's do it
ourselves.'"

That was easier said than done. The first major challenge they faced was how to
raise funding, based on little more than an idea. "(We had) no track record and
no work experience because we had just studied at EHL," says Arnaud. As it
turned out, some of their EHL classmates were 'crazy enough' to invest in the
new venture and helped to get the project off the ground.

That initial funding helped but Arnaud and Junjun would need to go on to raise
substantial funds from venture capital, some seventy million dollars over
several years. Part of the problem they faced was in marketing the start-up.
They would raise millions but would end up spending massive amounts too,
pumping money into keyword marketing.

"Most of [the money] went on marketing and hiring," says Arnaud. "We had a
fairly large team, north of 200 people by the time we sold the company (to
TripAdvisor for an undisclosed figure in 2015)."

And their biggest mistake? "I would say probably using Google or paid
marketing as our main acquisition channel," says Junjun. "Basically it works
and we became addicted to it. And then at one point we couldn't get rid of it."

"The best marketing is free marketing," adds Arnaud, whether that's word
of mouth or getting media coverage. That means engaging with journalists
and trying to concentrate on public relations rather than spend huge amounts of
money on digital marketing, which proved to be a losing prospect.

But to get the right word of mouth, you need to make sure you have a great
product. "No one is going to speak about a so-so experience."

Eventually, after several years of scaling up the company, Arnaud and Junjun
chose to exit their venture rather than aim for an initial public offering or IPO.
(HouseTrip is now one of 20 travel media brands belonging to TripAdvisor). "I
don't have any regrets", says Arnaud. "We sold at the right time."
"You don't have so much strategy as you have dreams. Of course you dream of
the best possible exit from your company but you have to be realistic and
opportunistic as well."

Now they've set up a new virtual reality dating company, LovInVR, and plan to
learn from their mistakes by focusing on building the brand rather than spending
millions on performance marketing.

Arnaud says that, after selling the company, he wrote a 600-page book, more for
himself than for possible publication, on the lessons learnt, "especially all the
mistakes we made which were many."

"We created an internet start-up that, 10 years down the line, is still alive, that's
already success … It's actually why being an entrepreneur is so fascinating
because you get to learn so much from what you're doing."

HotelTonight: An integrated approach

Another tech firm which is focusing on brand building to get its message across
is HotelTonight, which has just celebrated its seventh anniversary.
HotelTonight VP, Amir Segall, came to Ecole hôteliere de Lausanne recently to
speak to students about the company which aims to offer clients the best deals
for last-minute hotel bookings via its mobile app.

Segall told Hospitality Insights that brand building is critical for the company.
Brand awareness, he says, is its biggest opportunity - and challenge.

"We feel we have a really good product and have mastered the customer
experience. So it's really about growing that brand awareness, letting more
people know about this great product, this great service you can use, and the
way we're dealing with that is that we have an array of marketing initiatives,
starting from online marketing, focusing on mobile and trying to stand out and
differentiate the way that we speak about our brand."
In addition to PR activities, HotelTonight has formed strategic partnerships
with the likes of Chelsea Football Club in London and Madison Square
Garden (home to the Knicks and Rangers) in New York. For fans of these
sports teams there's an obvious connection as they'll be looking for hotel
accommodation when going to away matches, but there's also a brand
relationship. "(This) is a very good way for us to associate ourselves with
brands that have more awareness than we do and really create strong trust
with customers."
The partnerships are part and parcel of HotelTonight's branding and marketing
mix, which also includes online and customer relationship management (CRM)
activities. "We feel that you have to have a really integrated marketing approach
so we want customers to see us in different places and this way we believe we're
creating trust." The company has recently released HT Perks, which the
company regards as a 'modern, innovative take on the traditional loyalty
programs provided by legacy desktop OTAs (online travel agencies).'

An IPO might be an option in the future but for now HotelTonight is focusing
on its core business. "It's about becoming kind of the most prime way to book a
hotel last minute and we like to think of ourselves as a mobile OTA. So we
want people to be thinking about us, to be repeatedly using us as the mobile
option. And so that's also what we focus on."

"So right now we're very much focused on mobile, continuing to build the
business, growing the business, expanding in the markets where we operate.
And that's the thing that we're focused on right now."

Learning from experience

HouseTrip co-founders Arnaud Bertrand and his wife Junjun Chen are also
focusing on their new business, LovINVR, determined that they won't make the
same mistakes this time around. "I'd say we're less naïve about it," says Arnaud,
adding that they believe virtual reality will be the next big thing in the digital
sphere. "Dating in virtual reality completely makes sense for us. So we think the
potential is absolutely enormous."
"I think we're a tiny bit wiser after the HouseTrip experience, so we're trying not
to repeat the mistakes that we made at HouseTrip. But I'm sure we'll make
plenty of new ones." That means a more cautious, organic approach to
growing the company and building brand awareness, rather any sort of
dependence on pumping millions of marketing dollars into online
advertising.

In a presentation at EHL last year, Arnaud advised would-be entrepreneurs not

to push for growth in revenue, but rather to focus on creating 'a great product
that people love', even if it takes several years.

"My mistake at HouseTrip was to choose not to develop a brand but to go for
so-called performance marketing, so to spend a lot of money on Google, buying
keywords on Google and so on and I continued to do so because it worked. We
were, at one stage, spending north of 40 or even 60 million dollars a year with
Google."

While the company was earning 70 to 80 million dollars, that still made sense.
But once competitors with deep pockets began bidding for keywords, and
potential customers began going directly to Airbnb and other companies than
use Google search, the cost of keyword advertising became a major issue as
traffic fell.

"It's a bit technical but that situation led us a stage where we were paying 60
million to Google still, but instead of getting 90 million, we were getting 50
million back. So we were losing money and that's a bad situation to be in."

"So my recommendation would be, instead of (using) performance marketing

where you don't grow your brand, try instead to go the harder way, grow your
brand. It's harder, it's a lot more work, you need to spend all day calling
journalists, involving your community, to develop positive word of mouth and
so on … but it's a great investment because those people will come for free and
they will spread the word if your service is good."
"So I would recommend you spend zero money on marketing and that's what
I'm going to do with LovInVR."

Dr Maggie Chen Meng-Mei, associate professor of marketing at EHL,

writes:
A strong brand focuses on providing a better solution than competitors can
offer. Through the delivery of its unique value proposition, a brand grows
its fan base and benefits from the word of mouth of passionate advocates.
These statements remain true, even with all the emerging digital marketing
tactics.

The challenges of branding are never about using the newest digital tactics, but
cleverly leveraging owned, paid, and earned channels to reach, convert, and
retain customers. In the digital world, the traditional media and promotional mix
(promotion, advertising, public relations, personal selling) still work.

Instead of bidding for keywords, focus on finding customers who may need
your solutions, as shown in the partnership between HotelTonight and Chelsea
Football Club. Be present - or better still, top of mind - when customers
discover they have a problem. An effective solution may convert a first-time
user into a repeat customer or even an advocate.

As for the new approach taken by LovInVR, which is relentlessly executing its
value proposition, it will organically build its own fan base, and eventually
become a powerful brand.
19TH MAY 2018

As for most industries, it’s important for the Hotel industry to adapt to the digital age
in order to remain successful, especially with the expansion of people searching for
the best hotel deals online. To remain competitive means constantly being up to date
with the latest digital marketing trends. That’s why we have come up with what we
found were the most important digital marketing trends for the Hotel Industry and
how it can help your business.
1. Maximise Local SEO
Local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) helps the person searching for something
online find relevant, local results. For example, if you own a hotel in Bournemouth
and someone searches for ‘Hotels in Bournemouth’ your hotel will be easier to find.
To maximise your customer base, you need to find a way to get to the top of the
rankings.

Maximising your Local SEO will make your hotel more visible to potential guests,
giving you more brand awareness. Examples of local SEO opportunities for the Hotel
industry includes using Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Also, large
OTAs (online travel agents) like booking.com can help with local SEO opportunities.

It’s worth keeping in mind that SEO takes time, and remaining amongst the top
results on the first page of Google at all times requires skills and constant
investment. To help this, you may want to consider investing in paid search.

To increase you SEO results, you may want to consider investing in paid search.

Want to learn more about how our client experienced a 153.6% growth in organic
traffic to their website? Click here to find out.
2. Have a Mobile-Friendly Website
Creating a mobile-friendly website is a necessity for growth in the Hotel industry.
With more and more people using their mobile phones to initially search several
different hotels at once and book their hotel stays online, the importance of an
accessible website via mobile is clear.

According to ABTA’s Holiday Habits report 2017, Bookings on mobile devices have
leaped from 13% to 20% in the space of 12 months, whilst PC bookings had fallen
from 92% to 85%.

The amount of people who

booked a hotel in 2017 with a mobile device Source: Statista

You want your website to be available to as many users as possible to increase

potential bookings, regardless of the device they are using. Not only should your
website be accessible by all devices, but the quality of the website on all devices
should be the same. This prevents any of the users avoiding booking a stay at your
hotel because the site isn’t of great quality.

3. Create More Content

Content marketing is an important part of your hotel’s marketing strategy. Content
marketing is the creation and sharing of online material such as videos, blogs, and
social media posts that do not promote your brand directly but is purposely intended
to stimulate interest in your products/services (in your case your hotel).

For example, you own a hotel in Bournemouth, you could write a great piece of
content about sightseeing in Bournemouth, and although sightseeing isn’t what you
offer your potential guests it could persuade them to visit Bournemouth staying at
your hotel. To make your content even more effective you should include CTAs (call
to action) such as ‘book now’.

Find out more about our Content Marketing Service here.

4. Be Present on Social Media (Organic and Paid)

With 42 million active social media users in the UK in 2017 (according to Statista),
being present on social media is vital for the Hotel industry. By putting a strong social
media strategy in place, this can help you build engagement with existing and
potential guests, create brand awareness, and it lets you target new audiences.

42 millions active social media users Source: Statista

There are many different social media channels varying from Facebook, to Twitter, to
Snapchat, and more. You don’t need to be on all channels, but having a few varied
options are advantageous.

Monitoring and responding to feedback from guests is a crucial part of your social
media strategy, whether it’s positive or negative feedback. By being present online, it
makes it easier to discover feedback and in turn, you can respond in a professional
and timely manner.

One point to keep in mind, your competitors are very likely already on social media,
and to stay a step ahead and get noticed amongst the “noise” you may want to
invest in paid social ads to make sure that your offer is pushed to the right audience
at the right time.
5. Use Video in Your Marketing Strategy
When it comes to advertising your hotel, customers want to see what they will truly
be experiencing. Images have always been a good way to display your hotel’s rooms
and facilities, but a more effective way to give your customers a visual representation
of your hotel in its truest form is by using video.

According to Worldhotels, 80% of internet users prefer to watch a video than to read
the same content in text. Moreover, videos encourage social media shares, in fact,
76% of social media users would share a video if it was entertaining.

Seeing your hotel in a video will give potential guests more confidence to book a stay
at your hotel and there are a few great tools to share this asset with your
audience: Rich SMS, Social Media etc.

Unsure what Rich SMS is? Check out our blog article.

Ready to Transform Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

We hope this article gives you more insight into the current marketing trends for the
Hotel industry and some food for thought. If you are interested in exploring what it
would be like to outsource your marketing to a team like us, contact us here.

To find out more about our other digital marketing services click here.

101+ Essential Social Media

Statistics You Need to Know
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13TH MARCH 2017

Here is our comprehensive list of the must-know social media statistics for 2017.
Click to scroll down to:

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Instagram

Google+

YouTube

Pinterest

The world we live in is more connected than ever and that’s also reflected in our time
spent with media. There are officially more mobile devices than people in the world,
almost half of the world’s population is online and we spend on average a good few
hours a day interacting with our digital devices.
Essential social media statistics you should know
 Facebook

Despite the debatable rumours that Facebook is headed for a decline, the social
network completely dominates the social landscape. Here are some interesting
statistics to make you rethink where Facebook is really headed.

Users and Usage

 Facebook has 18 billion daily active users on average and 1.79 billion monthly active users
 Of those, 1.09 billion are active users on mobile on a daily basis and 1.66 billion on a
monthly basis
 9%of the global population are using Facebook
 Latin America has the highest active Facebook usage rate with 52.2 percent of the
population accessing the social network
 Facebook holds an 18% market share, followed by the Facebook-owned Whatsapp, which
holds 11%
 The average Facebook user has 155 friends on the social network.
 An average of 100 million hours of video is watched on Facebook daily.
 50 minutes is the average amount of time that users spend each day on its Facebook,
Instagram and Messenger platforms.
 Here is an interesting chart by ComScore showing engagement in terms of minutes
spent per visitor vs reach among Millennials (in case you missed Facebook – no, it’s
not missing, look top right)

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 There are over 50 million active business pages

 75% of brands promote their Facebook posts
 The most popular brand page on Facebook is Coca-Cola with a total of 100 535 767 fans
 People leave on average 2.5 billion comments on Business pages every month
 There is a 50% growth in Facebook advertisers since 2015
 Only 6% of all Facebook pages advertise on Facebook
 The average Facebook ad cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) is $7,29
 Facebook accounts for more than 65% of the total social network ad spending worldwide

LinkedIn

Although LinkedIn doesn’t hold a big market share compared to the competition, it
still dominates the field in terms of a top social media network for recruiters and
professionals.

Users and Usage

 The total number of LinkedIn users in Q3 2016 was 467 million

 LinkedIn currently holds a market share of only 0.19%
 The gender split on LinkedIn is uneven with men accounting for 59% of all users, whereas
41% of the users are female
 However, in the UK male users completely dominate the platform with 79% of users being
male
 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to help them in in the recruitment process
 71% of UK business professionals consider LinkedIn as a trustworthy source of content
 LinkedIn has long been popular with high income earners, 45% of online adults with an
annual household income of $75,000 or more use LinkedIn
 The hottest skill that can get you hired on LinkedIn in 2016 is Cloud and Distributed
Computing

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 The global LinkedIn CPM for Q1 2016 was $29.37

 Over 3 million companies have created LinkedIn business page
 Half of LinkedIn users say they’d be more likely to buy from a company they engage with on
LinkedIn.
 91% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn for sharing content
 81% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to launch new products
 73% of top companies on LinkedIn are utilising sponsored content to reach the right
audience
 Top brands post an average of 6 updates per week
 The most influential brand on LinkedIn for 2015 was Microsoft

Twitter

Recent research shows that the microblogging platform is slowly losing ground as
competition is making strides. Here is a comprehensive chart by Statista showing the
number of monthly active users compared to the competition.
 Users and Usage

 Latest reports showed that Twitter had 317 million monthly active users in Q3 2016
 A total of 3 billion accounts have been created, 44% of which made an account and left
before ever sending a Tweet
 On a global scale, roughly one quarter of all online adults (24%) use Twitter
 Only 21% of US adults use Twitter
 42% of Twitter users indicate that they are daily visitors of the platform
 Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter, which corresponds
to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute
 Twitter is more popular among the highly educated: 29% of internet users with college
degrees use Twitter, compared with 20% of those with high school degrees or less
 82% of all monthly active users access the network through mobile

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 The most popular brand profile on Twitter is Chanel with a total of 12 536 244 followers
 54% of users said that they have taken an action after seeing brand mentions in tweets, 23%
visited the brand’s website, whereas 20% searched for it online
 83% of Fortune 500 companies have active Twitter profiles
 8% of US companies use Twitter for marketing purposes
 Twitter is expected to earn over $3.26 billion in 2017 through global advertising
 The top rated brand for customers service on Twitter is Nationwide and the lowest rated one
if French Connection.
 The brand with quickest response time is Virgin Trains which has an average response time
of 4 minutes and 25 seconds
 77% of users who receive a reply from a brand feel more positively towards that brand
 42% of B2B decision makers use Twitter to help make purchasing decisions.

Twitter’s advertising revenue in millions

Instagram

Since Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, the network’s growth has skyrocketed
and has no intention of slowing down, constantly launching new improvements such
as Boomerang, improved branding, Instagram Stories and many more.

Related content: 5 Tech Brands that Rock Instagram

Users and Usage

 32% of internet users use Instagram

 Instagram has more than 500 million users and completely overtook Twitter (317M)
 Women are more likely to use Instagram than men (38% vs 26% of online adults)
 Instagram use is especially high among younger adults, roughly 59% of online adults aged
18-29 use Instagram
 It absolutely dominates the social landscape when it comes to interactions per post per
1,000 followers– an average of more than 50 interactions per post
 27% of teens consider Instagram the most important social platform
 95M Instagram photos/videos are uploaded daily
 Sales, Marketing and Brands

 90% of Interbrand 100 companies now have Instagram accounts

 The most followed brand on Instagram is Nike with 64.9M followers, followed by National
Geographic with 62.6M.
 The global Instagram CPM is $4.44
 In 2015 3%of companies with 100 employees or more used Instagram for marketing
activities, this number is expected to jump to 70.7% by 2017.
 53% of Instagram users follow their favourite brands
 44% of Instagram users conduct brand research on the network
 70% of the most-used hashtags are branded
 Google+

Google+ might not be the most popular of social networks, however it is still very
important for companies to be present and active on it as it has a different value.
Above all, it helps your brand be more discoverable and boosts your SEO and also
allows customers review your business. A recent study found that 88% of consumers
trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, hence they can play a
crucial role in your business’s reputation and credibility. Additionally, Google My
Business puts your business hours, phone number, and directions on Google Search
and Maps which improves your business’s searchability.

Users and Usage

 The total number of active Google+ members is 375 million

 Google+ has a predominantly male audience – 73.7% of all users
 The top occupation on Google+ is Engineer with 29% of users working in that field
 Google+ sees a 33% overall growth rate year on year
 However, in the UK, the social network saw a decline in market share from 0.26% in 2014 to
0.09% in 2016

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 70% of all brands have a presence on Google+

 The average sales order for a visitor referred from Google+ is $40
 Google+ costed $585 million to build
 40% of all marketers use Google+
 3% of total consumer brand social sharing occurs on Google+
 YouTube

Our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Since we are
capable of processing such outstanding amounts of information, there is no wonder
that video is such a big deal.

Users and Usage

 YouTube has more than 1000 million monthly active users

 6 billion hours of video are being watched monthly
 More than 40 minutes is the average time spent on YouTube per session
 YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-
olds than any cable network in the U.S.
 More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 Lego is the brand with the largest audience on YouTube with 3 594 235 123 total views
 61% of US enterprise companies are on YouTube
 The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube has increased by 50%
year over year
 22% of social media marketers surveyed point to video as the most effective content
medium
 The top 100 brands collectively upload a new video every 18.5 minutes
 Top 100 brands also increased their video investment by 40 percent year over year.
 Searches related to “how to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year

Pinterest

Pinterest launched in 2010 and in just two years, it had increased its traffic by 789%
with 200,000 UK users. It allows you to search and discover new ideas through
searching both with words or images and create image-heavy idea boards. It has no
match and it’s the most popular social media platform among online shoppers.

Users and Usage

 31% of internet users use Pinterest

 It has more than 100 million monthly active users
 Currently, the social network market share held by Pinterest in the UK is 7.35%
 Women use Pinterest at much higher rates than men (45% vs 17% of Internet users)
 54% of those who use Instagram also use Pinterest
 More than 75% of Pinterest usage takes places on phones and tablets
 The average pin is pinned 11 times

Sales, Marketing and Brands

 88% of all Pinterest users purchased a product they pinned

 66% of content that users Pin comes from brand websites
 The site category with the highest concentration of Pinterest visitors is ‘Retail –
Jewellery/Luxury Goods/Accessories’
 People do more than 2 billion monthly idea searches on Pinterest
 Pinterest is the top social media platform among US online shoppers with 55% of them
picking Pinterest as their favourite social media platform
 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases.
 Pinterest drives 300% more revenue per click than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook

We know that this is a lot to digest! Increasing your social media presence is an
absolute necessity, and as you have probably understood by now, knowing what to
do when and on which platform is not an easy task and requires experience and
expertise.

If you want to improve your social media strategy but you don’t know where to start,
please contact us and we will be more than happy to help!

The Benefits of Social Media

Marketing for B2B Brands
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21ST APRIL 2017

Social media has been around for a while now and most B2C companies have
embraced it and are already exploiting the benefits of social media marketing. B2B
brands, and specifically the ones in the technology market, can be slower to adapt
and move beyond the traditional outbound tactics to a more inbound strategy. While
it is true that the traditional methods are still effective and continue to deliver value to
B2B businesses, social and other digital marketing tools available are still being
overlooked.

Even though many B2B brands are on social media, their accounts are often
underdeveloped or abandoned, not updated frequently enough or used without a
clear strategy in place. In fact, only about 10% of B2B marketers say that they are
able to quantitatively show the impact of social media on the business, as reported in
the B2B Marketing Trends for 2016. Don’t get me wrong, there are many B2B brands
that run brilliant inbound campaigns, however these are usually the bigger names in
the market. In contrast, many B2B SMBs have been reluctant to embrace and
uncover the full potential of social media.
That doesn’t mean that you have to jump on the bandwagon and just join all social
media sites out there, you’ll firstly have to determine which social media networks
you should be present on that will bring the most value to your business and
industry. For instance, some social media networks such as Pinterest and Instagram
are usually more relevant to B2C than to B2B, whereas LinkedIn is predominantly
focused on B2B. Regardless, most of the social media channels can bring benefits to
your business.

The top benefits of social media marketing for B2B brands:

1. Social media helps increase your brand

exposure & awareness
One of the most indisputable attributes of social media is the sheer reach and
exposure it can provide for your brand. Facebook currently sits at 1.97 billion
monthly active users, Youtube has more than a billion monthly active users, whereas
LinkedIn and Twitter fall further down with 106 and 319 million active users. And this
is only a tiny fraction of all social media networks out there. Let’s put that in
perspective, even if only 0.01% of these 1.97 billion users on Facebook are in your
target audience, this means that there are roughly 200 000 people you could be
engaging with and turn to potential customers at some point.

One of the most important dimensions and ultimate goals in marketing & branding is
for consumers to remember our brands. More specifically, you want to ensure that
your brand is always at the back of the consumer’s head and is the first thing that
comes to their mind when a particular product/service is mentioned. Brand recall is
extremely important in turning prospects into clients, and as you can imagine, brand
exposure directly impacts brand recall. You can’t remember what you cannot see,
right?

2. Social media can help bring potential

customers down the sales funnel
As I mentioned earlier, social networks are great for boosting your brand exposure
which also means that they are great for helping moving your customers down the
sales funnel.

So, where does social really fit into the sales funnel?

From my experience, it usually sits at the very top of the funnel, at the
‘awareness’ stage. As social media is so great in giving you that extra exposure you
need, awareness just follows.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing for B2B Brands – Social media can help bring potential
customers down the sales funnel Source: Buffer

Regardless, there are many strategies that can incorporate social media into other
stages of the funnel. For instance, having a customer service account on social
media can easily fit into mid and even late stages of the funnel such as
‘delight’ (good customer service can turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer).
Additionally, Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups can also easily fit into the
‘awareness’ and ‘consideration’ stages of the sales funnel.

3. Social media can help and complement the

customer journey
It is also changing the customer journey. Social media is a norm for your customers
and they will expect you to be not only present, but also very responsive to all their
queries. Users now expect brands to respond to their query within an hour of
tweeting, a recent Twitter survey showed. How you engage with your followers on
Twitter is closely linked with how your customers feel about you. The Twitter survey
also found that when a customer Tweets at a business and receives a response,
they are willing to spend 3–20% more with that business in the future. Similarly,
responding to customers’ tweets also increases word of mouth activity, likeliness to
recommend, and customer satisfaction.
Lessons learned: you’ve got to be on social media, be responsive and provide the
best possible experience for your customers.

4. Social media can help you turn followers into

leads
Social media wouldn’t directly bring new leads in, since a big part of your social
media followers are most likely current or former customers (in short, what you like in
real life, you like on social media as well).

Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that you can’t attract new customers and with the
help of social, convert them into leads. With a solid social media strategy aligned
with your overall marketing strategy, social media can be a valuable touchpoint in
many cases.

Firstly, social is great for exposure, and without that exposure a potential customer
might never get familiar with your brand otherwise. Secondly, it is also great in the
‘delight’ stage to ensure customer loyalty through customer service, customer
engagement and also promotions that can be run exclusively on social media.
Additionally, social also plays a role in deal nurturing, acting as another touchpoint.

5. Social media can bring visitors to your website

As I mentioned earlier, social media is a powerful tool for brand exposure and
awareness. It’s likely that a portion of the people that encountered your brand on
social media will also want to find out more about it and visit your website. So, social
media can be great for bringing traffic to your website. In fact, social media referrals
account for over 10% of all website traffic of our own website.

Let’s do the maths, if you are running a small business and get around 1000
sessions (visits) per month, for a year that’s 12 000 sessions. Based on the 10%
mentioned above, this means that 1200 sessions will come from social media.
According to Search Engine Land, across industries, the average landing page
conversion rate is 2.35%. This means that you could get 28 leads in a year.
Now imagine the number of leads with 10k visits per month. What about 100k
monthly visits? Is it not worth your time and efforts?

6. Social media is another platform to distribute

your content on
Social media is a great tool in helping you distribute your content and expand
beyond your typical reach of customers, subscribers and website visitors. At the end
of the day, the ultimate goal for your content is to be seen, read and shared by as
many people as possible.
Of course there are many other ways to distribute your content, however most of
them are more appropriate for newly produced and fresh content. You wouldn’t put
an old ebook or blog article in your next newsletter, would you? However, you can
share your old evergreen articles on social media even months after you’ve
published them. As long as they are relevant, they are shareable. Especially in times
when you are running late with deadlines and can’t get the new content out on time,
old articles are something you can leverage and use to fill in the gaps on your social
media calendar.

7. Improve your search rank with social media

Google and Bing have both denied that they are using social signals for SEO
ranking, which means that all links on social media are rel=“nofollow” links. In other
words, they don’t influence the ranking of the links’ targets in search engines.
Regardless of this fact, this doesn’t mean that you should fully discard social media
and the other ways in which it can help you improve your search rank.

Firstly, social media networks are crawled and indexed by search engines the same
way any other website would be. Therefore, social media profiles rank in SEOs and
are displayed on the search engine result page (SERP). Furthermore, if you have
registered your business on Google+ and Google My Business, the info will also be
displayed on the right-hand side of the SERP, together with directions to your
business’s location, links to your social media profiles etc.

An image showing SERP – the benefits of social media marketing for B2B brands

Furthermore, social media networks are search engines by themselves. To our

surprise, back in 2010 Twitter self-reported 19 billion search queries per month. This
number have now tripled to 2.1 billion SE queries per day, Static Brain reports. For
reference, Bing only handles 122 million queries per day. This presents a huge
opportunity, which you don’t want to miss. Make sure you optimise your social media
profile descriptions and bio so your profile is discoverable for your target keywords.
8. Social media can improve your customer
service
A lot of B2B brands rely on social media to handle some of their customer service
inquiries and with good reason. Using social media as another channel to help
resolve customers’ problems can help dramatically improve your customer service,
and as a result, also boost customer satisfaction levels. Even if it’s to simply let your
customers know that you are actively working to resolve a disruption or an issue that
occurred in regards to your services, a small touch can go a long way.

A Twitter survey found that 96% of users who turned to Twitter for customer service
and had a positive experience with the brand would buy from that brand again.
Additionally, 83% of these users would recommend that brand to others. This shows
how great customer service on social media can also have a positive impact on your
bottom line.

9. Social media can improve your relationship

with existing and potential customers
As its name suggests, social media is about being social and connecting with
people. This human element of social media makes it very powerful in strengthening
brands and helping them build long-lasting relationships and brand loyalty. In order
to build relationships with your followers, you need to come across as authentic
and human, not a faceless robot. A study conducted by Trustpilot found that 29% of
respondents said that brands that are on social media appear more ‘human’ and
more approachable.

There are many ways in which social media helps interact with followers; for instance
replying to comments or mentions and actively engaging in conversations, helping
customers solve issues or clarify the questions they might have, participating in
Twitter chats or LinkedIn groups, asking customers questions to improve your
brand, among others. Never let the conversation be one-sided (only your
followers’ side). Show them that you pay attention and you care.

Conclusion
To wrap it all up, social media is a powerful tool which every digital marketer should
have in their arsenal whether the company is operating in B2B or B2C. The benefits
that social media marketing can bring to your organisation and the experiences it
provides for customers are unique and not achievable through any other marketing
channel. Additionally, social media provides you with an additional platform and
touchpoint to connect with your existing and potential customers and the opportunity
to form long-lasting relationships with them.
We hope this article has been of interest. If you want to improve your social media
strategy but you don’t know where to start or don’t have the necessary time to do so,
please contact us and we will be more than happy to help!

What You Need to Know About

Google Reviews
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29TH NOVEMBER 2018

Being able to display customer reviews has a tremendously positive impact on your
business. Reviews can heavily influence whether someone decides to do business
with you or not, and they are a great way to get ahead of the competition.

Did you know, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal
recommendations? (BrightLocal)

Google review is a great example of an online review platform that your business
can use to enhance your business’s online presence.

In this article, we will take you through what Google reviews are and what positive
impacts they can have on your business.

What are Google reviews?

If you use (or have used) Google to search for businesses, you will have more than
likely come across a Google review.

Google reviews appear next to your listing in Google Maps and in Google search
results. The reviews allow customers to provide information about your business; this
could be about the quality of the products or services you provide, about the
atmosphere at your business, or even about your employees’ service.

The reviews are aimed to provide an overview of the overall experience customers
receive when doing business with you, and these reviews are completely voluntary.
Benefits of Google Reviews
There are a few benefits that come with using Google reviews for your business,
these benefits include:

Building customer trust

Customer trust is one of the most important factors for enhancing your business’s
online presence and success, and Google reviews help to build that trust.

According to the Local Consumer Review Survey 2017 by BrightLocal, positive

reviews make 73% of consumers trust a local business more.

This statistic alone shows how online review platforms such as Google reviews can
have an incredible impact on the trust of local businesses.

SEO & Local SEO

Google reviews are a great way to enhance your SEO (search engine optimisation)
and help you rank higher in the search engine results pages. Because positive
reviews influence others to do business with you, you will receive an increase in
clicks to your site.

The increased ‘click-through rate’ matched with positive reviews triggers trust signals
to Google’s algorithm, ultimately positioning your website higher on the search
engine results pages which will more than likely lead to an increase in traffic.

This is the same for local search. The local pack is a list of businesses near the
location of the search. As previously mentioned, positive reviews have an effect on
consumer trust for local businesses. Positive reviews will influence a higher CTR and
a better position in the local search results.
Increased ROI
With positive reviews impacting your site’s search engine ranking and click-through
rate, this also means that there is a potential for increased conversions and sales.

A better position in the search engine rankings means that your business’s site will
be visible to more searchers, hence the increase in click-throughs. Moreover, when
your site is visible to more searchers, they too will be able to see the positive reviews
about your business.

More traffic coming through to your site will generate more conversions; those
clicking onto your site are more than likely interested in the type of business offerings
you provide. It’s now up to your site to attract the customer further into becoming a
conversion/making a sale.
 Positive vs. Negative Reviews
Of course, the impacts of reviews about your business works both ways; a lot of
positive reviews will increase customer trust whereas a lot of negative reviews is
likely to deter potential customers.

According to a study by Marketing Charts, 95% of respondents have shared a

negative experience vs. just 87% of respondents sharing a positive experience.

This shows that people/customers are more willing to share an experience if it is

negative rather than if it is positive. So, although your business may have a greater
number of happy and satisfied customers, this may not be presented well, as those
happy and satisfied customers are less likely to share their experience.

Do not dread negative reviews though, as the way you respond to them is another
way to showcase the high standards of your customer service. Not only can you “fix”
the issue with the customer who complained, but also your fair response may
convince other readers that your business is worth their time.

Get started now: Encourage customers to leave a

review
Encouraging customers to leave online reviews is a great way to tackle the above
problem (more negative reviews shared vs. positive reviews). Generally, customers
can’t be bothered to leave reviews, or sometimes it just may not have crossed their
mind. However, a little bit of encouragement can go a long way.

Tips to encourage customers to leave online reviews:

1. Ask them to leave reviews

2. Make it easy to leave reviews
3. Make reviews visible
4. Publish both good and bad reviews

To leave a Google review, customers will need to use their Google account to do so.
This makes the process very easy with the added benefit that everyone can see who
left the review, making it very unlikely to receive the dreaded fake anonymous
feedback. Moreover, Google has automated spam detection measures in place,
making the feedback you receive genuine.
We hope this article has given you insight into what Google reviews are and the
positive impacts of using them for your business. You can go beyond just Google
Maps and Google Search as you can use them for your own website and social
media platforms. Take a look at 5 Ways To Do More With Your Customer Reviews

Responding To Hotel Customer

Reviews: 5 Top Tips [Infographic]
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6TH JUNE 2018

83% of consumers indicated that reviews help them pick the right hotel, which is why
it’s important that your reviews are conveying a positive outlook of your hotel.

It’s inevitable to receive a bad review from time to time, however, as long as you
handle customer reviews with best practices in mind, you’ll likely to be onto a winner.
You will have the opportunity to make it right, to improve their perception turning it
around and the ability to take feedback onboard to improve your processes and
business overall.

We have come up with 5 top tips which will help guide you in responding to your
hotel customer reviews.
 10 Essential Metrics To Measure
Your Digital Marketing Efforts
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20TH MARCH 2018

How you measure and analyse your digital marketing efforts can be the difference
between wishful thinking and actual return on your marketing investment. Using the
data analytics and metrics enables you to make informed decisions, it gives you the
understanding of what is and isn’t working.

There are hundreds of metrics and analytical combinations you could measure to
gain insight into your marketing efforts and customer behaviour. However, this can
be time-consuming and complicated, so often it is best to simplify it and focus on the
most important.

The good news is there are a few key metrics that are applicable to pretty much
every digital marketing campaign. That’s why we have listed the 10 key metrics you
should have your finger on the pulse of, period.

You will need Google Analytics set up to access this information, if you aren’t sure
how to do this we can organise this for you the same day. It won’t cost you and we
will be happy to help.

If you simply don’t have the time to keep on top of this, but you acknowledge its
importance, have you considered partnering with an agency? See the benefits here.

1) Website Traffic
It might seem like an obvious place to start, equally, you would be amazed how
many businesses don’t keep track of this. Your overall website traffic is a
measurement to evaluate how popular your website is, by recording how many
people land on it.
This measurement can help determine how effective your SEO (search engine
optimisation) marketing strategy is. If your overall website traffic is lower than you
hoped it might be that your website is not easy to find. You should, therefore, look at
your website’s SEO, the quickest way to determine this is through an SEO audit. You
can request a complimentary one here, that will help you get started.

Example
of Web Traffic recorded by Google Analytics

2) Traffic Source
Traffic source is a very important metric to measure to ensure you know where your
online users are coming from. Whether it’s from social media, paid advertising like
display ads, mobile marketing such as Rich SMS, email marketing, or organic search
etc. It’s so useful to know which channels are performing well and then you can
focus your efforts here initially. For the channels which are bringing you the regular
traffic, you can start to look at why this might be and make some changes to better
adapt to this.

This can also help you with your marketing budget. If you’re spending the majority of
your marketing budget on a digital strategy that isn’t bringing in much traffic, you
should be re-considering where you invest your resources and focusing your efforts
on what will bring a return.
 E
xample of the traffic source on Google Analytics

3) Mobile Traffic
With the rise in technology, there has been a significant increase in the number of
mobile devices being used to access the internet. If you can see that the majority of
your customers access your site via mobile, you may consider focusing your efforts
on a mobile website instead. You may even reconsider the type of content you put
on your website, to simplify it for mobile users.

It’s always important to ensure that your website is mobile-optimised for maximum
success in your digital strategy.

The benefits are:

1. Your website will rank higher according to Google’s algorithm, so your website will have
more visibility
2. Visitors of yours that access your website on their mobile will get a better user experience

Related article: Why is it Important That Your Website is Mobile-Friendly?

4) Bounce Rate
Some visitors who arrive on your site may leave almost immediately and not engage
with anything else on your site, this is known as a bounce. The reason will more than
likely be that the visitors found your content/site irrelevant to what they were looking
for.

You should be measuring the bounce rate for each digital marketing campaign so
that you can avoid targeting people who aren’t interested in your business. If you
have a considerably higher than usual bounce rate, it is a cause for concern and you
should be considering what you can do to improve your digital marketing
campaign(s) to get the right audience clicking.

5) Page Views Per Visit and Average Time Spent

on Site
Directing traffic to your site is the first step, but once the visitors are on your site you
want them to engage with your site and its content for as long as possible, follow
your CTAs etc. That’s where page views per visit and average time spent on site
measurements come in.

Measuring these metrics are important as it can help you identify whether your
website is doing its job properly or if there are certain pages that don’t perform as
well. If your site gets plenty of traffic but you have low conversions, this could be due
to the quality of your site’s navigation, speed, content, or general user experience.

Related article: Why Content Marketing Isn’t Working For You

Example of Page Views, Unique Page Views, and Average Time Spent on pages

6) Return Rate of Visitors

The return rate of visitors is a great way to measure the loyalty of your visitors. By
having a high percentage of return visitors, you’re obviously doing something right in
your digital marketing (and vice versa for a low percentage).

The return rate can help you identify what is enticing your visitors to return so that
you can increase this even more over time.

Once finding out the return rate of visitors, you should find out why they returned and
whether their visit led to a conversion. If it didn’t lead to a conversion, you could
consider a remarketing campaign. Remarketing campaigns are used to show ads to
people who have visited your website before, to entice them back.

Example of New vs Returning Visitors

7) Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Your click-through rate (CTR) refers to the ratio of how many users click a specific
link to the total number of users who view it. You will most commonly hear CTR
mentioned regarding paid ad campaigns, although your click-through rate is an
important metric in all your marketing efforts, including email, pay-per-click marketing
(PPC), social media, etc.

The CTR is a very important measurement to determine how well your PPC ads are
performing. The higher your CTR, the more traffic you are getting from your PPC ad
campaign.

8) Conversion Rate (CVR)

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who completed the
desired objectives such as; making a purchase, membership registration,
subscribing to your newsletter, submitting an enquiry etc. CVR is very important to
define how well your digital strategy is performing for each digital marketing
campaign you have in place.

Digital marketing campaigns with higher conversion rates are more successful
because this means that more of your site’s traffic is being converted to meaningful
actions that are likely to contribute to growing your business. You will want to
measure conversion rates so you can see what’s working in your digital marketing
campaigns in order to duplicate this success in other areas of your digital strategy.

Example of Conversion Goals

9) Return on Investment (ROI)
Naturally, any business will want to know if the money they’re investing in digital
marketing is bringing a return. However, it is important to note that although some
areas of your digital marketing campaigns may not be profitable straight away, it will
be a longer investment.

It is not always easy to track your return, but it is possible, you just need to know
how and be willing to put in the time.

Rich SMS is a great way to bring an ROI fast, on your digital marketing
efforts. Download our eBook here.

10) Cost To Acquire a Customer (CAC)

CAC is a great metric to measure your digital marketing efforts. CAC is the total
marketing and advertising cost required to obtain a new customer over a period of
time divided by the number of paying customers that were generated at the same
time.

If it’s costing you more to acquire new customers compared to the amount of paying
customers you get in the same time period, your digital marketing efforts aren’t
performing well and will need to be reviewed to avoid this in future

14 Proven Benefits of SMS

Marketing
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22ND SEPTEMBER 2017

There’s no doubt that mobile marketing is becoming more important than ever. I can
prove it to you without even using statistics or numbers, just with a simple question:

Do you remember the last time you didn’t check your phone all day? Because I don’t.
In fact, you probably use your phone way more than you think. Research discovered
that the average person checks their phone around 85 times a day. And we’re talking
here about 64% of the world’s population as that’s how many people own a mobile
device.

The truth is that we’re increasingly connected to the world of digital information while
“on the go” via our mobile devices. And this trend is only bound to grow.

So, to keep up with consumers’ needs we need to adapt our marketing game and
include mobile in our digital strategy. Mobile marketing covers SMS & Rich SMS,
push notifications, mobile apps, emails and websites.

All these methods are equally important, however, SMS marketing is often left out by
many companies. This means they are missing out on huge opportunities.

For this reason, I’ve compiled the ultimate list of all the benefits of SMS marketing.
Let’s have a look:

1) SMS marketing has a sensational open rate

SMS marketing is way ahead of the competition when it comes to open rate.

The average open rate for text messages is 98%, compared to only 24.79% for
emails.

The statistics for social media look completely hopeless since you can expect your
message to reach only about 2-3% of your audience.

I bet you’re not surprised by the statistics.

We receive so many emails and are swamped by so many social media notifications
on a daily basis that we’ve developed a form of ad blindness. We simply ignore
them.

However, we’re used to mainly receive text messages from our close friends and
family. This makes SMS a more personal platform. Let’s be honest, it bothers us
when we have even a single unread text message notification on our phones.

Besides, even if someone hasn’t opened your SMS, that doesn’t mean they haven’t
read it. Normally, all phones provide a preview in form of a snippet. This means that
your messages can still reach your audience even if they don’t open them.

In contrast, 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone.
So, if your subject line is not enticing enough, chances are your email is not going to
be read.
2) SMS marketing still has little competition
Did you know that in an entire day the average consumer is exposed to around 3500
marketing messages?

Marketing clutter is becoming a major problem for marketers and advertisers.

Consumers are overwhelmed with marketing content, making it difficult for brands to
get noticed.

So, what’s one of the best ways to break through the clutter and reach your target
audience?

Quite simply to find an underutilised channel or platform. Don’t forget to make sure
that your target audience is also there and likes to consume information that way.

SMS marketing, despite its effectiveness, remains largely

underused. Research showed that only 21% of brands leverage SMS to
communicate with customers.

An image showing the Preferred Channel for Receiving Loyalty-Related Communications

from Brands According to US Internet Users – March 2016

Therefore, this platform is not saturated yet and presents a huge opportunity you
should take advantage of.

If you’re unsure about whether receiving SMS promotions is something your

customers would be interested in, the best thing to do is simply ask the question.
You might be surprised by the results.
3) SMS helps increase customer engagement
levels
There’s a misconception that SMS messages can only be used for reminders or to
send vouchers and discount codes when you can do so much more.

A timely SMS message can do a great job in engaging customers in ways which
email or social can’t achieve. Here’s a great example from the NHS:

Here’s a great example from the NHS SMS

What makes these text messages so great is that they are very timely, personal and
relevant. They also make you feel more secure as you’d know what to expect and
you feel in control of the situation.

At the end of the day, who wouldn’t want to receive SMS to support such an
important event in their life?

You can even take engagement rates to the next level using Rich SMS.

Providing customers with rich media content such as games, scratch cards and
personalised selections will naturally make an impact. Rich SMS can help you
increase not only engagement levels but also brand awareness and word of mouth
referrals.

No wonder Rich SMS has a pretty impressive click-through rate (CTR) of 36%.
That’s pretty amazing, especially compared to email marketing, which has an
average CTR of 4.19%.

4) SMS is more reliable

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve spent hours crafting the perfect email and then it
goes straight to spam?

Even if you’ve followed all the best practices to dodge the spam folder you can never
ensure 100% deliverability.

It’s even harder when it comes to B2B communication. Bigger companies and
enterprises usually have granular email gateways with extended security.
 Recent research reported that spam messages account for 57% of all email traffic
worldwide. You can imagine that spam filters are working even harder to ensure that
email users receive safe, solicited content.

While mobile providers also process text messages for spam, if your text doesn’t
look spammy it is much more likely to make it to the inbox. This makes SMS a more
reliable channel to communicate with customers.

Here are a few tips to ensure that your SMS will reach the intended destination:

 Don’t use alphanumeric sender IDs as many mobile network operators around the world
filter them out.
 Many operators scan the traffic coming in and search for keywords which might indicate
spam so it’s best to avoid sensitive words
 Don’t overuse capital letters and exclamation marks
 Operators also attempt to block repeated messages so try to randomise your content

5) SMS provides greater reach

On a global scale, more people own a mobile device than they are connected to the
Internet.

Currently, 64% of world’s population owns a phone, whereas only 48% are
connected to the Internet.

Of course, this information is not location-specific and numbers tend to fluctuate in

different parts of the world.

Regardless, SMS can help you reach customers who don’t have an Internet
connection and with whom you wouldn’t be able to interact otherwise.

And I don’t only refer to the poorly connected parts of the world but also to the most
connected areas such as the USA. It all depends on your target market.

For example, if your target audience is seniors, you have better chances of reaching
them via mobile phones. Research among US seniors shows that people aged 65+
are more likely to have a mobile device than an Internet connection.

However, many of them also use the Internet so you shouldn’t exclude other digital
channels. Most importantly, you need to do your own research whether it’d be best
to only focus on one channel or on multiple channels.
 mobile marketing statistics – a graph
showing the percentage of seniors owning a phone or having internet connection

6) SMS provides a more personalised experience

Why go to such lengths as to personalise your campaigns?

Well quite simply, because it works, it provides a better user experience and
customers expect it from you. Bulk messages just don’t cut it anymore for a number
of reasons.

To begin with, every customer is on their own unique journey. Every individual has
different motivations to try, buy or stay loyal. So they expect you to meet them where
they’re at on their journey.

Secondly, nobody likes to feel like just another number on your marketing list.

Statistics and case studies show the same findings – customers want to feel
important and seek personalised experiences.

That’s why businesses that personalise web experiences see on average a 19%
increase in sales. And 39% of customers spend more if they receive a personalised
mobile coupon.
It’s safe to say that personalisation is becoming increasingly important and it’s the
future of marketing. So as marketers we need to better leverage the customer data
available and find new ways to deliver more personalised experiences.

Rich SMS helps deliver personalised experiences based on your users’ interests and
preferences. It enables you to segment your audiences based on past behaviour and
send them tailored offers. Or even better, you can engage them in the selection
process and, based on their choice, deliver a personalised content. Here’s an
example:

Benefits of SMS marketing – personalisation example

As you can see, you can swipe left or right to indicate what products you are looking
to buy. After you’ve liked or disliked certain product categories you are offered a
personal selection based on your choice.

7) SMS offers immediacy

SMS is one of the most immediate channels out there.

With a whopping open rate of 98% and with 90% of messages being read within 3
minutes, brands can be sure that their most critical messages will be read right
away.

This enables brands to send time-sensitive messages such as last-minute deals,

flash sales, event-related promotions, holiday greetings and so on.
 For example, retail and other consumer goods brands can leverage SMS to increase
sales on short or single day promotions such as Cyber Monday.

Additionally, restaurants can send deals out in the late afternoon or early evening
when people are still deciding where to go out to eat. This gives you the possibility to
provide ample time for users to take action, while still creating a certain amount of
urgency.

The potential of SMS is limitless. Few other marketing mediums can boast such
immediacy, making SMS an extremely valuable tool when it comes to instant
communication.

8) SMS integrates with other channels

It’s important that your campaigns are integrated and that the different promotions
methods are well coordinated and reinforce each other.

One of the best things about SMS marketing is that it is great as a standalone
channel but also plays well with other channels.

Social and traditional media are not always the most effective channels to reach
customers on time. You can integrate these channels with SMS to ensure that your
message will reach customers who haven’t read your email and let them know about
your offers.

Reportedly, a follow-up SMS message encouraging customers to check the latest

email offer you sent can help increase email open rates by 20%–30%.

9) SMS marketing is easy to track and analyse

If you don’t know what’s working and what’s not, how can you adjust campaigns
accordingly, let alone improve them?

You can’t. That’s why it’s essential to track and analyse how your marketing efforts
are performing.

This also goes for SMS Marketing. Thankfully, SMS Marketing makes it easy to track
and analyse your campaigns. It allows you to track deliverability rates, open rates,
CTRs, among others.

Here are the most important metrics to measure to determine effectiveness:

 Redemption and click-through rates – it allows you to measure how many customers took
advantage of your offer
 Opt-out/churn rate – there will always be people leaving your list. However, carefully tracking
your opt-out rate can help you see if there’s an increase and determine the reason
 Response rates – if the message requires a response, you can measure its effectiveness by
looking at how many people took the time to respond
 ROI – it’s always important to measure the return on investment on any marketing initiative.
This will give you insights into which channels bring you the best results and you should
invest more in

10) SMS has a great return on investment

As I’ve just mentioned, return on investment is one of the most important metrics to
measure to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. At the end of the
day, it all comes down to the bottom line.

When done right, SMS marketing has a generous ROI.

For example, the British motor racing circuit Silverstone sent a text message to
45,000 people in their database, inviting them to buy tickets for an upcoming
Formula 1 race. Just this single message resulted in 680% ROI.

This success is due to two very important factors. Firstly, that the message was very
timely and also that the offer inside the message was highly relevant to Silverstone’s
audience.

As you can see, SMS marketing has a very strong potential when executed with
careful planning and strategy in place. So to make the most of SMS marketing, it’s
essential to ensure that your SMS marketing efforts are aligned with your overall
marketing strategy and initiatives.

11) SMS messages are easy to share

We trust the people we know. It’s only natural. That’s why 92% of consumers believe
suggestions from friends and family more than they believe advertising.

Trust is what makes word of mouth marketing (WOMM) so effective and important to
every marketing activity. If used well, WOMM is a great vehicle for exposure and
distribution.

Having said that, the easiest way to earn someone’s trust is if a person close to them
recommends the particular product or service.

As opposed to other channels such as radio, TV and at times even social media,
SMS makes it easy for people to share your messages with friends and family. All
they need to do is forward it to the desired person.

SMS also has another advantage when it comes to sharing – privacy. SMS is a more
private way to exchange messages as opposed to social media where everybody
can see what you shared with your friends.
12) Rich SMS allows you to send any type of
content
While in the past many marketers were put off by the fact that SMS was quite
restrictive as it was only text-based and very character limited, that’s not the case
anymore. Rich SMS allows you to send virtually any type of content.

Rich SMS even enables you to send more types of content than most channels
including email and social.

You name it: traditional SMS messages, games, scratch cards, surveys, newsletters,
personalised offers and promotions, event-related messages, reminders, among
others.

It allows you to add visual content to the SMS message and we all know that visuals
are vital to online success. This is due to the fact the human brain understands
visual information better: it processes visual information 60,000 times faster than it
does text.

an image with statistics how the human brain processes visual information

13) SMS can help you learn more about your

users
One of the best ways to learn more about your users is through customer surveys.
SMS-based surveys enjoy a high conversion, with 31 percent of
consumers responding to such invitations, on average within five minutes.
This means that people are more likely to respond to your SMS than open your
email. The high engagement and conversion rates of SMS make it the perfect
medium to run short surveys and gain more customer insights.

Also, if you run your promotions on multiple channels, you can track which
customers engage more on email or SMS. You can leverage this information later
and communicate with them on their preferred channel.

14) SMS helps you improve user experience (UX)

As we conduct most of our daily tasks and interactions online, it has become critical
to provide a seamless experience to users.

And users expect you to provide them with such experience. For example, 46% of
people said that they wouldn’t purchase from a brand again if they had an
interruptive mobile experience.

In contrast, nearly 9 in 10 smartphone owners who had a helpful and relevant mobile
experience would purchase from that brand again. I believe this makes the case for
UX.

As SMS provides an interactive and personalised experience, it also inevitably

improves the user experience. In fact, the ultimate user experience starts with
personalisation. Having said that, the more you know about your customers, the
more likely you are to provide them with a better experience. So, SMS can help you
improve user experience which will also have a positive impact on your bottom line.

Conclusion
The digital marketing landscape has changed more in the last decade than ever. The
time we spend on mobile devices has led to one of the most important changes – a
mobile-first world.

To keep up with consumers’ needs, we need to embrace it and make our strategies
more mobile-focused.

One of the most effective ways of mobile communication is SMS marketing. The
benefits SMS marketing can bring to businesses are substantial and include instant
communication, better engagement and improved user experience, personalisation,
greater reliability and generous ROI.

That’s why marketers shouldn’t overlook it and try to incorporate it into their existing
marketing strategies
 Is SMS Marketing Right for My
Business?
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28TH SEPTEMBER 2017

Are you still on the fence about SMS marketing and whether it should be part of your
marketing strategy?

Believe it or not, SMS marketing is one of the most effective forms of instant
communication. It has a whopping 98% open rate with 90% of the messages being
read within 3 minutes. There are many more advantages to using SMS
marketing which can benefit any type of business.

Yet, it is also true that companies in certain sectors can make better use of this
marketing form and therefore take full advantage of what SMS has to offer.

So, what businesses can make the most of SMS

Marketing?
Beyond industries, there are certain characteristics that make a business a good fit
for SMS marketing. Generally, SMS marketing is beneficial to:

 Companies that need to verify a person’s identity

 Organisations that want to make their content interactive (through Rich SMS)
 Companies that need to send reminders
 Businesses where instant communication is essential
 Organisations that run last-minute deals and promotions
 Companies that need to send timely offers
 Businesses which run surveys to improve their services
 Businesses that need an instant response from clients
 Organisations that need to send confirmation messages

Some businesses aren’t an obvious match for SMS marketing but can benefit from
implementing it. For example, local libraries. Libraries can leverage SMS messages
 to send reminders when a book’s due date is approaching or recommendations
based on past behaviour.

Now, let’s have a look at the industries that can utilise SMS marketing the most:

Here’s the list of the industries in which SMS marketing is widely used:

1) Food and Beverage Industry

The UK restaurant sector is booming, with Britons spending a total £52.2bn on
eating out in 2015. No wonder the food and beverage industry is so competitive.
Restaurants are competing on many levels including price, value and promotions,
service, location, and food quality.

Just think about how many Italian, Mexican and Chinese restaurants there are in
your city or town. Probably more than you think.

Unless you own a Michelin star restaurant or have an infamous chef, chances are
you will have to find other ways of standing out from the crowd. So, how do
restaurants and bars differentiate themselves in the market and attract more guest
traffic?

To succeed you need a marketing strategy which utilises different techniques across
multiple channels. This includes word of mouth, referral marketing, social media,
local SEO, email marketing, SMS marketing, among others.

All these are equally important but when it comes to sending last minute deals and
planned promotions, SMS is the clear winner.

Restaurants and bars can leverage SMS marketing in so many ways. Here are some
campaign ideas the food and beverage industry can take advantage of:

 Last-minute deals – Restaurant and bars can increase their guest traffic by sending last-
minute deals, especially on less busy days. The industry is always busy on weekends but
weekdays tend to be slower. For the same reason, people tend to make reservations for
weekends and plan ahead. In contrast, during the weekdays, people usually decide where
they’re going to eat or grab a drink on the spot. Restaurants and bars can leverage this
opportunity to send text messages with relevant promotions and offers in the late afternoon
or early evening when people are still making their minds up.
 Personalised offers – People tend to respond better to tailored promotions. To personalise
your offers you can integrate data from other marketing channels to gain a comprehensive
picture of your customers. For example, you can send them a special promotion for their
birthday. Also, people are more likely to redeem offers on such occasions. Research found
that people are more likely to self-gift on their birthday, with 61% of people indicating that
they treat themselves.
 Confirmation messages – Don’t you just hate it when a restaurant has lost or messed up
your booking? This can happen even in the most reputable places. Sending a confirmation
message to your customers can help you avoid mistakes and also increase customer
 satisfaction. If the receptionist made a mistake about the date or time you will be able to see
and correct it on time.
 Surveys – surveys are a great way to improve customer service and in turn customer
satisfaction. Reportedly, SMS messages are one of the best platforms to request surveys
with 31% of consumers responding to such invitations, on average within five minutes.

an image showing an SMS marketing example for the food and beverage industry

2) Banks and Financial Services

Mobile is the new hub for personal banking. According to BBA, mobile banking
overtakes branches and the internet as the most popular way to bank. And this trend
is only estimated to grow.

internet vs branc vs online banking usage estimate

 This means that mobile phones are the preferred device for customers to manage
their finances. So, it makes sense to contact them on their preferred device and
platform and leverage it to create a superior customer relationship.

Research showed that customers under 25 who had a positive first interaction with a
bank, are more likely to approach the same organisation later in life when seeking to
finance for larger transactions such as a mortgage or business loan.

Positive experience and a good relationship with customers are essential to success
in the digital age. Here’s how SMS marketing can help banks and financial
institutions foster a better bank-client relationship:

 Payment reminders – SMS messages are a great way to remind clients of outstanding and
overdue payments. HMCTS achieved a 14.5% increase in collections of fines using text
message reminders. The immediacy and open rate of text messages, make SMS reminders
are a more effective communication method than email.
 Payment confirmation – SMS can also help you fight fraud and make clients feel more
secure. You can alert customers by SMS when payments over a certain amount or oversea
payments are made.
 Notify for updates – Banks tend to change policies quite often. It’s easy to miss an email or
in-app message, so SMS provides you with a more reliable platform to send critical
messages and notify users about important updates

3) Travel Industry
As the travel industry is so dynamic, last-minute communication is essential. The
immediacy of SMS messages makes them the perfect platform. Text messages can
greatly help in:

 Notifying customers – Last-minute changes such as flight delays or cancellations are

common. SMS can help you notify passengers resulting in greater customer satisfaction.
 Reminders – Text messages can serve as reminders for customers to complete online
check-ins or other outstanding actions before their departure.
 Offers and promotions – You can leverage data such as past behaviour and travel history
to tailor-make exclusive offers. For example, if someone has travelled to a given country
more than 3-4 times in the past years, most likely this person is originally from that country
or has close friends and family there. This means that they’d be interested in travelling there
again in the future. You can segment these customers and send them a targeted campaign
with a discount code for that destination. Here’s an example of push notification from Wizz
Air using this tactic, but you can also adapt it to text messages:
 An image showing an example of a push
notification by wizzair

 Promotion of new destinations – Using customer data you can uncover which airport
individual customers travel most often from. Based on it you can market new routes and
destinations through targeted and personalised SMS messages.

You can think outside the box and get creative with SMS marketing when it comes to
the travel industry. For example, you can also send customers helpful tips, like
exchange rate information, the weather forecast and best things to see or do in their
destination.

4) Healthcare Industry
Did you know that more than 12 million NHS appointments are missed each year
which costs the health service nearly £1bn? And the worst part is that over 50% of
‘no-shows’ are due to simple forgetfulness.

SMS reminders played a crucial role to decrease NHS’s no-show rates and save the
healthcare services millions per year.

Here’s how businesses in the healthcare industries can use SMS messages to
improve their services:

 Appointment and prescription reminders – Not only sending reminders can decrease “did
not attend” rates and save you money but it also results in better customer satisfaction.
 Provide test results – While some test results are of sensitive nature and need to be
discussed privately with patients, many of them are regular check-ups. SMS messages can
help you cut time, admin and communication costs by automating the process.
 Health and diet tips – You can leverage SMS to send health or diet tips to patients. For
example, The Guardian reported that motivational messages help smokers quit, doubling
their chances of giving up tobacco.
 Surveys and feedback – you can use text messages to gain patient feedback or conduct
surveys.
 An image of an example of sms
marketing survey by NHS

5) Retail
The retail industry was one of the first to jump on the SMS marketing bandwagon
and one in which SMS marketing is still widely used.

Similar to the travel industry, the retail industry can leverage SMS marketing in so
many ways. From courtesy messages to coupons delivered in the form of a
scratchcard or shake-to-reveal messages.

As the opportunities for retail are only limited to the marketer’s imagination, here’s
just a quick list of the ways the retail industry can use SMS messages:

 Deals and offers – Retail brands can use text messages to notify subscribers about
upcoming sale events, both online and in-store.
 Personalised promotions – Based on past consumer behaviour and other data,
personalised promotions can be sent for birthdays or events such as Valentine’s Day and
other holidays.
 Is SMS marketing right for my business – an image showing a personalisation example of
Rich SMS

 “Don’t miss it” campaigns – An SMS message triggered when an item on customer’s wish
list is low in stock.
 Launch of a new product – You can use SMS to create buzz around the product before the
launch date.
 Re-engagement campaigns – Send campaigns targeted at lists that have become
despondent.
 Courtesy messages – You can let customers know of any changes or inform them about
their account credit via SMS messages
 Event invitations – SMS enables customers RSVP for events via text message

An image showing an example of a SMS

marketing courtesy message by Very
 6) Recruitment
Emerging technologies had a great impact on the recruitment and HR industry.
Technical innovations enabled HR teams to streamline activities and operate more
efficiently. One of these technologies is SMS messages. Here are some ways
recruiters can benefit from using text messages:

 Inform job seekers of new openings – Recruiters can leverage SMS to inform applicants
of new job openings. 61% of customers prefer to receive text messagesas they are much
less obtrusive than a phone call and job seekers can evaluate the opportunity in their own
time.
 Interview reminders – It’s frustrating for both the recruiter and the interviewer when an
interviewee doesn’t turn up for the interview. Sending reminders to interviewees can help
decrease the no-show rate.
 Inform applicants – SMS enables you regularly inform job applicants about their application
status. This will help you foster a better relationship and establish trust with candidates.

7) Beauty industry
The beauty industry includes hairdressers, manicurists, makeup artists, skin
professionals, among many others. SMS messages can help them combat their
biggest challenges: no-shows, slows days and one-time customers. Here’s how SMS
messages can help:

 Appointment reminders – No-shows and late clients are inevitable, however sending
reminders to clients can help you reduce the rate.
 Re-engagement campaigns – If you’re using a CRM you can track the time between
customers’ appointments. You can use this data to remind them it’s time to book a new
appointment.
 Deals and coupons – you can use SMS messages to send your customers deals and
promotions about your services.

8) Entertainment venues and event organisers

From promoting an event to ensuring everything runs smoothly on the day,
organising an event is no easy feat. That’s why savvy marketers are making SMS
marketing a key part of their mix. Here’s how SMS can benefit event venue and
planners:

 Promotion – SMS enables you to send notices of upcoming events. You can segment your
lists by interests and target subscribers with personalised text messages. For example, if
you held a rock concert a few months ago but also have another one upcoming, the
attendees on the first event will also likely be interested in this one.
 Information – You can send notices to delegates and attendees to keep them instantly
updated about what to expect next.
 Special offers – If one of your events is not selling as good as you thought it would, you can
run a promotion and distribute it via text messages.
 Surveys – SMS helps you conduct surveys about attendees’ experiences
An SMS marketing example of an event-related message

Do you use SMS marketing as part of your mix? What industry does your business
operate in?

6 Stats Proving Why You Should

Consider Rich SMS
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12TH JANUARY 2018

Did you know that by 2020, 48.7M consumers will opt-in to receive business SMS?

Believe it or not, the power of SMS is increasing daily and these figures make SMS
the fastest growing marketing channel in the UK.
In a competitor heavy industry, how can you possibly differentiate yourself? Simply
through implementing Rich SMS into your mobile marketing strategy.

What is Rich SMS exactly?

Rich SMS, also known as Rich Media Text or Rich Media Messaging, is an SMS that
contains rich multimedia content that is not limited to 160 characters.

It advances SMS Marketing to a new level with content that you choose from
surveys, gamification, discounts and plenty of call to actions such as drive-to-store,
links to download your app, click-to-call … all of which is completely personalised for
each customer.

What Rich SMS ultimately does is give users the opportunity to interact with their
SMS messages, allowing an outstanding user experience to be achieved.

Related content: What is Rich SMS Marketing and Why You Need to Use It

So why should you start using Rich SMS?

Rich SMS is great as it comes with the added benefits that a standard SMS does not
have. Here are some key statistics proving why you should be considering Rich SMS
in your mobile marketing strategy.

1. SMS has an open rate of 98%

Did you have the time to open all your emails this week, or did you do what I did and
deleted them without reading? According to Smart Insights, email marketing
campaigns only have an open rate of 22% in comparison to SMS open rate of 98%,
huge difference, right?
 An image
showing the open rate of SMS vs email – Stats to Make you Consider Rich SMS

2. 60% of 18-34 year-olds want to receive SMS from

businesses
In a survey conducted by OpenMarket on 500 Millennials, it was found that
60% want to be able to text their favourite brands; but currently they are receiving
less than five messages a week from companies.

These are surprisingly high statistics considering that there is much discussion on
whether SMS messaging is too intrusive.

Rich SMS is considered a personalised experience meaning that the content that is
used in the Rich SMS is tailored to the interests of the user, limiting the probability of
being intrusive.

3. SMS is the number 1 preferred channel for

notifications from businesses
Whilst brands are more favourable towards email campaigns (maybe because of
how cost-effective they are) SMS is still considered the number one preference in
receiving notifications from businesses.

Email is still second and close behind followed by the voice. Amazingly, the amount
of effort that is put into Social Media Management does not compare, with postal
mail also rating higher as a preference than Twitter and Facebook.
 An image showing
the preferred channels for business notifications – SMS, email and voice

4. 62% of customers want to receive reminders by text

According to OpenMarket, not only do customers want to receive promotional
messages, there is a higher preference to receive texts from businesses for
appointment reminders (62%), delivery notifications (59%) and payment reminders
(48%), all these features can be included by Rich SMS.
An image showing the types of text messages that millenials prefer to receive from
companies

5. 39% of customers spend more if they receive a

personalised mobile voucher
That’s right, you heard it correctly. Providing personalised experiences in marketing
has become the #1 goal for some businesses. As opposed to SMS, Rich SMS can
help you deliver personalised experiences based on your users’ interests and
preferences. This means that your customers will receive messages that are actually
meaningful to them, and will therefore feel more engaged and connected to your
brand. Needless to say that an engaged customer is a customer that will spend
more.

6. 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is

visual
In a race, text can simply not compete with images. We understand images instantly,
whereas we must work to process text.

That’s where Rich SMS can help.

One of the best things about Rich SMS is that you can pretty much send any content
you choose through rich media messages. Whether you want to push your latest
promotions and offers, invite your customers to an event, or simply remind your
customers that you exist by entertaining them with a memory game, you can be
pretty confident that you are delivering the best possible experience to your
customers

Why All Websites Should Start

Using SSL Certificates
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8TH NOVEMBER 2018

It goes without saying that the internet is continuously evolving at a rapid rate. So
much so that it can be hard to keep up with.

It is paramount to keep your website as secure as possible, for not only your
business but also for your website visitors who are becoming savvier than ever
before at spotting which websites are protecting them and which are not; particularly
now with the help of Google in naming and shaming the businesses without the
standard protection.

This is where the SSL certificate comes in…

What is an SSL certificate?

An SSL (secure socket layer) certificate is a digital certificate that validates the
identity of a secure website.

The protocol in which data is sent between your browser and the website you are
connected to is HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). And when it is combined with
SSL it becomes HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) meaning that the data
being sent is secured.

The way that HTTPS/SSL secures data is by encrypting all communications between
the browser and the website.
Why is it important to have an SSL certificate?
Having an SSL certificate is important for your website’s security as mentioned
earlier. However, despite the obvious benefits, many businesses still haven’t
acquired an SSL certificate.

This is quite surprising due to the fact that 74% of businesses say that cyber security
is a high priority.

There are several significant advantages of having an SSL certificate on your

business’s website:

1. SSL protects data

Having an SSL certificate is paramount for all businesses, even more so for
businesses that keep important customer data such as payment details. You as a
business are responsible for protecting your visitors’ data, whether it’s their name,
payment details, or personal preferences etc.

According to the GOV.UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2018, 43% of UK

businesses have experienced a cyber security breach or attack in the last 12
months. This statistic just goes to show why website security should be taken
seriously.

Fortunately, an SSL certificate can protect your data as every bit of information is
encrypted so that only the intended receiver can unlock and have access to this
information.
2. SSL provides authentication
The internet can be a very misleading place, with fraudulent websites getting more
and more cunning. However, SSL certificates are helping to battle this by providing
authentication to real, trustworthy websites.

To be able to obtain an SSL certificate, you first have to go through a validation

process to verify your identity using a third-party CA (certificate authority).

The identity verification process ensures your protection from impersonation, so no

one creates a fake website pretending to be yours. Not only are you protecting
yourself, but you are also saving website visitors from frauds which will consequently
enhance your reputation.

3. Better SEO
Everyone wants their business’s website and its pages to rank as high as possible in
the search engine results page, so working on improving your SEO is necessary to
get there.

Changes in Google’s algorithm has focused on the security and authentication of

websites. In fact, Google has recently introduced HTTPS as a ranking factor,
therefore giving HTTPS-enabled websites the advantage over competitors without a
secure website. And although the ranking boost may not be substantial, it’s still one
step closer to where you want to be in the results page.
Google has recognised that secure websites deserve the upper hand, and by having
an SSL certificate, you will be a secure website reaping this SEO benefit.

An example of how Google will show websites that are not secure compared to previously

4. Enhances customer trust

One of the most significant benefits of having an SSL certificate is that it helps build
and retain customer trust. Website visitors want to know that your website is safe for
them to use.

So how will visitors know that your website is secured by an SSL certificate? The
answer is trust indicators. Google has started labelling websites without SSL
certificates ‘not secure’ to warn users of the risks in the browser bar on the top left-
hand side. And websites that are secure show ‘https’ in the URL with a padlock icon,
which means they are secure.

No matter how big and credible your business is, if you were to experience some
kind of data breach in which your website visitors’ information was at risk, this could
well damage your reputation.

5. Improves conversion rates

Another great benefit of getting an SSL certificate is that it helps improve your
conversion rate. This goes hand-in-hand with the point that having an SSL certificate
builds customers trust; a visitor is far more likely to convert into a customer if they
trust you.

It’s not rocket science understanding that a site clearly labelled ‘not secure’ will deter
visitors from giving you their personal information or making a purchase.

Ultimately, once a visitor knows that you’re legitimate and you can be trusted, they’re
far more likely to do business with you and even revisit your site.
Secure your website
We hope this article has given you insight into the importance of having an SSL
certificate for your website. Why not check your businesses website? Just check for
the ‘not secure’ or padlock icon in the URL. Check the Rebixit website to see how it
should be and compare it to your own website.

Did you know? We provide the SSL certificate for free, as part of our hosting
package, enquire here to find out more.

When choosing what the right level and type of SSL certificate you should use for
your website, there are a few factors you need to consider. This includes how you
use your website, how many domains you want to secure, your location and whether
you can install the SSL certificate yourself.

If you are interested in working with a team of digital experts to help keep your
website secure to be able to achieve the benefits mentioned in this article, contact us
here

Blogging for Business: How &

Why Your Business Should Have
A Blog
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12TH OCTOBER 2018

With all the attention focused on video content, it’s easy to think that blogging is
over. But don’t let this fool you in 2018. Your content strategy (which is intrinsically
linked to SEO strategy) should still involve blogging as usual. Because blogging is
and will remain, an essential strategy to reach your target audience.

Moreover, it is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to enhance your SEO efforts.
That’s why we decided to highlight what the benefits are, and the best practices for
maintaining one.
Hubspot reports ‘Businesses using blogs as part of their content marketing
mix get 67% more leads than those who don’t’.

Why?
Let’s start with the benefits of having a blog so that you know what your business
could be missing out on… We have 5 to go through with you!

Blogging aims to bring your business greater visibility online and aims to increase
‘quality’ traffic to your site, consequently increasing enquiries/leads/sales.

And how does a blog do this?

1. Drives traffic to your website

Without potential customers knowing your brand already, the chances of them
coming across your website is often slim.

When you write a blog post, that’s one more indexed page on your website. So
ultimately, blogging gives you the opportunity to show up in more search engine
results, meaning potential customers have a chance of coming across your content,
driving more organic traffic to your website.

Video Player

00:00

00:17

2. Converts traffic into leads

More traffic generated through a blog means more opportunity to convert those
visitors into paying customers. That’s, of course, providing that your content is
relevant and of good quality to the visitor.

But the way to convert visitors from your blog posts is by guiding them to take the
next action, otherwise, they’re reading content that may be useful to them but then
not going any further.

You can guide these visitors by adding CTAs (call-to-action) at the end of your blog
posts, such as ‘contact us’ or ‘browse related services’ etc.
3. Helps establish you as an authority
Being established as an authority is great for building trust and credibility with your
audiences. The more people trust your brand, the more likely they are to convert into
paying customers.

And one of the best ways to become an authority is by blogging. The reason being is
that if you’re consistently creating valuable content that is useful to users, they will
build a relationship with your brand and start considering you as their ‘go-to’
resource.

4. Creates long-term results

Blogging is a great marketing tactic that gives you long-term results. Your content
doesn’t always become ‘old news’ after being published for a week. Once you’ve
published a blog post, it can be found in search engine results years later, as long as
the search engine considers the content ‘relevant’.

With content being available for a long time after it’s been published, that means you
can still get traffic which could then result in leads later down the line.
5. People trust blogs
Building trust is fundamental to the success of any business, and blogging is great
for doing so. Your business’s personality can shine through your blog and you can
approach/answer your audience’s concerns in your industry, giving something back
to them.

Did you know that blogs are the 5th most trusted source for accurate online
information? (Search Engine People)

Blogging shows your audience the human element of your business and gives them
the chance to learn more about your brand, which in time will build trust.
How?
So, now that we’ve covered the main areas of the benefits of blogging, it’s time to go
through the best practices of blogging.

1. Content planning
Planning is always a crucial step that should never be overlooked, especially when
your business is on the line. Working from hunches, or by impulse works to a certain
extent – however, it can actually turn out to be more time-consuming and the big
picture is less likely to turn out how you originally envisioned it.

Planning thoroughly for a blog allows you to see any gaps that may lie within your
content strategy. Creating a content calendar is a great first step as you can plan
what topics you want to post and how frequently you want to post them before
you’ve even begun creating the content.

Another planning tip for blog content is to use topic clusters. Topic clusters are a
collection of interlinked articles or pages around one umbrella topic.

So, although it won’t technically be a topic cluster until you’ve created the content
and the articles are interlinked, you can still plan your blog content to relate to
becoming topic clusters once the content has been created.

2. Frequency
How often you publish blog posts really makes a difference to your results. A general
rule of thumb is to post at least twice a month, but if you can post more regularly, the
better the results.

Trying to be consistent in how often you post is what you should aim for, however it
is equally as important to be flexible, as some months may need more coverage for
events/occasions (Valentine’s, Christmas etc).

At least try to make the number of posts a month similar. For example, you wouldn’t
want a blog that has 2 posts in January and 12 in February. Something more like 8 in
January and 10 in February would be more ideal.

Research carried out by HubSpot found that all sized companies that publish more
blog posts than competitors of the same size drive higher traffic to their sites. And
when these companies are publishing 11+ blog posts a month, the amount of traffic
increases considerably more.

Moreover, this was the same case whether the company was B2B or B2C.
Related article: 6 Tools to Help You Come up with Fresh Content Idea

Screenshot of ‘impact of monthly blog posts on inbound traffic by company size’ chart
in HubSpot

3. Keyword research
Knowing what keywords to target in each of your blog posts is an important step
towards getting your blog post to rank well in the search engine results page.

And the best way to do this is by putting your mindset into that of the user; what
queries would you be typing into a search engine about your chosen topic?

Also, checking the articles that appear in the top spots of the results page is a good
idea, as you can see if it answers the questions you would have as a user and if not,
you can provide more insight where they are missing it. This should help set your
content apart from others, hopefully meaning you can capture the search traffic
related to the keyword.

4. Length & readability

Length is another important factor when blogging for business. And in general,
bigger is better. Short form blog posts tend to have a hard time ranking well and
aren’t great for SEO.

But that’s not to say that having the occasional short post can’t be effective. They
can be great for generating discussions. Whereas, longer-form blog posts are great
for social shares.
The downside to long-form blog posts is that the readability is usually harder, so you
will need to be extra skilled and careful when writing long-form blog posts. Making
sure not to repeat yourself too much throughout the blog post and no keyword
stuffing will help your readability.

5. Images & Videos

Images and videos play an important role in blogging. Using this type of media is
great for captivating your audience, as well as providing a quick and concise way to
explain or show what you’re talking about.

However, what you shouldn’t do is overload a blog post with images/videos as this is
unnecessary – too many images or videos will not look visually appealing and can
actually affect user experience as it will slow down the page speed.

Also, images and videos need to be of high quality, otherwise your brand can come
across as unprofessional and cheap.

Mobile Page Speed: Is Your

Business Ready?
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7TH SEPTEMBER 2018

It’s no secret that mobile usage has grown exponentially in recent years. You just
need to think about how you use your phone personally in your daily life to
understand how dominant it has become.
Ubiquitous Wi-Fi access and the development of 3G and 4G networks mean that the
internet is accessible to mobile users anywhere and (almost) everywhere.

Businesses of all industries have understood and seized the opportunities that come
with it, by becoming as mobile-friendly and mobile-first as possible in terms of their
websites.

Related article: Why Is It Important That Your Website Is Mobile-friendly?

An example of a good mobile-responsive website vs an unresponsive mobile website

However, as you may already know, consumer behaviour is always evolving,

meaning that consumers have higher expectations than they used to. And you as a
business need to be on top of these expectations to stay relevant and dominant in
your sector.

Simply just having a mobile-responsive website isn’t enough anymore, you need to
make sure that your mobile website is being regularly optimised to suit the needs of
the ever-changing consumer behaviours.

And that’s where mobile page speed comes in, but first…
What is Page Speed?
Page speed (not to be confused with site speed) is a measurement of how fast the
content of a specific page loads.

It is related to the site speed for the reason that if you have several pages with slow
page speeds, it will affect the overall site speed, and consequently affect user
experience and conversions.

Page speed can be determined by either the ‘page load time’ of the whole page’s
content to display or the ‘time to first byte’ which is how long it takes for your browser
to receive the first byte of information.

If you haven’t already optimised your mobile page speed, we’ve covered why it’s
important to do so right away.
Why Does Mobile Page Speed Matter?
Mobile page speed is an important aspect when trying to adapt to mobile users.

According to Google, the average time it takes for a mobile landing page to load is
15 seconds. Now another stat to consider is that 53% of mobile site visitors leave
a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load… These two stats coupled
together mean that most visitors leave the mobile website they’re visiting before it’s
even loaded (in other words, they “bounce”). This is a very high bounce rate that
needs addressing, hence why Google is trying to challenge this, and you should too.
Page speed is a ranking factor on Google
Page speed has been considered important for a successful website for a long time.
In fact, it has been a ranking factor on Google for desktops since 2009. But for
mobile, it has only become a ranking factor only as of July 2018.

What this means is that mobile sites with the slowest landing pages will be affected
in Google’s search rankings. The page speed affects the quality score, which in turn
affects your overall ranking.

As you may already know, Google continuously updates its algorithm to ensure that
the best and most relevant content is available to its search users. By ensuring that
you follow Google’s algorithms where possible, you can become more relevant, rank
higher, and consequently gain more traffic.

Moreover, Google has mobile-first indexing in place which puts websites with good
mobile sites as a priority. Even more of a reason to ensure that your mobile users
are being looked after.

Video Player

00:00

00:21

User Experience is Improved

Consumer behaviour changes over time, and with the constant advancement of
better and faster technology, users have less patience and higher expectations.

In today’s technologically advanced time, everything is fast-paced. Users want to

click, scan and scroll content efficiently without it ‘wasting’ their time.

By optimising your mobile site to your users’ needs and wants, you will be providing
a better user experience. And mobile page speed is important for user experience
and your business as it highly affects bounce rate and conversions.

Lower Bounce Rate

According to Google, as page load time goes from 1 second to 5 seconds, the
probability of bounce increases by 90%.

That’s crazy to think how high the bounce rate is from 1-5 seconds when the
average mobile page load time is a staggering 15 seconds, as we uncovered earlier.

This clearly shows that page load time highly affects your website’s bounce rate,
making it imperative to optimise your mobile page speed to be as fast as possible.
Users being able to access your content quickly and efficiently will create a better
user experience, hence why they are less likely to bounce.

Improved Conversion Rate

Long load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions on your
website.

This makes sense as we’ve already clarified that a slow mobile page speed
increases the bounce rate, which includes users that are genuinely interested in your
offerings.

With users being deterred from your website due to slow mobile page speed, they
aren’t even getting to the conversion stage.

You shouldn’t be putting obstacles in the way of users who are interested in your
offerings, you should be making the process as simple and enjoyable as possible.
After all, great user experience leads to conversions.

How to Work on Your Mobile Page Speed

So now that you know why mobile page speed is important for your business and
your customers, we have some advice below on how to optimise your mobile page
speed.
 Check your speed
You first need to know the speed of your mobile landing pages to determine whether
they need to be optimised or not.

There are plenty of tools available that allow you to test your mobile page speed, for
example, Google’s mobile page speed tool.

Using a mobile page speed tool is far more reliable than trying to test your mobile
speed yourself with your own device. The reason being that there may be other
factors to consider in your own analysis such as the signal in your area at the time
you test it.

The best practice for testing your mobile page speed is by using a few different
sources, not just Google’s mobile page speed tool, as this will allow you to get more
reliable results. You can, for example, find interesting metrics such as Page load
time, Server response time, Page download time etc. in Google Analytics (simply go
to Behaviour > Site Speed > Overview, create a new segment, Mobile Traffic or
Tablet Traffic for instance, and choose a recent date range).

Tips to Improve Your Mobile Page Speed

1. Remove or Reduce the size of your Images
Images play a big role in your mobile page speed. They can significantly slow down
your mobile page, so being able to remove, reduce and compress images is an
important step in improving your mobile page speed.

Firstly, remove any images that add no value to your page, as it’s doing more harm
than good. Then, for the images that do add value, optimise them so that they are
reduced in size to suit your mobile page.

There are WordPress plugins available that allow you to do this such as Smush,
EWWW Image Optimizer, Imsanity and more.

They all have different features, so it’s worth taking a look at what would be most
useful for your website, but they all have the same aim – to reduce and compress
your images to suit your businesses mobile site, without affecting the quality of the
image.

An example of how smush works in compressing images via a website.

2. Consider moving to another server

If you buy hosting space for 1 website, there are likely to be hundreds (or thousands)
of other websites hosted on the same server. Sometimes this works fine with
businesses, especially when you’re just starting out. But it does also mean that you
are limited to space.
The owner of the server will give each website an allowance of space so that each
website that is hosted on their server has the same amount of available space for
their website.

If your website has a lot of traffic, if you have a lot of photos, videos, or if your
website is complex (such as having e-commerce element) you should consider
moving to a bigger server.

This allows your website to grow, and with more available space on your chosen
server, your mobile page speed and your site speed overall should improve.

3. Update your software

If you use software such as WordPress for your website which hasn’t been updated
for a long time, this should be looked into. This may sound like an obvious tip,
however, it is still a valuable (and often overlooked) step to take into consideration
for speeding up your mobile page speed.

Over time, developers write better, more efficient code, fixing a lot of previous issues
and helping to speed up your page and site speed.

4. Minify CSS
CSS (cascading style sheets) are used to describe how elements such as font,
colours, spacing for your website and so on will look on screen. CSS files are
typically large files with thousands of lines of code.

Although everything on the CSS file is important and has a purpose, it can slow
down your website. And there are ways to compress it.

One way is to keep a copy for the developers to work on and have them remove all
the unnecessary bits. Whilst this is time-consuming, in the long run, it can really help
your page speed.

There are also tools available to minify the files, such as CSSminifier.

Want to Optimise Your Mobile Page Speed?

We hope this article has been helpful and insightful about mobile page speed and
the importance of optimising it.

If you are interested in working with a team of digital marketing experts to help you
optimise your mobile page speed or your mobile marketing strategy as a
whole, contact us via phone or email.
What is Content Marketing & Why
is it So Critical to My Food &
Drink Business [Infographic]
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18TH MAY 2018

Content marketing should play a significant role in your digital marketing strategy, for
the reason that it’s one of the most effective ways to set yourself apart from your
competitors by bringing value to your customers and improving your online
presence.

(Related content: 11 Essential Ingredients For A Food Business’s Presence Online)

For all industries, including the food and drink industry, content marketing is key to a
successful digital marketing strategy. Which is why it’s important that you know what
content marketing is and why it is so critical to your food and drink business.
Get A Head Start With Great Content
Now that you know what content marketing is and why is it so critical to food & drink
businesses, why not take it a step further and take action? If you are interested in
working with a team that can help you hit the ground running contact us here.

If you want to find out more about our content marketing service, click on our content
marketing services.

5 Ways To Do More With Your

Customer Reviews
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27TH APRIL 2018

Word of mouth remains a powerful tool for marketing a business. With the internet
and so many digital channels at our fingertips (Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp etc.) it’s
easier than ever for consumers to tell others about their very best (and worst)
experiences and for people to base their buying decisions on them.

Ask yourself: When was the last time you made a purchase decision without first
checking out reviews for that product or service?

A 2018 BrightLocal study about online reviews for local businesses revealed that
97% of consumers aged 18-34 read online reviews, 91% of consumers aged 35-54
read online reviews, and 86% of consumers aged 55+ read online reviews.
In a recent study, 88% of customers reported that online reviews of a business
influence their buying decision. So, we know that they are valuable but how can you
do even more with them to make sure they are seen by a wider audience, so you
can increase acquisition? Here are 5 ideas.

1. Display them clearly on your website & across

social media accounts
As obvious as this idea may sound, displaying your customer reviews on your
website and on your social media platforms where visitors are likely to come across
them is often something businesses miss out on.

a. Website
You don’t necessarily need a specific web page for your testimonials, place them
where visitors are likely to see them, give them pride of place. For example, near the
bottom of each service page would be a good place, or even on the homepage as a
slide share. You can also embed plugins which will allow you to show reviews from
3rd party trusted sites such as Yelp and Google reviews. You could also showcase
your favourite reviews on your blog, to increase your visitors’ faith in your expertise
and experience in your industry.

b. Social Media Accounts

There’s no better place to share customer testimonials than across your social
channels. This is because it is what we call user-generated content, it’s authentic, it
builds trust with your audience.

2. Repurpose the reviews into eye-catching

visuals
People are drawn to visuals, period. By taking your reviews and transforming them
into a graphic it will showcase your brand and allow you to share the review on
another channel that favours image-based content, such as Instagram.

3. Make engaging videos with your reviews

Humans love video. The way our brains are wired means we retain visual content
better than a page loaded with words. According to research, the average viewer
remembers 95% of a message when it is watched, whereas only 10% when read.

a. Animation Video
Taking your best customer reviews for the month you could create a short animation
video which showcases them in a fun, engaging way. You can then share these
videos on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. There are so many platforms out
there that enable businesses to take plain text and bring it to life with animation.
Alternatively, working with an agency who has these skills can enable you to do this
regularly.

b. Create Video Testimonials

Video testimonials have gained popularity amongst brands, and with it being easier
than ever before to create and publish videos of your own there is no excuse. The
great thing about video testimonials is that they really stand out and make a
statement, people recognise the effort a brand has gone to when creating a great
video. There is something about seeing a person talking and hearing an actual voice
that establishes trust.

You can create videos of your customers giving feedback on your products/services
if you have some customers who are willing to get on camera and tell others about
their experience. An interview video can be powerful if not too scripted, it needs to
remain as natural and authentic as possible.

You should also make sure that the videos you use are of good quality, otherwise,
you risk coming across as unprofessional.
 Perfect Smile is
a great example that creates video testimonials and post on social media

4. Use them to start a conversation and

demonstrate customer care (both positive and
negative reviews)
Responding promptly and effectively to all types of reviews is a must for your
business. It says a lot about your business and you can bet your audience is
watching closely. Businesses often think it’s only necessary to reply to negative
reviews since it acts as a sort of damage control. In fact, you should reply to
compliments as frequently. Recognise and value the time someone has taken to
leave a positive review, these people are your advocates and will continue to
promote you if you continue to nurture that relationship. Online users will see that
you are active in communicating with your customers online and this creates a great
impression of the brand in their mind.
 An
example of our clients reviews, and responses to them

5. Use them in your marketing collateral

Adding your best customer reviews into any printed material is another great method
for building credibility. Incorporate them into brochures, case studies and even into
your pricing packages to justify the investment they will make with you.

Do More With Your Customer Reviews Today

We hope this article has given you insight into how important customer reviews are
and how you can do more and make the most of them.

If you are interested in working with us to help you make the most of your customer
reviews, contact us via the form below (We’d love to hear from you).

To find out more about what we do, take a look at our Services.

Checklist: Features of a Great

Website In The Food & Drink
Industry
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25TH APRIL 2018

What makes a great food and drink website? If your business is in this industry, it’s a
great question to ask yourself.

Just having a website or landing page of information simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
Standing out from your competitors, creating great experiences online so people
keep coming back and recommend you to others, converting your traffic into
purchases… are no small feat.

So, we’ve brought together a checklist (to make it easy and simple) highlighting the
most important features of a great food website, from the more obvious ones to the
less so. We have focused on food and drink websites specifically in celebration of
the Christchurch Food Festival next month. However, this checklist can be applicable
and relevant to other industries.

Creating great first impressions the moment someone lands on your site is what we
all hope to achieve, this infographic explains more: The Power Of First Impressions
Online.

✓ Mobile-Optimised Website
Consumers often look at food & drink websites to look for a nearby shop, or where
best to buy a certain product when watching TV or at the office on a lunch break etc.
Having a mobile responsive design is a must; when did you last look at your website
on your smartphone to see how it looks? Step in the shoes of your customers when
you do this, ask yourself how highly you would rate your website in terms of visual
look, the simplicity of use and ease of steps to purchase.

Statistics from Statista show that the share of mobile phone traffic in 2017 was
50.3% and so far in 2018 mobile traffic share is 52.2%. It is likely that a significant
proportion of your visitors are from mobile devices, you can check exactly how much
by logging into your Google Analytics.

 More than 7 in 10 (73%) say content “must display well on the device” (Adobe)
 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site.
(Socpub)

Related article: Why Is It Important That Your Website Is Mobile-friendly?

✓ Visually Appealing
Using great quality images of your product online is an effective and important
feature for your website. It sounds obvious however we still see examples of sites
each week that don’t get this point right. Not only do great images help you display
best your products and tempt your visitors to purchase, it is also useful for visitors
who aren’t familiar with your brand to start to build a picture of your products. After
all, the best way to tell your customers how delicious your food is is by showing
them.

Poor quality images or videos will give off the impression that your product is also of
poor quality. It can influence your brand coming across as unprofessional, cheap,
and research suggests that people can go as far as to think the company doesn’t
really care if the site doesn’t look great and showcase the products in a really
appealing way.

A study by Adobe shows that if images won’t load, 46% of people will switch devices,
39% will stop engaging.
 An
example of a food & drink website showing the food in visually appealing photographs.

Related article: 5 Reasons To Invest In a New Website

✓ Content Quality & Relevance

Your content should speak directly to your target market, the moment people land on
your website. A great way to test this on your site is to adopt the character of one of
 your key customer personas, decide on a key outcome you hope to achieve or a
specific pain or question you have. Visit your site and see: how easy is it to find your
answer? Is the content long and complex? What is the tone, does the content on the
site speak directly to your problem or question? It is best to do this exercise several
times with various customer personas and actions in mind.

According to an Adobe study, some of the reasons consumers decide to switch

devices or stop engaging with content altogether include:

 Content is too long; 30% switch devices, 38% stop engaging

 Content is unattractive in its layout or imagery; 35% switch devices, 38% stop engaging

Source:
Adobe

✓ Embedded Instagram Feed

The use of social platforms is an obvious one. Instagram is a great one for the food
and drink industry as its visual element makes it great for the platform. It is always
best to ask yourself the question: Is this where my target audience spends their time
online? Over 208 million Instagram posts have been hashtagged “food” since
2010 (Financial Times).
 Showcasing your business’s tasty Instagram feed on the website makes your
business look active, helps build credibility, builds awareness and more.

Website showing the

Instagram Feed at the bottom of their website

✓ Video
A video is easier to digest than it is to read a text and is far more engaging. People
generally appreciate the effort a company has made to create a video and the
statistics say it all.

According to Wyzowl:

 79% of consumers would rather watch a video to learn about a product, than reading text on
a page
 84% of consumers have been convinced to make a purchase after watching a brand’s video
 91% of consumers have watched an explainer video to learn about a product or service
Moreover, video has become cheaper to produce with the advance in technology
and use of social media platforms such Instagram show you have no excuse to not
create even short-form free videos.

✓ CTAs
CTAs (calls-to-action) are buttons placed across your website to guide and
encourage your visitors to perform the desired action. For example: ‘Find Us,
‘Download This Recipe’, ‘Contact Us’, ‘Read more’, ‘Continue’ or ‘Buy now’.

What makes a good CTA? First off it needs to stand out on the page, it is best to
experiment with size, the image, even colour to find out what brings the most
conversions. You can A/B test this.

A lot of thought needs to go into strategically placing them and not overdoing it. They
are a key element of converting visitors towards your website goals, so take the time
to think it through.
 An example of a
website that shows two clear CTAs against a food image.

✓ Live Chat
Adding live chat to your website is a useful feature for visitors wanting to ask queries
and get answers fast. By providing this option to your online visitors you can provide
great customer service the moment they reach you, many people like efficiency and
speed, live chat enables you to provide this. You can set live chat for only peak times
of the day, so you do not have to be responding 24/7.
Moreover, having a live chat will help you to better understand customer pains or
how effective your website is being. If multiple visitors are asking the same/similar
questions it gives you an indication to make it clearer for future visitors and improve
aspects of the website.

✓ SEO Optimisation (Search Engine

Optimisation)
Great SEO is an essential feature to ensure your food & drink website gets the
attention it deserves. SEO is a marketing discipline to ensure that your website and
its content appears in search engine results for keywords related to your business,
increasing quantity and quality of traffic to your site. You can find out more here.

SEO should not be taken lightly, as it can make all the difference as to whether your
website ranks well on Google or any other search engine for that matter. If your
customers have a hard time finding you on a search engine, then you need to up
your SEO game. Even if you are ranking for key terms, great, but what else could
your target market be looking at which relates to your business? Are you ranking
there too?

Related article: 10 Eye-Opening Statistics to Show The Importance of SEO For

Businesses

✓ Make it clear: What is your USP? (Unique

Selling Point)
What sets you apart from your competitors? Whether it’s a specific ingredient, your
competitive price, the way you source the product, your fun packaging, you need it to
be clear and obvious the moment someone visits your site, spell it out. Something
different is usually something memorable, so it could be the contributing factor of
why your customers chose you.

Not all USPs have to be extravagant or edgy. If you’re not sure what your USP is,
start by asking your existing customers why they come to you and keep coming
back. Make sure your visitors know why they should buy from you.

An example of this is The Wall SE1, which provides food and drinks whilst tying in
with the Vans’ skating ethos. They use their USP, Eat. Skate. Drink. extensively
throughout their website enabling users to understand who they are and what they
do.
The Wall SE1 Cafe Website showing the USP of their brand, Eat. Skate. Drink.

✓ Your Story
Having a back-story is a very valuable feature for your website, particularly for the
food industry. Consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of where their food &
drink comes from, and your business’s practices and processes along the way will
help them determine how ethical your brand is. People also like to hear the
business’s why what makes the business and its team do what they do.

By providing consumers with transparency, it gives you the chance to build a

trustworthy, honest relationship between your brand and the customer. It is showing
that human element and a side to the business that people often appreciate and
remember.
Related article: 11 Essential Ingredients For a Food & Drink Business’s Presence
Online

Want to tick off your checklist for a great food

website?
We hope this article has given you insight as to what features are important for your
website.

If you are interested in working with our team of digital experts to help build a great
food & drink website which brings you business, contact us via the form below
(“We’d love to hear from you”).

Alternatively, read more about how we can help you in your digital journey by
providing you with a digital audit: Steps To Kick-start Your Business’s Digital Journey
Today.

10 Eye-Opening Statistics to
Show The Importance of SEO for
Businesses
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6TH APRIL 2018

Businesses, no matter how big or small, need an SEO strategy in place. If your
business is online (as it should be) and a potential customer searches information
relevant to your business, you need to be present. To help you understand the
importance of SEO, we have gathered …

10 Eye-Opening Statistics to Show The Importance of SEO for Businesses

Related article: What is SEO? How Does it Work?

Search Engines
1. On average there are 3.5 billion Google searches a
day globally (Internet Live Stats)
2. Up to 90% of traffic originates from a search engine
(HubSpot)
3. 64% of people use search to influence their I-want-to-
buy moments (Think with Google)
With the large scale of searches performed daily from Google (and other search
engines) and the fact that almost all web traffic originates from a search engine, it is
clear just how influential search is for any business.

Source: Think With Google

Having a great SEO strategy in place will help you ensure that your business shows
up in the best position to experience and earn some of this traffic.

On-going SEO
4. 500-600 times each year Google changes its
algorithm (Moz)
SEO is not a one-time thing, and having an on-going SEO strategy is crucial to stay
ahead of your competitors in terms of where you rank on search engines. With the
vast amount of changes made to Google’s algorithm, it’s almost impossible to keep a
high rank on the results page if you don’t work on your SEO regularly in conjunction
with these changes. This is especially important as search engines do not always
state when changes are being made or what exactly the changes are.

Mobile Users
5. Only 3 words are used in the typical search query
(Moz)
6. 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated
through mobile phones in 2018 so far (Statista)

Statista: Percentage of all global web pages served to mobile phones from 2009 to 2018

7. 75% of smartphone owners use search first (Think

with Google)
Being mobile-optimised is important for any business to obtain a good position
online. Mobile has influenced changes to search such as the number of words used
in the typical search query. And with just over half of all website traffic being
generated through mobile today, this proves that mobile users should be
acknowledged in your digital marketing strategy.
The majority of these mobile users use search first for their online needs, so having
an SEO strategy that works well for mobile is just as important as SEO is for desktop
users.

Local SEO
8. 46% of all searches on Google are local (HubSpot)
9. 1 in 3 smartphone searches were made right before a
store visit (HubSpot)

With close to half of all searches on Google being local, this demonstrates how
important local SEO is in your digital marketing strategy. Most businesses will want
to drive more people to their store, and local SEO can help achieve this goal as it
goes hand-in-hand with the searches your potential customers’ type.

Moreover, to back up the fact that local SEO has an impact on driving more people
to store, statistic number 9 confirms that local SEO is used right before a store visit.

Target Audience
10. 2 out of 3 people aged 65+ go online (Pew Research
Center)
Targeting the right audience is unquestionably important. And although most
businesses understand this concept, it’s important to recognise that not all traffic is
good traffic if it’s coming from the wrong people. Statistic number 10 is just an
example of what may seem to be an unlikely audience (people aged 65+)
actually does exist.

That’s where SEO (coupled with a clear content strategy) comes in, you can use it to
define who you are targeting and so you avoid showing up on search results that go
to the irrelevant target audience.

On-page vs Off-page SEO:

What’s The Difference?
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12TH OCTOBER 2017

SEO remains one of the most misunderstood industries because of the common
misconceptions outsiders hold true about SEO.

To shed some light on the problem, we discussed last week the basics of search
engine optimisation, exploring what SEO really is and how it works.

Another SEO topic that often pops up on forums, discussion boards or that I hear
someone ask is the difference between on-page and off-page SEO and which one
is better.

I feel a bit intolerant of the word better. Something can only be better when put in
context and judged on certain criteria. By the same token, your approach to SEO will
depend on your current situation. One size never fits all.

So, let’s start by outlining the differences between on-page and off-page SEO. Then,
I’ll walk you through common cases and which type of optimisation would
be better suited for each.

What is the difference between on-page and off-page SEO?

Generally, SEO is divided into two main categories – on-page and off-page. Think of
them as the two branches of the same tree. They are completely different but are
both crucial to running successful SEO campaigns.

To discover how our client received a 153.6% increase in organic traffic from our
SEO work click here.

On-page search engine optimisation

As its name suggests, on-page SEO is concerned with the pages on your own
website, both in terms of content and the backend of your website.

On-page optimisation aims to improve individual web pages on your website to rank
higher in search engines and drive more targeted traffic to your website. With on-
page SEO you have control over the factors that influence rankings. Here’s a list of
the most important on-page SEO factors:

1. Title tags
Title tags indicate to visitors and search engines what a given page is about and
helps establish relevance. That’s why they remain one of the most important factors
for on-page SEO. There are many best practices you can follow to ensure your title
tags are effective.

On-page vs off page SEO – an image showing an example of a title tag, an important on-
page SEO factor

2. Meta description
The meta description is a short paragraph of information that describes to website
visitors and search engines the content on the page. It’s not only essential factor for
search engines but also in catching searchers’ attention and get them to click on
your link.

Good meta descriptions are unique to that page, contain the focus keyword, are
between 135 and 160 characters in length and are written in actionable voice.

3. Keywords and phrases

Keywords are one of the main elements of on-page SEO. As with the other signals,
keywords help search engines identify what a given page is about. Building a list of
keywords to target is not only one of the most important first steps in any SEO
initiative but it’s also an ongoing and ever-evolving process.

Developing an initial list of keywords can be tough.

4. Search engine friendly (SEF) URL

Here are two examples, which one do you think is the search and user-friendly one?

That’s right, the second one! Generally speaking, if an element is user-friendly

Google loves it as well. Most CMSs have a built-in feature that generates SEF URLs,
but you should still pay close attention to ensure URLs are optimised.

5. Heading tags (H1, H2, H3)

It’s important to optimise heading tags not only for search engines but also for user
experience.
The H1 tag is often one of the first elements that visitors see when landing on a
page. Therefore, you can leverage headings to reassure visitors that they are at the
right place and have found what they’re looking for.

Additionally, the Google Hummingbird update made Google much better at

answering specific user questions. Optimising the H1 tags for the specific search
intent and question give you great opportunities for your page to appear in a featured
snippet block at the top of the search results page. Here’s an example of a featured
snippet:

An image showing how a H1 heading helped a page rank first on Google and appear in the
featured snippet

As you can see, it answers the search query straight in the SERP. The H1 for this
page includes the phrase “What is Rich SMS?”.

6. Internal linking and anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. You see anchored links all the time
but you probably don’t know they are called this way.
Linking your pages internally and using descriptive keywords in your anchored text
are still important elements to establish a site architecture and help spread link juice.

Internal linking is one of the fastest ways to give your content a little boost and
experience an SEO uptick.

7. Robots.txt
The robots exclusion protocol (REP), or robots.txt is a text file webmasters create to
instruct search engine robots which pages to crawl and which pages not to crawl. It
can be found for every website at http://www.website.com/robots.txt and it looks like
this:

An image
showing an example of robots.txt

Each bot has something called ‘crawl budget’ (it is the number of pages Google will
crawl on your site on any given day).

This will depend on the size of your website, the number of links to your website and
how many errors the bot encounters. So, if the bot doesn’t have enough budget to
crawl your newly submitted or optimised pages this will get in the way of your SEO
efforts.
That’s why it’s important to ensure that archived pages, pages with thin and low-
quality content and duplicate pages are not indexed so there’s more crawl budget for
the pages that actually matter.

8. XML sitemap
An XML sitemap lists the URLs for your website and acts as a roadmap to all
important pages. A sitemap helps Google find pages you deem essential on your
website and allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

9. Website performance
Website performance is crucial to SEO as Google wants to rank highly websites that
provide an exceptional user experience. Factors such as page speed and mobile
responsive design are crucial to your website’s performance.

Back in 2010 Google announced that site speed had officially become a ranking
factor in their algorithm. A slow website is not only a killer for SEO and user
experience but can also dramatically affect your bottom line.

Research indicated that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3
seconds to load. And with every second that passes the abandonment rate goes
higher and higher.

Last year, Google also announced that they had started experimenting with mobile-
first indexing which means that search engines will look at the mobile version of a
page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user.

Needless to say that having a responsive mobile design of your website is becoming
more important than ever.

There are many other factors that go into Google’s algorithm, but as not all signals
are created equal should you optimise for the ones that matter the most. Here’s the
anatomy of a perfectly optimised page, courtesy of Moz :

the difference between on-page and off-page SEO – The anatomy of a perfectly
optimised page by Moz

Off-page Search Engine Optimisation

Off-page SEO refers to all the actions taken outside your website to impact search
engine rankings. You typically have less control over these.
Off-page largely consists of link-building through different approaches such as guest
blogging, outreach, participating in forums and leaving valuable comments on other
blogs.

Other aspects such as social amplifications, reviews and brand mentions also play
an important role when it comes to off-page signals.

The number and quality of links pointing to your website remain one of the top three
signals taken into account when Google ranks a website.

Google considers backlinks to be similar to a vote. A vote of confidence showing that

someone else outside your website trusts your content and believes it’s valuable
enough to link back to it.

Here are some of the most common off-page SEO techniques:

1. Manual link-building
This practice refers to links which are not given naturally. It includes manually
reaching out and asking for the link, for example, asking customers to link back to
your website.

Another common technique is involving influencers in content creation, mentioning

them in your content piece or expanding on a topic they discussed and asking them
to share it or link back to you in their next piece.

2. Self-created links
Self-created links are the links that SEOs create themselves. Such include website
submission to directories, participating and commenting on blogs and forums and
adding your website to your online signatures.

You need to be careful when creating such type of links as some practices might be
considered a black hat. Ensure your comments and input to online communities
provide value and are not spammy or overly self-promotional. Also, you only want to
submit your websites to trustworthy directories with high domain authority.

3. Social sharing
Social media doesn’t help SEO in the way many people think it does.

Google has repeatedly confirmed that social signals aren’t a direct ranking factor.
Put simply, Google doesn’t take into consideration factors as Twitter followers,
Facebook likes or content shares when ranking a website.
 However, social media provides indirect SEO benefits. Indirect impact comes from:

 Increased inbound links and brand mentions due to improved online visibility
 Improved brand awareness as results of increased exposure to a much wider audience
 Helps you build an audience for your website

Even though social media doesn’t play a direct role in website rankings, its impact
shouldn’t be overlooked, as it helps you build an audience for your website.

Social media has the power to make a content piece go viral. When it enters the viral
loop, people will naturally link back and mention your brand, so you don’t have to do
all the manual work yourself.

4. Guest blogging
Guest blogging has so many added benefits not only to SEO but also to your brand
in general. It’s a win-win tactic to employ. It takes a lot of time and efforts but also
has great returns so it should play a central role in your digital strategy. Here are
some non-SEO related aspects to consider:

 It can help you establish your brand as an authority on your subject

 It will help you expand your exposure and reach new audiences
 Guest blogging can bring you some serious referral traffic
 It can help you create relationships with valuable influencers and other figures in your
industry who own the website or also guest blog on it

When it comes to SEO, guest blogging can greatly help you in increasing brand
mentions and earning backlinks to your website. Of course, this is assuming that you
create a valuable piece of content which people enjoyed consuming.

Additionally, every author has a short bio box, typically after the blog post. This short
description gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself, link to your social profiles
or website. Here’s an example of an author bio, in which the author has included a
link to his website:
Example of an author bio in a guest post

5. Brand mentions
Monitoring brand mentions and finding unlinked mentions is a powerful link-building
technique and it’s especially helpful for new websites when trying to earn their first
50 links.

The easiest way to discover existing brand mentions is by using third-party tools
like Mention or using advanced Google search commands. Once you’ve uncovered
websites that mention your brand, employees or founders you can manually reach
out to them and kindly ask them to include a link along with the brand mention.

By doing this, you will not only get some new backlinks, but this mention can also
bring you tons of referral traffic.

On-page SEO vs Off-page SEO: Which One is

More Important?
Both on-page and off-page SEO are equally important and they are both needed to
ensure a good ranking on search engines.

However, there are certain instances where it would be wiser to focus on one of
them more than the other. Here are 3 situations and how you should allocate efforts
and resources:
1. An old domain with a strong link profile
This is a website which has been around for a while, has evolved organically and
has managed to get a good number of links over the years.

However, in terms of content it has many neglected pages which have never been
optimised, are no longer relevant or have thin content. These types of websites are
an SEO goldmine. They are also likely to have many technical and on-page SEO
issues such as duplicate tags or pages, out of date keyword research, non-SEF
URLs, among many other.

In this case, it would be wiser to focus the majority of your resources on on-page
optimisation. Just by optimising or refreshing old content, you’re likely to see a good
boost in rankings.

2. A brand new domain

As you can imagine, the debate whether to focus on content or link-building for a
new domain causes quite a stir among the SEO community. It’s almost like the
metaphor, ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’

The debate will never be settled, however, I really stay strong behind the ‘content
comes first’ stance.

Firstly, if you have a brand new website with no content, why would an established
website with high authority even want to link back to you? The new website probably
wouldn’t have anything worth linking to.

If you’re selling a disruptive product or service it might be easier to get people to talk
about it and link back to your website. However, if you’re penetrating a saturated
market, chances are you’ll need 10x content to get people talking about you.

Content is the backbone of every successful marketing campaign, so you’d want to

start with it.

3. A website that has created valuable content but

failed to distribute it
Just producing great content and waiting for it to get discovered doesn’t work
anymore. Perhaps it never did.

No matter how good your content is, it wouldn’t get the attention it deserves without
a thorough distribution strategy. However, many businesses fail to realise that.
That’s why there are many blogs out there that have valuable content that nobody
reads. In this case, the wisest thing to do is to shortlist the best articles, give them an
update and set up a thorough distribution and outreach strategy in place.

You can contact influencers in your niche, sponsor that content on other websites
and run a paid social media campaign. There are so many options available on how
to distribute your content. This should win you enough backlinks to get you started.

Additionally, you can use your existing content to run a broken link building
campaign.

What is your current situation? How are you planning to allocate your resources –
equally, on on-page optimisation or link-building?

9 Reasons to Outsource Your

Digital Marketing to An Agency
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31ST JANUARY 2018

Accelerating growth is on every business leader’s agenda. It’s natural for businesses
to always look for new opportunities to grow and market themselves. Maintaining a
leading market position includes continuously adding new strategies and channels to
your existing marketing mix, and refining existing ones.

As you consider new strategies to stay ahead of your competitors and increase
profitability, there are always two options in front of you – to either hire internally
or outsource the services.

Ultimately, the choice will depend on your current situation, but before taking a
decision to hire marketing staff for your business, you should consider the benefits of
outsourcing marketing to a digital agency instead.
An image responding to the question: why do companies outsource?

1. You get an entire team of experts

In today’s economic environment, finding top talent can be hard. In fact, 44% of
market leaders say they can’t find the right combination of people and skills. Filling
just one role can be challenging, imagine building an entire marketing team.

You also need to think about the diverse range of skills required to make a marketing
campaign a success. Such skills include writing and editing, SEO, market research
and analysis, design and production, among others. We all know that the jack of all
trades is a master of none. So, a single employee is unlikely to possess such a
broad skill set and you will end up hiring more than one person.

In contrast, there are many full-service agencies that offer integrated services and
can handle all marketing aspects of your business. This means that for a fixed price,
either for a particular project or on a retainer agreement, you get an entire team of
experts at your disposal.

2. You can reduce costs and risks

It’s easy to forget that the cost of a new employee goes way beyond a person’s
salary. It also includes recruiting, training and other intangible costs which can be
elusive. In fact, a study published by the Centre for Economics and
Business. Research reported that SMBs face an average employment cost of
£35,500 per worker.

Many small businesses simply can’t afford the costs of hiring a new employee and
the risks associated with it. Such investment in the wrong person or a poor performer
presents a threat to the business.

By outsourcing work to a marketing agency, you can future-proof your business

without risking investing time and resources in an employee who doesn’t have the
right experience or is simply a bad fit for the role.

3. You’re working with people with industry

experience and tried-and-tested processes
You might be running two or three marketing campaigns at the same time, but
remember that marketing agencies often run the same amount of campaigns but for
each of their clients.

Therefore, you’ll be working with people who have been there and done that.
Chances are that the agency in question has already worked on a similar project and
knows what works best and what doesn’t. This means that their advice can help you
prevent common mistakes which are easy to avoid.

What’s better than working with people who already know the best way to achieve
results?

4. You don’t need to train staff

Providing employee training is the scaffold to business growth and is also essential
to remain competitive in your niche. However, training also presents a lot of
challenges to businesses.

There is no one-size-fits-all training solution. You need to create a custom learning

and development program that addresses the challenges individual employees face.
Preparing a thorough development plan involves having a person responsible for
executing the training, creating training materials, among many others.
The best thing about working with an agency is that you don’t have to go through the
whole training process, their staff already have the depth and breadth of skills
needed.

5. You get access to the latest technology

Marketing technology is, without a doubt, something that every business should
invest in to ensure success. Marketing technology plays a crucial part of every
marketing campaign as it helps you gain insights into customer behaviour, save time
and streamline processes.

You can choose to work with different platforms for each channel or invest in an all-
in-one solution that allows you to track your marketing efforts in one place. Either
way, it’s a costly investment.

Additionally, there are almost 5000 different marketing tools available to marketers.
How do you know which ones to pick? Is your staff trained to work with them?

When you outsource your marketing to an agency you don’t need to worry about the
intangible costs, choosing the best solution or getting your staff trained.
An image showing the growth in marketing technology tools over the years Source: MarTech
Today

6. You can focus on the core of your business

If you’re focusing on other activities for a couple of hours every day, other than the
core of your business, your talent is being wasted. Rather than effectively
concentrating on core business competencies or activities, you’re focusing on issues
that are less critical or you have less expertise in.

Working with an agency will allow you to free up internal resources to focus on what
you do best. Outsourcing part or all of your marketing initiatives means that your
team will also be able to focus on the areas where they can make the best use of
their time.

7. Your marketing won’t suffer as a result of staff

problems or annual leave
A key to successful marketing is consistency. However, staff with numerous
responsibilities or understaffed teams may feel overwhelmed when they cannot
deliver on time or targets.

This situation gets even worse when even one team member is on an annual leave.
During the festive season your marketing can take a big hit, especially when it
comes to channels that require constant work and monitoring like social media. You
can’t simply stop posting on social because of the holidays – quite the opposite, you
should be more active than ever.

This pressure can have a bad impact on your employees, which will also negatively
affect your business. By outsourcing your digital marketing to an agency, you can
relieve this pressure off your staff while ensuring that all deadlines and targets are
met.

8. You get an on-demand service

Do you have too much work so your employees struggle to deliver on time, but at the
same time, not enough so you can’t justify hiring a new member of staff?

That’s where agencies come in handy, they serve as an extension of your own team
and you can get them involved on projects you need some extra help with. This
makes it easy to scale your marketing efforts as needed.

Additionally, if you are working with an agency in the long run, you can always
consult them on upcoming campaigns and use their expertise in the field. Two
heads, or in our case teams, are always better than one.
9. Outside perspective on your business
There is no doubt that you know your business better than anyone else. Yet, your
perspective is one-sided. The harder you focus on something, the less you actually
see, sometimes missing easy-to-spot mistakes or gaps in your process.

A good agency will bring a fresh perspective to your business, point the gaps in
current strategies and provide you with solutions.

Ready to make a change?

Outsourcing your digital marketing can be a game changer, allowing you to focus on
what you do best and a team like us on what we do best. Your business will
capitalise on having an entire team of experts behind it overnight.

If you are interested in enhancing your digital marketing strategy, contact us.

To find out more about our all our digital marketing services click here

6 Long-Term Benefits of Content

Marketing
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1ST SEPTEMBER 2017

One way to set yourself apart from your competition is to influence how your target
market perceives your company, and publishing content online is a great place to
start. Done right, this content can earn you trust with your audience and position you
as one of the leaders in your industry.

Moreover, the consequences of not finding innovative, engaging ways to stand out in
today’s increasingly competitive online world could result in your brand and message
being overlooked. Especially at a time when many search engines reward websites
who update their content with higher rankings and push back websites who are
stagnant.

With so many different types of content from blog posts, to eBooks, white papers and
even videos you’re spoilt for choice on how to communicate with your target market,
to generate new interest and grow your audience.

‘53% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority
(HubSpot, 2017).’

You might be thinking that content isn’t right for your business, if you are still on the
fence about content marketing or need some reassurance to continue to invest in it,
here’s a list of the top long-term benefits to consider.

Content Marketing Benefit #1: Improve your SEO

If your sole outcome for producing content is to improve your search engine rankings
we advise you to change your mindset. Always write with the intention of adding
value to your audience, if your audience loves your content we expect the search
engines will too.

Content marketing can greatly improve your search engine visibility. Every new
content piece you add to your blog or resources page is another page Google is
going to index. More pages don’t necessarily mean more traffic, but the more quality
pages you have indexed, the more opportunities you get to rank for in these search
queries.

In addition, if you produce a strong piece of content, you’ll likely to get people linking
back to you, sharing your content across other forums and blogs.

Adding graphics to your articles helps you rank in Google’s image search. The best
thing about image search is that it’s much less competitive and can be a major
source of traffic. According to Moz, the number of visits resulting from image
search accounts for 20% to 60% of all visits.

Lastly, internal linking. Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a
different page on the same domain. If you don’t have enough pages to link to/from
you cannot build strong internal links, so this is where your content comes in.

By having more pages on related topics, you can build good internal linking
architecture. This will help important pages and cornerstone content rank better.
Here’s an example of internal linking:
An image showing internal linking SEO Source: Neil Patel

Content Marketing Benefit #2: Increase the traffic

to your website
Providing free valuable content for your audience to easily access will draw traffic to
your website. With improved search visibility, the traffic flow to your website will also
increase.

Where relevant you can include links to your website in your guest or syndicated
content pieces. You not only prompt readers to click-through but also improve user
experience providing more content on a topic of interest.

As you may already notice, some authors have a short bio at the end or the
beginning of their posts. To drive more traffic to your website you can leverage this
description by mentioning your products, services or company. Here’s an example,
see how the author has anchored her services and linked back to her website? Not
only that, but she has also mentioned her social media profiles to grow her following.

An
example of an author bio
Content Marketing Benefit #3: Establish your
brand as authority
Producing helpful and informative content will influence how people think of your
brand and what they associate it with trustworthy/dishonesty, expert/novice etc.
Ultimately you want to position yourself through your content as the go-to resource
for any questions your target audience may have.

Did you know that 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research at some point in the
buying process? By establishing yourself as a go-to source in the awareness and
consideration stages, you’re also likely to become the go-to website when they’re
ready to make a purchase.

Additionally, guest posting or content syndication can also help establish you as a
thought leader. This is especially true if you post on authoritative websites your
audience visits.

Content Marketing Benefit #4: Improve your

brand awareness and recognition
Strong content allows you to show your customers who your company is and what
your brand represents.

If you want your content to reach as many people as possible, your brand awareness
strategy should be geared toward mainstream topics that appeal to high-authority
news sites with large followings.

The consumer’s ability to recognize, recall or associate your brand to key qualities
they are looking for is essential to deciding which company they choose to purchase
from.

Content can help you further establish your brand’s identity by using brand-specific
language and voice, but also important messages to your products or services.

Content Marketing Benefit #5: It helps generate

leads
63% of marketers say that generating traffic and leads is their top challenge in 2017
and producing content can be a great way to do this.
images showing the top marketing challenges for 2017 Source: HubSpot

One of the biggest benefits of content marketing is the ability to attract new leads. A
research found that companies that blog generate 67% more leads than companies
without blogs or content-rich websites.

A way in which to generate leads is to create some gated content, it is usually in the
form of an eBook, whitepaper or a webinar and requires users to fill out a form to
access it. Once you’ve got their contact details you can nurture them with more
relevant content and hopefully convert them into a customer.

The best part about content marketing is that even old blog posts can keep
generating leads over time. Evergreen content is an asset to your business and
offers a compounding return on investment.

Content Marketing Benefit #6: Cost-effectiveness

& loyalty
Make no mistake the initial investment can be sizable for planning and executing a
strong content marketing strategy. However, compared to other outbound marketing
strategies, content marketing still proves more cost-effective in delivering results. In
fact, it costs up to 62% less than traditional marketing.

The association your customers can have with your companies consistent, riveting
content can last for years, creating a steady flow of people who are ready to engage
with you when they are ready to make a purchase.

Brand loyalty can be influenced through updated and relevant content, resulting in
your consumers returning to buy more of your product or service. The community
that results from this provides a consistent source of revenue for your company,
reducing the pressure for your company to continuously seek new customers.

If you would like to find out more about the benefits of content marketing or would
like to get to work on your own strategy look no further, we would love to hear more
about your company.

Is Content Marketing Right for

Your Business?
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25TH AUGUST 2017

Before we dive into the discussion whether content marketing can work for any type
of business, let’s clarify:

What exactly is content marketing?

I bet when you hear “content marketing” you think about blog articles, Facebook
posts and YouTube videos. Content is much more than that, it’s anything that
communicates a message – infographics, emails, landing pages, podcasts, eBooks,
whitepapers etc. It’s what we’ve been doing as marketers before the term even
existed.

Leaving aside the subtleties of the different definitions available, content marketing is
all about providing something useful and relevant to your audience. Above all, it’s
 about providing value, regardless of the form it takes – webinar, guide, eBook, video
or just a blog article.

So as long as your efforts are structured around educating your users, content
marketing can bring many benefits to your business. Here are just a few of the things
content can do for you:

 Improve brand awareness

 Help you position your brand as an expert in the field
 Improve search engine ranking
 Improve conversions

There’s no doubt that content marketing works, but could it also work for your
business?
 Thi
s is a humourist image showing the branded content impact Source: Marketoonist

Is content marketing right for your business?

Everybody does content marketing these days. The latest study from the CMI states
that 86% of B2B marketers and 76% of B2C marketers use content marketing.
But before you jump on the bandwagon, let me share some more stats with you:

70% of companies don’t believe they are effective at it and struggle to see results
from their content marketing efforts.

An image showing the effectiveness of content marketing Source: Content Marketing

Institute

Clearly, there is a huge gap between companies that produce content and
companies that are actually getting a return from it.

Is it because content is just not right for their businesses?

Actually, no. Content marketing can work for every type of business, as long as
it is executed right – and by the look of it, a lot of companies are getting it wrong.

Therefore the real question is not “Is content marketing right for your business?”
but…

Should you produce content marketing internally

or through an external agency?
Here are three questions to consider before you decide which one to go for:

Do you have enough resources to produce content?

It’s time to debunk the myth that content marketing produced internally is “free” or
that “it doesn’t take too much resources”. It takes work, and that comes at a cost.

Do you have a person dedicated to creating content?

If the answer is no, then you’ll need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to
manage your content efforts (don’t forget to account for budget for training and
development!).

You’ll need the right tools for the job – keywords research tool, distribution tools, etc.
Some of the tools have free plans available but with limited functionalities.

Keep also in mind that you might have to involve members from other teams –
developers, if your website is not running on a CMS, designers if you don’t have the
necessary designing skills for the project and so on.

If you decide to produce the content yourself, you need to commit to it and
dedicate at least 20 hours a week on creating & distributing content.

And even if you decide to focus on creating “evergreen” content, it still requires a
lot of time and resources. Evergreen content tends to be lengthy and can take weeks
or even months to produce.

In a nutshell, if you choose to produce content internally, you need to ensure you’ve
got the right resources to not only produce great content but also distribute it

Do you have the skills to produce content?

There’s a reason why not everybody with enough industry knowledge becomes a
content writer. Here’s a question:
Who’d write a better piece about healthcare – the doctor or the copywriter that
consulted the doctor and did their research?

Of course, the content writer is likely to do a better job.

Just like anything, writing requires skills. Being an expert on a particular topic doesn’t
mean that you can transfer that knowledge in a comprehensive and engaging way.

Luckily, most people weren’t born effective writers, and you can choose to brush up
your writing skills, at the obvious expense of hard work and dedication.

A good place to start is by learning some copywriting formulas to help you make your
writing more engaging. You can also check Jeff Goins’ blog for some pro tips on
copywriting.

The Hemingway Editor and Grammarly are also great tools to help you become a
better writer. They show you when your writing is grammatically incorrect, too
complex or passive.

Another one of my favourite tools is Unbounce’s Dejargonator. It does exactly what

the name suggests – it eliminates jargon from your landing pages.

A screenshot of Unbounce’s Dejargonator in action Unbounce Dejargonator

If it looks like it can be within your grasp, then go for it. If you don’t think you’ll have
enough time to dedicate to gain a new skill, then you may consider outsourcing to
someone who already possesses this particular skill.

Are you looking for immediate results?

Let’s get back to the definition of content marketing:

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on

creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content
to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to
drive profitable customer action.”

There are a few keywords in this definition, and one which is often overlooked
is ultimately – content marketing is a long-term strategy, and before you sell
anything, you must create genuine value.

You can’t expect results tomorrow, it takes at least six months to see results from
your efforts. Unfortunately, most people give up before that, fooled by thinking that
content marketing doesn’t work.

Here’s a great visual by Moz which shows what often happens with content
marketing:
Here’s a great visual by Moz which shows what often happens with content marketing
Source: Moz

If you feel like you’ll probably lack patience and give up producing content after a few
months (not unlike everyone else), maybe it’s time to outsource your content efforts
to experts who will know when not to give up.

Conclusion
Content marketing can bring many benefits to your business, whatever it sells, and
it’s a very successful long-term strategy.

However, to make content marketing work for you it needs a long-term commitment
and a certain standard of quality.

Your content needs to be valuable, highly relevant to your audience and delivered on
a consistent basis.

If you know you need to improve your content marketing strategy but don’t think you
can invest the necessary internal resources, then give us a call and we’ll be happy to
discuss how we can help you.
 Why Content Marketing Isn’t
Working for You
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22ND AUGUST 2017

Are your content marketing efforts not getting you the results you expected?

Do you feel like you’ve followed all best practices and done all that you’ve been told,
but for some reason, you are still not getting anything back?

What if I told you that you’re not alone:

In fact, a survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute found that 88% of the
companies interviewed use content marketing and only 30% of B2B marketers say
their companies are effective at content marketing.
An image showing the effectiveness of content marketing Source: Content Marketing
Institute

This means that all this content creation doesn’t seem to be working.

So, does content marketing really work?

Absolutely. It’s just really easy to do it wrong and very hard to get it right.

There are countless examples of companies (even in the “boring” industries) which
had huge successes using content marketing.
For example, Optum, a health information technology and services firm, leveraged
the hub & spoke approach to content marketing to boost their lead generation &
nurturing campaigns.

Optum released an eBook called Moneyball Analytics talking about the power of
analytics in healthcare. The eBook was downloaded more than 500 times in the first
month and generated more than 18,000 leads.

I know you’re thinking that content marketing is just not right for your business but
most likely you’re missing an important piece of the content marketing success
puzzle.

Thankfully, the reasons behind ineffective content marketing strategy are common
and most of them have an easy solution.

Here we’ve packed the most common reasons why your content marketing isn’t
working and an advice on how to fix them.

1. You don’t have a content strategy in place

A good strategy is at the heart of every good marketing campaign, not just content
marketing. You name it – social media, SEO, PPC, email marketing, the list goes on
and on. All marketing incentives need a strategy in order to be successful.

However, 14% of marketers have no strategy and 48% had a verbal-only strategy
(which let’s face it is the same as… having no strategy).
 An image showing the percentage of companies that have a content marketing strategy in
place Source: Content Marketing Institute

To nobody’s surprise, research consistently shows that having a clear (and

documented) strategy directly impacts content effectiveness.

So what does this mean for us marketers?

To put it briefly, even a bad strategy is better than no strategy.

When you have some strategy in place you can judge & measure whether what
you’re doing is working or not. When you have no strategy, or at least not a
documented one, there is no way to benchmark your efforts.

Do you remember all of your KPIs for this quarter?

So I thought. Go and document your content strategy if you haven’t already.

To help you, here are the basics of a content marketing strategy:

 Set up content marketing objectives & KPIs – You can’t measure whether your content
marketing efforts are successful if you are not clear on what you want to achieve with it. Do
 you aim to increase website visitors? Do you want to use content for lead nurture and lead
generation? Or maybe improve SEO? Set realistic, clear & timely objectives and KPIs on
how you would measure success.

For example:

Objective: Increase new visitors to the website

KPI: 5% increase in new visitors month on month

 Build a buyer persona –To run a successful content marketing campaign you need to know
who you’re speaking to. So, define your target audience before you start.
 Run a content audit – If you’ve been producing content until now you might want to run a
content audit. It will help you figure out what you want to keep, scrap or repurpose & identify
any existing content gaps.
 Come up with content ideas – Do a keyword research or use a content idea generator to
help you come up with content ideas.
 Make an editorial calendar & plan your posts – If you don’t have one you can use ours.
We’re that cool.
 Content creation & distribution– Here’s where you make magic happens. Don’t forget to
put as much effort and resources in distributing your content as you did in producing it.

What you should do next: sit down and document your strategy.

2. Brands don’t know who their customers are

A study back in 2005 discovered that in an entire day, we see around 3,500
marketing messages. Imagine what this number is likely to look like in 2017…

So how do you make sure you cut through the advertising clutter and better tailor
your messages to the people who could be interested in your products or services?

By clearly identifying your target audience. The easiest way to do that is to create a
buyer persona(s).

HubSpot defines buyer persona as:

A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on

market research and real data about your existing customers.

Here is an example of a good buyer persona:

 An image showing an example of a buyer persona

See how the description is all written as if the persona was a real person?

The more fleshed out & detailed your buyer description is, the better. Your buyer
persona(s) should include traits, attitudes and values such as background,
demographics, hobbies & interests, motivations, challenges, goals & common
objections.

Now, before you start fleshing out your buyer persona you need to determine how
many target customers your business has. Some niche businesses might only have
1 or 2 target customers and that’s okay. However, services like Grammarly will have
several distinct groups that can benefit from their grammar & spelling checker.

3. Brands think it’s good enough to publish

average content
Between 60% & 70% of B2B content created goes unused and about 30%
of Microsoft’s content had never been visited.

What does this mean to you?

That investing in content that nobody will read is quite simply an empty investment,
but most importantly that:

Average content can no longer cut it. Neither can random acts of content.

To be successful in content marketing you need to provide unique content & value to
your audience. That’s what your visitors are expecting and that’s what Google wants
to show searchers.

Here are the basic criteria your content needs to meet:

 Your content needs to be original, no copycats

 It needs to be relevant to your audience
 Content should be well-timed
 It has to be helpful, nobody likes a sales pitch
 Provides unique value to the reader
 It needs to be in line with your overall marketing strategy
 Good writing skills
 Your website provides great user experience

I know that it can sometimes be tough to meet all of those criteria. Coming up with
fresh content ideas can sometimes be challenging. Also, the amount of research,
time & resources put behind one of a kind content is enormous.
Nobody said that doing content marketing is easy, but it can be rewarding.

4. Brands treat content marketing like a sales

pitch
The one thing that great content marketing lacks is a sales pitch.

An illustration showing how content marketing doesn’t work when it’s too salesy Source:
Marketoonist

Salesy content and clickbait might get people to click, but visitors will be looking for
answers, not pitches.

And what do visitors do when they don’t find what they’re looking for?

That’s right, they leave. And the last thing you want is people bouncing off your
page.

So, to ensure that people stay and read through you need to meet their expectations,
and first of all you need to identify their needs.
 How do you do that? The easiest way is to identify the users’ search intent.

Search intent is concerned with:

Identifying primary topics and questions that people are looking to

answer when searching for a specific term, then creating content that
addresses the user’s needs.

In other words, search intent simply refers to a searcher’s intentions when

performing a search.

There are 3 main categories of search intent:

 Informational
 Navigational
 Transactional

Here’s a practical example of every type of search query:

An image showing the different types of search intent Source: CoSchedule

There are plenty of questions that can help you investigate and identify user intent.
Here are some to help you get started:

 What were visitors searching for right before they arrived on your website?
 What answers were they hoping to get from your content?
 Are there any other semantic searches that your content could have answered?
 Why did they choose to land on your page and not another?
 Understanding this intent will help you drive more qualified traffic, improve user
experience and also identify missed opportunities & content gaps.

5. Your content lacks a clear call-to-action (CTA)

We can all agree when I say that CTA buttons are one of the most important tools
that we digital marketers have at our disposal.

The term refers to the buttons that encourage visitors to take a certain action,
whether that’s reading more articles, scheduling a demo, or requesting a quote.

 “Subscribe to our newsletter”

 “Download…”
 “Start your free trial”
 “Add to basket”

Why does your website need a call-to-action?

Approximately 75% of your blog traffic are information searchers. This means that
these readers are not yet sales-ready.

An effective CTA can help you:

 Nurture these visitors

 Provide clear expectation of the next logical step
 Generate leads
 Increase conversion rates
 Capitalise on your content efforts
 Improve customer experience by helping visitors fulfill a need or solve another problem
 Grow your email list

Here are some examples of effective CTA buttons that you can’t help but click:
An example of a home page with a strong call-to-action (CTA) button UrbanMassage’s home
page

An example of a home page with a strong call-to-action (CTA) button Neil Patel’s home page
An example of a home page with a strong call-to-action (CTA) button

See how all of them are focused on a single next action? How the surrounding
images & text complement the button and make it more effective?

To design a successful CTA, you need to consider more than just the text itself. It’s
also important to consider elements like button design, colour and position,
background colour, surrounding images and text.

6. Lack of an effective distribution & promotion

plan
You spend hours brainstorming, writing and editing your new blog post, you even
created a custom image for it so you’re sure that this article is going to become viral.
You hit the “publish” button and wait for the traffic to start pouring in… but then
nothing happens.

Does this sound familiar? I thought so.

Everybody tells you that to excel in content marketing you need to create great
content. However, nobody tells you that the creation is just the first part of a two-part
rule. The second rule is effective promotion.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received is to invest as much time and
effort in content promotion as you did in content creation.

You need to get at least some initial traction for your content through your own
promotion initiatives. Without an outreach and promotion plan, chances are even
your best killer content will go unnoticed.
 How do you promote your content?
For a comprehensive promotion & distribution strategy it’s best to harness owned,
earned & paid media. However, you should adjust your promotion strategy according
to need, budget & internal resources.

For example, you want to invest more time & resources promoting a cornerstone
content piece or an eBook than a regular entry on your blog.

Examples of paid, owned and earned media

Here are just a few ways to promote a single blog post and increase your reach:

 Email your internal teams

 Email newsletter subscribers
 Share across social media channels
 Put new content in your email signature
 Publish on Medium
 Post to Reddit
 Write a weekly round-up post
 Practice good internal linking
 Mention your content when you comment on other websites and forums
 Pitch industry influencers & other bloggers and ask them to share your content

7. Your content is not search engine friendly

Content and SEO go hand in hand. If your website has bad SEO then nobody is
going discover your content, and there is no point producing content nobody will
read.

So, before you start producing content it’s important to familiarise yourself with
the basic principles of SEO.

If you’re running your website on a CMS platform you can also install an SEO plugin
which will help you optimise your content. I would personally recommend Yoast
SEO which will not only improve your SEO but also content readability. It’s easy to
use and will make a huge difference to your website.

Conclusion
Don’t despair if your content marketing efforts are not paying off, many businesses
are facing the same challenges as you are. Most likely, the reason why content
marketing is not working for you is already on our list.

Luckily, there’s a fix for every mistake and by identifying what your gaps are you are
halfway there.

But most importantly, content marketing is a long-term investment and an asset to

your business. So, be patient & give your content time to start paying off.

Are there any other content struggles you have faced? How did you overcome them?

Why Is It Important That Your

Website Is Mobile-friendly?
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30TH MARCH 2017

With mobile taking over the desktop usage, one would assume that most websites
would already have a mobile responsive version. To my surprise, I recently came
across a considerable number of web pages which were not mobile-friendly. This is
what prompted me to outline and highlight the importance of having a mobile
responsive design, as well as the whole bunch of benefits it can bring to your
business.

But before we begin, let’s start by defining what mobile-friendly web design really is.
As you probably already know, a responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to
web design which automatically adjusts layout, sizing, orientation and proportions to
display the website in a legible way on different devices.

The smartphones became the social norm in the mid to late 00’s and since then
mobile usage has only been exponentially growing year on year. It has even got to
the point where mobile is completely taking over and desktop is becoming a
secondary device. According to Smart Insights, mobile now accounts for 65% of the
overall digital media time.

As people spend more and more time on mobile they also expect you to keep up
with the trends. As a result, users are five times more likely to leave a website that
isn’t mobile-friendly, Google reports. So in order to prevent missing any exciting
opportunities, you should ensure that your website is mobile responsive.

5 reasons why it is important to have a mobile-friendly web design:

Google rankings
Google has always been encouraging mobile optimisation – first by rolling out
mobilegeddon in 2015 and then the mobile-first index in 2016. Mobilegeddon is the
name of the algorithm update which rewards mobile-friendly websites by giving them
priority and ranking them higher than the non-mobile responsive ones. In other
words, mobile optimisation is great for your Google rankings and SEO.

If you are unsure whether your website is mobile optimised, Google has a great
tool which tests how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. It also
shows you any particular errors that the Googlebot encountered, such as page
sources being unable to load for instance. Another Google tool
called TestMySite gives you a full report on your website’s mobile friendliness and
mobile speed performance together with recommendations on what to improve or fix.
Better user experience (UX)
Your website is one of the most important branding tools in your arsenal and it’s also
one of the first stops in the customer journey, in other words it is the digital
equivalent of a first impression. And you know what they say about first impressions,
they can either make or break you…

In order to get that good first impression, what is the single most important thing that
your website can provide visitors with? That’s right, a good experience. At the end of
the day, it’s all about the experience users have on your website. Negative
experiences will make users leave your website and you will consequently lose
potential business. Negative experiences and first impressions are hard to forget, so
make sure you provide good ones!

More than half of the total digital time spent is spent on mobile, where 10% of it is
spent browsing. So mobile optimisation plays an essential part in ensuring that
visitors have a good time on your website. You need to make sure that your website
displays accordingly on mobile and that the most important information on the page
is also present on the mobile version. Otherwise, not only will you upset the users
but also it might hurt your rankings with the introduction of Google’s mobile-first
index last year.

Multiplatform and cross-device usage

In the recent years we’ve seen a growing trend towards multiplatform and cross-
device usage. People turn to the closest device to find immediate information, to
make a purchase, or take a decision. I am certain that most of you can relate even
solely based on personal observations; most people these days own at least a
laptop/desktop computer and a smartphone, not to mention that a large part of them
also have a tablet device. Consistently, a recent research from ComScore shows
that the overwhelming majority of users now use multiple devices and will often
multi-screen. Therefore, it is essential that there is a consistent experience across
devices and that the journey across these micro-moments is as smooth as possible.
An imageshowing the majority of users now use several devices. Source: Smart Insights

Technology companies also recognise the multiplatform state of Internet user

behaviour with many brands introducing integrations which make cross-device
interaction even easier. For instance, Apple introduced Continuity, an umbrella term
referring to a group of features which allow Apple devices to connect together so you
can move your work seamlessly across them. Features include a universal clipboard,
multiplatform SMS/MMS messaging and cellular calls, the ability to easily hand off
tasks across devices, among many others.

Therefore, providing an even more undisrupted and seamless cross-device

experience to users will make them more likely to access your website on more than
one device.
Recent research showing the growing trend towards cross-device usage, explaining why you
need mobile-friendly web design. Source: True Digital

The majority of social traffic comes from mobile

phones
Try to remember the last time you accessed your social media account on a
desktop… Nearly 80% of social media time is now spent on mobile devices,
ComScore reports. I’m assuming that your business is already present on social
media which means that the content you are sharing there will most likely be seen
and clicked through on a mobile device.

As I’ve already mentioned, a non-optimised website is likely to result in negative

UX, causing the users to leave your website. Make sure that your website is mobile
responsive but also that your social media sharing buttons are mobile-friendly as
well.
 Mobile user behaviour
People’s behaviour patterns are different for each device they use. Here are the
most fundamental differences you should be aware of:

 Mobile users are usually after an immediate answer to a question or a quick fix to a problem.
In contrast, desktop is usually used for more time-consuming tasks. So browsing sessions
on mobile tend to be shorter and more “to the point”. Desktop sessions usually last
longer, and usually the more in-depth searches are carried on desktop computers.
 Most of pre-purchase research is done on mobile, whereas the actual purchase is mostly
done on either desktop or in store.
 According to a Pew research, mobile devices are mostly popular with 18-49 years old with
more than 88% of people surveyed owning a smartphone. As expected, usage rates drop as
the age increases.
 According to a study conducted by Twitter, Millennials are also more receptive to branded
content on mobile rather than on desktop.

There are many more important differences between mobile and desktop users,
however this is a topic for another article. The bottom line is that at least one of these
behaviour patterns will be applicable to your organisation’s activity which can only
lead to one conclusion: you need to optimise your website for mobile, if you haven’t
already done so.

We hope this article has been of interest. If you want to improve your marketing
efforts but don’t know where to start please contact us and we will be more than
happy to help

The Top 5 Benefits of Email

Marketing
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8TH FEBRUARY 2017

Contrary to some rumours that have recently surfaced stating that email marketing is
slowly dying, I actually think that it is more powerful and more important than it has
ever been. Technology has changed the way consumers interact with businesses
and has also changed the rules of email marketing. With so many different channels
and ways to communicate with existing or potential customers, good email marketing
is getting harder to do and consumers simply expect more from us marketers. So in
response to the rumours I would simply say that great email marketing that gets your
message across, engages and differentiates your brand will never die.

Here are the hard facts to give you some context: a recent study found that 72% of
the surveyed consumers indicated email as their favourite channel to hear from
brands. Year over year, email beats any other channels in both return on investment
and customer acquisition: it generates $38 for every $1 spent and beats social by
40x times for customer acquisition.

However, email marketing has many more benefits besides its high ROI and
customer acquisition rate which also deserve some special attention.

Related content: The Best Email Marketing Software of 2017

So what are the top benefits of email marketing over other channels and
platforms?

Low cost and High ROI

One of the main benefits of email marketing is that the necessary tools come at a
low price compared to other marketing channels. Many advanced solutions offer very
affordable plans starting at about £10 per month or even have free plans available.

But do not confuse low cost with low quality; when designed, organised and
executed properly, email marketing can be extremely efficient and actually brings the
highest ROI of all the marketing tactics. As mentioned above, email has a return of
$38 per each $1 spent!

Here is a graph that compares the ROI of different channels:

An image showing the return on investment (ROI) of the different marketing channels

Easy to create and use

Email marketing used to require trained and HTML savvy professionals to craft good-
looking and purpose-serving emails. Nowadays, most of the email marketing
software solutions are quite advanced, providing plenty of easy-to-use tools such as
ready-made or drag-and-drop templates to help you create professional-looking
email.

This saves a lot of time since you don’t need to code a new campaign from scratch
or update the code of an existing HTML email campaign in order to send your
monthly eNewsletter.
Personalisation for better results
Email marketing enables you to personalise every message for each individual with
their first name, last name, birthday, the company they work for etc. plus of course all
the custom fields that are important to you and your audience. Personalisation is an
easy way to make your emails more effective and relevant, which leads to big wins.

Segmentation for a better reach

Another key advantage that email marketing has is that it allows you to segment and
target your audience in a much more precise way than the other channels.

For example, let’s consider social media: excluding paid social media advertising, it
is not easy to target your audience on social media. Firstly, even though you can
plan what you post and talk about on social media to attract the right audience, you
don’t have full control over who follows you. Fake or dormant accounts are very
common, which only makes your audience inactive. Even though there are many
ways to help you target your audience such as hashtags or posting times, it is not a
given that your message will get to the right people or that your audience will see it.
For instance, #security is mainly used by the IT industry, but also used by home
security businesses or recruiters. So there is no promise that the right message will
be delivered to the right people.

Email marketing ensures that your message will be delivered to the right audience at
the best time for them. Segmentation is a great tool which allows you to send emails
only to those who meet certain criteria. It can help you upsell or cross-sell to existing
customers, inform and encourage new customers to make a purchase, or re-engage
inactive customers among many other segmentation strategies.

Additionally, since your subscribers have signed-up to receive those emails, they are
already familiar with the brand and you know they are interested in it.

Easy to track
One of the best and most important advantages of email marketing is that it’s very
easy to track so you can easily report on your email marketing efforts. Most solutions
provide you with reports after each campaign on open rates, CTRs, CTORs,
conversion rates and many more. This, in turn, allows you to determine what worked
best and what didn’t work well so you can change your strategy and improve on the
move.

With all the benefits mentioned above – it looks good, it’s more personal than social
media, if segmented well it delivers the right information at the right time to the right
people; plus it’s got the highest ROI and customer acquisition rate – email shouldn’t
only be the customers’ favourite channel for brand communication, it should
be yours too.
We hope this article has been of interest. If you understand the benefits of email
marketing but struggle to do it yourself, please contact us and we will be happy to
help you

Top 10 Must-have WordPress

Plugins to Help You Get Started
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23RD NOVEMBER 2016

If you are new to WordPress, choosing plugins for your new website can be quite
confusing with so many available. We know that choosing the wrong or poorly-
developed plugins can not only make your life harder but also have a devastating
effect on your website. That’s why as WordPress experts we have done the research
for you, so you don’t have to. We have shortlisted the must-have WordPress plugins
for every site.

With so many good plugins out there, it surely wasn’t an easy task picking only the
best ten.

Essential WordPress plugins for beginners:

1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO has almost become like a cliché for must-have WordPress plugins, but it
has rightfully earned its place on the table. It is the most complete SEO plugin you
could possibly get. Yoast SEO is not only an invaluable SEO plugin, but it also
incorporates a snippet editor, readability check and real time page analytics to help
you optimise your titles, meta description and XML sitemaps among many others.

An alternative SEO plugin, which is also good is All in One SEO Pack.
2. W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache are both caching plugins that reduce
download times, increase website performance and loading speed. In cyberspace,
every second matters and your website’s speed plays affects your search engine
ranking. Additionally, loading time is a major contributing factor to page
abandonment. In other words, make sure your website loads fast, not only for the
sake of indexing, but also for better user experience.

3. Jetpack by WordPress
Jetpack is an almost-all-in-one type of plugin which includes powerful features such
as increased traffic, improved site performance, statistics and improved security
among others. Additional features include related posts, social sharing and spam-
free comments.

And the best part is that Jetpack is all free. That’s right, no 14-day trials or premium
versions!

4. Google XML Sitemaps

Not only one of our personal favourites but also one of the highest ranked
WordPress plugins with 5 full stars. Google XML Sitemaps simply generates a
sitemap for your website to help search engines better index your site. It’s all about
the SEO!

5. JM Twitter Cards
JM Twitter Cards, as its name suggests, is an easy ‘plug n’ play’ integration for
Twitter cards. Other plugins such as Yoast SEO and Jetpack also have Twitter cards
integrations however the best part of JM Twitter cards is that you can customise your
cards for each post, it includes all card types and it is extremely easy to use.
Additionally, it is Yoast SEO and All in One SEO compatible, so there is no conflict
with SEO title and description set for these plugins.

6. Contact Form 7
Simple, coding-free and easy to use plugin that allows you to customise and manage
multiple contact forms. It also supports and is compatible with Ajax-powered
submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering.
7. Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker scans your website for broken links and missing images and
notifies you. It saves your both time and effort since broken links can be edited
directly from the plugin’s page, without manually updating each post.

8. Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is a very comprehensive security plugin that protects your
website from malicious attacks. Features include firewall, malware scan, blocking,
live traffic, password auditing, login security and more. With the growing number of
cyber attacks year on year, you want to ensure that your site is protected.

Another reliable security plugin on our ‘favourites’ list and worth checking out is Brute
Protect.

9. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Google Analytics is the most comprehensive traffic monitoring tool. It also provides
the most detailed in-depth traffic reports providing performance details for each post
or page on your website. This plugin brings all that information right to your
WordPress admin dashboard.

10. OptinMonster
OptinMonster helps you grow your email list and get more subscribers by creating
different pop-up and opt-in forms. This includes pop-up forms, floating header and
footer bars, slide-ins also known as scroll triggered boxes, sidebar forms, after post
forms, in-line forms, mobile-specific forms, welcome gates and more.

Which Social Media Platforms

Should Your Business Be Present
on?
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14TH NOVEMBER 2016

We assume you’ve already made the first step and decided that your business
should be present on social media. And that’s right, it should be, social media is no
longer an option, but rather a must for every organisation.

Otherwise, if you’re still not convinced, let us start by outlining all the benefits social
media can bring to your business. Here are some of the things social media can
do for you:

 Increase your brand awareness

 Drive traffic to your website
 Gain customer insights
 Render your business more credible and trustworthy
 Position your business as modern and relevant
 Increase conversion rates
 It is one of the most affordable marketing options
 Connect you to influencers and thought leaders

However, this doesn’t mean that your business should be present on all platforms.
There’s a countless number of social media platforms out there starting with the
most popular ones like Facebook and Twitter to more specific and niche platforms.

How to determine which social media platforms are right for your business:

Know your audience, before you choose a

platform
The first thing to do in order to determine the best platforms for your business is
to identify who your audience is. Knowing who are you speaking to is essential for
any successful marketing activity not only for social media. You need to define your
target audience’s demographics including age, gender, location, occupation,
interests, challenges, goals etc. For example, if your target audience is 40+ males,
you may consider using platforms such as LinkedIn and Google+, instead of
Instagram, whose audience mainly consists of 18-29-year-olds. Understanding these
demographics will enable you to also look at the demographics of social media users
and determine which platforms is your audience present and active on.

Most of our clients had not considered Facebook before due to viewing it as less
professional and not for the B2B market. When they looked at the statistics they
realised the majority of their target audience were likely to be on this platform. We
understood it was not a platform in which significant technology contracts could be
agreed, however the lack of our clients’ presence on a platform their audience was
active on could have adverse effects.
The platforms you should be present on already
There are 4 main ones you should be present on regardless of your audience and
the industry you operate in. If you are not present on them, you can guarantee your
competitors are. If a conversation takes place with a potential customer and that
person searches you on their preferred platform and you are not present, this will
damage the relationship and most importantly trust. These platforms are Facebook,
LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter.

Facebook
There are 3.5 billion Internet users and more than half of them are on Facebook.
With 1.7 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social media network. I
bet you would agree that it’s nearly impossible that your audience would not be on
Facebook!

LinkedIn
Most people assume that LinkedIn is a platform predominantly for B2B, rather than
B2C marketing. However, B2C companies can also make use of its content and
targeting capabilities to showcase their expertise and win new business. LinkedIn
is reportedly the platform with highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate compared to
Facebook and Twitter.
It’s a graphic showing the best social media Network for lead generation to know which
social media platforms should your business be present on – Rebixit Consulting

Twitter
Twitter is a happening and eventful place. Every minute, on average, 350,000 tweets
are sent on Twitter. This means that the median lifespan of a tweet is 18 minutes. If
there is a conversation about your brand going on, you would want to be involved.
Twitter is a good marketing tool to increase brand awareness and drive traffic.

Google+
With a growth rate of 33% year on year, Google+ is most definitely a platform your
business should be present on. Even though the Google+ has a predominantly male
audience (74%) which might not match your business target audience, Google+ is a
powerful algorithmic factor and helps your business to show up on Google’s SERP.
And who doesn’t want to appear at the top of Google’s search result page?

A platform you may not have considered before,

that deserves it
Here are some other platforms you should consider depending on your business’s
needs and demographics:
 YouTube
It is the largest search engine after Google and it reaches more people than any
cable network. In fact, it reaches more people than all cable networks combined. So,
YouTube definitely reigns when it comes to video streaming. If you do have a
collection of branded videos, or plan to create one you should, without doubt, share
them on YouTube. The amount of people who search “how to” related videos
is growing 70% year on year. This is a channel suitable for any industry or sector,
both B2B and B2C.

Instagram
As we have mentioned earlier, these platforms are very visual and mainly image and
video-based. So if your company is an “image-heavy” brand and you want to
showcase your work, being on them would be a smart social media move.

We know that enterprise companies have been reluctant to embrace it, considering
this platform is not a right fit for their sector or being unsure what purpose would the
app serve them. Contrary to the popular belief, Instagram is not a platform only for
B2C, but also could serve well the B2B sector. Here is an excellent example of
Cisco, an IT conglomerate, which adds some humour to an otherwise tedious topic.

Pinterest
Similar to Instagram, a common misconception about Pinterest is that is only for the
B2C market. Quite the opposite, Pinterest has major B2B marketing potential.
Pinterest enables you to create boards for your blog posts, inforgraphics, case
studies, slideshares etc. By not being present on Pinterest, you miss out on
increased traffic, better brand recognition and simply another channel to distribute
your content on.

Niche Platforms
Finally, there are also many niche social media platforms that can prove to be more
effective for your business than the traditional ones as you are promoting yourselves
to an engaged audience in your sector. Here are some examples of niche social
networks:

 Github – professional network for software engineers

 Kaggle – online community for data scientists

If this article has been of interest however you still have some questions, please
contact our team and we would be happy to help
5 Mind-Blowing Stats About Digital Trends In
Travel And Hospitality
by Giselle Abramovich . Senior & Strategic Editor . CMO.com May 9, 2018
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This article is part of our May series about travel and hospitality. Click here for
more.

For travel and hospitality brands, providing superb experiences starts long before
their customers’ trips ever begin.

No surprise, consumers are relying more and more on digital channels and
platforms for all of their travel needs, from researching to booking. The following
stats show just how much of a role digital plays in both the lives of travelers and
the companies that service them.

1. More consumers are using smartphones to explore destinations and products.

Mobile accounts for 37% of travelers shopping for flights and 43% for
accommodations. However, only 25% of those surveyed said they book
accommodations on their smartphones, while only 18% said they book airline
tickets on their smartphones. (Source: Phocuswire)

2. This year, digital travel sales are expected to reach $198 billion. More than 140
million U.S. adults will research a trip online. (Source: Social Media Today)

3. When figuring out their travel plans, more than 60% of travelers said their
budgets were a key factor, and they look for deals before making a decision. More
than half the travelers from the U.S., Australia, the U.K., and Canada said social
content featuring deals and promotions influenced their decisions. (Source:
Expedia)

4. As brands work to make themselves visible to travelers, they are now spending
61% of their marketing budgets on online channels. That number is even higher for
online travel brands such as OTAs, which allocate 73% of their spend to
digital. (Source: Phocuswire)

5. Social media’s role in the travel journey can’t be ignored. Fifty-five percent of
people like social media pages related to trips they are planning. (Source: Webpage
FX)

6. Additionally, 52% of Facebook users said that a friend’s travel photos have
inspired their own travel plans. (Source: Webpage FX)

7. Fifty percent of travel and hospitality companies today are gathering and using
real-time data; 47% are using automated personalization. (Source: Adobe)

8. Just 18% of executives at travel and hospitality brands said they believe their
company is a digitally mature organization. (Source: Adobe)

9. Only a tiny percentage of check-ins (4%) and check-outs (1%) occur through
mobile apps, but when it is used, it is associated with higher guest satisfaction.
(Source: J.D. Power & Associates)

10. Guests who download and use a hotel’s mobile app are more satisfied and have
greater loyalty to that brand. While only 19% of all guests have downloaded a
hotel app, 70% of rewards members have done so. (Source: J.D. Power &
Associates)
11. During the travel research process, 43% of consumers said they use their
smartphones to look for accommodations, and 76% said they use their desktops
computer. Twenty-five percent of consumers said they used their smartphones to
book their accommodations, and 67% said they used their desktops. (Source:
Social Media Today)

12. Seventy-eight perfect of travelers said informative content from destinations or

travel brands can influence their decision-making process, and 46% said ads with
informative content can be influential. (Source: Expedia)

13. Analysis of 321 million social engagements found at least eight of the largest
hotels have tested some kind of virtual reality experience during the past 18
months. Most of these experiences were programs that paired VR devices with
consumers’ mobile devices. (Source: Adobe Digital Insights)

14. Social mentions for travel and AR/VR-related experiences increased 13%.
Social mentions about travel-related wearables also increased (44%). (Source:
Adobe Digital Insights)

15. A whopping 83% of Millennials said they would let travel brands track their
digital patterns if this would provide them with a more personalized experience.
(Source: MDG Advertising)

Hotel Marketing Budgets: How Much is

Actually Enough?
It’s probably time to sit down and address the elephant-in-the-room: how much should you be
spending on marketing?

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Hotel marketing budgets: how much is actually enough?

According to a recent study, Booking.com and Expedia return $16 for every dollar spent on
marketing. This looks great on paper, but the reality is that over the last decade OTAs’ return
on marketing investment decreased by 15%.

This explains why Booking.com dramatically decreased its advertising spend.

The same story is playing out across the hotel marketing landscape… cost-per-acquisition is
soaring, and if the Goliaths of the industry had to change their strategies, it’s probably time to
sit down and address the elephant-in-the-room: how much should you be spending on
marketing?

First: What’s in the Marketing Budget?

Allocations within the marketing budget vary from company to company. According to The
CMO Survey sponsored by Duke University, Deloitte LLP, and the American Marketing
Association, “less than half (47.9 percent) of companies include expenses for marketing
employees in their marketing budgets. Most companies (61.3 percent) include direct expenses
for marketing—such as advertising, trade promotions, and direct marketing—in their
marketing budgets, but this varies by industry (See below):

What does your hotel or resort include in its annual marketing budget? Do you include
employee or outside agency costs in your budget? How about OTA commissions or GDS
fees?

This is a critical definition that will determine how much you need and how your results are
perceived by ownership.
THE INVERTED U-CURVE

Hotel marketers can learn a valuable lesson from Malcolm Gladwell in his inspiring
book David and Goliath. In the book, Gladwell talks about “inverted U-Curves:”

“Inverted-U curves have three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There’s the left
side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where
doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more
or having more makes things worse,” according to Gladwell.
The curve has been around for over a century and it has been applied to a wide range of
different situations:

Money: Scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people
happier after they exceed $75,000 per year

Class Size: Contrary to popular belief, a class size decreases beyond an optimal number,
learning effectiveness decreases. Apparently, the optimum number is 18-24 students per class

Punishment and Crime: Past a certain point, cracking down on crime and locking people up
stops having any effect on criminals, makes crime worse and the juvenile delinquency rate
increases

Similarly, hotel marketing budgets have an inverted U-curve; doing too little will result in
sub-optimal results, but doing too much is often wasteful.

So how can you identify this sweet spot?

WHERE ARE YOU ON THE CURVE?

Hotels on the left side of the curve (usually large branded properties) typically allocate little
to no budget in marketing beyond their brand fees.

They often have a lackluster brand.com web page, no outside marketing investments and
their distribution relies almost entirely on third-parties. The good news is that if your flagged
hotel is on that part of the curve, any additional marketing investment will help you move to
the flat middle of it, where investments and return are in balance and your profitability is at
its zenith.

The majority of hotels fall between the left side and the flat middle of the curve (and need to
spend more to achieve their goals. However, if you categorize OTA commissions as
marketing costs, virtually every hotel immediately moves to the right side of the curve, where
spending more often delivers diminishing returns. As Kalibri Labs notes in their recent
report: Demystifying the Digital Marketplace: “if you’re growing top-line revenue —but
you’re spending a lot to do it—then you’re ultimately less successful in contributing to
overall profits. Not an optimal strategy.”

However, if profit is not your primary goal (i.e. hotels rebranding, new openings, brand
awareness projects, etc.) spending MORE may be the correct strategy, but for the vast
majority of hotels (if you believe Malcolm Gladwell) it is not.
So, how much is too much when it comes to hotel marketing?

Marketing effects profitability

According to a recent Gartner Research study, companies spend an average of 12% of their
annual revenue on marketing. A recent CMO Survey comes to similar conclusions,
highlighting how tech companies are among the biggest spenders (14%) when it comes to
marketing. The hotel industry, however, seems to pay an even higher price (up to 25%,
according to Kalibri Labs). Tom Klein, the former CEO of Sabre, recently stated in a Tnooz
interview that Travel “is not 90% margin like many of the businesses that Google and
Facebook and others are in.” With OTAs’ average commission at 19% and direct booking
cost-per-acquisition growing year after year, industry margins are under siege.

So while ADR and RevPAR are important metrics, you should also focus solely “ProPAR”
(Profit per Available Room): the revenue generated per room minus the investments needed
to acquire the guest. Here again, we strongly recommend categorizing OTA commissions as
marketing costs to get a true picture of your marketing budget and its effect on profitability!

WHAT ABOUT DIRECT BOOKINGS?

Because of high 3rd party acquisition costs, there has been a lot of attention on building direct
channels, just think about Hilton’s Stop Clicking Around campaign:

The unavoidable truth is that it is also very easy to overspend when it comes to direct
booking investments and you can find yourself on the right side of the inverted-U curve
without even realizing it. Similar to the OTA channel, direct reservations also have growing
costs.

Special discounted rates, loyalty programs, hotel digital marketing, PPC, metasearch engines
and social media ads to name a few. Our advice to clients has always been: “you should have
an unlimited budget for things that work…”

This philosophy requires a near-manic obsession with ROI tracking and analytics that
requires serious software and some intensely nerdy data, scientists. As the CMO Survey
reinforces: when respondents were broken into three groups—high, medium and low usage of
ROI analytics— marketing budgets were 70 percent larger in the high group than the low
group.

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

Before you can determine how much to budget for marketing, hotel execs need to answer
three critical questions:

1. What are the revenue targets by segment? (more on this here)

Without a concrete understanding of targets by segment, hotel marketers cannot quantify (or
deploy) their budgets properly… leading to misalignment with ownership and missed targets.

2. Where is the property in its lifecycle?

Recently opened hotels, or properties which went through a rebranding, in fact, should be less
focused on return on investment and more on building awareness. In cases like these, 20-25%
of annual revenue spent on marketing is common. If, on the other hand, your hotel has
matured to a more advanced stage and it’s been in business for 3+ years, then 8-15% of your
annual revenue on marketing should be more than enough to guarantee you a good balance
between profit and visibility.

3. How much revenue is marketing accountable for…?

As the CMO Survey points out: “Marketing is responsible for leading revenue growth at
38.4 percent of companies. These companies have larger marketing budgets as a percentage
of the overall company budget than companies that do not assign primary responsibility for
revenue growth to marketing.”

Hotel Emails Won’t Convert Without These 2

Vital Elements
For emails that actually convert, make sure they include these two items:

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Don’t let your promotional emails be ignored or deleted. Emails that
actually convert always include two critical elements of success.

Even with all the attention Instagram and Facebook receive, smart hotel and resort marketers
know that email marketing is still the essential channel for driving direct bookings.

Unlike hotel social media, emails can be sent to targeted audiences, be highly
segmented/personalized and reach loyal audiences who are ready to buy.

However, emails are also prone to be ignored and getting deleted. For emails that actually
convert, make sure they include these two items:

1. An Irresistible & Relevant Subject Line

While only several words long, your email subject line has the biggest impact on your
conversions. To drive bookings, emails have to be opened! Research shows that 35 percent
of email recipients will open emails based on the subject line alone.

The secret is to choose clarity over creativity, but always be compelling. For example, if
you’re promoting a 4th night free offer, then a clear and compelling subject line would
advertise that explicitly: “Few days left: Get Your 4th Night Free.” Resist the urge to be too
creative and ambiguous, such as “4 Days of Fun & Sun!”

Take a look at this example from Overton Hotel & Conference Center in Texas,
Subject line: “Don’t Drop the Ball on this Exclusive Offer”
2. A No-Nonsense Call to Action
Don’t expect readers, especially those who are quickly scanning your email, to take the time
to sift through lots of self-indulgent fluff to discern what your offer and promise are.

Think about exactly what you want the reader to do next, then guide their decision. Just like
your email subject line, be clear and concise. Effective calls to action include, ‘Select Your
Room,’ ‘Book Now,’ or ‘Explore Now.’
Propel the reader to go where you want them to go!

3 Quick Ways To Drive More Bookings From

Hotel Email Campaigns
Here are three essential components that every hotel marketing email must have to drive
conversions.

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Even with all of the attention and focus given to Facebook, Google Hotel Ads, metasearch
and other tools du jour… let’s not forget the tried and true workhorse of hotel marketing –
email!

Smart hospitality marketers know that email marketing is still an essential method for driving
bookings. However, it’s just as easy to be complacent with email marketing, using “spray and
pray”techniques that only result in fatiguing your list and encouraging people to opt
out. Here are three essential components that every hotel marketing email must have to
drive conversions:

ESSENTIAL 1: Be Mobile Friendly

Statement of the obvious right?

Think about it: What is the first thing you do when you wake up? If you’re like most people,
you grab your phone to sift through your email inbox. In fact, more than 65 percent of emails
are now opened on a smartphone or a tablet. Hotels that don’t optimize marketing emails for
mobile devices face a steep penalty. Research shows that 71 percent of people will
immediately delete an email if it’s not displayed correctly for their mobile device. Ignore the
needs of mobile readers and you’ll likely lose them for good.

Not only should the email design be mobile-optimized, your content should also be created
with the mobile audience in mind from the very beginning. Think short copy, bold headlines
and images, large call to action buttons and plenty of white space for easy scanning.

ESSENTIAL 2: Craft an Irresistible Subject Line

Your guests’ email inboxes are overcrowded places these days. While it may seem like a
small part of your hotel email campaign, your subject line has the biggest impact on that
email’s success. You either win or lose with your subject line, there is no “good enough.”
Afterall, an email is worthless if it sits unopened, and the best email is the one that actually
gets opened.

Studies prove that 35 percent of email recipients will open email solely based on the subject
line. Not only does your subject line have to be compelling enough to grab attention, it has to
be relevant and worthy enough to be opened. Keep them simple and clear, convey
urgency and resist the urge to be too creative and ambiguous. Instead, you have to hint at
what is waiting for the guest inside. If you’re promoting a “3rd night free” special, then your
email should say just that. Use a subject line such as, “Limited Time: 3rd Night Free,” instead
of a confusing “3 Times the Fun!”

Also, subject lines are most effective when you segment your email list. You should already
have a separate email list for travel trade, transient and group business, however it’s best if
you keep drilling down. So, build niche lists by geography, travel type (romantic, family,
business, etc), or even meeting type. This way, you’ll be able to tailor your subject lines to
match these audiences.

ESSENTIAL 3: Have a Compelling Call to Action

A common failure of unsuccessful emails is the lack of an obvious and meaningful call to
action (CTA). A CTA is a no-nonsense, clear message that tells your audience what you want
them to do. Think about what you want your guests to do, then tell them that explicitly. This
can include, “Book now,” “Explore our suites” or “Start your adventure.” Otherwise, the
email will sit there, languish or be immediately deleted. Never assume your audience will
know, want, or feel propelled to take the next step on their own.

Further, make sure your CTA is correlated to the recipients level of interest: if you are blindly
emailing people who have never heard of your property before… its doubtful they will
respond to a “Book Now” CTA. Instead, gently invite them to “explore the property” or
“check rates.”

It’s also important to make the CTA stand out from all other text and graphics in the email.
Many people scan their emails on-the-go. So, place the CTA prominently, with a compelling
graphic or button

The Official Gift Guide for hotel marketers

This wish list is unlike any other.
Don’t expect to be asked for the latest tech gadget or an all-expenses paid vacation.

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Listen up, hotel owners and asset managers.

Want to sleigh the holidays this year for your hotel marketing team?

No holiday is complete without our annual Official Gift Guide for Hotel Marketers to keep
the season bright.

Just one heads up: This wish list is unlike any other.
Don’t expect to be asked for the latest tech gadget or an all-expenses-paid vacation.

What hotel marketers really want are the necessary assets, funds, and tools to reach their
2019 goals.

So, pass the festive cocktails.

Bring on the cheer.

Here’s what hotel marketers REALLY want this year:

1. They want a budget correlated to revenue goals

Let’s be realistic.
If you’re holding your marketing team accountable to loftier revenue goals, you’ll need to
support that with a loftier budget. Unfortunately, there are still many hotel owners who
believe marketers are miracle workers who can achieve more revenue with less resources,
less tools, less staff, and less funds.

Want to achieve more in 2019?

Calculate how much you spent in OTA commissions in 2018, you’ll quickly realize that
investing in DIRECT marketing is one of the smartest moves you can make to boost margins.
Support your hotel marketing team’s efforts with the appropriate budget needed to hit
revenue goals and to make the desired impact on 2019 profits.

2. They want compensation for driving measurable revenue

The sales team isn’t the only department accountable to revenue goals anymore.

Hotel owners and asset managers are now expecting hotel marketers to contribute to the
bottom line in a tangible way, beyond pretty pictures, Instagram posts and squishy “branding
projects.” In return, hotel marketing teams are beginning to track direct ROI, such as
marketing cost per booking (MCPB), return on ad spend (ROAS) and direct website
conversions.

Armed with these figures, hotel marketers want to be rewarded and compensated for
contributing to their piece of the hotel revenue pie.
3. They want better digital marketing talent

To outperform your compset, you need an army of top talent at every level of your marketing
department. After all, someone is behind every digital touchpoint – from social media, to
the hotel website design, to email. Not to mention all the expertise needed behind-the-scenes,
such as search marketing, data analytics, and CRM systems. While talented digital marketing
professionals are aplenty all over the country, they are being reeled in by other industries that
offer higher pay and better benefits and perks (think Google, Facebook, and virtually any
major corporation with a website).

The first step to building an unbeatable team is recruiting employees who have both digital
prowess and hotel marketing instincts. This means hiring staff who understand the hotel
experience. Rethinking your compensation packages. And, making sure they understand the
stages of the travel purchase funnel, ROI of each, and how to usher a visitor onto the next
phase.

Read more: Hotel Digital Talent: Why Is it So Hard to Find

4. They want property upgrades…Please!

Every week, a hotel is announcing a stunning redesign or renovation, or breaking ground on a

new property entirely. With so much shiny and new inventory on the market, it’s getting near
impossible to compete with an aging, tired product. No amount of innovative and brilliant
marketing (and trust us, your marketing team is trying) can mask a shoddy hotel experience.

The solution IS NOT leaning more on your marketing team.

It’s to invest in the necessary property upgrades to remain competitive. Travelers are more
sophisticated and vocal than ever. It’s vital to keep up with modern amenities, aesthetics, and
experiences. Without improving your hotel product, trying to win over the hearts and
wallets of guests simply with more marketing will be a never-ending battle.

Read more:
Are You Putting Lipstick On a Pig?

5. They want the time and tools to handle more data

The effects of Big Data are enormous.

Think deep insight into your guests’ behavior and preferences – past, present and future.
Knowing which customers have the highest lifetime value and how to reach them. Aptly
leveraging peaks and dips in your hotel’s business cycle to reap the best possible net profit.

Not to mention, the responsibility to protect your guests and their personal data. The
hospitality industry has been a target of security breaches since 2010. No hotel is immune and
the effects on customers’ security have been far-reaching. From independent properties to
Marriott to Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ reservation system, hackers have been able to collect
secure customer data, including credit card numbers, addresses, names, login credentials,
dates of birth and passport information.

Collecting, managing, analyzing, and protecting all this data can be exciting but also
overwhelming. Hotel marketers need the tools and the funds to pull this off.

6. They want better benchmarking

Almost every hotel marketer we have spoken to has the same question: “How am I
performing compared to similar properties?”

While we can rely on common benchmarks like STR’s indexes, other key performance
indicators like direct vs 3rd party revenue ratio and website conversion rates can vary by
market and property type. Thankfully, smart analytics companies like Kalibri Labs and others
are helping hotel marketers understand critical KPIs and provide actionable advice.

7. They want better vetting and yield from social influencers

Nihiwatu, the top-rated hotel in the world (and one of our clients has had great success working
with social influencers

Hotel marketers are besieged by social media influencers.

Not all should be avoided, nor should all be showered with comp stays.

Hotels, especially luxury resorts, are a favorite of Instagram brand influencers. While it may
be tempting to dismiss these seemingly ruthless freeloaders, there IS massive value in
partnering with legitimate content creators who have sizeable followings and engagement.

The key is thorough vetting to find the content creators who are worth the investment and
who will produce actual deliverables beyond a few selfie Instagram posts. The more
worthwhile influencers produce additional content on the hotel’s behalf that you can use for
future marketing campaigns. Some even assist with the hotel’s social media efforts ongoing.
Either way, standardize the process by requiring an application covering demographics,
engagement, following and a minimum amount of deliverables. This will make it easier to
discern which influencers are worth a partnership.

8. They want continued investments in direct booking campaigns

What started as a big-bang movement by Marriott and Hilton with campaigns like “Stop
Clicking Around,” has now filtered down to hotel collections and individual properties of all
sizes, locations, and brand affiliations. Battling massively funded OTAs not only takes time
and gumption, but a steadfast investment and long-term outlook in getting the message across
about direct booking.

There are plenty of good reasons for your guests to skip the OTAs and to book direct.

But, don’t sit back and rely on AHLA, Marriott, Hilton and all the other major brands to raise
awareness and get the point across. You will have the greatest impact on your own audience.
Continue to fund best practice direct booking campaigns and the technology to guide visitors
to your website and deliver an easy booking experience, instead of allowing them to drift
back to OTAs.

Read more: We’re Using the Wrong Message to Fight OTAs

9. They want better integration with local, authentic experiences

Modern travelers are a different breed from customers of the past.

For them, it’s no longer just about what’s inside the confines of your property. They’re
looking beyond the hotel walls for remarkable experiences they can’t achieve at home. So,
for the past several years, hotels have answered the call by redefining their guest
experience… and attempting to become the epicenter of their destination.

From chef-led farmers market tours to lobby art shows featuring local upcoming artists,
hoteliers are hoping their curated local experiences will prove to drive more bookings and
boost their bottom line.
Hotel Hugo in NYC provides “Staff Picks” to convey its commitment to providing a truly unique
experience

10. They want decreased dependence on OTAs

We get it…. no surprise here.

Sometimes you feel as if your hotel can’t survive without OTAs.

They bring bookings seemingly out of nowhere and consistently fill your rooms with a
minimal amount of effort. However, the fact remains that those rooms are booked at rock-
bottom prices. On top of that, OTAs still pocket 15-30% on top of the already reduced room
rate.

Yet, driving your own reservations and relying less on OTAs IS possible. ROI-obsessed hotel
marketers like many of our hotel marketing clientshave created tools and perfected marketing
techniques to take back bookings, such as booking engines that decrease
bounces, copywriting that drives conversions, and pricing psychology that convinces guests
to purchase.

Do this to gain instant trust with hotel website

visitors
Build trust with hotel website visitors by showcasing SOCIAL PROOF.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.
This week’s Freebie: Build trust with hotel website visitors by showcasing SOCIAL
PROOF.

Social proof is critical to easing the worries of potential guests. In fact, a study in
the Washington Post showed social proof had more influence over customers than a discount.
This is why a guest review site like TripAdvisor is so popular and impactful on purchase
behavior. As travelers and meeting planners are faced with more and more hotel options, it’s
vital to win their trust first, to win their heart and their wallets.

Here are the four core methods of leveraging social proof online:

1. Awards, Accolades and Media Labels

Prominently display any accolades or awards from reputable travel industry organizations or
media that have recognized your hotel. Just a quick glance can lock in buyer confidence.

2. Guest-generated Social Media Posts

Photos and videos increase trust. Today, some of your best property photography and most
poignant stories will come from the guests themselves, whether from their Instagram photos,
YouTube videos or Facebook Livestreams. Use your geotag to search for these posts, ask
permission to use, then re-post or reuse for your own hotel marketing assets.

3. User Testimonials & Reviews

Skip the generic “Great service!” reviews and instead showcase testimonials that explicitly
share how the hotel and your staff made the stay or the meeting extraordinary, not just
pleasant. If possible, include a photo of the person leaving the review, which enhances the
perceived legitimacy of the testimonial.

4. Partner Logos

Showcase logos of partner organizations and businesses, even if they are lesser-known
brands. These partnerships will go a long way to bolster credibility and draws other
customers and partners to you.

Get more: How Guests Decide Whether To Buy On Your Website

10 Essentials of a Killer Hotel Website

There are a number of proven elements that when applied consistently, can transform a hotel
website into a true market killer.

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What is the most important technology in your hotel?

While many would say it’s the PMS or CRS, your direct hotel website is a vital, revenue-
generating platform hub that is rapidly growing in importance as hotel marketers struggle to
reduce the cost of guest acquisition and shift share from OTAs.

And make no mistake, your hotel or resort website is a technology “system.”

Just like other cloud-based software, your hotel website should be viewed as a living,
breathing “software application” that constantly adapts to technological, governmental and
property-level changes.

There are a number of proven elements that when applied consistently, can transform a hotel
website into a true market killer, potentially driving higher conversions and average daily
rates (ADRs) simply by virtue of effective design and messaging.

Many of the best practices for hotel websites focus on optimizing the user experience, as well
as the story being told to those users, through elements like imagery, social media and
destination-related content. Other best practices concern technical and web design aspects,
such as SEO, booking engine integration and page load speed.

We maintain a list of more than 200 hotel website design best practices, but here are 10
essentials:

1. Speed and trust

It’s crucial to have a clean, user-friendly, easily navigable and unquestionably secure
website that performs well in a rudimentary sense. That means the pages should load quickly,
without being stalled by poor design elements (ie clunky code and overly large image files)
or missing SSL certificates. Dropping the ball here could spell doom for your website: Some
25 percent of visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load, and
nearly 50 percent will abandon the site if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. (Aim for
about 3 seconds or better as your goal.) Pages should also be mobile-friendly, utilizing a
responsive design that adapts to the device on which the page is being displayed, is
streamlined for one-handed navigation and potentially accepts alternative payment methods.
2. Schema and SEO plumbing for organic traffic

Thanks to the rising costs of paid hotel advertising media, smart hotel marketers are realizing
the importance of fresh, native content on SEO… but there are also critical technical, back-
end tasks that need to be performed to enhance your website’s search engine optimization
(SEO) with the goal of boosting organic (non-paid) search traffic. These SEO “tweaks” can
range from basic SEO foundations like creating indexed XML sitemaps and effective H1
page headers, title tags and meta-descriptions, to more advanced upgrades, such as the
integration of product schema code and enhanced tracking through Google Analytics.

3. Visually arresting imagery

Compelling visuals are a critical component of a hotel website and all accompanying digital
marketing efforts because they convey—at a moment’s glance—the overall experience at
your property, and have the power to change a customer’s mind, for good or bad.
Images like this for Nihiwatu (the #1 hotel in the world), inspire affluent travelers to fly around the
world to experience the property

That’s why it’s imperative to have current, non-stock, professionally taken photographs of the
property and its various amenities, and make sure the photos convey the emotional story you
are trying to communicate, rather than just bland pictures of the lobby. Strive to present at
least 20+ images, so feel free to shoot from various angles. Don’t forget to crowd-source
imagery too, by soliciting and sharing the photos your guests take and post on social media.
Guest photos offer a level of authenticity your visitors will appreciate and acknowledge, often
even more than your own photographs.

4. Compelling, emotional UVP

Differentiate your property from the rest by offering a clear and powerful unique value
proposition (UVP) that explains why guests should choose your hotel, instead of the one
across the street. Maybe you are part of a family-run business, or are environmentally
friendly, or are in the best location for guests going to the ballpark, or you have the best chef
of any hotel in your comp set. Whatever it is, find what makes your property unique and
aspirational to guests, and make sure your website shouts that UVP from the digital rooftops.
Just be sure to keep that messaging consistent across all sites, pages and channels, to avoid
erosion of buyer confidence and customer attrition.

5. Prominently showcase the hotel’s direct-booking benefits

Give your site visitors a reason to book direct while you have their attention, before they
leave to go price-check elsewhere. Make your case by prominently displaying the advantages
of booking directly on your site, including any promotions, discounts, memberships, policies
and perks you are willing to offer.
Here’s an example of one hotelier, Couples Resorts in Jamaica, creating perceived value in booking
direct right on their home page.

It’s also a good idea to auto-match third-party rates when direct rates on your site are
showing higher than third-party rates. Don’t let your site become a source for “window
shopping” before customers head to an OTA to complete the sale.

6. Post deep content about the local area/destination

In most cases, your guests aren’t just booking a room; they’re seeking an authentic local
experience, potentially using your hotel as their headquarters. Help them (and aid your sales
efforts) by providing lots of destination content, tips, recommendations and insights into your
local market.
Sell the heck out of the area and make guests want to visit there, but don’t just serve up the
same textbook attractions as all your competitors: Offer personal insights from your own
experience, answering real-world concerns, like where to park, shop and jog and/or hike,
what’s within walking distance, how to beat crowds and save money, and the best hole-in-
the-wall spots that the locals frequent. You want to be the authority on what’s fun, hip,
healthy and delicious outside your property, as well as within.

7. Provide social proof/validation

Lotte Palace in NYC showcases trustmarks above the fold on its homepage to build instant trust with
website visitors.

One of the most powerful online trust-builders is the use of awards, testimonials and other
trustmarks to provide “social proof” and validation that solidifies the notion that guests
regularly have an amazing experience at your property. Make every effort to integrate user-
generated content (UGC) from channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter into your site
and overall marketing plan, since this content offers the relatively objective, unbiased guest
viewpoints that modern consumers crave and may even pay a premium to experience. (A
recent marketing study found that UGC is 20 percent more influential than any other type of
marketing when driving purchases among millennials.) This endeavor also includes
capitalizing on glowing reviews on Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor and OTAs, so proactively
curate and share those “highlight” reviews on your hotel’s website.

8. An array of prominent communication choices

Don’t limit the ways in which potential customers can contact your property.

Your hotel website design should clearly display options for talking with hotel
representatives by phone, email and live chat, including “click to call” linking for mobile
users. Live chat, which may seem like an “extra,” is actually increasingly useful, with recent
studies indicating that as many as 62% of consumers are more likely to buy online when live
support is available. Also, be sure you have proper goal/event tracking in place in Google
Analytics, so you can track and measure conversions from each method of contact your site
offers.

9. A simple, intuitive booking process

The last thing you want to have is a site that effectively gets visitors in the mood to buy, but
then fails to convert due to a poor and/or confusing booking process, where customers have
multiple opportunities to bolt and run.

To keep customers moving through the bookings funnel, present a booking platform that is
fast, dynamically personalized for the customer, consistent in pricing and aesthetically
seamless as the customer moves from the website into the booking engine. Experiment with
tools like Crazy Egg and Hotjar to generate user heat maps, which show how visitors are
utilizing the site, so you can investigate and fine-tune navigation and content. Integration
between your site and booking engine should pay close attention to user experience (UX),
including matching fonts and colors, so the visual bookings journey is smooth, appealing and
profitable throughout.
The Reefs, in Bermuda, does a great job of creating continuity between the hotel website and booking
engine.

10. Deep meetings, groups and wedding content

Considering the percentage of revenue that groups/events represent in many hotel

budgets, not enough thought and emphasis is given to that segment on the hotel website.

There are so many nuances to the process of planning and executing events like weddings,
corporate meetings and other group happenings, that you will earn valuable favor from these
potential customers if you provide them with as many tools as possible within your own hotel
website. Include useful things like FAQs, best practices, client testimonials, floor plans
and past event photos. Of course, make sure you have an intuitive, cleanly designed lead
capture form, which is prominently displayed and promoted through corresponding calls to
action (CTAs) on the site

Hotel SEO: How will Google’s new EAT

Algorithm affect your property?
Google rolled out a new algorithm update that is already causing widespread changes in both
organic and local search engine rankings.

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In August, Google rolled out a new algorithm update that is already causing widespread
changes in both organic and local search engine rankings.

Although some specific types of websites appear to be affected more than others, all websites
—including hotel and travel-related sites—should factor the latest criteria into their ongoing
development and content plans.

Centered on the acronym E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), the latest
update is placing still-more emphasis on content quality and sourcing, as part of the search
engine’s perpetual work to boost the relevance of its results. The new algorithm also appears
to be favoring local business sites over broader, corporate pages.

“It would appear that the algorithm changes apply to both organic and local searches, rather
than just organic searches,” said Sean Cornilliac, SEO Manager here at
Tambourine. “Google says that it is trying to prioritize relevance, and we can surmise that it
perhaps sees local businesses as being more relevant to searchers than large multi-
nationals.”

The algorithm update is also connected to Google’s sustained efforts to prevent the practice
of “keyword stuffing,” in which content is overloaded with targeted search terms, but may
offer minimal information of use. Thus, the goal of E-A-T is to make hotel website
designers write copy intended for real users, instead of search engine crawlers. So now more
than ever, it’s best to strike a careful SEO balance, adding keywords carefully, while writing
in a natural way.

“The ‘T’ in ‘E-A-T’ also becomes more important, as Google is working harder to determine
which websites are the most trustworthy to show searchers,” according to another
expert recent post on the subject.

“Hotels need to pay attention to EAT and take action to improve their trustworthiness in
Google’s eyes.”

Sean Cornilliac
SEO Manager @ Tambourine

Focused on Health & Finance

At the moment, it seems the new algorithm is primarily affecting health and medicine-related
websites, earning it the nickname, “The Medic Update.” It is also significantly impacting
search rankings for what is known as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) websites, such as
those that handle online banking, e-commerce and investing, as well as sites that offer tips
and advice on such subjects.

Hotel websites, while also impacted, are reportedly being affected at relatively lower levels
than other websites. Still, there is a definite hotel/travel impact to the new Google algorithm,
and therefore it’s essential to factor these changes into your company’s ongoing digital
initiatives. There’s no “silver bullet” for the situation, Google says, other than continued
content and website development.

“Google clearly states that there is no ‘fix’ for pages that perform less
well,” said Cornilliac, “Other than to remain focused on building great content.”

How To ‘E-A-T’ Like A King

Google search relevance and site quality is primarily determined according to its Google
Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines, which are used by more than 10,000 reviewers tasked
with rating Google’s search results. Among those guidelines, E-A-T is cited as one of the key
factors that determine the resulting Page Quality Ratings generated by reviewers.

Fortunately, there a number of things you can do to ensure great hotel website and search
engine performance under the latest E-A-T algorithm criteria:

1. Commit to quality content

Granted, it’s easier said than done, but creating engaging, factual content about your region
and destination is the key to driving hotel SEO rankingsunder the E-A-T algorithm and
should be a main priority. Thin, outdated and spotty content simply isn’t going to cut it
anymore; it’s vital to ensure the information presented in your content is current, robust and
factual. Leverage inter-linking between posts on your site to make the content more
comprehensive, provide links to sources and author bios for the purposes of fact-checking,
and in the case of opinions, offer your justification/credentials to support those opinions.

For example, The Lotte NYC produces consistent, compelling content about New York City
events and attractions that help the property build its (E) Expertise and (A) Authority for
relevant NYC-related keyword searches:
2. Make your website trustworthy

There are also some technical, site-related steps you can take to improve your website’s E-A-
T allure in the eyes of Google. This includes website trust-builders like converting the site to
HTTPS and embracing GDPR regulations. You can also add or emphasize information on
business policies like money-back guarantees, customer satisfaction promises, etc.

Visitors to non-secure hotel website pages will see this message… sure to cause abandonment

3. Reach your customers on social media

Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube should be used in conjunction
with hotel website content, in order to promote and validate the website. And as with your
web content, social postings should strive to educate, inform and engage your users;
misleading, untruthful and poorly sourced content should be avoided at all costs. If
applicable, investigate plugins and apps that facilitate easy sharing of web content on social
channels.

4. Add an ‘FAQ’ page

Devote time and resources (if needed) to create or expand your website’s frequently asked
questions (FAQ) page, addressing the common concerns voiced by your customers. This
bolsters your site’s perceived credibility in the eyes of Google, while also offering a
genuinely valuable piece of content. Maintaining a solid FAQ is also linked to voice search
optimization, so this effort can yield numerous benefits.

5. Revisit your ‘Contact Us’ page

The new Google algorithm is highly optimized for local SEO, with the idea that websites
offering local information are more useful to searchers than sites that are decentralized or
widespread. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that all local information for your business
is up to date, including your “Contact Us” page. This includes embedding a Google map of
your hotel’s location on the page, and updating/posting address info on each page, preferably
in the footer.

This is especially important for hotels with significant F&B revenue and local visitation.

6. Cultivate your Google reviews

No one knows how much, but reviews certainly play a part in Google’s EAT score for your
property.

Encourage customers to leave Google reviews for your hotel, including as always, a post-stay
link for easy access to your reviews form or directly on Google or TripAdvisor. If your hotel
is worth its salt, you needn’t worry about having perfect reviews; even neutral reviews are
better than no reviews, according to Google, and a perfect score looks fake. Honesty and
transparency are always the best policies. For more on the effects of reviews on your Google
results, check out this great article from the folks at Trust You.
7. Add/enhance your ‘About Us’ page

Creating and/or beefing-up your hotel website’s “About Us” page offers numerous benefits,
most notably, it adds credibility and relevance to the site’s content, so be sure to include all
“social proof:” press mentions, awards, years in business and staff bios, in order to
substantiate your standing as an expert source and trusted business.

And remember: This isn’t the first or last time Google will change its algorithm, so instead of
trying to specifically “game” the new criteria, it’s always best to simply focus on employing a
sound digital content strategy. If you continue to offer users transactional value and rich
information, perpetually adding new useful content over time, the rest will fall in place.

Want to fill meeting spaces? Show filled

meeting spaces…
Use photos of actual previous events to showcase and sell the group experience at your
property.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Use photos of actual previous events to showcase and sell the group
experience at your property.

The most common photo on a hotel’s meetings and events page is also the least helpful to
meeting planners.
The photo of an empty room.

You may assume that this shows a blank canvas of possibilities. Or, that the room’s
versatility will spark some creative event ideas. In reality, your clients are leaning on you for
inspiration on how to maximize space. They will want to know what other planners have
done in the past and what attendees enjoyed the most.

Further, our meeting planner survey shows that photos of previous events are one of the top
five things meeting planners look for on a hotel’s website. Even better still, if they are
captured by the event attendees themselves.
Here are two easy ways to build your collection of FREE event photos that best showcase
your meeting space:

1. Connect with the event photographer

Most events will have an official photographer hired to capture keynotes, networking
events, breakouts, award ceremonies, offsite activities, etc. Ask to use some (in
exchange for promotional credit on your hotel website) that show off the space,
décor, while also showing attendees engaging, mingling and enjoying both the
space and the program. This works especially well for wedding photography.
2. Use the event hashtag to search attendee photos

Dig into the event’s official hashtag, whether on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and more
than likely you’ll find plenty of photos captured by attendees throughout the event. Reach out
directly and ask if you can post their image on your website and in group sales materials.

Turning bellhops into group sales scouts

Drive more group sales by making sales everyone’s responsibility.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Drive more group sales by making sales everyone’s responsibility.

Smart hoteliers widen their outlook beyond the sales department and create a culture that
includes ALL hotel employees in the sales journey.

By making everyone aware of the importance of group revenue—from the bellman to the
banquet server—hotels can increase meeting lead flow.

Here are two simple ways to accomplish this:

1. Build Awareness
Educate all employees on the property’s event space, highlighting unique venues such
as oceanfront ballrooms, rooftop pool decks or outdoor courtyards. Plus, familiarize
staff on standout meeting experiences and activities for groups.
2. Offer Incentives for Lead Generation
Create a program to reward and celebrate any staff member that generates a new
meeting or event lead. After all, every employee has outside social circles or belongs
to an association, church group, sports team, etc. Or, is related to someone who works
for a corporation that holds at least one event and meeting. Or, are friends with
someone who is getting married, celebrating an anniversary, planning a reunion, or
throwing a bar mitzvah. The possibilities are vast. Be generous and make it fun. No
matter what position they hold, give all of your employees the opportunity to
contribute to a critical component of the property’s success

Resort Marketing: 10 Ways To Dominate the

Comp Set
To meet revenue projections and outperform their comp set, smart resort marketers focus on
these 10 things:

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Resorts face unique challenges.

They are usually more expensive, geographically harder to reach and incur longer stays than
standard full-service hotels. Many are built in “clusters” in a destination, too, which can make
it tough to differentiate one’s product from the resort next door.

These challenges require smart, skillful marketing.

Much of it comes down to the nuances of the product and destination, and how the value of
these aspects is communicated to potential guests. To meet revenue projections and
outperform their comp set, smart resort marketers focus on these 10 things:

1. Be vigilant about product and service experience

The only way to truly inspire guests to return to your resort after their initial visit is to
provide a fantastic product and service experience, from the look and feel of the property to
the amenities, F&B and activities offered, like on-property programming, a special events
schedule, kids club, etc.
The most important aspect of resort marketing is the product itself

Couples Resorts Jamaica, for example, generates 35% to 40% of its bookings from repeat
business, in some cases welcoming guests who’ve made visiting there a multi-generational
tradition. The company’s four all-inclusive Jamaican resorts achieve this by offering a
comprehensive menu of resort activities and amenities, but also superb dining experiences,
custom add-ons and various special events, like its pop-up JamRock Beach Club. Still more,
the staff is renowned for their personal, above-and-beyond approach to serving guests.

“Our product, and our offering, leads the hospitality business when it comes to the number of
repeat guests that we see year in and year out. It’s frankly amazing,” said Dean Sullivan, VP
of sales and marketing for Couples Resorts Jamaica. “We have weddings of sons or
daughters of the previous generation. We have guests arriving in a few days, and it will be
their 1,000th night. We see that across each of our properties. As a marketer, that makes my
job, in a sense, very easy.”

2. Have a powerful, unique and/or emotional story

A key point for any successful resort marketing program is developing and maintaining a
clear understanding of the resort’s identity and story, including what makes it unique in the
marketplace, what customer profile it caters to and what those customers value most. These
core elements should be at the root of all marketing efforts and accompanying
communications strategies.

“The resort is on my family’s property, so on our website, it’s all about the resort being a
family-owned business,” said David Dodwell, Jr., GM of the Reefs Resort & Club in
Bermuda. “We communicate to the guest that they’re not coming to just a hotel; they’re
coming to a family-style hotel. We really try to make our guests feel like they’re part of our
family, so our marketing approach emphasizes that and conveys that feel.”

3. Be the epicenter of your destination

Rather than operating as a self-contained city, resorts should integrate seamlessly with their
destination and market, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship with the many other local
businesses serving visitors.

This may entail partnering with scuba shops, purveyors of snorkel trips, or horseback riding
guides, to create for guests the additional experiences only available outside the resort.
Optimally, the idea is to blend together the value that both the resort and destination offer,
and match your marketing methods accordingly. For example, if the destination is marketed
heavily toward a certain demographic, be sure your own marketing messages match the
audience whom the destination is trying to reach.

“A lot of others want to keep people on the resort as much as possible, for obvious reasons,
but we really feel strongly that a good relationship between the resort and the destination is
critical,” said Dodwell. “People aren’t just coming to stay at our resort; they’re coming to
experience Bermuda as an island, and they want to get out and experience it.”

4. Emphasize F&B and wellness

One of the key differentiators and demand drivers for virtually any resort property are its
food and beverage (F&B) and wellness offerings, including its spa facilities, as these are
some of the most popular, sought-after vacation activities.

Providing memorable, even extraordinary experiences in these settings can yield untold
amounts of future repeat business, as well as new business; the latter generated by
recommendations and through user-generated social media postings. The service levels for
these kinds of resort offerings also play a huge role.

“We have bartenders who remember the drinks that guests had 12 months ago,” said
Sullivan.
5. Ensure rate parity across all channels

Smart resort marketers also know how to avoid creating dissonance with affluent, finicky
guests.

One way of dodging that bullet is to maintain consistent, transparent rate parity across all
channels. This helps to ensure that a $600 per night luxury customer isn’t sharing the hot tub
with a guest that scored the same room for $150 on a last-minute discount site, who then tells
the $600 guest all about the great deal they scored.

6. Partner with the local/regional CVB or tourist board

In a similar spirit as #3, don’t turn your back to the local convention & visitors bureau (CVB)
and/or area tourism board operating in your market. These groups can be extremely valuable
partners, especially for generating group and new business, which you can then convert into
repeat guests, once they’ve been enticed to sample the many wonderful offerings at your
resort.

7. Manage seasonality

Know how to extend your resort’s prime season, limiting “down” demand periods with a
strong offseason plan/campaign and creative ways to extend average length of
stay. Promotions, group business and special events are some great ways of filling rooms
during the trickier months of the year, including special dinners and wine tastings, partnering
with local festivals and offering stay packages tied to seasonal activities. During slow times,
resorts can also focus on the local market, selling “staycations” to locals seeking to spend the
night and enjoy cool amenities nearby.

One popular example is Couples Resorts Jamaica’s “Camp Couples” promotion, which is
marketed as a kind of summer camp for adults. Building upon its already lengthy list of
amenities, during this special promotion the participating resorts build an active daily
itinerary for guests, just as a young summer camper might experience. These are the kinds of
innovations that can keep a resort busy, year-round.
“We don’t have the deep pockets; we don’t have the large advertising budget that our comp
set has,” said Sullivan. “What we have is a fantastic product and fantastic word of mouth.”

8. Have great photography

At many resorts, guests need to travel a long way and pay a lot to stay with you. The photos
of your resort need to be compelling and visually arresting in order to convince them that it’s
worth the time and money.

That means bucking up and paying for world-class hotel photography of the resort and all its
amenities, so all your official communications, websites, etc., have better photos than the
generic images that many hotels utilize. Savvy resort marketers further bolster their online
content and social media imagery with guest-generated images, which provide social proof
and authenticity
Photos like this have helped Nihiwatu become the #1 hotel in the world!

“We work with a lot of user-generated content—like people who’ve tagged us on Instagram
—to really give it that authentic feeling,” said Dodwell. “It’s not your average picture of a
beach again and again; we try to find some unique shots to really convey that the overall feel
of the property is not just to come and sit on a beach and have a meal, but to interact, to meet
people, meet our staff and experience Bermuda.”

9. Take advantage of loyalty rewards redemptions carefully

While there are many perks enjoyed by resorts that offer a loyalty program, there are some
caveats. Resorts that use loyalty rewards redemption periods wisely use them to their
advantage, promoting to loyalty members in periods of need, while limiting promotions in
periods of high demand.
Even independent properties lacking a formal loyalty program can utilize similar methods. In
some cases, it’s as easy as building and maintaining a database of email addresses of guests
who’ve opted-in to receive your online newsletter. You can then send out special promotions
to those guests when seeking to plug holes in demand.

“We do a lot of email marketing and promotions to targeted segments,”said Dodwell. “We
might do a targeted email to our repeat guests, saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a special rate out
that’s just for those who come regularly.’ We’ll do that at different times of the year to try to
incentivize them to come back, especially the ones who haven’t come in the last couple of
years.”

10. Invest in video

Videos like this for Couples Jamaica inspire resort consumers to include the resorts in their
consideration set

Finally, video is increasingly important to hotel digital marketing, so offering great video is
just as essential as photography, and that comes at a price. Instead of frugal tactics, like trying
to have your staff capture video on their phones, hire a videographer (or social media
influencer) instead to shoot and edit some proper footage. Videos should be immersive and
engaging, to drive inspiration for bookings and the necessary long-haul travel. After watching
your video, guests should be more motivated than ever to come and experience your resort.

Segment Your Past Guest List For Greater

Returns
Sending the same message and offer to your entire past guest database is a thing of the past.
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Sending the same message and offer to your entire past guest database
is a thing of the past.

Savvy hotel marketers have invested time and effort in smart segmentation. Here are the
basics:

• identify key guest segments in your CRS/PMS

• append relevant demographic info from third-party sources

• place them into “buckets” or segmented audience groups in your CRM system based on
their demographics, historical visitation and behavioral spending patterns

• deploy unique offers, messages and experiences for each group

Emailing the “right offer to the right person at the right time” is the most
fundamental type of personalization hotels should be mastering amidst all the
hype about personalization
This targeted approach will help you stay relevant to your varied audiences, instead of
dropping rates in an attempt to sell to everyone.

For instance, the Landings Resort & Spa in St. Lucia is popular with families on summer
vacation looking for more room to play and more ways to make memories. So, they create a
summer special and marketed it directly to past guest they know to be parents. The Exclusive
Family Offer invites guests to take 50% off villa stays and free babysitting, while kids eat
free for the entire season.

Friday Freebie: One Timeless Rule Every

Hotel Marketer Should Follow
The most successful marketers know that what you sell is probably NOT what you should
market.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie! Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic
that you can implement immediately to drive more direct bookings.

This week’s freebie: Forget your hotel. It’s all about emotions.
Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon Cosmetics, famously said,“In the factory, we make
cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope.”

It’s all too easy to get caught up in selling rooms each night. Most often, hotel marketers are
buried under a barrage of daily marketing tasks that take up most of their time. It’s little
wonder then that some hoteliers may start seeing their hotel as a commodity – as a physical
product rather than a “creator of emotion.”

But, the most successful marketers know that what you sell is probably NOT what you should
market. So, instead of focusing on your rooms, your restaurant, your spa or any of your travel
awards, focus on the emotional benefit that a stay at your hotel can bring.

For example, Revlon sells makeup, but they market hope for women wanting to look their
best. Disney sells tickets to an expansive theme park, but they market family togetherness and
joy.

What feelings can come out of staying at your property? Is it precious time with friends and
family? A peaceful place to remain productive and successful on the road? Is it a place to
rekindle romance? Forget about your rational hotel features and emphasize how your guests
will feel.

Why every hotel paid media campaign needs a

landing page
Every marketing campaign should lead to a corresponding landing page.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Every marketing campaign should lead to a corresponding landing
page.

So, you’ve come up with a creative marketing idea to draw in winter bookings. You create
catchy marketing emails and witty social media posts to lead people back to your website.
But, beware: This is where your audience can fall off.

Avoid confusion and abandonment by leading visitors to a page that shows the
same offer, the same design, the same branding as your ads or email promos.
If you simply lead prospective bookers to your homepage or directly to your booking engine
and assume visitors will just take it from there, you’re sorely mistaken. Most often they will
abandon your site and head elsewhere.

Even the smallest of differences can be jarring to the customer and will slowly chip away at
the trust that you worked so hard to establish. So, keep things consistent to boost both
customer trust and conversion rates.

Instead, all hotel advertising campaigns should lead visitors to a custom landing page offering
more details and a compelling call-to-action.

Check out this example from Charlestowne Hotels and see how their Cyber Monday email
campaigns lead visitors to a correlated landing page:
Email promo for Cyber Monday
Correlated landing page with same offer, branding and prominent call to action

Can paid social media advertising rescue low

booking periods?
Smart hotel marketers are embracing paid social media advertising to alleviate periods of
weakness and drive revenue from hyper-targeted social campaigns.

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No matter how well you run and market your hotel or resort, there’s a good chance you’re
going to face some seasonality in your demand patterns, which inevitably manifest
themselves as the mortal enemy of hoteliers everywhere: the dreaded low period.

Recently, smart hotel marketers are embracing paid social media advertising to alleviate
periods of weakness and drive revenue from hyper-targeted social campaigns.

However, there are multiple best practices and nuances to be mindful of when formulating
your hotel social media advertising campaign specifically intended for aiding low periods.

Here are some key ways to utilize social advertising to drive business during those slow
times of the year:

1. Get Specific

One of the great strengths of social advertising is its ability to zero-in on very specific
audiences, based on a host of factors, like interests, location, age, income, sex and more. This
is an edge you don’t have with hotel pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which makes a social
media advertising presence all the more vital during slow periods.
 Elle Andress, social media
director at Tambourine

“You’re able to get a lot more narrower targeting on social media in your advertising, so if
you’re trying to grow specific markets, the ability to target any type of interest is something
that’s incredibly useful,” said Elle Andress, social media director at Tambourine. “You may
have specific interests or promotions you want to offer for people who like running, because
there’s a big running event happening in town. You’re able to target those really specific
audiences on social media, which you won’t find with PPC.”

2. Be Timely

Another of the helpful, hyper-focused advantages of social media advertising that can be vital
during slow periods is the ability to isolate potential guests based on when those users are
considering taking their next trip. It’s especially helpful for attracting last-minute guests,
which can be used to fill holes in demand that are too close to the day of arrival to be
marketed through less timely channels.
Social ads like this one from The Reefs in Mexico, target visitors interested in
Mexico’s Independence Day celebration in September

“Facebook recently unveiled a ‘frequent travelers’ type of targeting, so you’re now able to
serve social media ads to people who’ve shown some interest in traveling very soon,” said
Andress. “If you’re in a low period, you’re able to target people who’ve specifically shown
that they’re interested in traveling in the very near future, so you know that your ads are
being sent to people who are actively looking to book a getaway.”

3. Don’t Be Afraid of the Bill

Social media advertising tends to be more inexpensive than hotel PPC advertising, which can
get fairly costly, especially when trying to outbid deep-pocketed online travel agencies
(OTAs) in Google AdWords. That’s why it’s important to approach social media advertising
without fear of sticker shock. You’ll likely be pleasantly surprised by the advertising bang
you’ll get for your social media buck, and if it fills rooms that would be otherwise empty
during a low period, it’s worth every penny.

“The cost is going to be a lot lower in most cases, so it will be more cost effective and you’re
able to see direct results, like with PPC,” said Andress. “As soon as you drop that Facebook
tracking pixel into your booking engine, you’re able to see direct conversion and ROI with
social advertising. And the costs do tend to be a little bit lower, which is an added benefit.”

4. Embrace Creativity

Just like with your everyday “organic” social media content, social advertisements rely
heavily on creative elements, especially photos and video, to tell your hotel’s story and
engage the user. It’s ok to use candid, user-sourced content for regular unpaid posts, but your
social ads need to always be visually superior. Invest in quality hotel and resort photography,
ad copy and video that paints your hotel in the best possible light wherever social advertising
is concerned.
Hotel and tourism marketers are increasingly using video in their social
advertising to tell powerful stories

“You need to think of social media not just as this weird new type of advertising, but also as
an extension of traditional advertising,” said Andress. “So you’re going to need creative
elements that are compelling, beautifully designed and succinct. You need to treat it as a
billboard online; or as a TV commercial. Just because it’s placed on Facebook or Instagram
doesn’t mean that the creative can be less quality than people are used to seeing in other
mediums.”

5. Double-Down on Facebook and Instagram

Social media advertising can be most effective when utilized on multiple fronts, especially
when Facebook and Instagram—both part of the same corporate entity—are used in tandem.
Not only will you garner more eyeballs using this method, but you’ll also save on advertising
costs, which is always a strong incentive.

“We tend to find that the cost to advertise on both Facebook and Instagram together is much
more effective than trying to segment it out to just Facebook or just Instagram,” said
Andress. “The platform actually gives you better results if you’re willing to opt-in to multiple
placements, versus just going one or the other. Instagram’s always going to cost a little more
to advertise on alone than just Facebook alone, but if you’re willing to put your ads on both
platforms, it has a lot better return as far as cost and the audience it’s being served to.”

6. Cast A Wide Net

When using social advertising, particularly during low demand periods, don’t just reach out
to one specific demographic. Target several groups, including social users who are currently
liking/following your page, and those who haven’t liked/followed your page yet. You can
fine-tune the offerings for each group, while also growing your ongoing dedicated base of
social media followers.

“You want to hit your people who are your tried and true fans, who are maybe considering a
getaway, and they get an ad in their feed that prompts them to book,” said Andress. “The
other piece to consider is to start focusing on growing those feeder markets. If you have
specific feeder markets that you know perform very well, bring those people in, even if
they’re not fans of your page. Anyone that’s come to your website or shown interest in
traveling, but might not necessarily be a fan of your social media pages yet, are also a great
audience to include for those offers.”

7. Be Clear with the Offering

It’s also important to tailor your social media advertising offering to its purpose; in this case,
promoting specific specials intended to drive business during low periods. Being as
descriptive as possible is also useful in that setting. That’s a very different approach than say,
a generic branding promotion on social media, which is more about building positive
goodwill. Be sure to understand these distinctions when creating and approving low-period
social media ads.
Legendary ad exec David Ogilvy reminds us that regardless of the medium, the best advertising has a
clear selling proposition

“When you’re doing those offer ads, that’s when you want to showcase whether it’s a specific
room category that you’re trying to sell, or whether it’s a specific package that goes in
conjunction with something else on the property,” said Andress. “You can really get into
those micro-stories on the property level and showcase those things that make the property
special, more so in those offers and type of ads, versus a general branding campaign.”

8. Don’t Forget Branding, Either

As we mentioned above, you should create specific, targeted social ads for driving business
during low periods. But that doesn’t mean you should switch off your hotel branding
campaigns during times of need. Actually, it’s vital to keep branding campaigns alive and
active at all times, even if that means spending a little extra, so you can increase your social
media advertising scope to encompass both branding and targeted low-period ads.

“Just because you’re in a low period doesn’t mean you should ignore branding,” said
Andress. “People only want to push offers when they’re in a low period, because they think
that will automatically result in bookings, but don’t forget that branding initiative as well.
Instead of thinking of one versus the other, think about how you can segment your budget to
have both initiatives running constantly to help with those low periods and with that overall
branding, so when you hit your next low period, you’ve already grown your audiences that
much more to serve those ads to.”

9. Don’t Wait Until The Last Minute

On a final note, you don’t want to be the hotel marketer who waits until they’re facing a full-
blown demand crisis before taking action to bring in additional guests. Do your
homework, analyze your hotel’s historical performance data, and then formulate your low-
period marketing strategies well in advance. Even though social media can seem all about
instant gratification, your social advertising efforts will also benefit from advance planning,
just like more traditional channels.

“It’s never too soon to start thinking about advertising,” said Andress. “If you’re already
advertising in other mediums, social shouldn’t be considered this strange unicorn, where,
‘Maybe I’ll throw in a little bit here and there.’ If you already have your set media planned
for the year, we recommend clients provide their yearly marketing plan to us and then we’re
able to recommend different plans depending on the high period, the offers and the need. If
you have your marketing plan set, then you should definitely have your social media
advertising plan set, as well.”

What does the #1 hotel in the world know

about hotel marketing?
Hotel marketing is all about setting proper guest expectations.

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One way great hotels can get even better is to learn from the best.

In this case, we’re proud to be talking about our client, Nihi Sumba, an island resort that has
earned the distinction of being the best hotel in the world according to Travel +
Leisure readers. As such, James McBride, founding partner and CEO of Nihi Hotels, has a
wealth of knowledge that hotel marketing professionals can leverage to grow their own
successes.

From big brand to cult destination

James started his hospitality career in the corporate world with Ritz Carlton. From six hotels
in 1988, James helped grow the brand, opening 25 new hotels in locations like Hong Kong,
Singapore, and Washington DC.
 James McBride, CEO at Nihi Hotels
“One of the best things I ever did for my career was joining Ritz Carlton in its infancy,” says
James. “That opportunity doesn’t exist anymore with the level of brand saturation that exists
today. New companies and brands don’t exist at the speed I was fortunate to enjoy. I loved
the culture at Ritz Carlton and it was an amazing experience that really made my career,” he
adds.

After his time at Ritz Carlton, James moved on to run the Carlyle in New York and the
Rosewood Resorts in the Caribbean, Caneel Bay, Little Dix Bay, Jumby Bay, and the
Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe New Mexico.

In 2011, during his tenure as President of YTL Hotels, his soon-to-be business partner Chris
Burch called to tell him about a property for sale on the island of Sumba in Indonesia. This
560-acre hotel and its property represented the perfect opportunity to create a unique and
exclusive destination beach resort on the edge of the wild southeast Asian jungle.

“Chris and I went all in,” says James. “We knocked down the hotel and rebuilt it in 2012. We
became the number one hotel in the world by 2016, and again in 2017,” he adds.

Understanding the digital revolution

A brand new, remote hotel with an experience on the extreme end of the luxury scale could
easily have failed. But, James attributes the success of Nihi Sumba to an early-adopter
approach to the hotel digital marketing revolution. “It took everything to get this hotel off the
ground,” says James. “It wasn’t just one thing. It was everything. It was digital ads, PR,
print, word of mouth,” he adds.
The stunning accommodations at Nihi make for great photography and tantalizing viral,
social posts
However, social media was undeniably a key, essential piece for Nihi Sumba’s
success. “We’ve been on Instagram since 2013. One of our biggest initiatives was a strong
Instagram push in the early days of that network. We had Instagram influencers before
influencers were common. Just hacking into the power of that network and thoroughly
understanding it has been a big part of our success,” he says.

“The reasoning behind such a strong push with Instagram influencers,” says James, “is you
have to experience this place to understand what it’s all about. This property is so unique
and tribal in nature with an animus culture. As much as you explain that to people, they can’t
possibly understand. They need to see it,” he adds.
 Nih
i has benefitted from great relationships with social media influencers
But, he adds, you can’t forget some of the more traditional hotel and resort
marketing channels. “Our number one provider is Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts,” he says,
which makes sense, given the higher dollar value, exclusive nature of Nihi Sumba. “You have
to experiment some to determine what your best distribution channels are, and then double
down on those channels,” he adds.

Focus on character and exceed expectations

By 2016, the hotel had become an exclusive cult destination.

“Sixty percent of our guests are repeat guests. Those that come in July and August have been
coming for the past six or seven years. It’s expensive to come here—it’s a $20 thousand
dollar trip—but when people try to look for a similar experience anywhere in the world, it
doesn’t exist. They can’t find it,” says James.
In this industry, the consolidation of larger hotel brands is creating what James calls “vanilla
experiences.” He says, “The acquisition of Starwood by Marriott was incredibly well done.
But, the bigger companies just keep getting bigger. This represented an amazing opportunity
for Chris and me, and for other independent hotels because people want to discover places
with extraordinary character. The world has become vanilla, but people want every flavor of
ice cream.”

One piece of advice James has for hotel marketers, even if they don’t have the amazing
product that is Nihi Sumba, is to market truthfully what you do have. Hotel marketing is all
about setting proper guest expectations. “There’s nothing worse than going to a hotel that
promises a beautiful beach, but upon arrival, the beach is small and rocky. If you try to be
everything to everyone, you’re going to fail. The key to success is to highlight your unique
strengths with amazing content, and then deliver on that expectation once the guests
arrive,” he says.

Want to learn more?

Five ways to avoid the Summer lull in Group

business
Here are five key steps to take to arm your hotel during the summer slowdown:
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For many hotels, summer can be a time when group business dwindles to a crawl.

The large national association and annual company conventions tend to dry up during the
summer, and if you’re located in a warm-weather destination, convincing guests to bask in
the heat may be a tall order. It takes a concerted effort—utilizing all the tools at one’s
disposal—to overcome those challenges.

That said, there are multiple steps hotel and resort marketers can take to ensure a steady flow
of summer group business, even if it means doing things a little differently, and perhaps,
targeting some customers outside of the usual base. Here are five key steps to take to arm
your hotel during the summer slowdown:
1. Plan ahead

Solving a hotel’s summer group needs is not an issue that can be addressed with rushed
promotions created a few months in advance. Much to the contrary, it truly is a long game.
Experts say the only way to truly get out in front of these kinds of seasonal dips is to plan
years ahead, using historical data as a guide.

Mike Schugt of Teneo

“What great hotels do is they don’t wait until the last minute to have a fire sale on Expedia
or even lower their group rates dramatically,” said Mike Schugt, president of Teneo
Hospitality Group, a luxury representation firm with more than 300 member hotels and
destination management companies (DMCs). “They’re using their information technology
and systems to look at those weeks 2 to 3 years out and executing a solicitation and a new
business development plan against those.”

That includes leveraging partners, deploying sales teams and attending trade shows and
meetings where key meeting planners will be present, with the ultimate goal of booking
problematic summer dates as early as possible. With an established base of advance group
business, some hotels may even enjoy a “slingshot” effect, being able to drive higher rates for
leisure business as a result.

Planning also involves making sure other hotel departments are on board with the summer
push. Oftentimes, hotels may host smaller, lower-rated groups during the season, and those
groups tend to be more price-conscious than guests attending larger conventions. That means
your hotel needs to be prepared to serve those lower-rated guests, from the room rate to the
F&B offerings.

John Washko, EVP at Mohegan Sun

 “Things like your food and beverage need to change. You can’t expect smaller groups to pay
hundred-dollar-per-plate banquet prices, for example,” said John Washko, EVP of expo &
convention sales at Mohegan Sun. “Instead, think about special offerings you can provide at
the right price point. I always suggest building a menu around local, seasonally available
ingredients.”

2. Know thy (competitor’s) customer

Don’t be shy about gathering intelligence on your comp set, including who their sources of
valuable summer group business may be. Start by identifying who these group customers are
and what is prompting their stay, then explore why they’re not staying with you. From there
you can devise the necessary steps to capture these untapped groups.

“There are a lot of resources out there in our business to really understand who’s staying in
your competitive set historically,” said Schugt. “It makes good sense to go back and really
look at who’s staying. Is there an annual event at a certain property? Is the business flowing
into hotels in the comp set on a historical basis, but not coming to your property? It’s about
going back and finding out who, when, where and why, and starting to develop a plan to get
that.”
Tools from firms like The Knowland Group can help hoteliers discover relevant
prospective groups who have booked at nearby compset properties

Part of that process is understanding the travel patterns of prospective group guests, and
that’s where it’s good to think outside the box and get a little creative, to help cover more of
the bases. For smaller groups, local and state association business, sports teams, etc., it pays
to learn details like school summer closure schedules, sports league schedules and which
smaller associations tend to meet in summer for the convenience of members.
“There are a lot of groups that prefer to travel when school is closed for the summer, so they
can bring their families along for the trip. You can do some research and specifically target
those groups,” said Washko. “It sounds trivial, but it’s really useful to learn school
schedules for the areas where your prospective groups are coming from. That way, you can
time promotions for the prime summer weeks when they’ll be looking to travel.”

3. Make SMERFs your friends

When summer break makes some sources of group demand disappear, other segments are
poised to step in and fill at least some of the void, provided hotels proactively identify and
market to those segments. This is especially true of the many smaller groups that comprise
the social, military, education, religious and fraternal (SMERF) segment, which can offer
brisk summer business for those seeking it.

“In order to be a successful hotel 52 weeks of the year, the SMERF market is vital,” said
Schugt. “You want to start working it years in advance and building those relationships and
going to those conventions. When there’s an opportunity, you can lean on that relationship
you’ve developed to separate yourself from the competition.”

Within the SMERF market, state and regional association business can be significant, as well
as social business, like weddings and reunions. Don’t neglect to market to these groups,
including offering incentives—like a complimentary suite or hospitality area—for guests to
book direct and within the reserved group room block.

4. Utilize digital marketing to its fullest extent

While this piece of advice generally holds true for most times of the year, digital marketing
can be even more useful when it comes to selling rooms during slower periods. Hotels may
want to up their digital spending in the booking window for summer.

“The digital marketing opportunities can be significant,” Schugt said. “Devote resources to
really understanding if planners are researching things through Google, for example, and if
so, making sure you have the appropriate digital marketing strategy against that.”

One particular place to focus within that digital landscape is paid search/PPC advertising,
especially through Google AdWords. Although the cost of paid search has been rising, and
keyword competition can be fierce in the hotel industry—especially when well-funded OTAs
are in the mix—there’s still an opportunity to drive direct bookings during the summer by
upping the pay-per-click (PPC) spend in anticipation of those months.

In a recent survey of meeting planners conducted by Tambourine and ePro Direct, results
showed that planners do use internet search engines and other digital research tools to
discover new potential venues (see chart below):
“We’ll increase our digital marketing efforts as we ramp-up for that summer season,” said
Washko. “Paid search can be especially helpful, even if you just raise your bids at the times
when you need to bring in that extra business.”

5. Consider your location

Summer group business tends to vary based on geographical location and the local climate.
Year-round warm-weather destinations like Arizona, Florida and Texas can be a tough sell to
groups traveling in the summer, so in these cases, it’s vital to find nearby attractions and
“bleisure” opportunities and promote them, in order to offset concerns over the heat.

“In Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas, Louisiana, Atlanta and similar places it will be a
little more challenging,” said Schugt. “Those are the very lean time periods of the year on a
general basis compared to the key months where most business is coming in. The areas that
benefit from that are the places north of the really hot, steamy hurricane-threatened
weather.”
Northern and western meeting venues accentuate their cool evening weather to attract groups in the
summer

As Schugt suggests, the reverse holds true for colder-weather markets like Chicago, the
Rockies and the Northeast. These areas can have a hard time enticing groups to visit come
winter but offer much more agreeable temperatures in the summer. This selling point should
also be stressed in the hotel and resort marketing and can be used to target groups from
warmer climates, who may be seeking an oasis amid a sweltering summer back home.

“You take places like Colorado, where in the evenings it might be around 60 degrees, and
you may even need a light jacket,” said Washko. “For some guests, that might seem like a
much-welcome respite from what they’re used to. It’s another simple, yet effective method of
convincing them to stay in your market, and hopefully, your hotel.”

Friday Freebie: One Secret Your Booking

Engine Wants You To Know
More than just a vehicle to book rooms, your booking engine is a goldmine of profitable data.
But, only if you take the time to pull it up.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Smart hoteliers are pulling the curtain back on their booking engines to
find which room types are highest in demand by the day. This vital piece of data allows them
to price each room type accordingly for maximum revenue.
More than just a vehicle to book rooms, your hotel booking engine is a goldmine of profitable
data. But, only if you take the time to pull it up.

One piece of booking engine data that can dramatically drive your room rates is the demand
for different room types.

Usually, revenue managers monitor the ups and downs of your hotel’s bookings by date.
However, this single-focused method means you’re missing out on pricing optimally based
on various room types.

If you examine closely, you could find a higher demand for double rooms Thursday thru
Sunday. This would justify pricing the rate higher than the standard rooms over those days.

If you continue to focus your revenue management decisions based only on your entry-level
inventory, you’re only revenue managing a tiny fraction of your entire property.

20 free tools every hotel marketer should

know about
Whether you want to supplement your current paid marketing programs or if your hotel
owners didn’t allocate enough to your marketing department this year, here are 20 free hotel
marketing tools to use:

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Let’s start off by busting one of the biggest marketing myths: Great hotel marketing requires
a massive investment.

On the contrary.

Tons of FREE marketing tools have exploded onto the scene, streamlining every single hotel
marketing task you can think of. From creating eye-catching visuals, to deep diving into your
comp set’s methods, to monitoring every single social media mention.

These free tools make it easy for hotels with minuscule marketing budgets to compete with
the big boys.

Whether you want to supplement your current paid marketing programs or if your hotel
owners didn’t allocate enough to your marketing departmentthis year, here are 20 free hotel
marketing tools to use:

Content Marketing

As we have said before, hotel’s need to position themselves as the epicenter of their
destination. To do this, they need to create content, blog posts, staff picks, etc. Here are a few
free tools that make that effort much easier:
Grammarly

Even the smallest of mistakes in your hotel’s online presence can undermine a customer’s
trust in you. So, catch them before you hit publish. Grammarly is a powerful tool that checks
grammar and spelling for anything you write online, including emails, social media posts or
comments, blogs, and even the content you create on your hotel vanity website. (Free, with
paid premium options available)

Headline Analyzer

Consumers today have minuscule attention spans, thanks to ever-streaming content

online. Not only does every second count, but so does every word. Whether it’s a monthly
email you send to a targeted list or a blog post, the headline will ultimately determine the
number of people who click. Headline Analyzer scores your headline ideas and rates how
effective they are. Use this to gauge how much your headlines and subjects will resonate with
your guests. While offered by paid service CoSchedule, the Headline Analyzer is free to
everyone.

Canva
A stunning photo is worth a thousand bookings. So, are any other visuals you create for
your hotel marketing campaigns. Consider Canva as a virtual digital graphic designer. It
offers thousands of fresh and modern templates for just about any type of visual marketing
asset, such as brochures, posters, Facebook covers, email heads, and even infographics and
PPT presentations. Customize with various fonts, colors, and your hotel images. (Free, with
paid premium options available)

Piktochart

A great tool for your group sales managers, Piktochart offers free templates for eye-catching
infographics that are meant to present facts and figures beautifully. Your sales team can
create infographics to compare your offerings with the compset, whittle down the benefits of
your meeting packages, or break down event costs. (Free, with paid premium options
available)

SEO
Browseo

While eye-catching design will make your hotel website more attractive to visitors, the way
potential guests see your website is different how search engines review it. This free tool
clears out all the style and visual extras and allows you to see what the search engines see.
You can see how relevant your hotel’s web pages are to specific search terms, based on
external and internal links, META information and headings. (Free)

Keywordtool.io

Keywords are the foundation of every marketing and SEO campaign. However, Google isn’t
the only place to search for keyword terms. Keywordtool.io will show you variations of your
keywords to help you build content. SEO professionals consider this tool the best alternative
to searching on Google. (Free, with paid premium options available)

Link Explorer

Check your hotel’s web domain and page authority using this free link analysis tool. It will
check how many links your hotel’s website is getting and from which source. Plus, you’ll
also discover your most linked-to pages. Even better is that this tool will also give you this
same information on your comp set’s website. (10 free queries a month)

Comp Set Research

Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook has one of the most robust collections of audience data around, including what
people like, what they buy, where they live, who they’re friends with, etc. This free tool will
not only give you insight into your hotel’s audience, but also your competition’s audience.
Use this information to shape your messages and campaigns to target effectively. (Free;
Facebook advertising is not required)

Moat
A search on MOAT for Westin reveals many interesting ads/sizes…

This amazing free tool uncovers all the digital ads that your comp set has created. Not only
will you see the actual digital creative, but also the dimensions, where the ad appeared, and
when the campaign ran. If a hotel brand has purchased an interactive banner and rich media,
those ads will animate right on the screen. Use this tool to see what creative your comp set
has out in the market and to get inspired by other brands. (Free, with paid premium options
available)

SEO Analyzer

Enter up to three competing hotel’s URLs, and you’ll see how well their websites are
performing based on several factors, including speed and search engine optimization. On top
of this, the site will point out what your comp set is doing wrong and what they need to do to
increase search traffic, giving you rare insight into what your competition is NOT doing.
Obviously, you can deep dive into your own site’s issues. (Free)
Spyfu

This competitor analysis tool lets you research (and even download!) your comp set’s most
profitable keywords. You’ll see both paid keywords the competition has invested in, plus
keywords they’re targeting for organic search results. Leverage these details to enhance your
hotel’s own market share and outrank the others. (Search for free, with paid premium options
available)

Social Media
Clearbit Connect

Perfect for group sales managers who want to gather social intelligence on prospects, Clearbit
Connect connects to your Gmail or Outlook account and shows the LinkedIn details and
activity of prospects in an email sidebar. Even better, it will provide the company’s details
too. Including address, the number of employees, funding, and social accounts. (Free)

Social Mention
This search engine is a straightforward method of discovering and monitoring your hotel
brand’s social mentions. Specify which social platforms you want to search, and see details
including top keywords, top users and sentiment. Their exporting function helps with end-of-
month reporting, too. (Free)

Hootsuite

One of the largest, and most popular hotel social media management tools out there,
Hootsuite is an all-in-one platform for creating, curating and scheduling content, run social
media ads, measuring your hotel’s social ROI and monitoring multiple accounts and
keywords. This is one of the preferred free tools of hotel social media managers responsible
for overseeing accounts for the restaurant, spa, golf course or sister properties. (Free for up to
three social media accounts and 30 scheduled messages)

Email
Freshmail

Using Freshmail, you can create visually arresting hotel marketing emails that look similar to
stunning product demo pages. This free service offers an intuitive editor, streamlined
templates and hundreds of fonts, media blocks, buttons, drag-and-drop content sections,
images and more. Other features include A/B testing, inbox inspector and real-time tracking.
(Free for up to 2,000 emails and 500 contacts)

PutsMail

After spending hours collecting details and writing copy for your hotel’s next monthly
newsletter or email marketing campaign, use PutsMail to see a functional, immediate preview
of the email itself. This means you can skip sending countless test emails to yourself to scout
out any edits. Just enter the email’s HTML and subject line and see a fully functional
preview. (Free)

MailChimp

Want more insight into sending better marketing emails that get opened and convert?
MailChimp’s Forever Free Plan offers a host of dynamic features, including rich contact
profiles that track interactions with your hotel’s emails, and the ability to send email
newsletters based on photos you captured on your phone.

One of the more popular and valuable services is the Subject Line Researcher. Type in
phrases you’re considering as a subject line and you’ll see how well those keywords
performed for other MailChimp users. (Free for up to 2,000 email subscribers)

Analytics
Cyfe
Yes, even all-in-one marketing dashboards can be free!

Analytics is dire for the success of your hotel’s online marketing campaigns. Cyfe allows you
to monitor and analyze up to 5 widgets showing social media accounts, SEO, email
campaigns, blog, website and more from one dashboard. The large collection of available
widgets include MailChimp, Infusionsoft, Google Adsense, Instagram, YouTube, WordPress,
Highrise, Google Analytics and Moz. This streamlined solution will bring all marketing
performance data under the same roof, with the convenience of a single log-in. (Free for up
to 5 marketing widgets)

Mixpanel

Ever wish you could spy on visitors to your website, mobile site or app?

Mixpanel will monitor your customers based on their actions and behaviors, not page views.
Your hotel can monitor how visitors interact within your entire site or you can even just focus
on one page or button. Best part – they can do this without any techie programming, making
it easy for the non-techie hotel marketers. (Free for up to 5 million data points per month and
3 team members)

Convertable

Power your hotel’s email sign-up or RFP forms using Convertable, which analyzes your web
forms’ metadata to unveil crucial information on leads. Besides collecting the usual name and
email address, Convertable will show the relevant keywords the visitor used to find your
hotel, the visitor’s location, their operating system and device, which pages they visited (and
how long they spent on that page), and how the visitor arrived at your hotel site (paid,
organic, etc) in the first place.

This deep dive into the customer’s path will give you a better understanding of your audience
and gauge the success of your marketing efforts. (Free)

What is “programmatic advertising” and why

should hotel marketers care?
Here are a few pros and cons for hotel marketers to think about when considering
investments in programmatic advertising:

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Most hotel marketers associate traditional ad buying as a hit-or-miss strategy.

Buy space in a magazine… pray for an unknown return.

“Programmatic advertising,” which has generated a lot of buzz in the last few years, is data-
powered and designed to help hotels target their audience with remarkable accuracy, provide
greater insight into who’s responding to the ad and eliminate the guesswork behind hotel ad
buys.

What exactly is programmatic advertising?

Simply put, programmatic advertising is a way to automate and scale hotel advertising.
It gives hotel marketers the ability to deploy advertising to specific audiences (ie. Men with a
household income of 150K+ that live in Fort Lauderdale) wherever they congregate across a
vast global array of websites and networks.

For example, using Programmatic, hotel marketers can:

1. Target an audience (Adults 150K+) that have researched flights to any specific
city/destination

2. Create an advertising geo-fence around any given area, so that every-time a person passes
within a pre-defined threshold of that area, they can be targeted with relevant messaging

3. Utilize their existing CRM of past guests and target them virtually anywhere on the web, as
well as identify “look-alike” users that have similar online behavior profiles

Because it allows hotels to efficiently buy ad space at scale and capture new audiences, many
hotel marketers have increased their annual programmatic budgets by 40 percent since 2012.
It has become the logical alternative to Google Paid Search advertising (CPCs), which costs
continue to dramatically increase, up to $10 per click for non-branded keywords.

In 2017, programmatic advertising endured a lot of obstacles such as ad fraud (which also
pre-existed with other advertising methods) and the looming 2018 GDPR Standards.

Despite the bumps, programmatic advertising remains an increasingly popular method to

purchase and optimize hotel ads. The benefits are significant: including cost efficiencies,
robust reporting analytics and quick turnaround time (campaigns can launch in just 24
hours!).
Here are a few pros and cons for hotel marketers to think about when considering
investments in programmatic advertising:

PRO: Programmatic can hyper-target at scale

Programmatic platforms process millions of columns and rows of data about the behavior of
online consumers. “This is the type of analysis normally performed by a data scientist, but at
a greater speed and capacity,” said Todd Latter, Media Manager here at
Tambourine. “Programmatic ads are extremely targeted; hotels can now show display ads to
individuals based on their demographic data AND their online behavior.”

Todd Latter, Media Manager at Tambourine

For example:

Mary and Joan are neighbors, both fall within the same demographic parameters: They live
in the same zip code, with children who attend the same school and have similar household
incomes and ages. However, Mary and her family love skiing and winter getaways, while
Joan’s family only books cruise vacations.

A small Florida hotel located near a cruise port is looking to attract 1-2 night pre- or post-
cruise bookings won’t want to waste precious ad dollars on Mary, who represents their target
demographic, but who has no history of traveling to Florida for a cruise.

PRO: Programmatic can tap new markets

Consider the case study of a major branded hotel in San Francisco which had a goal of
generating more direct online bookings from Asian Pacific markets. Programmatic
advertising enabled the property to target individuals from key Asian Pacific markets who
had already searched for flights to San Fran for a multi-day trip.
Campaign Results

Duration: 60 Days
Investment: $2,700
Impressions: 461,000
Total hotel ecommerce Bookings (not including call center): 17
Revenue Generated: $16,200

ROI: 6-to-1

CONS: Fraud and inappropriate content

While programmatic gives hotel marketers massive scale and efficiency, it has also attracted
significant fraudulent activity as well.

According to a recent Adweek article, “Programmatic open exchanges were discovered to be

rife with all sorts of bad ad inventory issues. Threats include ad fraud, such as bots and
domain spoofing, as well as brand safety issues (think your brand’s commercial next to a
jihadi training video on some obscure website pretending to be The New York Times).
The third annual Bot Baseline report said that the economic losses due to bot fraud are
estimated to reach $6.5 billion in 2017 worldwide.”

“That point that nobody is really making is that, even if you can avoid bots or extremist sites,
the long tail of the internet is teeming with boring, irrelevant and crappy content, which
aren’t great platforms for consumer engagement. While well-known, established sites offer
good content, programmatic display networks all too often serve up disruptive, annoying
consumer experiences with annoying pop-ups, takeovers and autoplay videos with audio.”

Friday Freebie: Ditch the Extras to Clear the

Path to Purchase
Offering too many options to customers clutters the booking experience and can cause
decision paralysis.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Stop cluttering the booking experience with too many options.

Want to drive guests to make quicker transactions?

Stop offering too many options to sift through!

If you’re asking guests to select a room type, choose enhancements, and add
upgrades before making a reservation, you’re setting up a serious roadblock to that booking.

Offering too many options to customers can cause decision paralysis.

Guests are likely to get so daunted by making the wrong decision, that they delay moving
forward, putting off the decision until the next day, the next week or worse, not at all!

Scrutinize the steps you make guests go through in order to complete a booking. Do they
have to choose from 7 room types with similar descriptions? Do you give them too many
add-on and upgrade options, such as spa treatments, bottles of champagne, flowers in the
room, airport transportation, etc?

While it may seem worthwhile to let them personalize their stay, modern travelers really seek
simplicity and ease. Get them to the booking faster, instead of overwhelming them and
causing unnecessary delays.

Leave guests a clear path to purchase by paring down on their options.

The 10 Commandments of Hotel Email

Campaigns
Here are some of our email best practices for hotel and resort marketers looking to improve
their profits in 2018:

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Email marketing is one of the best ways to retain customers by engaging with past, present
(and future) guests.

Smart hotel marketers prioritize keeping up-to-date on email marketing best practices in order
to continually improve their programs and reap a growing return on investment. Here are
some of our email best practices for hotel and resort marketers looking to improve their
profits in 2018:

1. Create one clear call-to-action

One of the biggest mistakes hotel marketing managers make in email marketing is putting too
many offers or links into their marketing emails. This dilutes your potential for success, as
having multiple calls-to-action or CTAs can confuse your guests.

For this reason, it’s very important to pick one goal or primary objective for your email
before you sit down to write your copy and brainstorm your design. Your marketing emails
should have one large button that is your main call-to-action or CTA. Campaign Monitor
found that having a single, button-based CTA increased click-through rates by 28
percent over a link-based CTA. Also, having a single CTA makes it much simpler to measure
the success of your email by looking at click-through rates.

An example of a promotional
email with a single, clear CTA from The Roger, NYC
2. Be short and sweet

Although the myth that human beings have the attention span of a goldfish persists, the
reality is not much better. Litmus found last year thatthe average time spent reading an
email is around 11 seconds. Therefore, to create a message that resonates with your guests,
you must get to the point quickly. Communicate your intent with headlines and images, and
don’t spend too much time on body copy that most of your guests probably won’t bother to
read.

3. Automate what you can

Whether you’re managing a small independent property or field marketing for a major
brand, your time as a hotel marketer is precious!

Therefore, you should automate as much of your email communications as you can.

How?

Start with a basic booking confirmation email that goes out automatically as soon as the
guest’s stay is on your books. Continue with a post-stay series, with a thank you email sent
after the guest checks out, and a “we miss you” email inviting them back, sent six weeks to a
few months after that.

Next, you might try a pre-stay email series sent in the weeks leading up to the guest’s stay.
These emails can be adjusted quarterly or seasonally, depending on what works for your
brand. The important part is, automating some of your communications can help you drive
upsell revenue and repeat bookings while saving you time.

One of the most lucrative automation sequences you can create is for Reservation
Recovery. After a visitor abandons your hotel’s booking engine, it should automatically send
out a compelling email with a personalized greeting that thanks them for visiting your
website and a reminder to book. Reservation recovery automation can produce significant
results every month, as the chart below shows for a Miami property:
4. Target segmented audiences

In 2017, Mailchimp found across industries that segmenting email campaigns, or sending
different campaigns to different types of customers, produced 14 percent higher open rates
and 100 percent higher click rates.
 A great example from Sotherly Hotels of a segmented
campaign to feeder market, driving-distance members of the hotel database
For example, targeting different groups of guests might be one campaign to guests who
stayed as a couple, while another might go to business travelers or guests with children. It is
true that over-personalization can be perceived as somewhat creepy, and is frankly difficult to
do accurately at scale. But, sophisticated hotel marketers with advanced CRM systems know
that targeting guests with relevant offers are more likely to convert.
Chart from Conversion Fanatics
5. Correlate the landing page

One of the most overlooked aspects of successful hotel email marketingis the need to have a
landing page experience that satisfies the curiosity of the arriving visitor from your amazing
email campaign!

If the landing page experience doesn’t synchronize and reinforce the offer you made in the
email itself… prospective bookers will abandon the page and surf away. To avoid
dissonance, confusion and abandonment, your landing page should have the same offer,
branding, look and feel of the email itself. If you are sending a promotional offer and
directing clickers to your specials page, by all means make sure that the promo is in fact
included on the specials page!

Here’s an example from Charlestowne Hotels of a correlated email offer and landing page:
6. Practice good data hygiene

Many hotels have old or inaccurate emails in their guest databases, which increases bounce
rates and can affect your deliverability. It is important to regularly remove invalid emails.
You should also remove guests who haven’t stayed on your property for over two years.
Finally, never ever purchase email lists online. Purchased lists have a low-quality rate and
will negatively impact your bounce, unsubscribe, spam reports, and delivery rates, all hurting
your email reputation and future deliverability.

7. Keep an eye on critical metrics

There are six critical email metrics that hotel and resort marketers use to measure their
success:
• open rate

• clickthrough rate (CTR)

• bounce rate

• guest database growth rate

• unsubscribe rate

• overall email marketing return on investment (ROI)

Most email clients will track CTR, bounce rate, guest database growth rate and unsubscribe
rate for you. ROI is often a bit trickier and involves the ability to tie bookings to specific
emails within your CRM and email marketing system.

8. Stay up-to-date on the law

Finally, there are laws about email marketing in most countries, and as a marketer, it is your
responsibility to follow the law, or face costly consequences. For example, the Can-Spam Act
of 2003 is a US-based anti-spam law that mandates certain content in your emails like a
physical address and an opt-out link. More recently, the General Data Privacy Regulation
(GDPR) in the European Union mandates certain practices for data handling by entities in
operation within the EU, or handling of data belonging to EU Citizens.

This means that your hotel is affected if you have any data on any EU citizen, regardless of
your location. Non-compliance means fines up to 20 million euros or 4 percent of annual
turnover (whichever is greater). These are just two of many laws that vary regionally and
change frequently, so it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest regulations that are
relevant to your business.
9. Optimize for different devices and email clients

Your email might look great on a desktop, but perhaps that code doesn’t work as well on an
iPhone or Android. As of 2015, the vast majority of emails were opened on a phone or tablet,
so it’s important to make sure your email is coded correctly for these devices. Email clients
also vary. Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and others are all a little bit different, so it’s important to
use a tool like Litmus to test your code on different devices and clients to make sure your
guests aren’t getting a jumbled mess of characters and broken links.

10. Write from the perspective of the guest

Now that you’ve considered some of the audiences that you might target with relevant offers,
it’s important to consider their perspective when crafting those offers. What are the wants and
needs of this specific audience? If your email appears to guests to be self-serving, they’re
more likely to click delete, or worse, report your messages as spam

Friday Freebie: An Extremely Simple Fix to a

Common (and Costly) Hotel PPC Mistake
Reap more ROI from pricey PPC campaigns with this simple fix.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie! Each week we share impactful hotel marketing services
tactic that you can implement immediately to drive more direct bookings.

This week’s Freebie: Reap more ROI from pricey PPC campaigns with this simple
fix: Replace broad, generic keywords with targeted, long-tail phrases.

One of the most widespread mistakes that hotel and resort marketers make with their hotel
PPC campaigns also happens to be one of the most costly:

Wasting precious marketing dollars on short key phrases (three words or less) that are too
generic, too broad and too pricey. These include widely used phrases like “Miami hotels” or
“hotels in Nashville.” Our team has seen costs of these overused key terms up to $8 per
click, a price which will only continue to rise in the face of dramatic surges in hotel PPC
costs overall. Investing in these generic terms not only will rapidly eat away at your hotel
marketing budget but rarely converts to worthwhile bookings.
Here’s why:

People using a short phrase like “San Diego hotels” are at the very start of their travel search.
They haven’t selected a neighborhood, narrowed down the type of property they want, or
even the desired price point. In other words, they’re just entering the “dreaming stage” of the
travel funnel.

Here’s the fix:

Use your precious hotel PPC budget to pick off quality “late funnel” clicks. Invest your PPC
budget in key phrases that are hyper-specific and targeted, such as “business hotel near San
Jose Santana Row” or “family friendly hotels Oregon coast Garibaldi.”

With these targeted phrases, you’re more likely to capture traffic ready to buy AND stretch
your PPC spend

The rising cost of hotel PPC…and what to do

about it
As owners and asset managers struggle to offset the rising costs of debt service, brand fees,
energy, staff and insurances, marketing costs have also come under intense scrutiny.

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As owners and asset managers struggle to offset the rising costs of debt service, brand fees,
energy, staff and insurances, marketing costs have also come under intense scrutiny. For
many hoteliers, reducing the cost of guest acquisition is the only way forward to improving
margins.

Unfortunately, the cost of one of the most popular marketing tools available to hoteliers
continues to rise.

In just a short amount of time, we’ve seen dramatic surges in search engine marketing pay-
per-click (PPC) costs (especially on Google), burning holes in hotel marketing budgets
around the globe.

PPC is an advertising system where hotel marketers pay only when an online user clicks on
the hotel’s ad, regardless of how many times the ad was shown. A search engine, like Google,
runs PPC ads using an auction of search phrases. The highest bidder of a search term gets the
most prominent position on the SERP (search engine results page).

Incredible benefits… but at what cost?

PPC has become standard for most hotels and often consumes the majority of a hotel’s digital
marketing budget. From a small boutique property on Venice Beach to a Hilton in Chicago,
branded to independent, hotels across the globe rely on PPC as their default channel to
generate traffic from customers whose search activity demonstrates a clear intent to purchase.

Paying only when prospects are taken to your website is a revolutionary concept that’s
disrupted the advertising world, destroyed the print media business and made Google one of
the most valuable companies in history… but hotel marketers are attracted to it for other
reasons as well:

1. PPC is focused on guests at the bottom of their purchase funnel journey

2. Hotels are charged only when someone clicks… which means their ads appear to relevant
searchers for FREE. These repetitive “impressions” also have value
3. Each click can be tracked to measure ROI from online bookings and phone calls
4. PPC campaigns preserve clicks that might otherwise go to 3rd parties “squatting” on your
hotel name. Any OTA or competitor can bid on your keywords and even your hotel brand
name. In fact, they most likely already are (just look up your hotel name and see what
websites come up on top of the SERPs).

Budget Busting Costs

Unfortunately, these benefits come at a price tag that will continue to climb dramatically.

“Since 2012, we’ve seen more volatile fluctuations to Google CPC (cost per click) costs for
both branded and non-branded keywords in certain markets,” said Shannon DeFries, director
of digital strategy & optimization at Tambourine. “Most hotel’s branded keywords have
become much more expensive.”
This chart from Search Engine Land illustrates the rising cost of PPC and the associated increase in
PPC spends

What’s behind your hotel’s skyrocketing CPC prices?

And, what can you do to combat these costs so that they don’t eat your entire marketing
budget?

DeFries maps out the reasons behind the rapid inflation:

1. Google Continues to Raise the Minimum CPC

Google can set minimum cost-per-click (CPCs) however they’d like.

And, their algorithms do it automatically. The minimum CPC to appear on the top of the
search results page (SERPs) is not your actual rock bottom CPC, but the floor of your
bid. Even if your hotel doesn’t have any competition for top of page Ad rank for a particular
keyword, Google’s minimum CPCs can drive up your CPC for that keyword. This essentially
allows Google to increase your hotel’s overall cost by raising the minimum CPCs.

2. Changes in SERP Layout

Changes to the way Google displays organic (non-paid) search results have made even harder
to show up on the first page of search results, even for your own branded hotel name.

This traces back to 2015 when Google removed its signature right hand rail ads. Then, it
began to hyper-commercialize its SERPS, placing 3-4 ads at the top of organic search results.
These ads now push organic search listings further down, leading to less organic clicks and
more competition for the top-of-page ad spots.

3. Spiraling Competition

Because search engines play a role in almost every online hotel booking journey, PPC is the
default tool of not only every hotel, but also OTAs and sites like TripAdvisor. “These third
parties bid aggressively on hotel’s brand keywords, forcing hotels to keep up in order to
create direct traffic and booking revenue,” DeFries said. This means the more your
competition bids for your brand name, the higher you’ll have to bid, and so on, driving the
rising spending spiral.

4. Ad Groups With Overlapping Keywords

While you can’t change Google’s SERP formats, you do have control over this common
scenario that essentially pits you against yourself. “When running multiple ad groups and
campaigns, avoid driving up your own costs or bidding against yourself by ensuring there
are no overlapping keywords,” warned DeFries.

5. Poor Quality Scores

Quality scores determine if your hotel will pay more or less than your competition for higher
ad positions. To garner higher Quality Scores, you need to maximize the quality of your
landing pages. This means the relationship between your keywords, your ad text, and your
landing page have to be in tight harmony. If your search term for ‘Boston wedding venues’
leads simply to your homepage or your sales ‘contact us’ page where there is scant mention
of weddings, this will lead to a lower Quality Score and inflated CPC prices.

How to Combat Rising Hotel CPC Costs

What can you do to offset these increases and lower your hotel’s PPC costs?

1. Perfect your landing experience

Since competing hotels are competing for your same exact match keywords make sure clicks
lead to a relevant and compelling destination landing page experience. Here’s an example of
a visually arresting PPC landing page from The Whitehall in Houston:

2. Leverage Extensions
First, max out all possible Google Adword extensions, where you can offer more hotel details
beyond the basic ad headline and hotel copy. The idea is simple: The more real estate you
take up with your ad, the more your hotel ad will stand out and get clicked on.

3. Dial Down Keyword Bids

If you’re still paying more than you’d like, despite having solid copy, robust ad extensions
and quality landing pages, try peeling back on your bids. Tweak to test how much you can
lower your CPC without compromising on the number of clicks.

4. Monitor Progress
Scrutinize your search query reports to identify which keyword variations are working and
which aren’t. Plus, monitor and optimize as needed based on auction insights within the
AdWords platform.

5. Continuously Add to Your Negative Keyword List

Eliminate terms that likely cause irrelevant or negative clicks that are unlikely to convert into
a booking. For example: if you are paying to show up in search results for “hotels in
cleveland,” make sure you add words like “Cheap,” “discount” or “free” to your negative
keyword list.

6. Consider Other Options

Look into other efficient methods of targeting non-branded keywords, including RLSA
(remarketing list search ads) and AdWords Express. Also, consider other platforms such as
programmatic retargeting, as well as meta-search advertising channels like Google Hotel
Ads, Tripadvisor, Trivago, Kayak or Wego

Why Is Hotel Marketing so Hard? (And What

to Do About It)
Hotel marketing is getting more and more complicated, and it’s unlikely that the trend will
revert any time soon, so you’d better be prepared to overcome new obstacles and challenges
every week.

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If you’ve been in the hotel industry long enough, you’d remember when having a few
wholesalers’ contracts, a fancy brochure and a telephone number were pretty much all you
needed to stay in business.

The bad news is that the good ol’ days are gone for good.

Hotel marketing is getting more and more complicated, and it’s unlikely that the trend will
revert any time soon, so you’d better be prepared to overcome new obstacles and challenges
every week.

An unimaginable level of sophistication and complexity

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change,” said Stephen Hawking… and now more than
ever, hotels need to be pretty intelligent. The hotel industry in 2018 looks like Darwinian
natural selection on steroids and in order to survive, hotels and resorts will have to adapt,
evolve or be extinct.

From the early SEO hacks of the mid/late 90’s to the generic-keyword ads of the early ’00s,
from Chris Anderson’s Billboard Effect to AI chatbots, hotel marketing has evolved to a level
of sophistication and complexity simply unimaginable just a decade ago.

COMPLEX GOALS = HARD WORK

In order to understand how hotel marketing has become so hard, we need to understand the
overarching goal of hotel marketing (If your goals are difficult, then it should be no surprise
the related activity is equally arduous).

With that in mind, we humbly offer up Sergio Zyman’s (the legendary Coca-Cola Marketing
Executive) definition of the goal of marketing: the sole purpose of marketing, he wrote, is “to
get more people to buy more of your product, more often, for more money.”
Today, most hotel marketers use this definition as their goal and subsequently, they face hard
work every day.

COMPLEX CHALLENGES = HARD WORK

Hard goals make the work of hotel marketing harder… but on top of that, there are daily
tactical challenges as well, for example:

• too much expectation placed on hotel marketers

• not enough support/investment

• too much disconnected technology

• vendor fatigue

• too little actual product differentiation

• too little actual pricing differentiation

• too little actual distribution differentiation

• new shiny tech objects all the time

• multiple screen sizes/experiences to manage

• historically high results in ADR/AOR and Revpar have made it hard to “raise the bar”

• lack of comprehensive reporting systems

• siloed departments (sales vs revenue mgt vs marketing)

• owners with short term horizons to flip properties; unwilling to invest in direct audience

For this Article, we picked five key issues that, in our opinion, contribute to the
exceptional difficulty of hotel marketing:

1. Fragmentation
2. Expectations
3. Distribution
4. Apathy
5. Hype

1. FRAGMENTATION

We live in an overconnected world, but when it comes to travel technology, it seems like
little has changed since the late 90’s. It is not unusual, in fact, for a hotel to have a dozen
different providers (PMS, CRS, Channel Manager, Booking Engine, CRM, etc.), not
communicating with each other.

As this chart from our friends at Snapshot shows: multiple, disconnected vendors and systems
will inevitably challenge any efforts to drive bookings. Your marketing operation needs to be
a well-oiled machine to outperform the compset. However, that’s near impossible when
you’re juggling disparate vendors, shuttling messages back and forth to make sure everyone
is aligned. Worse yet, no one vendor will take full responsibility when campaigns fail and
goals aren’t met.

2. EXPECTATIONS

Another friction point arises whenever owners and asset managers expect marketing
executives to perform at unnatural speed, with minimal resources and (yet) be able to provide
ever-increasing results.
The misalignment between the management and the marketing team is one of the main
reasons why hotel marketing is so hard.

No matter how intimidating your boss might be, if you do not man-up (or put on your big girl
pants!) and ask for that additional budget you absolutely will need, you’re basically
sabotaging your whole department (and potentially your career) from the start. No goal can
be achieved without a sufficient and adequate budget. An AdWords campaign for example,
could need $1,000/month to guarantee continuity and ROI, so if management is immovable
and allocates only half of the budget needed, they shouldn’t be surprised when the campaign
goes offline by the 15th of each month, harming the final campaign outcome.

Hotel marketers need to ensure their owner’s expectations are aligned with the marketing
budget.

3. DISTRIBUTION

Let’s not forget that distribution (Placement of your product) is one of the 4 “Ps” of classic
marketing theory. And nothing is more complex for today’s hotel marketers than managing
the distribution landscape (see Spaghetti chart above again)!

For example, you have your channel management strategy correctly mapped and setup,
you’re respecting the agreements with all your distribution channels but, out of the blue, you
find a cheaper rate, usually sold by an agency you have never heard of before and have no
contract with…

Sounds painfully familiar, doesn’t it?

Even though wholesalers created their business model for offline distribution, as their market
share started to shrink, their only way many found to survive was unbundling package rates
and selling them at a lower price all over the web, creating a Babylon of online offers.

Hotel marketers and revenue managers often have no other options than making “test”
bookings on these obscure channels, finding out who is the wholesaler responsible for the
contract breach, getting in touch with the respective account manager and, with some luck,
stopping the discounted price from spreading, re-establishing price parity, until (eventually)
the vicious circle starts all over again. On top of that, the complexity of juggling room
inventory and rates across all the ever-growing endpoints, such as metasearch engines,
consortia, etc., usually gives little to no control on the very end of the booking funnel, making
even the best marketing teams extremely frustrated.

4. APATHY

If this has always been the way you run your business, why change it now, right?

Wrong.

“There is no growth or success without change,” said Ed Catmull, the brilliant mind behind
Pixar. Unfortunately, many hotels start resting on their laurels until they enter a downward
spiral of lethargy, from which they wake up only when the proverbial s*it hits the fan and are
forced to adapt and improve. Unfortunately, with record high industry results, too many hotel
marketers are suffering from apathy; taking your foot off the gas and coasting actually makes
the job harder in the future.

According to Jamie Adams, vice president of asset management at The Carlyle Group, a
well-known hotel asset manager: “Market share is so vital and we won’t gain if we’re not
constantly figuring out how to do it better,”he said. Adams stresses that in the age of daily
developments in technology, you have to remain flexible, agile and on your toes. “You’re
either moving forward or backwards. The real danger is if you fall behind.”

Getting too comfortable with ‘business as usual’ will eventually yield diminishing returns.
Your competition will get smarter, new hotels will enter your market, and suddenly the same
rules won’t apply anymore.

And while recklessly going against the grain is never a good idea, you should make sure to
find your place in the market, tell a story that is different from your comp set. Don’t be afraid
to try new approaches and experiment, even when (or especially when) the market stagnates,
as this will give you an advantage over the competition.

5. HYPE

One year in a dog’s life is approximately seven human years and the same formula can be
applied to technology.

Every day we hear about the “Next Big Thing” that will disrupt the Industry (remember
Google Glasses?”).

But all that glitters is not gold, so it’s important not to get too excited about any new shiny
object out there. It’s worth remembering that nine out of ten startups will fail. The travel
industry seems to be obsessed when it comes to unproven new tech that is incompatible with
their 23 other existing systems. Some of them could, eventually, become the standard in our
Industry, but you should not put too much energy and money on something that may or may
not work in the next five years.

Remember how much effort you put in optimizing your MySpace profile back in 2005?

Neither do we.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Here’s our 5 key takeaways for dealing with the inherent difficulties of hotel marketing:

1. AVOID FRAGMENTATION
Choose a PMS, Channel Manager and hotel booking engine that’s integrated with as many
third-parties as possible (and willing to create new integrations if/when needed without extra
costs). You may not know today what data you will need to pull out tomorrow

2. MANAGE EXPECTATIONS
If you need more advertising budget, new tools or more people on your team, you better ask
for it! Is it better to sound cocky and arrogant or to miss your yearly budget?

3. REGAIN CONTROL OVER DISTRIBUTION

Restrict your OTA partners from using your brand name on search marketing. Bulletproof
your wholesalers’ agreements by sticking with dynamic rates only, or by adding clauses to
prevent unbundled rates to be sold online. Make sure to partner with a booking
engine/channel manager that provides connection to both metasearch engines and GDS, in
order to maximize your reach and regain control of your distribution.

4. AVOID APATHY
A mobile website and a good booking engine are not enough anymore. Hotel marketing has
reached an incredibly high level of sophistication, as we stated earlier, so, if you want to be
prepared to kick some butt, you may want to have something new and different in your
quiver.

5. BUZZWORDS ARE JUST BUZZWORDS

Some technologies are still at their infancy stage. And some of them will never be a fit for
your hotel anyway. So, if your average guest is 60 years old, you could probably drop that
brand new Snapchat ad campaign.

Friday Freebie: 7 Cool Google Hacks for

Hotel Marketers
Here’s how to eliminate useless Google search results and search like a pro:

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.
This week’s freebie: Stop wasting time researching on Google and wading through useless
pages. Efficient hotel marketers know how to properly tweak their marketing questions to get
the most targeted and relevant results.

You know the drill.

You turn to trusty Google when you want to know something about pretty much anything.
Especially how to get better marketing results for your hotel!

However, we have all squandered valuable time scanning irrelevant search results to find the
answer we’re looking for. Don’t be fooled – not all Google searches are created equal. There
are actually some brilliant shortcuts that only the savviest of internet searchers know about.

Here’s how to eliminate useless Google search results and search like a pro:

1. When You Want to Find the Origin of an Online Image

Stumbled across a wonderful destination image or even a photo of your own property that
you’d like to use in future marketing materials? Do a reverse image search to track down the
original photographer.

Go the ‘images’ tab on Google, click on the camera icon in the search bar, and either insert
the photo’s URL or the image itself. Google will then show where else the image has shown
up online.
2. When You Want to Search An Exact Phrase:
Place quotation marks around your query to search for exact words, such as marketing
slogans or promotion names.

Example:
“hotel social media best practices”
3. When You Want to Search Related Words At The Same Time

Place a tilde before a word so that search results will also show the word’s synonyms or
related words

Example:

Summer hotel ~promotions

Results will also show social media campaigns, strategies, marketing ideas, and tips.

4. When You Can’t Remember The Exact Phrase to Search

What if you wanted to look up Kalibri Labs latest report and could only remember part of the
name? Place an asterisk in place of the unknown words and Google will even search for
phrases that are often misquoted.

Example:

Demystifying digital * hotel

5. When You Want to Narrow a Search By Excluding a Word

Place a dash in front of the word you want to eliminate from the search results.

Example:
Clever winter marketing ideas -Christmas

How to gather marketing analytics –advertising

6. When You Want to Search Within a Particular Website

Recall a great article and post you read on an industry or marketing site? Instead of using the
search function within the website itself, simply place the word ‘site’ in your Google query.

Example:
“abandoned reservations” site:tambourine.com
alexa in hotels site:lodgingmagazine.com

7. If You Want to Find Similar Websites and Resources

When looking for resources and tools that are similar to a specific site, use the word ‘related.’

Example:
Related:smartmeetings.com
Related:socialmediaexaminer.com
Smart hotel marketers are going “old school”
No matter how much on-the-job experience you’ve amassed over the years, successful hotel
marketers still need to crush the subjects they learned in high school and/or college.

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It’s graduation time.

And as we sit on uncomfortable auditorium chairs watching our kids, nephews, nieces or
grandkids beaming with eagerness for the road ahead… we can’t help think back to the good
ol’ days of our own high school and college experiences.

Yet, the more our school days fade away in the rearview mirror of life, the further we get
from some of the critical lessons we learned back in the day.

No matter how much on-the-job experience you’ve amassed over the years, successful hotel
marketers still need to crush the subjects they learned in high school and/or college.

Here are a few courses we can all use a refresher on:

1. English

One of the most vital weapons in any marketer’s arsenal—and a skill that’s often sorely
lacking in the business world—is having a strong command of the English language,
including a talent for narrative writing.

Successful hotel marketing efforts begin with simply having a compelling story to tell and
being able to tell it cleanly and professionally. Whether you are crafting a newsletter, press
release, blog, advertisement or website copy, all efforts hinge on your language skills. Not to
mention the countless emails, phone calls and meetings happening in the background, where
your language skills will also need to shine.

And that’s not all:

Marketers who excel in English may possess strong analytical abilities (used for picking apart
all those words) and are usually great at empathizing, since appreciating literature (and its
many characters) hinges upon this core ability. That translates well into understanding
customers, who require marketers’ empathy, in order to truly understand their wants, needs,
dreams and pain points.

An interesting Study from Grammarly concluded that better writers make more money

2. Math

Now more than ever, it is hard, quantifiable numbers that drive marketing, especially when it
comes to harnessing analytics and data for smarter campaigns and management/ROI
reporting. You don’t need to be a trained mathematician, but you do need to view numbers as
your friend and embrace them, in order to develop effective marketing plans, analyze results
and craft meaningful reports.
And unlike other subjects, math is definitive.

You either know the answer or you don’t.

Similarly, hotel owners demand solid math skills from their management teams… they
expect their sales and marketing leaders to contribute to revenue in a measurable way,
communicate in number-speak and be accountable for tangible results.

There may have been a time in the past when hotel marketers could get by with subpar math
skills, but all of that changed with the advent of Google Analytics, which has made numbers
the new boss.

3. Psychology

Consumer behavior has always been driven by psychology, and now even more so in the
digital age, where competition is intense and trust from customers is minimal. In order to
drive business, it’s essential to get into the heads of customers, understanding their desires,
pains and fears, and then address those psychological factors with relevant marketing efforts
and frictionless ecommerce.

Buying behavior also strongly hinges upon emotion, so tapping into those consumer emotions
can pay huge dividends when properly applied.
As we explored in our previous blog regarding web buying decisions, your sales will suffer if
you fail to foster trust with your visitors and give them a psychological motivation to buy.
According to a recent Western University study discussed in the Harvard Business Review,
that begins with understanding the methods of reasoning customers use when making online
purchases, depending on the level of risk involved with that decision. This is the kind of
psychological sensitivity that can make the difference between a successful and failed
marketing campaign.

4. History

It may not be the American Revolution or ancient Rome we’re talking about, but having an
appreciation and mind for history will carry you far in your day-to-day marketing efforts.

Your property’s past results also provide valuable lessons for the future. If every weekend in
December and January has been slow for the past four years, it’s easy to see that this coming
year will be the same unless you do something to fix it. If every weekend is busy, but you
don’t adjust your rates to maximize your yield, you lose out on potential income.
History is also your friend when it comes to knowing guests’ habits, past purchase behaviors,
the demographics of your area, annual events and demand drivers and more. Part of this
effort can be enabled with technology—a good CRM system and data mining process will
help you amass customer histories you can utilize in the future. In the era of big data,
understanding history and its value can help marketers cut through the clutter and target the
things that count.

Finally, if possible, make history work for you.

Is your hotel housed within a historic building? Utilize that in your marketing message. Or, if
it has an interesting/rich history, leverage that in all messaging. And don’t underestimate the
power of nearby historical attractions; make sure to know all about those that are located near
your hotel, and how you can convince the history buffs visiting those places to stay with you.

5. Economics

A firm grasp of economics is yet another hotel marketing essential, which often works
directly in tandem with math-related functions like data analytics. Unless you understand the
trending economics of the industry, your compset and region, it will be tough to make sense
of your property’s performance.
The more you analyze relevant economic stats, the better you will be at forecasting future
trends and providing context to management/ownership about your property’s results.

Economics, like psychology, also plays a key role in driving consumer behaviors, particularly
with regard to pricing, booking pathways and reservation abandonment.

Successful hotels are reaping direct bookings because they learned how to tap into the
psychology behind buying behaviors and can encourage them by implementing psychology
and human behavioral insight into their hotel website design.

Time to do your homework

Metasearch: is it right for your hotel?

If your guests are using metasearch sites to book hotel accommodations, you need to have a
presence on those sites. Fortunately, there are some great benefits to investing in metasearch.

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While OTAs have long been a dominant source of indirect hotel bookings, metasearch sites
like Kayak, Trivago, TripAdvisor, and Google have recently become much more relevant in
hotel marketing and distribution channel discussions.

As you know, OTAs are indirect booking channels that own the relationships with your
guests. Metasearch sites, on the other hand, are primarily not booking channels. They are
advertising platforms on which hotels (and OTAs!) can market their inventory. From the
price-sensitive consumer perspective, metasearch sites have the distinct perceived advantage
of being a one-stop shop—it’s a way to research hotels available during their desired travel
dates, read reviews and compare prices between different booking channels (including the
OTAs).

However, we’ve recently seen a blurring of the lines between OTAs and metasearch sites.
First, a sweeping trend of industry consolidation has led to acquisitions; like Kayak by
Priceline and Trivago by Expedia. Also, much like the OTAs, TripAdvisor and Google have
integrated inventory into their search results with a Book Now button, leading many to
wonder whether a hybrid OTA/metasearch model is on the way.

Given this information many hoteliers are asking, do I really need to invest time and money
in metasearch?
The answer is, probably yes. If your guests are using metasearch sites to book hotel
accommodations, you need to have a presence on those sites. Fortunately, there are some
great benefits to investing in metasearch.

What are the benefits?

1. Reduce cost per booking

OTAs like Priceline and Expedia are now charging booking commissions as large as 30
percent, taking ever larger cuts of the hotel’s bottom line. Metasearch sites, however, operate
on a different model, as businesses pay on a cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per click
(CPC) basis. This often results in hotels paying much less overall per booking, allowing them
to keep more of their profits. TripAdvisor, for example, offers a CPA model and charges only
12-15 percent of the booking, in exchange for a guaranteed 25-50 percent visibility in search.

Google’s metasearch program is a significant opportunity for hoteliers to lower their cost-per-booking
vs OTAs

Google has also jumped on this model in their own way with the Google Hotel Ads Program.
With this program, ads appear deeper in the consumer’s hotel search process, as prospective
guests narrow their requirements for your specific type of hotel, resulting in stronger
conversion rates and higher returns on investment. Hotels can choose the OTA-like CPA
model or the traditional CPC model. But in both cases, the hotel “owns” the customer and
receives the contact when the consumer books.

2. Increase your visibility

Traffic to metasearch sites has tripled since 2014. This isn’t likely to slow down any time
soon, given developments like the meteoric rise of Google’s travel business and
the heavyweight ad spend of sites like Trivago and TripAdvisor. Metasearch sites are
increasing in popularity with consumers and hotels should use this to their advantage.

3. Defend your turf

Hyde Resort in Florida: an example of

an independent property disrupting OTA squatters on their brand name on metasearch (Google)

Expedia and Priceline Group together spent $5.8 billion on advertising last year, with 23
percent ($1.3 billion) of that deployed on TripAdvisor and Trivago. In other words, your
OTA partners are likely using metasearch sites to sell your hotel. Why not claim your own
presence on those metasearch sites, pay a lower price for the booking AND get the contact
info of the guest?

4. Own your guest data

With metasearch sites, hotels receive the booking as a direct booking, as these sites either
redirect guests to the hotel’s website or integrate directly with the hotel’s CRS/booking
engine. This means you receive the guest’s contact information and other data, rather than a
generic Booking.com email address. Once you have that data, you now have the opportunity
to market directly to that guest with targeted email marketing and win back direct, repeat
business.

5. Diversify your marketing

The cost of other direct traffic sources continues to rise, making metasearch a proven, viable
option to diversify your marketing investments. Search engine marketing pay-per-click (PPC)
costs (especially on Google), burning holes in hotel marketing budgets around the globe.

“Since 2012, we’ve seen more volatile fluctuations to Google CPC (cost per click) costs for
both branded and non-branded keywords in certain markets,” said Shannon DeFries, director
of digital strategy & optimization at Tambourine. “Most hotel’s branded keywords have
become much more expensive.”

This chart from Search Engine Land illustrates the rising cost of PPC and the associated increase in
PPC spends
Metasearch: Keys to success
1. Pick the right sites

Some metasearch sites may yield better results than others, depending on factors like your
hotel’s location, the type of experience you offer, and the types of guests you attract. If
you’re a small hotel with fewer resources, it’s a good idea to closely monitor your return on
CPA/CPC spend for each site. This way you can prioritize the channels that perform best for
you.

2. Use technology to your advantage

The thought of managing yet another distribution channel may be daunting to revenue or
channel managers who are strapped for time or have little to no experience with CPC ads.
Fortunately, there are ways to easily manage all of your distribution channels in one place,
including automated best rate guarantee on your direct booking engine and dashboards that
instantly show you your return on investment.

3. Get help if you need it

On the other hand, while revenue and channel managers at branded hotels may leverage
technology to help them scale, their counterparts at independent properties may struggle with
the additional load and should consider outsourcing metasearch to a trusted and experienced
agency partner who will help them achieve their revenue goals.

4. Close the loop

Now that you have a relationship with this guest, it’s important to convert that guest to a
direct booker. Make sure your marketing team communicates with these guests regularly
after the stay with offers and incentives to book directly with you the next time they take a
trip to your area.

Friday Freebie: Focus On, Then Fix Your

Booking Failures
By only focusing on what works, you’re hurting your hotel’s revenue. Instead, find out what
makes visitors abandon their bookings and fix it.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: By only focusing on what works, you’re hurting your hotel’s revenue.
Instead, find out what makes visitors abandon their bookings and fix it.

It’s a seemingly profitable hotel marketing tactic: Find what works and keep doing it.

Our advice: Don’t rely solely on this method.

Or, solely on your current customer database.

By only focusing on how past guests successfully landed on your website and booked a room,
you’re ignoring the thousands of others who didn’t “survive” your booking process and
booked elsewhere. It’s an overly optimistic view that hides whatever is stopping you from
capturing even more direct bookings.

In addition to celebrating what IS working, also dig into what IS NOT working, to increase
hotel revenue.

Why did they leave?

What could have made them stay?

Here’s how:

Closely monitor the points of booking abandonment. Leverage your website’s analytics
or heat mapping software like HotJar to find out exactly where potential guests decided to
bounce.

Is it on the homepage?

The accommodations page?

Or, the transition from your website to the booking engine?

Find out where you are losing potential guests on your website and pinpoint the
issue. Perhaps your photography doesn’t inspire guests to move forward. Or, the hotel copy is
generic, long-winded and not written to convert. Or, perhaps you’re driving people away with
an inconsistent experience when guests finally press ‘book’.

If you want to thoroughly optimize your hotel’s most successful conversion methods,
consider the entire audience — those who booked and those who bounced
How Can a WWII Scientist Help Your Hotel
Survive?
7 ways to prevent survivorship bias from hurting your hotel’s revenue.

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In WWII, Allied planes would often return to their bases with hundreds of holes from enemy
guns. This inspired crafty ground crews to bolt on metal plating over the holes to strengthen
the planes and prevent future losses. They assumed that the evidence clearly indicated where
they should place the extra protection.
But one American scientist wasn’t so sure… Abraham Wald, a brilliant mathematician and
statistician, intervened and pointed out that while the surviving planes had been hit severely,
they were still able to fly safely home.

He urged the military commanders to add more armor to the parts of the plane where there
was NO DAMAGE. Wald theorized that the planes that didn’t make it back must have been
hit in different places than the planes that did make it back.

In other words, it was the other parts of the plane that needed reinforcements – not the parts
with obvious holes.

Enlightened commanders adopted Wald’s recommendation and his brilliant intervention

would end up saving the lives of thousands of Allied airmen.

Survivorship Bias: A Universal Human Error

Wald’s mind-blowing theory about the bombers’ weak spots is a classic example
of survivorship bias. This is actually a common human error that leads us to pay more
attention to survivors and “winners” instead of trying to understand the failures.
Almost everyone has survivorship bias without realizing it. Our entire global culture is about
celebrating winners and forgetting the losers.

As author David McRaney writes in his amazing article on Survivorship Bias: “If you are
thinking about opening a restaurant because there are so many successful restaurants in your
hometown, you are ignoring the fact that only successful restaurants survive to become
examples. Maybe on average 90 percent of restaurants in your city fail in the first year. You
can’t see all those failures because when they fail they also disappear from view.” As Nassim
Taleb writes in his book The Black Swan, “The cemetery of failed restaurants is very silent.”

Think about these other examples of how you (and millions of others) focus solely on
“survivors:”

Celebrities

Many children grow up wanting to be famous. After all, the rock stars and TV stars they see
everyday are all famous. So, there is plenty of opportunity, right? The truth is that famous
actors, musicians, comedians, etc. are only the ones who ‘made it.’ They survived the
auditions, the competition and let’s face it – had some good luck or God-given talent. But,
what about the millions of others who tried and failed to win the audition, to get that starring
role in a sitcom, to even make it past a casting agent? This is a prime example of how we
tend to obsess on and worship the winners, rather than the losers. If you understand
survivorship bias and you truly want to be a rock star, then you would be better off
interviewing failed musicians to understand how they veered off the road to success.

Senior Citizens

The most common question that people who live past their 90’s receive: “How did you do
it?” One senior citizen could say they never smoked or drank one drop of alcohol in their life.
Another might answer that they drank often, smoked everyday and ate whatever they wanted.

Whatever the answer, it doesn’t matter.

Because, we really should be looking at the millions of other senior citizens who DIDN’T
make it past 90. What did they do that prevented them from reaching 90? What could you
learn from them to stretch your own lifespan?

Fitness Gurus/Products

The fitness and health industry is notorious for profiting from people’s survivorship bias’.
Consider how many weight loss success stories you see promoting a certain workout, diet, or
even the advice of a fitness guru. It’s easy to fall for these testimonials and believe that these
extraordinary claims produce consistent results.

Reality Check: These commercials not only show the survivors, but the super-survivors. The
extreme and rare positive outcomes, like the person who lost 50 lbs in just a month. At the
same time, they hide the failures and even the normal results, like the participant who lost a
more stable 5 lbs in a month.

Survivorship Bias is Also Rampant in the Hotel Industry

Think about it.

We have survivorship bias thinking about our own guests and our own hospitality marketing
efforts. Most, if not all, of your present data come from the guests or group business clients
that successfully made a reservation.

But, what about the people who didn’t?

What about the people who visited your hotel’s website, clicked on a couple of pages, then
decided to stop looking and left?

Here’s the truth: The guest intelligence you have right now is most likely misleading, over-
optimistic data that only focuses on the people who actually made it to your hotel PMS. Most
hotel’s guest data leaves out those people who didn’t ‘survive’ the buying journey. You’re
overly focused on your known audience, instead of studying the business you lose.

To thoroughly optimize your hotel’s most successful conversion paths, you need to consider
the entire audience, not just those who actually converted. In other words, you need to
consider not just what’s working, but what’s not working, to drive bookings.
7 Ways to Prevent Survivorship Bias from Hurting Your Hotel’s Revenue:

1. Stop Copying Successful Hotels

It’s easy to look at successful hotels and think their strategy can be replicated in your
market. But also take time to consider the other properties that failed in that same location,
especially within the same chain scale level. Find out what went wrong, instead of only
focusing on what went right for the survivors.

2. Conduct Loss Analysis on Failed Group Business Bids

Hotels often focus their sales efforts on seeking repeat business from specific groups, their
“best customers.” Then, they proudly proclaim their venue is a ‘favorite’ of medical meeting
planners, for example. Or, that their business is made up of mostly annual tech conferences.
Instead, ask why other groups haven’t booked your hotel? What other industries are you
missing out on?

Whenever you lose a piece of group business, the sales person needs to ask the meeting
planner, “What went wrong? Why didn’t our hotel win your event?” This simple move could
dramatically alter your sales efforts, sending your sales numbers skyrocketing in the future.

3. Discover Which Companies are Visiting Your Hotel Site

You can find out if meeting planners are visiting your website, even if they don’t send a
message or fill out an RFP. We at Tambourine (and many other firms) have the ability to
identify inbound website visitors by company, enabling our clients’ sales teams to find out
which companies are visiting your meetings and event pages. For example, you can find out
if someone from Ford or Microsoft started clicking around on your site.

This now-warm lead can act like a trigger for the sales person on your team (in this case, the
sales person who is in charge of the Pacific Northwest market since Microsoft is
headquartered near Seattle) to reach out to the meeting planning department at that company.

4. Conduct User Testing

Don’t fall in the trap of assuming what customers think about your hotel website. The only
way to know how potential guests are interacting with your website and booking engine is
to engage random, unbiased users to test it. (Shameless Plug: As part of our hotel marketing
services, we implement random user testing for clients, and even provide videotape
footage of tester’s live feedback.)

5. Monitor Points of Abandonment

Use your analytics to find out where you start losing potential guests on your website. Do you
lose them right on the homepage? Or, when they encounter inconsistency moving from your
website to the booking engine? Fixing whatever the problem is means you’re helping more
visitors ‘survive’ the purchase journey to book a room.

6. Add More Languages

Your hotel is a global product. Or, at least it could be if you allowed your website to ‘speak’
to global audiences. Right now, too many American hotels only use English on their website.
So, what if a family from Spain wanted to book a stay? Or, a group of business people from
Dubai? You may think your hotel only attracts American travelers (or that virtually everyone
speaks English), but that is survivorship bias at work… you only see English-speaking
guests! If your website is only written in English, then only English-speaking travelers book
your hotel, which leads you to assume that only English speakers want to stay with you.
Consider what adding other language translations could do to attract global travelers.

7. Don’t Put Your Marketing on Repeat

It may seem like a smart strategy to repeat what worked for you last year, but again, this is
survivorship bias at work. It’s even smarter to figure out why certain marketing tactics and
campaigns failed. Did you have enough resources? Did the campaigns have enough time to
flourish? Or, did you back down and just grab the lowest hanging fruit (relying on OTAs)?

It’s vital to know about ALL of your hotel’s online visitors and potential customers – not just
those who successfully booked. This gives you more insight into how potential guests and
group business clients engage with your hotel in their research phase. Plus, it will help you
identify what to fix and where to make improvements. Examining your losses and avoiding
survivorship bias can be the pivotal move that will lead to quicker buying cycles and higher
conversion rates.

Friday Freebie: Take this piece of hotel

marketing advice from your Dad
In honor of Father’s Day, we celebrate one of Dad’s (many) favorite expressions and its
relevance to hotel marketing: “Share with the other kids!”

Sharing is caring!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: In honor of Father’s Day, we celebrate one of Dad’s (many) favorite
expressions and its relevance to hotel marketing: “Share with the other kids!”

Its an important lesson for hotel marketers who fail to work closely with their revenue
management (and group sales) teammates.

All too often, revenue management and marketing teams operate in silos. Although the two
disciplines use different tool sets and metrics to execute their strategy and measure their
performance, they have a common goal: driving revenue!

For many hotels and hotel management companies, one of their main challenges is shifting
the culture of the organization and the mindset of each department so that collaboration
becomes routine.

Hotel marketers should at least be doing these five things with their peers:

1. Building revenue targets together

2. Informing revenue management and sales of impending campaigns
3. Examining periods of weakness together
4. Identifying segments that are causing shortfalls
5. Determining what can be done as a unified team… then doing it

Which Direct Booking Incentives Actually

Work?
What’s specifically working right now to motivate consumers to book direct?

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As hotel and resort owners strive to improve margins by reducing the cost of guest
acquisition, hotel marketers are increasingly focused on driving direct hotel bookings, with
the major brands spending millions annually to evangelize the benefits.

And according to experts, brand.com sites are already seeing strong returns on these
initiatives—although it will take years of ongoing effort to achieve a broad consumer shift—
so the question is: What’s specifically working right now to motivate consumers to book
direct?

Surely, promoting a direct booking strategy begins with understanding that different
incentives and messages are effective for different chain scales and geographies. What works
for a large resort in California may be very different than what is effective at a select-service
property in downtown Cleveland.

That’s why it’s so vital to separate the actionable items from the generalities.

Whichever direct booking incentive you choose, remember that success hinges upon creating
perceived value to stimulate bookings. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel at your hotel to
do it—you can showcase proven, every day offers and amenities—as long as you spotlight
those perks across all your direct channels, these offerings are often perceived by guests as
exclusive to the direct channel, which may make the crucial difference when competing for
bookings. Remember: OTAs have to manage thousands of properties, its difficult to
impossible for them to keep up with every offer at every hotel.

Looking across our diverse portfolio, we evaluated which book-direct benefits have a low
cost, but a high perceived value to guests.

Here’s what we found:

1. Enhanced On-Property Experiences:

Many properties offer differentiated on-property services and experiences to direct bookers,
such as club-level access, room upgrades or late checkouts. These are powerful differentiators
that hotels can offer, but OTAs cannot. It’s an important distinction to capitalize upon, since
there will always be certain benefits that can only be provided by those directly managing the
hotel.
The Roger in NYC showcases significant on-property benefits to direct bookers.

“Hotels are able to offer more than just points through their loyalty programs,” said Mark
Carrier, president of B.F. Saul Hospitality, in a recent article in Hotel Management. “By
virtue of operating their properties, hotels are able to alter the stay for loyalty members in
tangible ways that third parties simply cannot. There are very significant benefits that are
delivered to the frequency club members, and those are often worth more than points. OTAs
are very smart, aggressive, focused and well-financed, but hotel operators still have the
physical properties.”

2. Enhanced Digital Experiences:

Big brands now offer loyal consumers greater control of their digital travel journey right from
the start, with features like the ability to pick their own room, check-in by phone and even
use their phone to unlock their room, if they use the brand’s mobile app. These advanced
functions—not available to guests who book on third-party sites—are highly effective at
driving direct bookings, especially among time-starved, tech-centric, road warrior business
and “bleisure” travelers.
3. Loyalty Rates & Points;

According to hotel loyalty marketing expert David Feldman, loyalty programs can do many
things, such as:

 Preventing customers from switching / defecting to competitors;

 Provide insights into consumer preferences;
 Drive incremental spend and increased demand;
 Increase share-of-wallet;

So its no wonder this is the largest and most common of the direct booking incentives used
by hoteliers.

Big brands, soft brands and collections have enjoyed tremendous traction by offering
“closed-group” rates to loyalty members. These discounted rates enable hoteliers to offer
parity-busting room rates, without violating their OTA contracts. Such incentives—although
costly and not necessarily sustainable—are the primary reason most industry experts agree
that Hilton and Marriott’s large-scale campaigns will be successful in the long-term at driving
loyalty.
Preferred Hotels Rewards Program includes many best practices of direct booking strategy

And even at a discounted rate, these direct bookings are still more profitable than OTA
bookings, according to Kalibri Labs research. In, “Book Direct Campaigns: The Costs &
Benefits of Loyalty,” its study of 2016 direct booking campaigns, Kalibri found that the net
average daily rate (ADR) of discount loyalty rates was 8.6% higher than the net ADR of rack
rates on OTAs. Loyalty memberships—stimulated in part by points—are also a crucial
overall provider of direct bookings volume, with four to six of every 10 room nights booked
at upper midscale, upscale and upper upscale hotels driven by loyalty members, according to
the report. Loyalty contribution rates appear to be directly linked to growth in loyalty
membership, which the study says increased 30% to 40% from 2015 to 2016.

4. Fear:

Rather than showcasing tangible incentives or discounts, some properties choose instead to
remind consumers of the dangers of booking anywhere else but direct.

This can be highly effective, too, since many consumers (especially older ones) have
preexisting concerns about third-party bookings and fear that one mishap with an OTA could
completely disrupt their long-awaited travel plans.

To leverage this effective emotional/psychological edge, hotels should remind prospective

guests at every opportunity (are you listening call center managers?) that their direct websites
and call centers are 100% dedicated to handling the needs of their property. Meanwhile, you
can honestly explain to customers how OTA booking engines and their call centers are
servicing tens of thousands of properties, including your competitors.

5. Best Rate Guarantees:

Best Rate Guarantee badges are nice, but many consumers have become desensitized to those
innocuous graphics and believe OTAs vast array of hotels guarantees lower prices.

Savvy hotel marketers are talking things to the next level: advanced tools that display OTA
rates on your hotel website (and inside your direct booking engine) have become a popular
and effective method of deterring shopping cart abandonment and inspiring direct bookings.
Widgets like TripTease are a wonderful addition, yet they still lack the connectivity to
actually change your direct rates when a lower rate is detected on an OTA. Instead, TripTease
simply reports the disparity to you and then requires you to track down and resolve the OTA
disparity.

SHAMELESS PLUG: Hotel tech vendors (including Tambourine with real

website/CRS integration can automatically display OTA rates AND update direct rates in
real-time when they are higher than the OTAs’ often inexplicably lower prices.

6. Thematic Destination Incentives:

This is a great opportunity to offer book-direct benefits that correlate with the hotel’s unique
story, geography or theme. For example, hotels near Disney may offer discounted or free
park passes; or mountain resorts may offer discounted ski lift passes. Smart hoteliers are also
positioning themselves as the authentic epicenter of their destinations, by offering curated
city guides/maps (and in some cases, actual tour guides!) to direct bookers. Such direct-
booking benefits work because they are relevant to the typical guest persona and they
reinforce the hotel’s theme and/or geography.

Friday Freebie: Follow These Digital

Breadcrumbs To Find Out What Guests Really
Want
You can easily discover what travelers are seeking in a hotel experience by listening and
monitoring the right places.

Sharing is caring!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Travelers are already telling us what they want, what they’re excited
about and what will draw them in. Just listen closely in the right places and embrace this
data to improve your hotel product and overall marketing results.

There’s no need to conduct a survey to find out what guests want. They’ve already revealed
this information online. And, it’s readily available to you.

You can easily discover what travelers are seeking in a hotel experience by listening and
monitoring the right places:

1. Use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to see what keywords visitors are searching for
2. Monitor your social media posts and comments AND your compset’s
3. Monitor your TripAdvisor reviews AND your compset’s
4. Study your DMO’s research on regional visitors and their habits
5. Comb through post-stay surveys

By keeping a close tab on this readily available data, you’ll be able to see both the threats and
the opportunities for improving your hotel product and service experience. For instance:

1. Do you get frequent complaints regarding a specific aspect of your hotel?

2. Are travelers to your destination talking about a certain new attraction?
3. Is there a spike in keyword searches for hotels near a certain neighborhood?
4. What are the top activities and attractions near you (and how are you partnered with them)?
 5. These priceless digital breadcrumbs and golden nuggets of information will assist you in
building a customer path straight to your door

What’s Hot (and What’s Not) in Hotel

Marketing Right Now?
So, what’s worth exploring and expanding… and what needs to be jettisoned?

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Here today, gone tomorrow.

We all know hotel marketing moves at a rapid pace. Tactics that crushed it last year may no
longer even be relevant today.

So, what’s worth exploring and expanding… and what needs to be jettisoned?

From time to time, we identify hotel marketing tools, tactics and techniques that transcend
property segments, chain scales and geographies. And similarly, we see practices that have
fallen out of favor or are simply not living up to the hype.

Depending on whether you work for a large flag, a select service property in New York City
or a small independent resort in coastal California, your definition of “what’s hot” may be
radically different from ours, but here’s our latest thoughts:

WHAT’S HOT?
A recent Survey by HSMAI asked hotel marketers which marketing investments they planned to
increase

1. SPAC

It’s not easy filling your hotel’s need periods.

These low periods can break your annual budget. So rather than “spraying and
praying” offers all over the digital landscape in a frantic, last-minute frenzy, smart hoteliers
are tapping into a simple, but increasingly popular new technique: SPAC: Simultaneous
Promotion Across All Channels.

Launching the same promo on every channel AT THE SAME TIME gives consumers
comfort and avoids confusion. If guests see different offers for your hotel on a 3rd party
channel than what is shown on your own direct hotel website, they will get uncomfortable
with the inconsistency and find another hotel that gives them greater mental comfort.

Also, just like a military operation, launching a well-timed, multi-pronged effort gives
your campaign the highest possible chance of success.

Think about it:

If Offer A is running on your Facebook page, Offer B is running on a 3rd-party channel and
Offer C is running on your website, guests will be leery of what’s real or what’s current.
Prospects will experience dissonance… enough to turn them away looking for another more
consistent and mentally-calming hotel option. Consumers are uncomfortable with
inconsistency.

It may be overwhelming to keep all of your hotel’s content updated and consistent across a
dizzying array of digital channels.
But, it’s vital. Consistency matters.

2. Being accountable for revenue

What?!
Marketing people carrying a quota?

While this may be a strange and radical concept among a large swath of hotel marketers,
other industries (i.e. Silicon Valley software companies) have been assigning scary lead
generation AND REVENUE quotas to marketing teams for many years.

Asset managers and property owners no longer want to hear about “branding initiatives” or
logo colors… they expect their hotel management firm’s marketing team to contribute to
revenue in a measurable way, communicate in number-speak and be accountable for tangible
results.

Quotas for marketing teams can be memorialized in terms of direct bookings (or group sales
leads) generated by traffic driven by the marketing team. And marketers often receive
bonuses based on their performance against their quota.
Serious hotel marketers are realizing that having a quota is not only a burden, but also an
opportunity: if they hit their assigned targets, they increase their value in a demonstrably
important way to their management and can ask for compensation increases as a result!

3. Personalization
As hotel marketing technology becomes more affordable and manageable, hotels know more
about who’s looking, booking and bouncing than ever before. With this robust “big data,”
more and more hotels are personalizing and optimizing offers email campaigns, dynamic
website content and pricing.

More and more hotel marketers are using basic website personalization tools to improve direct
booking conversion rates

Hotel marketers are smarter than ever about crafting hotel marketing campaigns that are
tailored to the right travelers and delivered to the right place, at the right time. And, best of all
– everything is measurable, which provides tremendous power to hotel marketers when it
comes time for annual performance and budget reviews.
WHAT’S NOT?

The HSMAI survey also asked hotel marketers which marketing investments they planned to decrease

1. Juggling Vendors
Over and over again we hear the same thing from hotel marketers: “too many vendors breeds
chaos and complexity.”

Hiring multiple, disconnected vendors and systems will inevitably challenge any efforts to
drive bookings. Your marketing operation needs to be a well-oiled machine to outperform the
compset. However, that’s near impossible when you’re juggling multiple disconnected
vendors, shuttling messages back and forth to make sure everyone is aligned. Worse yet, no
one vendor will take full responsibility when campaigns fail and goals aren’t met.

The solution is to consolidate.

Pare down your partners to only those who produce the best work, you trust the most, and
who can handle multiple functions.

2. Tolerating an Inferior Product

Not even the most creative hotel marketing strategies, sophisticated hotel booking engine, or
targeted hotel PPC campaigns can compensate for a sloppy hotel experience. Just as the
saying goes, “You can’t put lipstick on a pig,” you can’t cover the signs of your hotel’s
frayed edges or lapses in service. Travelers are more sophisticated than ever and they’re well
aware of their options, especially with so many shiny and new boutique hotels stealing their
attention.
No amount of “lipstick” can cover up an aging, inadequate product

While you can’t decide what gets fixed and replaced, that shouldn’t stop you from diligently
pointing out to your owners what guests are complaining about. Each year, leverage your
guest reviews that show the shortcomings that are deterring guests and hindering revenue
growth. Convince your owners that property upgrades and enhancements are urgent if they
want to compete in today’s marketplace.

3. Ignoring the group sales team

Many hotels spend all of their marketing resources on boosting leisure business while leaving
the sales team to generate their own group leads.

Big mistake.
Hotel marketing teams need to form a close relationship with their sales team peers

Events and large groups are game changers for hotels.

Revenue from just one group’s spend on room nights, F&B, event space, and ancillary
services is significant. Group sales managers depend on a steady flow of business leads to hit
the hotel’s revenue goals. And, hotel marketers should be the champions of that.

Here’s how:

 Consistently create content that positions your hotel as the epicenter of your destination’s
group experience
 Carry a quota for marketing-driven leads or actual closed leads
 Routinely communicate with high-value sales targets with targeted emails, social posts (and
even direct mail!) containing helpful tips, insider destination info, stories, photos, and videos.
 Set up retargeting ad campaigns for meeting planners who visit your hotel’s meeting and
events page
 Optimize your hotel website with relevant tools that planners actually need, including photos
of past events, room measurements, floor diagrams, 360-degree venue tours, capacity charts
and testimonials
Friday Freebie: Don’t Miss This Channel
When Monitoring Your Hotel Comp Set
Never take your eyes off of the competition. Especially their sales team!

Sharing is caring!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Never take your eyes off of the competition. Especially their sales
team!

Hotels are forever locked in a battle for bookings.

Savvy hoteliers are always aware what their comp set is up to. Besides monitoring rate,
they keep one eye focused on what competing hotels are doing to draw more direct bookings
and group business. One of the easiest ways to watch your competition is to sign up for their
emails and follow their social media accounts.

After that, we suggest taking it one step further: Follow the social media accounts of each
group sales manager, too.

Find out how they’re offering value to meeting planners. Are they merely pushing out
promotional content or are they authentically engaging prospects? Are they contributing to
LinkedIn groups with other meeting and event professionals? How are they boosting their
brand, while drawing planners to their hotel? What promos are they pushing?

And, most importantly, what content are planners responding to most? Consistently use this
intel to review and implement your own group sales marketing activities.

Why are hoteliers asking CRS vendors so

many tough questions?
Lately, more and more hoteliers are waking up to the realization that their boring, old CRS
platform may have untapped capabilities that can deliver an unexpected, new competitive
edge.

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Hotel marketing and revenue management execs are pushing their tech vendors to do more…

Your central reservation system (CRS) is one of the most important assets in your hotel’s
overall marketing arsenal. (Yes, marketing… because pricing is one of the four “Ps” of
marketing)

It distributes rates and inventory to the online travel agencies (OTAs), global distribution
system (GDS) and other critical endpoints in the distribution food chain, as well as (most
importantly) your own direct booking engine. It also provides a centralized repository of
where your rooms are being booked across all channels… and at what rates.

Lately, more and more hoteliers are waking up to the realization that their boring, old CRS
platform may have untapped capabilities that can deliver an unexpected, new competitive
edge.

Here’s why hoteliers are pushing their CRS vendors to step up their game:

1. As ADRs and occupancies reach all-time highs, and new supply bloats a comp set, smart
hoteliers are pushing all their tech partners to do more…

2. OTAs have teams of data scientists and highly evolved digital tech and systems of their
own, designed to siphon and convert bookings from all the other channels where your CRS
distributes inventory and rates

3. Technology has changed. What used to be costly upgrades are now standard, but many
hoteliers are unaware of the power of new CRS tech, and some vendors aren’t doing a great
job of communicating these changes

4. Turnover among hotel revenue managers leaves new employees who are responsible for
the CRS, but possess an incomplete understanding of the power of the system

5. Revenue management teams are often unaware of new features or best practices espoused
by the CRS vendor. These best practices could help the revenue management team save time,
be more efficient and avoid redundant tasks
“Having a perishable product like room nights, means speed and accuracy of revenue
management implementation is paramount,” said Noelani Berkholtz, director of CRS at
Tambourine. “If system complexities are slowing down your strategies—or worse, blocking
implementation altogether—even the brightest minds in the business are set up for failure.”

Now that we know WHY hotels are putting more pressure on their CRS vendors,
what exactly are they asking for?

Here four of their most common demands:

1. Better Training:

These days, hoteliers are seeking unlimited training on the full CRS platform, as well as
ongoing training on new functionalities that provide expanded opportunities or meet the
custom needs of the property. Training should also be personalized and standard for all new
hires.

Why hand someone the keys if they weren’t taught properly how to drive?

“It seems counterintuitive to sign a multi-year contract with a technology company which
provides only one training,” said Berkholtz. “Either the technology company is assuming it
will not be adding any new functionalities that would require training in the next 3 to 5 years,
or they are planning on adding new functionalities, but not equipping the hotel with the
knowledge of how to properly execute them. This is the technology age, right?”

2. Expert Rate/Promo Construction:

Once a rate/discount strategy is developed, tech providers should be able to provide expert
implementation to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign. This includes how the
package/promotion should be built, displayed (specific messaging or slash-through
capabilities) and ranked. The hotel should focus on revenue-generating activities, while the
tech team should focus on building-out the rate plan effectively in the CRS. This process also
includes creating new rate plans in the IBE and mapping all channels needed.

The hotel comes up with the strategy, and the CRS vendor implements that strategy in the
most effective way.

3. Better cross-Vendor Coordination:

Tech companies speak “tech” fluently.

Yet often, hotels are expected to coordinate efforts between their tech vendors (CRS and
PMS, for example) and a lot gets lost in translation. With the hotel’s permission, tech
providers should implement solutions and support common properties together, rather than
bogging-down the hotel as a referee in frustrating back and forth email threads, when the
issue could be resolved with one simple phone call between providers.

“With the industry movement toward revenue management and marketing convergence,
technologies are mirroring the evolution,”explained Berkholtz. “Revenue managers who
historically stuck to their hard facts and data are now needing to understand the marketing
abilities within their technology platforms to optimize performance. Tech companies need to
understand this education gap and explain in ‘revenue manager language’ how to utilize
marketing functionalities within their systems.”

4. Better On-Boarding:

When hoteliers switch CRS vendors, they want their new partner to make the experience
frictionless. They want assistance in retrieving data from their current systems to quickly
populate the new system. They also want to provide feedback on specific concerns from
past experiences and make sure the problems of the past are not repeated.

Similarly, when a new revenue manager is hired to manage the CRS system, hoteliers again
expect their vendors to step up: “When revenue managers join a new property, they typically
are engaged in a long process of untangling and discovering the strategies and
implementations of the previous director of revenue management (DORM),” said
Berkholtz. “When technology companies are consistently engaged with the property, they
can assist the new DORM to efficiently uncover the past and shorten the ramp-up time.”

Friday Freebie: You have one chance to make

a good impression
A hotel marketing lesson from mom….

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A hotel marketing lesson from mom….

Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie:

Mom was right.

Our moms are always dishing out sage advice. And, it turns out their quips hold a lot of hotel
marketing wisdom. In honor of Mother’s Day and all our wonderful mothers out there, we’re
celebrating one of our favorite mom quotes:

“You have one chance to make a good impression.”

And the valuable, hidden hotel and resort marketing message behind it?

Your words matter.

You have seconds to capture your customer’s attention and make an impression. EIGHT
seconds, to be exact. Studies show that’s the average attention span in our age of streaming
content and smartphones.

So, you have to get your message across – quick.

To entice, engage and convince within that tiny time frame, every word has to be intentional,
poignant and clear the first time around. Or else, risk losing the customer who doesn’t have
time to ‘get it’.

Don’t expect a second chance to repeat yourself.

Here’s how to write hotel copy that sells to today’s consumer::

 Succinctly present your core value proposition on your hotel website homepage in a
way that appeals to the emotional truth your property delivers (EX: “Create
unforgettable family memories at ____ Resort.”)
 Assume customers are going to scan, not read
 Put your most important points at the beginning
 Keep paragraphs short, about 2 sentences long
 Use bullet points, subheads, bold or design elements to break up text
 Leave plenty of white space

Want People To Actually Read Your Hotel

Website? Here’s How
Nine ways to write for the modern user, who is simply skimming and scanning your hotel’s
website.

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You want all of your customers to know your property intimately.

To love it.

To book it over and over again.

“And, they would,” you tell yourself. “If only they would just go to our website and read all
the beautiful details of what makes us so spectacular!”

But, here’s the harsh reality – your customers AREN’T consuming every inch of your hotel
website design. And, truthfully, they never will. Same goes for your blog posts and marketing
emails.

In fact, a recent eye tracking study shows that, on average, people are absorbing only 20
percent of your web content. And according to eConsultancy: “the majority of people read
online content in an ‘F’ pattern. The image below shows you what the F pattern looks like. It
is a heat map, so the red parts are where people spent the most time looking and the blue parts
the least time.”

Before you get

frustrated and fire your copywriter, here’s why your customers aren’t reading your web copy:

Why Don’t People Read?

• It’s too tiring to read text on a computer screen. In fact, your eyes move about 25 percent
slower online versus reading on paper.

• People have smaller-than-ever attention spans and are suffering from information overload.
Online visitors are searching for specific information and if they can’t find it with a simple
skim of your site, they’ll bounce.

• Web users want to feel as if they are driving their online experience by clicking on links
and “moving” around. If they are stuck reading lengthy copy online, they feel unproductive.

Reading is Out, Scanning is In…

• Don’t dismay. This doesn’t mean your hotel website and online marketing copy is
useless. You just have to write for the modern user, who is simply skimming and scanning
your hotel’s website.

• The solution is simple: Write less and use formatting to capture and hold attention. This
makes content easy to digest.

The Secrets to Getting People to Read Your Website

Here are a few tips for writing hotel website content that recognizes skimming and scanning
behavior:

1. Keep paragraphs short – about two sentences long.

2. Get to the point, and quickly. Write your most important points at the beginning of
sentences or paragraphs.

3. Use bullets (like we’re doing here) to break up content.

4. Use subheadings (also, see how we use them in this post) to break up groups of thoughts.

5. Add relevant links. Don’t just mention attractions that you are close to. Link out to them.

6. Emphasize your most important points by bolding them.

7. Leave plenty of white space.

8. Make each word count. Since you’re writing less, make sure the words you DO use are
poignant and not generic.

9. Use photos. Instead of speaking wax poetic about your relaxing pool deck, show a stunning
photo instead. READ: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Bookings

Are comments about your hotel falling on deaf

ears?
Hotels take reputation management seriously when it comes to guest feedback on
TripAdvisor, but often underappreciate the need to closely monitor other social media
channels.
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Hotel social media monitoring needs to go way beyond Trip Advisor

Hotels take reputation management seriously when it comes to guest feedback on

TripAdvisor but often underappreciate the need to closely monitor other social media
channels.

This is a lost opportunity to gain short-term insight and long-term goodwill.

Here are 3 reasons hotels need to prioritize social listening:

1. Instant karma

Social Media is a two-way communications channel; you can talk to guests, and guests can
talk back. You can have a real conversation with an individual. Not so with TripAdvisor: By
the time you respond, the damaging review may already have been posted.

Not to mention, social media trains consumers to expect an immediate response, and an
already irritable customer can get more irritable if they don’t receive a response in an
adequate amount of time. Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. It can often
exacerbate the situation.

Most negative posters on hotel social media channels are still on the property when
they post.

And they aren’t doing it for their own enjoyment, either: 78% of people who complain to a
brand via Twitter expect a response within an hour, according to a study by Lithium. By
monitoring and responding ASAP, hoteliers can potentially engage these dissatisfied
guests during their stay—and win them over—before they turn their vitriol into permanent
TripAdvisor or OTA reviews.

Another instant benefit of social listening for hotels is the ability to glean insight on guest
experience and product/service issues— both positive and negative.

If your hotel makes the mistake of ignoring positive comments about your property, you’ve
just lost out on valuable testimonials you can utilize, as well as gaining useful feedback and a
chance to strengthen relationships with users. And if you ignore negative comments, you’ll
damage your brand and foster negative social proof.
Further, by listening to social media channels and acting quickly, hotels are often able to
delight guests with unexpected surprises that create long-term loyalty and evangelism. These
opportunities—which are fleeting and must be capitalized on almost immediately—can offer
significant branding value, at minimal cost.

One company making tremendous strides to this end is Marriott, which has tasked its M Live
team with constant monitoring of social channels, for the sake of surprising guests with
enhanced service touches, like a free bottle of champagne delivered on-site for guests who
got engaged while staying at a property.

2. Complete strangers are talking about you…

It’s not just your fan base that you have to worry about.

Non-fans and non-followers are talking about your brand too. It’s crucial to listen to these
potential influencers as well.

Surprisingly, 96% of the users who discuss brands online don’t actually follow those brands’
profiles, according to a Brandwatch report.
You can be reactive and ONLY monitor people who directly comment or tag your hotel’s
Instagram “handle” (your actual Instagram account name) in a picture. You’ll receive a
notification and you can respond accordingly.

But there are more proactive ways of monitoring ALL relevant sentiment on Instagram. By
typing the generic name of your hotel (see illustration above) or property specific hashtags in
the search bar, you can discover additional content that guests have posted about your prop.

If you don’t have the time or resources to monitor your hashtags and geo-
tags, Tools like Tout allow you to find and license the content with ease.

3. Discover (and celebrate) the evangelists

Hotel social media monitoring isn’t just about catching people bashing your hotel: It’s
equally valuable when guests are celebrating their experiences on channels such as
Instagram.

Over the last few years, storytelling and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) have
become some of the most popular and cost-effective methods for hotel marketers looking to
harness digital and social media and put more heads in beds.
An example of capturing guest-generated social proof from The St Regis in San Francisco
This is driven by a decline in consumer trust in advertising; instead, consumers now look to
one another for credibility. UGC such as photos, videos, and posts about hotel experiences
are viewed as more authentic and less sales-focused, so using that content to your advantage
can offer tremendous benefits.

By monitoring things closely, you can locate and celebrate those brand ambassadors who are
taking pictures of their property experience, allowing you to benefit from what is essentially
free positive publicity.

Friday Freebie: How to Uncover Guests’

Hidden Instagram Photos
Your guests are creating FREE ultra-creative marketing content almost every day. Here’s
how to uncover that treasure trove of evangelism!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Your guests are creating FREE ultra-creative marketing content almost
every day. Here’s how to uncover that treasure trove of evangelism!

Right now as you read this, a guest is documenting their stay at your property and posting it
on Instagram for all their followers to see.

From breakfast in bed to epic balcony sunsets, these photos and videos are far more
authentic, unique and imaginative than anything the most creative hotel marketer can come
up with consistently. Plus, your guests’ posts carry more influence since they are authentic,
not manufactured. This SOCIAL PROOF builds validation and inspires their followers to
consider a stay. You can collect these posts and use them for future marketing collateral (with
permission) or to repost on Instagram to your own audience.

In other words – Your guests’ Instagram posts are precious marketing gold. And, the goodies
just keep flowing in.

Only problem is that many of these photos and videos are ‘hidden.’ You’ll only be notified of
a guest’s post if they happen to use your official Instagram account name, otherwise known
as a ‘handle.’ So, if a user leaves that out, you may never see their post.

Unless, you get proactive.

Here are three easy and proactive ways to unearth guests’ Insta content:

1. Search the generic name of your hotel. For example, the Grafton on Sunset
(@graftononsunset), should search ‘grafton hotel’ or ‘hotel grafton’ to catch any posts
where guests used those names.
2. Search any property specific hashtags that a guest might have used instead of your
handle, like #graftononsunset or #hotelgrafton
3. Monitor your property geo-tags, an automatic label that is marked when an Instagram
user posts from your location.
Monitor these three methods daily to catch any timely content, as well as to catch any
feedback or comments that guests make about their hotel experience

Why Every Flagged Hotel Should be

Rethinking Instagram
Instagram represents an opportunity for flagged hotels to shift travelers’ perceptions of a
boring, me-too branded property

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Flagged hotels enjoy an established presence in the global marketplace and the trust that goes
along with that. But… despite the common misconception that the brand is entirely
responsible for driving every flagged property’s bookings, successful hotel marketing is a
joint effort at both the brand and property level.

Remember: your brand’s marketing team is servicing hundreds of hotels (often several in the
same city) and providing the same tools to all of you. Think about that… every hotel in the
brand family is getting the same marketing and sales templates, the same loyalty database, the
same hotel website design and hotel booking engine.

Every same-branded property receives the same marketing assets, regardless of amenities,
destination, or target audience.

But every flagged hotel has its own unique story to tell and few platforms are as well
equipped to convey those stories as Instagram.

Instagram represents an opportunity for flagged hotels to shift travelers’ perceptions of a

boring, me-too branded property to a unique travel experience not found anywhere else. The
content is universal, shareable and easily understood by a wide range of audiences.

Tambourine’s Social Media Director Elle Andress details 4 ways Instagram can help social
media teams at flagged hotels differentiate their properties:

Elle Andress, Director of Social Media at Tambourine

1. Avoiding sterility

Today, people are investing their travel dollars in authentic experiences that immerse them in
the local culture and lifestyle. They’re hungry for local secrets, bold adventures and seeing
parts of the city that most tourists don’t see.
When your corporate brand team has control of your online marketing, they won’t be able to
convey those local gems. First off, because they’re not even there. They don’t know what
makes your destination so special.

They don’t understand the culture, the awesome mom-and-pop stores, and restaurants that
give your neighborhood character or know the local secrets. Only you and your local
marketing staff can tell a compelling story that will actually drive bookings.

Instagram is the ideal platform to showcase the images that make your flagged property
unique in the eyes of potential guests and avoid perceived “sterility.”

2. Monitor on-property problems…

Every day, there are good and bad things posted about your hotel on Instagram.

You can be reactive and monitor people who comment or tag your hotel’s Instagram
“handle” (your actual Instagram account name) in a picture. You’ll receive a notification and
you can respond accordingly.
But there are more proactive ways of monitoring guest sentiment on Instagram. By typing
the generic name of your hotel (see illustration above) or property specific hashtags in the
search bar, you can discover additional content that guests have posted about your prop.

If you don’t have the time or resources to monitor your hashtags and geotags, Tools like Tout
allow you to find and license the content with ease.

3. Celebrate past guest experiences

By sharing past guest stories, reviews (and best of all videos) on your hotel’s social media
channels, you can turn your past guests into a perpetual army of experience evangelists.

Harvest their good times!

An example of capturing guest-generated social proof from The St Regis in San Francisco.

Over the last few years, storytelling and “user-generated content (UGC)” has become one of
the most popular (and cost-effective) ways for hotel marketers to win guests’ hearts and
wallets.

Why?

Because consumers no longer trust advertising… they trust each other. As this article in
AdAge so aptly put it: “Your brand is defined by the interactions people have with it.”

User-generated content, especially photos, videos and posts about on-property experiences
are more authentic, less sales focused… and let’s face it, usually more creative than anything
hotel social media folks could ever dream up.

4. Paid Instagram stories

In addition to running an ad in the Instagram feed, hotel social media marketers now have the
added option of running paid Instagram stories.
The 15 to 30-second full-screen experience can showcase still imagery or a video clip,
appearing in Instagram’s story feed, alongside the stories posted by a user’s following so that
the organic experience is never disrupted for the user. “With paid Instagram stories,
properties can reach a much larger audience, including users who aren’t already
followers,” Elle explained.

Here, properties can promote time-sensitive offers such as a new restaurant menu or a
seasonal event to a broader audience than the property’s existing Instagram followers.

An example of using highly visual Instagram stories from The St Regis in San Francisco.

Friday Freebie: Solving the latest hotel

website curveball from Google
Google’s new security standards could threaten your hotel’s website traffic. Here’s how to
solve the problem:

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie:

Google’s new security standards could threaten your hotel’s website

traffic. Here’s how to solve the problem:

In hopes of fostering a safer internet, Google has moved toward new security standards for its
Chrome browser, which requires a significant update to hotel websites in order to achieve
compliance.

Under the new specifications, Google now requires all websites that collect any type of
personal data (i.e. forms, email addresses, credit card info, etc.) to migrate websites to
HTTPS and upgrade their security technology in the form of “SSL Certificates,” or suffer the
consequences.

Right now, that consequence is a security alert, which Chrome users see when they reach a
web page that Google has deemed a “Non-Secure environment” when the mandated SSL
certificate isn’t present. Considering roughly 60% of web surfers currently use Chrome, this
is no matter to take lightly; it’s best to make the required changes as soon as possible, to
ensure your site traffic isn’t at risk and/or potential guests being scared away.
This may seem like a small detail, but it may have a huge impact on hotel website conversion
rates. You don’t want to scare away customers with an unsecured website. Google has
indicated that warnings may become even more pronounced in future browser updates.

You also don’t want your customers’ data being compromised because you failed to provide
a secure setting. As recent data breaches among numerous major hotel companies have
proven, hacks can cause extensive damage to brands and they erode consumer trust, which
can be disastrous to the bottom line. Given those risks, taking the steps to comply with the
SSL/HTTPS standard is a no-brainer.

The Solution:

The first step in meeting the standard is for hotel digital marketers to obtain an SSL
Certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA). The certificate permits your website to
communicate using encrypted, non-corruptible data, while also acting as a stamp of approval.

Many providers offer free SSL/TSL certificates; (Shameless plug: Tambourine provides SSL
certificates for all clients included in our monthly service package).

With an approved certificate in place, the next steps are to conduct a full backup of your hotel
website site, change all your internal links, check code libraries, update external links and
create a 301 redirect. It’s also important to claim all four versions of your site URLs (HTTPS,
HTTP, www. and non-www.) on Google Search Console Analytics, AdWords and other paid
ads, plus social profiles and business citations. Since there are multiple complex steps, you
definitely want your digital marketing team or external hotel digital marketing firm to handle
this.

Bad Habits: 5 things hotel marketers should

stop right now
Today, we want to turn things around and recommend a few things NOT to do!

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Usually, we offer insight on the hotel marketing tactics, tools and strategies you should adopt
to drive more revenue to your hotel: add chatto your hotel website. Focus on this webpage as
your SEO secret weapon. Try these tips on your mobile website, etc…
Today, we want to turn things around and recommend a few things NOT to do!

From our experience, here’s five negative habits inhibiting hotel marketers from reaching
their full revenue-generating potential:

1) Using the wrong message to fight OTAs

Travelers aren’t as obsessed with low prices as you may believe. According to a recent JD
Power & Associates’ North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, customers who
booked on third-parties are more likely to face problems (like last-minute changes and
canceled reservations) and be dissatisfied with their hotel experience.

A common review from an unhappy OTA customer…

So, instead of using price to win back OTA customers, focus on a common fear: Fear of a
ruined travel experience.

It’s no secret that OTAs have left thousands of travelers in the lurch with their cancellation
policies and ability to change/reassign hotels at their own discretion.

So, use that your advantage. Remind customers that booking direct with your hotel is the
SAFER option. Unlike OTAs, you have a staff that actually, truly cares about them and will
do all that’s possible to avoid and quickly amend any issues.

2) Tolerating an Inferior Product

Not even the most creative hotel marketing strategies, sophisticated hotel booking engine, or
targeted hotel ppc campaigns can compensate for a sloppy hotel experience. Just as the
saying goes, “You can’t put lipstick on a pig,” you can’t cover the signs of your hotel’s
frayed edges or lapses in service. Travelers are more sophisticated than ever and they’re well
aware of their options, especially with so many shiny and new boutique hotels stealing their
attention.

No amount of “lipstick” can cover up an aging, inadequate product

While you can’t decide what gets fixed and replaced, that shouldn’t stop you from diligently
pointing out to your owners what guests are complaining about. Each year, leverage your
guest reviews that show the shortcomings that are deterring guests and hindering revenue
growth. Convince your owners that property upgrades and enhancements are urgent if they
want to compete in today’s marketplace.

3) Working in a Silo
It’s a common scenario playing out in hotels across the globe:

Hotel marketing departments that don’t communicate, share resources or vital updates.

The result?

Marketers left in the dark about upcoming periods of weakness. Group sales managers with
no leads. Revenue managers clueless about why marketing continues to target one audience
(or date period) over another.

It’s time to end this disconnect.

Smart hotel marketers break down silos and work closely with sales and revenue management
Your entire hotel and its financial success depend on all three pillars of the sales & marketing
platform working together in unison and towards the same revenue goals. One easy way to
break down these silos is to schedule an all-team meeting every week. This meeting should
include ALL associates, not just managers. Share your current priorities, upcoming projects,
recent discoveries, ask for feedback and share resources.

This not only gives every team member access to what’s happening outside of their
department, but it also fosters teamwork and enhances collaboration that results in success
across all S&M departments.

4) Ignoring the sales team

Meetings and events account for a major portion of your hotel’s revenue.

Yet, hotel marketers tend to solely focus on driving leisure business, leaving sales managers
to generate their own group leads.

This is a dangerous habit, as more and more hotel owners and asset managers become less
impressed with your branding initiatives or your hotel’s number of social media followers
and more obsessed with how much you contribute to your property’s revenue.
So start using your skills in digital marketing for hotels to champion the sales team’s efforts
and drive group business. Smart hotel marketers do three fundamental things to support their
sales teammates:

a. Run campaigns that consistently engage the sales team’s high-value targets (HVTs) with
relevant and entertaining content
b. Deploy marketing automation tools to alert sales managers when HVTs are on the hotel
website and what pages they are looking at…
c. Optimize the meetings and events pages on the hotel direct website with ALL the
resources meeting planners need… AND create compelling content showcasing your
destination as an exciting locale for meetings and events attendees

5) Focusing on meaningless stats

Because the best hotel marketers know they’re only as good as their metrics, measurement
and tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) are an ongoing commitment.

However, with more sophisticated technology comes more data.

While analytics are vital for doing what we do, we’re also burdened with an avalanche of
irrelevant KPIs stealing our attention from the metrics that actually matter.

Don’t get dragged down trying to keep up with useless numbers, such as bounce rate, online
page views and social media followers.

Instead of leaning on metrics that only sound impressive on paper, pay attention to
the numbers that will actually measure your contribution to hotel revenues. Every day, you
should be checking the KPIs that actually matter to your hotel’s owners and asset managers,
including:

1. MCPB (marketing cost per booking): Tracks the cost of each sales and marketing channel
versus actual conversions. Try using this for OTA commissions as well… and see how that
channel stacks up versus your other campaigns.

2. DRR (direct revenue ratio): Measures percentage of online revenue from direct sources (your
website) versus pricey third-party sources, like OTAs. If you’re not garnering 40 percent of
your revenue from direct reservations, you still have work to do!

3. Website conversion rate (from unique visitor to entrances into the booking environment):
Converting a higher percentage of visitors into booking searches (or phone calls) is critical to
reducing your cost of revenue and MCPB.

4. Variance from revenue target: This metric showcases revenue goals versus actual results
(by segment).

Friday Freebie: Rate parity matters… but so

does Promo Parity
We call this SPAC: Simultaneous Promotion Across All Channels.

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Behold the Power of SPAC…

Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Rate parity matters… but so does Promo Parity.

It’s not easy filling your hotel’s need periods. These low periods can break your annual
budget. Avoid what many panicked hotel marketers do… “spray and pray” offers all over the
digital landscape.

You need to be deliberate and focused.

Just like a general in charge of an army – you need to coordinate your operations and move
your forces in unison.

This is why smart hotel marketers launch one promo across all channels simultaneously. We
call this SPAC: Simultaneous Promotion Across All Channels.

Not only will your promo have the best chance of massive outreach and conversions, it also
squashes any chance of confusion and skepticism in your market.

Think about it:

If Offer A is running on your Facebook page, Offer B is running on a 3rd-party channel and
Offer C is running on your website, guests will be leery of what’s real or what’s current.
Prospects will experience dissonance… enough to turn them away looking for another more
consistent and mentally-calming hotel option. Consumers are uncomfortable with
inconsistency.

Lesson: Consistency matters. Maintaining parity among your offers, not just rate, is vital to
your bottom line
The 10 Daily Habits of Highly Effective Hotel
Marketers
Based on our 34 years in hotel marketing, here are the 10 daily habits we see that separate the
best hotel marketers from the mediocre:

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Hotel marketing success requires daily discipline.

Can we all agree that the cumulative effects of small daily habits—both good and bad—add
up to meaningful results over time?

Brush your teeth every day and you’ll avoid cavities. Eat chocolate pie every day, you’ll
probably gain weight…

If you were to ask pro athletes and successful business tycoons what made them successful,
most would tell you it required many years of hard work and practice.

The same goes for every profession, including hotel marketing; there are no silver bullets or
shortcuts to the front of the line.

Just take the example of British cycling coach Sir David Brailsford, whose aggregation of
marginal gains philosophy first led his Sky Team to a Tour de France victory in 2012—just
three years after its implementation—then fueled subsequent wins in 2013, 2015, 2016 and
2017. The core idea, for Brailsford, was to push his riders to work toward a 1% improvement
in everything they do, for a cumulative gain that is much more impactful over time.
British cycling coach Dave Brailsford recommends trying to improve many little things by
1%.
“So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible
outcome associated with it,” says writer James Clear. “Whether it is losing weight, building a
business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make
some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving by
just 1 percent isn’t notable (and sometimes it isn’t even noticeable). But it can be just as
meaningful, especially in the long run.”

At Tambourine, we live by the same philosophy and urge our clients to embrace Brailsford’s
daily method for meeting their own goals for success. Based on our 34 years in hotel
marketing, here are the 10 daily habits we see that separate the best hotel marketers from the
mediocre:

1. They check the numbers

Because the best hotel marketers know they’re only as good as their metrics, measurement
and tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) are an ongoing commitment. Savvy
marketers are constantly evaluating their efforts, budgets and staff in relation to business mix
targets.

2. They plan for times of need

Filling those sporadic gaps in demand requires forethought and careful planning. That’s why
successful hotel marketers always make a point to check-in with their revenue management
team, far in advance, to identify upcoming, cyclical and ongoing periods of weakness.

3. They exude positivity

The best hotel marketers know that energy and enthusiasm are contagious. They make sure
that everyone on their team, outside agencies, related departments (e.g., revenue
management) and upper management are aware and excited about the marketing activities for
the hotel. These marketers then celebrate meaningful success (always using metrics,
when possible) when that success occurs.

4. They face the music

While it’s natural to stress the positives, highly effective hotel marketers instead focus
primarily on problems and weaknesses (staff, results, product, etc.) that need improvement.
They think of ways to streamline processes and campaign execution.

5. They stay informed

Each day, hotel marketing all-stars are monitoring the industry and comp-set news, to have a
fully informed perspective on both local market conditions and the hospitality industry as a
whole. They also read their hotel’s latest guest reviews and feedback scores, to keep abreast
of guest sentiment.

6. They maintain a healthy work-life balance

All-star performers know that to truly function at the top of their game, they need to do more
than simply work around the clock. These professionals make sure to also earmark time for
exercise, family, vacations and getting a good night’s sleep.

7. They unplug

There’s more to life than staring at a computer screen.

Skilled marketers also spend time talking to guests, walking the property, listening and
learning, and interacting with reservation center/call center agents and the front desk.
Sometimes there’s just no replacement for human, face-to-face contact.

8. They say ‘no’…a lot

The highest-achieving professionals understand that time is money and there is an

opportunity cost associated with every endeavor one adds to their plate. Oftentimes, staying
productive means saying “no” to distractions like irrelevant opportunities, shiny new utopian
technologies and time-sucking projects.

9. They know what’s important

Highly effective hotel marketers prioritize objectives for both themselves and their key
employees. They correlate their activities and budgets to the business mix projection they
provided to upper management.

Also, they understand that achieving a greater goal requires a series of smaller steps all taken
in a logical order, and they can communicate that methodology to coworkers. Random busy-
ness and the constant putting out of fires is not the path to long-term marketing success.

10. They demand consistent messaging and execution

Hotel marketing rock stars are vigilant about ensuring that their property’s story and unique
value proposition (UVP) is infused in every marketing touchpoint and the operational
service experience at the hotel. Communicating that story and UVP to guests is a daily
obsession, essential to all sales activity, as well as maintaining a place of distinction in one’s
respective marketplace.

Friday Freebie: Use Content To Become A

Meetings Magnet
Creating content for the meetings industry doesn’t have to be time intensive.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Consistently attract group/event planners with content that touts your
city as a meetings-worthy destination — with you in the center of it all.

CVBs and DMOs aren’t the only ones who can produce destination content.

Hotels would be smart to create their own online destination pieces to drive traffic to their
website. While many properties already create content touting leisure travel, very few hotels
craft group-oriented content to cultivate traffic and awareness for group leads.
By creating helpful, “infotainment” content for meeting planners, you will establish your
hotel and sales team as being the leader in your region. AND, position your hotel as being the
most experienced property to host meetings and events in the area.

Creating content for the meetings industry doesn’t have to be time intensive. In fact, here’s
the secret to producing several pieces in just a couple of hours:

REPURPOSE.

Take content that you’ve already written for your leisure audience and customize for a
meetings audience by adding an ‘events’ spin throughout.

For example, here are repurposed titles that were originally written for the transient traveler:

Waterfront Teambuilding Activities in Chesapeake Bay

Philadelphia Group Tours for Conventioneers Who Love History

6 Venues for Corporate Dinners in Breckenridge

Best Louisville Distilleries for Group Bourbon Tastings

Post to your hotel blog, LinkedIn, or use as content for sales email newsletters. Produce
meetings-inspired content often to give event planners a reason to consistently consider your
property.

Get More: 6 Ways Hotel Marketing Can Generate More Leads for the Sales Team

5 Things Modern Hotel Marketers Can Learn

From Vintage Travel Posters
Decades before the creation of modern hotel marketing, poster designers inherently
understood and integrated five key elements of successful hotel marketing.

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Hotel marketing hasn’t changed much in 100 years…

In the Golden Age of travel in the early part of the 20th century, there were no online banner
ads. Nor guest analytics, marketing technology, mobile apps, retargeting campaigns, email
offers, Insta-influencers, or search engines.

Instead, airlines, CVBs, resorts and railway companies relied on one of the most powerful
mediums of their time – the travel poster.

These travel posters shared common characteristics: exuberant colors, a gorgeous single
graphic, and bold eye-catching lettering that all evoked a lust for travel and exploration with a
single glance. In fact, these poster designers have been nailing it for more than a century.
These vintage travel posters are still provoking inspiration for adventures far and wide today.

There’s a lot we can learn from these beautiful illustrations.

Decades before the creation of modern hotel marketing, poster designers inherently
understood and integrated five key elements of successful hotel marketing:

1. Take time to CRAFT your story

Your hotel is different.

You may know that, but your prospective buyer doesn’t.

So, you need to make it obvious. Your hotel marketing needs to deliver relevance and
intrigue immediately. A mistake many hotel properties make is ‘me too’ marketing that is
cliché and already overused by many of their compset neighbors. For example, describing
your hotel as ‘in the heart of New Orleans’ or ‘oceanfront hotel,’ making it difficult for
travelers to differentiate your property from other central New Orleans properties and
oceanfront hotels. Ditch these overworked marketing messages and present something
brilliant and provocative, instead of bland and predictable.

This poster for a French hotel tells a unique story of mountain air and healthy activity!

2. Tell It Succinctly
The marketing concept behind travel posters is simple: combine one vibrant image and bold
text to create a uniquely effective marketing medium that inspires travel.

These posters were easily understood and were perfect for capturing the attention of people
on the go. Today, attention spans are at an all-time low, so every second of your hotel
marketing counts. Hotel marketers need to be cognizant of the first five seconds that a visitor
lands on a property website, that short span of time determines if the person will book,
bounce or return. So, you need to squeeze performance out of every second for higher
chances of conversion and revenue. Cut the clutter, get rid of slow-loading graphics, keep
things simple.
 Is there any question
where this Rio hotel is located?

3. Be Visually Arresting

Your marketing images and hotel photography should be more than just pretty pictures. Just
like the eye-popping colors and a single image on a travel poster, your images should catch
attention in seconds and convey your experience in a single glance.

In fact, studies show that travelers spend time scouring through hotel images before making a
decision. And, that your hotel photography has the power to change a buyer’s mind, for better
or for worse. Ditch the stock images or dated blurry photos. Invest in a photographer
experienced in shooting interior design, real estate, architecture or other hotels. Plus, leverage
your hotel’s best FREE photographers – your own social media-savvy guests. Instagram
enthusiasts are producing images on par with paid professionals for their personal channels.
 Sometimes, the best image for
a hotel is not the hotel at all… it’s the nearby attractions!

4. Keep messaging consistent

Back in the heyday of travel posters, hotels could not change messages very often… so they
were forced into being consistent in their marketing.

Today, rate parity isn’t the only consistency your hotel should be vigilant about. Maintaining
your hotel’s STORY parity is also vital to your bottom line. Smart hotel marketers know their
Unique Selling Proposition (USP) has to be consistent across all touchpoints and marketing
channels. If consumers see your hotel described as ‘cosmopolitan and sophisticated’ on one
channel, then as ‘central and family-friendly’ on another, potential guests will be confused
and leery of moving forward. Consistency builds trust and trust turns into buyer confidence.
 For many
years, the Outrigger hotel in Hawaii used images of guests enjoying the surf with the locals. They
were the early advocates of celebrating authentic local experiences!

5. Be Intentional with Time and Place

The biggest boon of marketing technology is the ability to target and automate campaigns,
allowing you to reach the right audience, with the right message, at the right time.

Use it.
The most popular travel posters were commissioned by airlines and railway companies and
were respectively displayed in airports and train stations touting resort destinations, thrilling
cities, and weekend getaways. Today, consider where and when to deliver your marketing
messages. For example, consider the impact of a billboard promoting a Caribbean resort and
its sunny beaches displayed in New York City during the bone-chilling months of winter.

Friday Freebie: Want More

Business/Corporate Transient? Try this.
Start applying basic digital marketing tactics to enhance traction with the corporate/business
transient segment.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie:

Start applying basic digital marketing tactics to enhance traction with the
corporate/business transient segment.

2018 is going to be a hot year for corporate travel.`

The Global Business Travel Association and Carlson Wagonlit Travel 2018 forecasts predict
corporate travel spending will increase by 6.1 percent this year, up from the expected 2017
increase of 5.1 percent.

However, despite the growth, don’t expect corporate travelers to be drawn to your hotel on
their own. You’ll need to sharpen your plan to attract their business.

Here are FOUR easy ways to grow your hotel’s business travel bookings in 2018:

1. Make Your Business Benefits Obvious

According to a report by Concur and GBTA, 7 out of 10 travelers booked outside of their
company’s channels at least once in 2017. So, even if you are a leisure property, it makes
sense to showcase your business amenities thoroughly to this massive segment.

Create a page on your hotel website just for business travelers. Offer solutions and packages
for corporate travelers, such as offering free early/late checkout, complimentary in-room
WiFi, and complimentary breakfast.

2. Send Only Targeted Email Campaigns to Corporate Travelers

Generic emails promoting resort services are not relevant to business road warriors. Instead,
tout your airport shuttle, morning breakfast buffet, parking and nearby transportation options,
business center, list of company headquarters in your area, ironing and laundry services, area
eateries with grab-and-go options and your 24-hour fitness center.

3. Optimize Your Website With Corporate Search Terms

Be deliberate with your hotel website content and write in terms that are relevant to corporate
travelers. Create a business FAQ page that answers questions that business travelers are apt to
ask. Highlight all of your amenities that are vital to corporate travel. Not only are you
offering relevant content to this audience, it can be a magnet for SEO traffic.

4. Create a “Bleisure offer”

Create an offer solely for business travelers that extends the corporate rate a few days before
and after their reservation. Then, consider adding on simple perks during those extra days that
address “bleisure” needs such as complimentary breakfast, a late check-out, passes to a
nearby gym (if your property doesn’t offer a fitness center) and a calendar of
unique/authentic local events happening nearby.

Once the offer is created, use your CRM system to share the offer with all guests marked with
corporate rate codes in your PMS before their stay. Include the offer in their pre-stay email,
remind them at check-in and if possible… leave them a note during their stay

Friday Freebie: Feed Foodie Wanderlust

Upscale and luxury hotel marketers know that consumers’ increasing fascination with food is
a delicious path to profits! Tap into this growing trend by showcasing your unique F&B
offerings and quintessential local food experiences.

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Feed Foodie Wanderlust: boost upscale/luxury bookings.

Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.
This week’s freebie: Upscale and luxury hotel marketers know that consumers’ increasing
fascination with food is a delicious path to profits! Tap into this growing trend by
showcasing your unique F&B offerings and quintessential local food experiences.

Lingering over great food and drink is considered one of the best parts of traveling. From
splurge-worthy tasting menus to food tours, to local farmers markets. Foodie or not – modern
travelers crave discovering a city through its unique tastes and cultural elements. And, they’re
drawn to the hotels that give them front-row access to these culinary opportunities.

Luxury hotels understand this well.

In fact, most luxury hotel websites celebrate their food and drink, just as much as they
highlight their rooms and amenities. Visit any luxury hotel website and you’ll find their
restaurants positioned as vital components to the travel experience. Follow some of their
proven tactics:

 Highlight the local/sustainable ingredients in food and drink menus

 Showcase partnerships with organic markets and purveyors
 Share your chef’s background, their inspirations and influences
 Offer tips on how guests can bring the local flavor home
 Offer a food map showing your hotel’s proximity to authentic foodie finds, like farmers
marketers, ethnic eateries, and hidden local restaurants

The GM Checklist for Hotel Marketing

GM’s are now holding their marketing teams accountable for contributing – in a tangible,
measurable way – to revenue goals and generating leads.

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General Manager’s (GM’s) are more involved than ever in hotel marketing.
The cost of guest acquisition is on everyone’s mind these days, which means GM’s are
feeling pressure from ownership, asset managers and their hotel management companies to
maximize the ROI from their marketing investments.

GM’s have responded in two positive ways:

1. GM’s are now holding their marketing teams accountable for contributing – in a tangible,
measurable way – to revenue goals and generating leads.

2. GM’s are also championing their marketing team’s efforts and investing more time than
ever before in improving their understanding of the complex challenges facing their hotel
marketing team

To support this effort, here’s our list of 10 significant hotel marketing elements that every
GM should be familiar with:

1. The Four Marketing Pillars: Price, Product, Promotion and Placement

A smart, easy place for every GM to start is understanding the four traditional pillars of
marketing that directly drive the success of your hotel:

Product
The most important of the four, classic marketing “P’s”: How does your product differentiate
you? Consider both the hotel’s physical product (rooms, restaurant, meeting space, amenities,
spa, etc.), as well as the service experience. GMs need to constantly work with their
marketing team to determine if their product or service experience needs improvement (and
then ask ownership for the funds)!

Promotion (i.e. Advertising and Traffic Generation)

More than anything else, the GM MUST ensure that the marketing team’s promotional
expenses and investments are synchronized with the hotel’s targeted business mix

Placement (Distribution Channels)

GM’s need to know where the business is expected to come from and how the property’s
rates and inventory are positioned there? How many groups vs transient do you expect and
how much is actually being generated? How much inventory are you allocating to OTAs? Is
your team relying too heavily on OTAs to reach revenue goals? Or, are you thoughtfully
optimizing your own hotel website and booking engine to attract more profitable, direct
bookings?

Price

Your revenue management team controls pricing, but price is an unavoidably critical element
of marketing. GMs need to have consistent, accurate visibility to ADR vs the compset. GM’s
should also strongly encourage close cooperation between their marketing and revenue
management teams.

2) What your Marketing Team Needs from YOU to Succeed!

Your marketing team can’t survive without the GM championing their efforts and giving
them the right amount of funds, tools and resources to succeed. The key is to simply, and
constantly, ask them what they require from you to achieve their goals, then make it happen.

3) The Quality of Your Product

We want to underscore the importance of your PRODUCT in the marketing mix.

No amount of clever advertising or promotion can overcome an inadequate product or me-too
service experience. Keep in mind this compelling quote by Robert Stephens, founder of
Geek Squad, “Advertising is the tax you pay for an unremarkable product.”

There are far too many hotels that continue to sink millions of marketing dollars to over-
compensate for or to cover up an aging, lackluster, or grungy hotel product. The less you pay
attention to improving your service and your hotel product, the higher your marketing and
advertising expenses will be to make up for it.

GM’s can best serve their marketing teams by driving product improvement first!

By refusing to cut corners, investing in quality from the front desk to the back of the house,
and by presenting the best guest experience that your staff can deliver, guest sentiment will
go up, your number of repeat guests will go up, profits will go up and your marketing cost per
booking will go down.

4) How Marketing Investments Correlate to Projections

Smart GM’s know exactly how much revenue they expect from each segment of the hotel’s
business. And they expect their marketing teams to correlate their investments for
leisure/transient, group, corporate and F&B.

Generic, aimless and “pretty picture” marketing won’t cut it. Every marketing activity should
be done with the intention of achieving the segmented revenue goals of the overall business
mix.

Check back in throughout the year to see how your marketing team is synchronizing their
allocated budget and resources to align with revenue projections.
5) Your Property’s Story

Consistently and creatively telling a meaningful, truthful story is what truly attracts
travelers. However, many hoteliers don’t know what their story is, much less how to convey
it. Correctly telling your story means knowing your audience, being honest about your assets
and getting all stakeholders in agreement about your property’s unique identity so that you
can convey it poignantly across all your marketing channels.

Travelers are no longer drawn to sterile facts, puffy promises of a wonderful stay or mentions
of your recent industry awards. They want to be a part of something that intrigues them,
connects with them and gives them something to brag about.

GMs should be vigilant about their marketing team’s ability to propagate a unique story
across all channels.

6) Actual Costs of OTAs vs Marketing Expenses

Every good hotel marketer must know the actual costs and expenses of each channel. OTAs
are particularly tricky to track, as their commissions are often hidden, yet are one of the
costliest expenses to hit your bottom line (OTAs usually pay a net rate back to the hotel, so
the actual cost will never show up in your financials). Lean on your marketing and revenue
team to track the real expense of OTA bookings and compare that to the tangible expenses
that power more direct booking channels.

7) The Ratio of Direct vs 3rd Party Revenue

This goes in tandem with #6. Many hotels are still relying disproportionately on higher cost
channels for business. With rates and occupancy at an all-time high, one of the primary areas
GMs can affect is COST of acquisition!

And owners are watching this closely.

GMs should check the pulse on this each month to compare how many bookings came
directly through your hotel call center and website versus costly 3rd parties.

8) How to Augment the Brand’s Marketing Program

Brand affiliation offers many benefits… But custom marketing targeted to your specific
audiences is not one of them.

Branded/flagged properties need to augment their brand’s core program with timely
campaigns and custom direct “vanity” websites that help fill periods of need. Instead of
solely relying on the brand’s standard marketing program, which is duplicated for every other
sister hotel in the region. Your marketing team should be proactively differentiating your
property, customizing your website, and boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) and
social media efforts.

9) Marketing KPIs

Get familiar with the KPIs your marketing team is responsible for while ensuring they are not
spending too much time tracking vanity metrics. Metrics should offer insight that GMs and
the property owners consider high priority (like how much your marketing team is actually
contributing to the hotel’s revenue targets). Hotel marketers should be able to share vital
KPIs like direct revenue ratio, leads generated for the sales team and marketing cost per
booking (MCPB).

10) Why You Lose Business to the Compset

Winning is easy.

Losing requires painful introspection.

A majority of hotel sales and marketing teams fail to ponder why people chose another
property. Whenever your team loses a major group deal or market share, the GM needs to ask
the team: Why did we not win this business?

What went wrong… How could we have done better?

This simple follow-up could dramatically empower, alter, and inform your future sales
efforts.

Also, your team should never lose track of what your comp set is doing. In fact, there are so
many tactics and tools at your disposal, that a competitor’s success should never come as a
surprise. Keeping tabs on your compset will give you the insight to finesse, and possibly
pivot, your own marketing campaigns.

Friday Freebie: Crush the Compset with This

Group Sales Tactic
Stay ahead of new compset properties. Harvest your city’s special events to get ahead of
lucrative group business opportunities.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie:

Stay ahead of new compset properties. Harvest your city’s special events to get ahead of
lucrative group business opportunities.

Nothing can shake up your group sales numbers more than a new hotel in your compset.
Meeting and group travel planners are hungry for what’s new and will likely include the new
space in their consideration set… unless you employ smart strategies to provide your hotel
with a constant flow of revenue from other sources.

John Washko, VP of Expo & Convention Sales at Mohegan offers this powerful tip:

Work ahead by keeping close tabs on all the special events scheduled for your city as far in
advance as possible; monitor the area’s convention centers, concert venues and CVB
websites. Events, such as conventions, sporting events or concerts, almost always bring
meeting and/or group opportunities with them.

Your sales team should be researching and reaching out to any related clubs or organizations
that would likely travel to attend the event, then directly offer up a block of rooms at a group
rate. Your hotel can offer even more value through discounted transportation to the event.

For example, consider a Bon Jovi Fan Club, says Washko. This is a group, typically ages 40
to 50, that are enthusiastic fans of Bon Jovi and travel to his performances. Other examples
are car clubs for major races or car shows.

Washko says the key to staying ahead of your new comp set is by being the first to reach out
to these groups. So, set up processes with your sales managers to seek out these groups
several months in advance.

Why Do Some Hotel Marketers Get

Everything They Want?
Unlike many other industries that have already embraced the concept, too many hotel
marketers are still unable to quantify their CLV-to-CAC formula.
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Smart hotel marketing pros are using simple math get more budget.

With the hotel industry enjoying a period of record performance, posting all-time highs for
occupancy, ADR and RevPAR, one of the most talked-about ways to improve performance
(and delight ownership) are to reduce the cost of guest acquisition.

And that begins with fully understanding a vital metric: your hotel’s CLV-to-CAC ratio.

But unlike many other industries that have already embraced the concept, too many hotel
marketers are still unable to quantify their CLV-to-CAC formula.

This can be overcome with a little effort, offering a major potential boost to the bottom line
and a far stronger bargaining position when asking ownership for more marketing dollars
(and a raise)!
What Does It Mean?

To get started, there are some basic principles to know, beginning with terminology.

CLV stands for “Customer Lifetime Value,” meaning the revenue your hotel can expect to
earn from each guest over the lifespan of that customer’s relationship with you. CAC,
meanwhile, is short for “Cost to Acquire Customer,” or your total sales and marketing spend
to attract each customer and obtain the aforementioned CLV. The premise behind the CLV-
to-CAC formula is to maximize that ratio as much as possible.

There are multiple benefits from having a strong CLV-to-CAC ratio, including enabling hotel
marketers to ask owners for more investment dollars, for example, imagine being able to tell
ownership: “We spent $300,000 last year to attract 5,000 NEW guests, who represent a
LIFETIME VALUE of three million dollars in revenue… in other words, for every dollar you
give me, I’m giving you ten dollars back in gross revenue.”

So how do hoteliers calculate their CLV to CAC ratio?

According to Kissmetrics, a well-known web/data analysis company, Starbucks CLV is more than
$14,000.

Here are the core steps:

1. Making the Calculations

To come up with your CLV, first, consider how many times a guest typically stays at your
hotel(s) over a multi-year period. Then, deduce the total value of those stays. Multiply that
value by the total amount of visits per guest and that is the CLV you will use in the formula.

Next, to arrive at a value for CAC, simply divide the TOTAL amount your property spends
on sales and marketing for each segment (ie: transient vs group vs corporate) by the total
number of guests from that segment.
EXAMPLE:
So, if a hotel attracts 1,000 new guests this year and spends $100,000 to do it, the CAC
equals $100.

2. What to include in CAC?

When calculating CAC for each demand segment, be sure to include salaries, expenses,
technologies, advertising and any other investments made specifically to attract bookings
for that specific segment. That may include, for example, a customer relationship
management (CRM) system and trade show booth that is part of the CAC for your hotel’s
sales efforts for attracting the corporate business segment.

Other costs, like Google pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and social media
fees should be attributed primarily to transient guest CAC calculations. On the other hand,
your hotel’s website, the salary for your director of sales and marketing (DOSM) and other
“shared” costs can be distributed evenly across all segments that your property targets.

3. The Results:

Using the calculations described above, divide the CLV by the CAC to arrive at the ratio.

For example, if a hotel has a CLV of $5,000 per transient guest and the CAC for each
transient guest equals $100, then the CLV-to-CAC ratio is 50x. In other words, for every
dollar spent on sales and marketing to target that guest, the hotel will earn back $50.

That is the kind of return owners love!

And that is the kind of math that separates serious hotel marketers from those just focused on
pretty pictures!

Now compare results to your OTA costs!

Once you know your own CLV-to-CAC ratio, you can compare it to the CLV-to-CAC of
bookings derived from third-party online travel agencies (OTAs).

You’ll most likely be pleasantly surprised by what you find: Typically, OTA-driven guests
are less loyal and will have a lower CLV as a result. Also, the commissions on those
bookings may be higher than the CAC you are achieving on your own.

So, in the quest to drive hotel profitability even further into the stratosphere, make it a top
priority today to learn your CLV-to-CAC ratio for each customer segment you target. By
offering such compelling insight, the CLV-to-CAC ratio can be an incredibly powerful stat
for hotel marketers to cite to owners when requesting more marketing dollars.

You’ll be much more likely to obtain the budget you need when your owner is assured their
investment will lead to a far better payoff down the road

Friday Freebie: Stop Obsessing Over This

Hotel Marketing Metric
Stop obsessing about the quantity of traffic and visitors to your hotel website…instead, focus
on how many actually enter the booking environment!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Stop obsessing about the quantity of traffic and visitors to your hotel
website…instead, focus on how many actually enter the booking environment!

It’s every hotel marketer’s reality:

We have loads of stats to track…from website stats, search rankings, to social media likes
and email open rates. And we know that gathering data is instrumental to finessing our
marketing campaigns and being accountable to ownership and upper management.

However, some metrics can be dangerously misleading. One of those often-deceptive metrics
happens to be extremely popular in hotel marketing: Online traffic and visitors to your hotel
website.

Why is it misleading?

While a gradual, sustained increase in website traffic is a great thing, don’t let the numbers
mislead you into thinking your site is performing better than it really is (conversely, if it
drops, don’t freak out and think the sky is falling.)

The following are just a few of the factors can cause your traffic/visitors to create a “false
echo” and send you off trying to fix (or replicate) something that it is out of your control:

1. Seasonality can affect traffic up and down.

2. A major PR story about your property can cause traffic to spike.
3. PPC and Promo campaigns (avoid Groupon please!) can increase traffic and cause it to drop
when its over.
4. Local/regional events nearby your property will cause it to spike & drop.
5. Changes in the way Google displays their search engine result pages (SERPs) can actually
cause LESS traffic to come to your site (because users are getting their answers right on
Google’s SERPs!

Ultimately, it comes down to the quality of traffic, not quantity.

And there are three primary keys to attracting QUALITY traffic:

 1. Tell the story only your property can tell: If you want to find the right guests who will buy
and return, then you have to give them a truthful, relevant reason to consider you! You must
understand your ideal guest persona and communicate your UVP across every marketing
touchpoint.
2. Stop using cheap tactics: Lots of unsavory digital “publishers” sell access to cheap traffic.
But what good does it do if your traffic is coming from click-robots in Kazakhstan? Your
digital team (or ask your guests!) should be able to easily explain which media they actually
consume on their purchase journey. (And do we really need to talk about the poor quality
traffic from flash sale providers like Groupon?)
3. Invest in long-term organic hotel SEO content: Choose the right keywords to start
building long-term content around: You will never rank on page 1 of Google for “Hotels in
Boston” but you have a decent shot of ranking for “Hotels near Fenway Park” if your SEO
and content team is producing content EVERY MONTH with that “long-tail” focus. Another
simple trick: your content can bring you loads of quality search traffic if it answers the
questions of your potential customers… you can use this handy/cheap tool to see what
questions people are actually typing in about your market and compset

REMEMBER: If you have to pick one thing to focus on to measure the performance of
your website, track entrances into your hotel booking engine and calls to your
reservation center.

Get more examples: We Need to Talk About Hotel Metrics

What hotel brand managers really want from

their marketing vendors?
In our work with hotel groups all over the world, we’ve found that brand managers seek 10
key things from their vendors, here’s the list:

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It’s no secret that hotel brand managers, especially those responsible for large hotel groups
and multinational brands, rely on their marketing vendors to help manage their brand and
drive traffic and revenue growth.

This is a huge necessity, given that brand managers often have limited time and resources.
Otherwise, they risk allowing important initiatives to fall by the wayside as they become
buried in multiple daily projects.

In our work with hotel groups all over the world, we’ve found that brand managers seek 10
key things from their vendors, here’s the list:

1. Hotel expertise

One thing we hear from hotel and resort brand managers time and time again is that
significant hotel experience is mandatory. Many large, digital marketing firms, email
marketing firms, website developers and SEO firms lack the long-term hotel industry
experience necessary to provide compelling insight and elevate results from ordinary to
extraordinary. Having a deeply experienced hotel marketing vendor on your side who already
understands the economics of the industry and the right benchmarks is invaluable to savvy
hotel and resort brand managers.

This poll of senior marketing execs shows how important it is for agencies to understand their client’s
business and be aligned with their business objectives
2. Consolidated Services

Unfortunately, when many brand managers choose their preferred marketing vendors, they
assemble a piecemeal team: one specialist to manage email, another to run social media, a
third to manage hotel PPC and SEO, and yet another to optimize distribution.

And while hiring the best experts to do the job should improve performance, there are several
downsides to this scattered approach. Over and over again we hear the same thing from hotel
brand managers: “too many vendors breeds chaos and complexity.”

The biggest downside to the piecemeal approach is that when something goes wrong,
multiple vendors are likely to point fingers at one another instead of fixing the problem. For
example, an email vendor might point fingers at the website or hotel booking engine vendors
when an email goes out with broken links. But, when your website, booking engine, and
email marketing vendors are one and the same, you have direct insight into what went wrong
and who is responsible for fixing it.

Hiring multiple, disconnected vendors and systems will inevitably challenge any efforts to
drive bookings. Your marketing operation needs to be a well-oiled machine to outperform the
compset. However, that’s near impossible when you’re juggling multiple disconnected
vendors, shuttling messages back and forth to make sure everyone is aligned. Worse yet, no
one vendor will take full responsibility when campaigns fail and goals aren’t met.

The solution is to consolidate.

Pare down your partners to only those who produce the best work, who you trust the most to
protect your interests and who can handle multiple functions.

3. Ability to leverage data

No surprise here, marketing execs in every industry want their agencies and marketing
partners to cross-pollinate data to drive more personalized, trackable campaigns. Hotel brand
managers have a virtual firehose of data at their fingertips and they want to share it with their
trusted vendors to improve results, craft new insights and discover new audiences.
4. Proof of ROI

While every vendor will proudly provide metrics to show you how they’re doing, getting
down to the actual value their contribution brings to your hotel brand is much more difficult.
This is especially challenging when a single booking touches multiple vendors—each one
will want to take credit for that booking, and you’ll never be able to determine your return on
investment (ROI) for each vendor. With a consolidated services vendor however, it is very
easy to see who is truly impacting your bottom line, whether a booking comes through
your hotel’s social media, your booking engine, a metasearch site, or an email campaign.

5. Consistency

As a hotel brand manager, consistency is your bread and butter. It is your job to ensure that
your hotel’s brand promise is clear and consistent across every touchpoint. This is much
harder to do when you have dozens of vendors operating different touchpoints along the guest
journey. It is much easier to maintain the necessary brand consistency when you consolidate
vendors. Also, it’s critical that your marketing vendors be consistent in their delivery, fees
and performance. Brand managers have enough to worry about without having to police
inconsistent performance from key marketing vendors.

6. Quality

The more vendors you work with, the more moving pieces you have to deal with. Managing
separate, disconnected vendors to handle the various functions of your hotel’s brand
experience often means managing several projects separately, fielding multiple project calls
and emails, coordinating meetings, and relaying information back and forth amongst them.
With less time to devote to each vendor to ensure you get the most bang for your buck,
quality will slip, deadlines will be missed, and your KPIs will suffer.

Again, this is why brand management pros expect consistency AND quality from their
vendors. TIP: Ask your vendors about their QA process!

7. Value for the money

No matter how large the hotel brand… everybody has a strict budget. And while
sophisticated brand managers recognize the intrinsic connection between cost and value, they
also need to get as much bang for their limited marketing budget bucks as possible. So it’s
critical that marketing vendors add value in some meaningful to their contracted scope of
work.

From
LinkedIn:

8. Validation from other relevant brands

Much like guests like to read reviews on TripAdvisor or Booking.com before they select a
hotel, many brand managers like to hear that a vendor has trusted by their peers in the
industry. An experienced hotel marketing services vendor will be happy to show you how
their work has helped make your compset brands successful.

9. Help make you a star

Remember, the whole point of working with vendors is to get experts working on parts of
your job that would suffer if you had to do them all yourself. Their job is to be invested in
your success, and as such, they will be happy to support you and provide you with the
necessary reports when it comes time to show your boss how well you’re doing on your
KPIs.

10. Trust

Trust is paramount for any procurement team in any industry… but it’s even more important
for hotel brand managers because your vendors directly affect your ability to hit your KPIs
for the quarter. Therefore, it is critical that you demand accountability. A trusted marketing
vendor will be honest about performance, accountable for their mistakes, reasonable with fees
and credits… and committed to protecting you as their primary point of contact.

Friday Freebie: Reduce Booking

Abandonment with This Easy Fix
This week’s freebie: Showcase all room/property fees upfront. Nothing kills trust and
transactions faster than hidden costs.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Showcase all room/property fees upfront. Nothing kills trust and
transactions faster than hidden costs.

Today’s travelers are looking for honest, seamless transactions.

However, many hotels are still making a terrible mistake: Throwing in fees (Resort fees, we
are looking at you!) at the most critical point in the purchase journey – right before asking
for credit card information!

This greatly increases abandonment and plants the seeds of distrust in the minds of potential
guests. Worse, by encouraging abandonment at the very bottom of your booking funnel, your
conversion rate will also suffer (and conversion rate is a key metric many hotel marketers are
held accountable for).

As a hotel, you’re expected to simplify life, not confuse it. Nor, manipulate potential
guests. Modern consumers want truthfulness and become unsettled at the first hint of any
dissonance. They are usually ruthless in abandoning any property that tries to sneak in pesky
fees.

Instead, be upfront.

Present any costs, such as a resort fee, as early as possible. Don’t wait until they press ‘book
now’ to spring on extra charges.

How Guests Decide Whether to Buy on Your

Hotel Website
Psychology plays a deeper role in online hotel booking decisions than you may think.

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Psychology plays a deeper role in online hotel booking decisions than you may think,
particularly when it comes to building trust among hotel consumers. And creating that trust,
experts say, is not as simple as just touting your brand affiliation or Trip Advisor rating.

Ultimately, your sales will suffer if you fail to foster trust with your hotel website visitors and
give them psychological motivation to buy. According to a recent Western University
study recently discussed in the Harvard Business Review, that begins with understanding the
two methods of reasoning customers use when making online purchases, depending on the
level of risk involved with that decision.

Parallel Processing

There are two different, yet complementary “parallel” means in which humans decide to buy.
On the one hand, potential customers use logical, rules-based “deliberative” system of
reasoning when making small, low-risk purchases.

That means that when buying lower-priced items online, shoppers are mostly looking for the
standard signs of business legitimacy, like a secure checkout, a strong search-engine
presence, online reviews, etc. Buying in this situation is a deliberate, informed choice that
satisfies a very basic customer need.

But for more expensive, complicated transactions where personal comforts are associated (ie
hotel stays), humans tend to rely on what is called “associative” reasoning, which is far less
structured and rules-based than the deliberative process. Associative reasoning relies more on
the individual’s own intuition and personal experience, and here is where building virtual
trust becomes so important. Instead of creating a bond in person through your sales charisma
and the reassuring experience of meeting your client in person at your office or storefront,
you need to find the online aesthetics instead that trigger the same associative customer trust.

But how?

Here are three proven ways to build trust and increase your hotel website conversion rate:

1. Actually be authentic

You’ll never connect with consumers with a generic, cookie-cutter hotel website that fails to
convey a truthful story. But there are also a number of subtle visual cues, as well as content
features, that can go a long way toward enhancing a sense of authenticity that eases suspicion
and fosters trust. Some useful tips include:

The great ad
man David Ogilvy reminds about the importance of being truthful in our marketing

 Be truthful

Travelers are no longer drawn to sterile facts, puffy promises of a wonderful stay or mentions
of your recent industry awards. They want to be a part of something that intrigues them,
connects with them and gives them something to brag about. Telling a meaningful,
TRUTHFUL story is what can truly attract travelers. Correctly telling your story means
knowing your audience, being honest about your assets and getting all stakeholders into
consensus about your property’s unique identity, so you can convey it poignantly across all
marketing channels. Also, be truthful in how you tailor your messaging, language and
imagery. Avoid using models in photos who don’t look anything like your typical visitors.
And write your copy with language that speaks to your intended audience.

 Avoid stock photography

Those dull, lifeless stock images that are used all too often on the web do little to motivate
buyers or convince them they should do business with you. Instead, try and use your own
unique photos. If that means hiring a professional photographer in order to create quality
images, then go ahead and budget for that. And most importantly, every hotel should be
capturing guest-generated content and repurpose it across every marketing channel

 Get hyper-local

Give visitors the most authentic personalized content and recommendations you can. Offer
“Staff picks” on great places to eat, “in-the-know” events and other local suggestions that go
beyond the typical tips already available online for your area. Position your hotel website as
the epicenter of the destination!

2. Provide social proof

Social proof can have a huge effect on building trust, because it taps into that fuzzy human
logic that drives associative reasoning, including the fear of missing out (FOMO). Some core
methods of providing social proof include:

 Celebrate Past Guest Experiences on Social Media

Travel consumers are heavily influenced by “social proof” (this is why TripAdvisor is so
popular). By sharing past guest stories, reviews (and best of all videos) on their hotel’s social
media channels, you can turn your past guests into a perpetual army of experience
evangelists.

Harvest their good times!

An example of capturing guest-generated social proof from The St. Regis in San Francisco

 User Testimonials

Post glowing past guest reviews directly on your website (especially for meeting planners). If
possible, include a photo of the person leaving the review, which enhances the perceived
legitimacy of the testimonial

 Media Labels

Showcase awards on your hotel website from the reputable news or travel industry
organizations who’ve recognized your property. The equity of these organizations creates
buyer confidence at a quick glance

 Partner Logos

Also display the logos of the businesses and organizations you partner with, even if they are
smaller, less easily recognized brands. This bolsters credibility and draws other partners and
customers to you

3. Create helpful content

Research has shown that people are more likely to do you a favor if you do something for
them first. In marketing, this is called reciprocity, the principle of give and take. If you offer
something of value upfront, travelers will have an innate desire and obligation to return the
favor.

So when planning and executing content strategies for your site, create content purely for the
sake of being useful to your customers. Don’t make content a thinly-veiled sales pitch. That’s
a surefire recipe for a rapid bounce rate (how quickly someone clicks on a link and then
leaves) and is a general turn-off for viewers, who see right through this tactic.

Design content to help solve problems and address customer pain points. Local area guides,
FAQ pages, area events calendars etc are all examples of selfless content that conveys
helpfulness and generates trust

For more on the psychology of buying as it pertains to the hotel booking process, check out
our in-depth series on “The Surprising Psychology Behind Successful Hotel Websites,” Part
One and Part Two.

Friday Freebie: The Simple Digital Skill

That’s Changing Hotel Group Sales
This Week’s Freebie: Cold calling is dead… encourage your group sales team to master new
digital business development skills.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Cold calling is dead… encourage your group sales team to master
new digital business development skills.

Traditionally, hotel sales teams use classic old-school textbook techniques, relying heavily on
relationship selling and cold calls to book business.

Today, however, meeting planners are doing 80% of their pre-purchase research in the digital
world… relying far less on hotel salespeople for information, instead choosing to educate
themselves on potential venues via the web and peer referrals.
Here’s One Proven Way Hotel Salespeople Can Tap into This Trend:

Embracing digital doesn’t mean the longstanding practice of relationship-based selling no

longer applies; it’s just moved into a different medium. According to LinkedIn, three out of
four B2B buyers now rely on social media to engage with peers about buying decisions.

More than three-quarters (82%) of B2B buyers say vendor content shared on social channels
(like LinkedIn) has a significant impact on their buying decision, while B2B buyers are five
times more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights about their business
or industry, according to LinkedIn research.

With that in mind, today’s sales teams should be using digital to enable “social selling,”
which essentially means building relationships and nudging leads along through the sales
process via savvy, helpful, UNSELFISH social media interaction, rather than outdated and
ineffective methods like phone calls and email.

This is primarily done by providing content that solves the problems and answers the
questions of customers, as well as by interacting one-on-one with leads through social media.
It’s different from wide-swath “shotgun marketing” on social, where branding-related content
is shared everywhere in hopes of going viral and building awareness; social selling, rather,
makes the customer the key dictator of the type of content shared, based on their specific
wants and needs.

And remember, social interaction doesn’t end with that first sale, either.

Social platforms are also employed post-sale to retain and upsell customers, especially by
creating a channel for customers to share feedback and vent frustration. Referrals are now
essential to lead generation, with 84% of B2B buyers beginning the buying process with a
 referral and more than 90% of purchase decisions influenced by peer recommendations,
according to a 2016 Harvard Business Review article.

How B2B Sales Can Benefit from Social

Selling
 Laurence Minsky
 Keith A. Quesenberry
NOVEMBER 08, 2016 UPDATED NOVEMBER 10, 2016

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Outbound B2B sales are becoming less and less effective. In fact, a recent survey found that
connecting with a prospect now takes 18 or more phone calls, callback rates are below 1%,
and only 24% of outbound sales emails are ever opened. Meanwhile, 84% of B2B buyers are
now starting the purchasing process with a referral, and peer recommendations are
influencing more than 90% of all B2B buying decisions.

Why are more and more buyers avoiding salespeople during the buying process? Sales reps,
according to Forrester, tend to prioritize a sales agenda over solving a customer’s problem. If
organizations don’t change their outdated thinking and create effective sales models for
today’s digital era, Forrester warns that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-
service e-commerce by 2020.
The answer to the shift away from reliance on outbound sales could reside in social selling,
the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. With social selling,
salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing
educational content and answering questions. As a result, they’re able to build relationships
until prospects are ready to buy.

This is different than social media marketing, where a brand engages many, aiming to
increase overall brand awareness or promote a specific product or service by producing
content that users will share with their network. Social selling concentrates on producing
focused content and providing one-to-one communication between the salesperson and the
buyer. Both strategies create valuable content from the consumer’s perspective and use
similar social networks and social software tools. But with social selling, the goal is for the
rep to form a relationship with each prospect, providing suggestions and answering questions
rather than building an affinity for the organization’s brand.

Social selling makes sense for achieving quota and revenue objectives for multiple reasons.
First, three out of four B2B buyers rely on social media to engage with peers about buying
decisions. In a recent B2B buyers survey, 53% of the respondents reported that social media
plays a role in assessing tools and technologies, and when making a final selection.

In addition, more than three-quarters (82%) of the B2B buyers said the winning vendor’s
social content had a significant impact on their buying decision. A LinkedInsurvey found that
B2B buyers are five times more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights
about their business or industry. Another survey showed that 72% of the B2B salespeople
who use social media report that they outperformed their sales peers, and more than half of
them indicated they closed deals as a direct result of social media.

Social sales content also gets salespeople involved earlier in the sales cycle, which means
they’re more likely to define the criteria for an ideal solution or the “buying vision,” and
thus, more likely to win the sale.

It doesn’t take a significant amount of time to get started in social selling. B2B salespeople
only need to invest 5% to 10% of their time to be successful with social. Salespeople should
begin carving out a small percentage of their daily time for social media. Regular interaction
with a prospect may not lead to a direct sale this week or quarter, but could result in a
significant win within the year.

Salespeople should also collaborate with their social marketing counterparts to make the most
of their social efforts. Marketing can train salespeople in social media systems, processes, and
best practices. According to a survey, 75% of B2B salespeopleindicated they were trained in
the effective use of social media. This training can encompass everything from working in
specific social media channels to using corporate social media software, understanding the
business’s social media guidelines, and orienting social media content around customer
interests and needs, rather than on brand features, benefits, and prices.

What’s more, sales and marketing can collaborate on information to ensure that their efforts
are aligned and to identify common goals and metrics that both teams can support. Since
sales pride themselves on their one-on-one relationships with customers, they can discuss
with marketing customer successes and concerns, changing customer needs, customer
questions, and industry updates.
Integrating systems and encouraging transparency will also go a long way. Salesforce, for
example, emphasizes the importance of improved communication between sales and
marketing citing an App Data Room and Marketo study that found sales and marketing
alignment can improve sales efforts at closing deals by 67% and help marketing generate
209% more value from their efforts.

One way to improve communication between sales and marketing is by creating a portal.
BMC Software, a B2B IT solutions company, took this approach when they created
BMC BeSocial, a secure portal where salespeople can find content created by marketing and
other employees to share by posting immediately or scheduling for later. The portal also
provides guidelines, tips, and frequently asked questions on how to use social media.

Carlos Gil, the Head of Global Social Media Marketing for BMC Software, and his team of
content creators, social media managers, socially engaged salespeople, and other employees
developed a well-articulated and tailored employee advocacy program. BMC then leverages
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to deliver a mix of content — everything from eBooks,
whitepapers, and blogs to videos, news, events, and updates.

For salespeople and other socially engaged employees to get started, they sign up to BeSocial
with their LinkedIn account and then select and share content curated by Gil’s business unit.
The BeSocial portal makes social easy and fun, offering badges to gamify the experience,
which provides an incentive to share. The portal and program are working. Social media is
helping to raise awareness, increase percentage of mentions or share of voice compared to
competitors, and drive global demand for BMC products and services.

After all, social media is too important to be left to marketing. In fact, a recent studyfound
skilled social media sales professionals are six times more likely to exceed quota over peers
with basic or no social media skills. It is time to get started with social selling and meet your
prospects where they’re spending their time. Your organization could be halfway there if
marketing has already made the shift to integrating social media into their strategies. When
marketing combines their long-game with sales short game in social selling, it can be a win-
win for both teams — and for your overall business.

Editor’s note: We’ve updated the headline of this article to better reflect the main idea.

It’s Valentine’s Day: What Are Hotel

Marketers Loving?
Each year around Valentine’s Day, we ask clients, partners and industry insiders what they
are feeling warm and fuzzy about.

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Hotel marketing folks are infatuated with these 7 things…

Each year around Valentine’s Day, we ask clients, partners and industry insiders what they
are feeling warm and fuzzy about… here are the 7 things they’re smitten with right now:

1. A Strong Economy and Positive Industry Forecasts

The smart folks at STR, CBRE and PWC all generally agree that 2018 will be another year of
steady growth for the hotel industry. (You can download STR’s detailed breakdown by
market here.) Fueled by a strong global economy, relatively low gas prices and limited supply
growth, the US hotel industry is once again expected to enjoy positive RevPAR and ADR
growth. And since all boats rise with the tide… hotel marketers are riding the wave to
happiness and career growth.
2. Robust Career Opportunities

Speaking of career growth… hotel marketers are seeing more opportunities than ever.
Industry results have expanded budgets and created new roles. While the allure of the hotel
industry and the fast-tracked promotional opportunities make hotel marketing and hotel social
media jobs some of the most coveted in the country.

3. Elevated Consumer Awareness of Direct Booking Benefits

Thanks to the massive media outreach by Hilton and Marriott’s direct booking campaigns,
we’re seeing heightened public recognition of the benefits of booking direct. The idea is to
educate travelers and chip away at the myth that OTAs save guests money. With the stage set,
more and more hotels are following in Hilton and Marriott’s footsteps with their own hotel
marketing campaigns enticing audiences to book direct.

Plus, hotel marketers at properties of all sizes are now armed with new digital hotel
marketing tools and previously unaffordable technology that can help them drive direct room
revenue, instead of settling for costly OTA bookings. The momentum of the “book direct
movement” is growing and hotel marketing folks are excited to see where it’s headed.

4. Owners’ Investment in a Remarkable Product

New hotels with bold concepts and fresh guest experiences are springing up in all directions,
so hotel owners need to invest in their properties to keep up with modern expectations.

Thankfully, more and more hotel owners are realizing that the best hotel marketing
investment they can make is in enhancing their property, the experience and the service.

If your property is providing a lackluster experience with frayed edges, outdated décor, and
musty smells, no amount of brilliant marketing can save you from the downward spiral of lost
revenue.

5. Social Evangelism

Hotel social media managers are feeling blessed to have guests who gush and brag about their
stay on Facebook and post foodie pics to Instagram. Not only have they made marketing
travel engagingly personal and authentic, they come at no cost to the hotelier.
Over the last few years, storytelling and “user-generated content (UGC)”has become one of
the most popular (and cost-effective) ways for hotel marketers to win guests’ hearts and
wallets.

Why?

Because consumers no longer trust advertising… they trust each other. As this article in
AdAge so aptly put it: “Your brand is defined by the interactions people have with it.”

User-generated content, especially photos, videos and posts about on-property experiences
are more authentic, less sales focused… and let’s face it, usually more creative than anything
hotel social media folks could ever dream up.

6. Metasearch: An Attractive and Less Expensive Option

It’s easy to see why travelers love metasearch, such as Google and TripAdvisor: They receive
all the key details needed to research and book their stays all in one place, like real-time
pricing, availability, hotel information, guest reviews and location.

But, hotel marketers are loving metasearch too.

They are using these sites to boost direct bookings instead of relying on OTAs and paying
high commissions. You can pay-per-click or pay booking commissions (still less expensive
than traditional OTA fees) – all while getting brand exposure and access to travelers who are
just entering the consideration and booking funnel.

7. Digital Personalization

Every year, new hotel website and booking engine technology allows hotels to know more
about who’s looking, booking and bouncing. With this robust analytics and demographic
data, hotel offers are now personalized and optimized to reap the biggest ROI.

And hotel marketers are smarter than ever about crafting hotel marketing campaigns that are
tailored to the right travelers and delivered to the right place, at the right time. And, best of all
– everything is measurable, which provides tremendous power to hotel marketers when it
comes time for annual performance and budget reviews.

5 Things that Make Hotel Brand Managers

Happy
Here’s our take on why hotel brand managers have some great reasons to be happy in today’s
hospitality ecosystem.

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In our 34 years of helping hotel and resort brand managers achieve their goals, we have seen
a lot of happy people.

We have also seen a lot of unhappy ones.

A contributing factor to professional unhappiness is often the uncertainty that comes with
change. The market, technology… and consumer behaviors and expectations are all rapidly-
changing elements in the world of hoteliers.

But, change isn’t always bad.

At Tambourine, we think that the current state of affairs is pretty sunny for our
customers. Here’s our take on why hotel brand managers have some great reasons to be
happy in today’s hospitality ecosystem.

1. High Investor Confidence

The continuing strong economy means that asset investors and owners are more confident
now than at any time in the last 17 years. This is great news for hotel brand managers, as it
means they likely have an easier job convincing key stakeholders to increase their budgets
and invest in updating and enhancing their products.

2. Sentiment Data

In addition to having capital available to invest in their brand, hotel and resort brand
managers can also be happy with the advent of technology like sentiment analysis, which
makes it easy to determine the most impactful way to invest that capital.

TripAdvisor data:

For one thing, this technology makes it really simple for hotel marketers to look at an
aggregate of customer reviews and surveys to discover what product and service aspects are
delighting or disappointing guests.

Sentiment data can also be valuable in terms of market research and competitive research.
What are your competitors doing well that you might consider doing yourself? This kind of
data used to take hours to compile. Now, with sentiment analysis technology, this information
is available to brand managers instantly at all times.

3. Social proof

One challenge that hotel brand managers are facing is that most consumers don’t trust
advertising. They trust other consumers instead…

Fortunately, the rise of social media and online review sites has created an easier way to
leverage “social proof,” a phenomenon in social psychology which states that people will
conform in order to be liked by or accepted by their friends, an influencer, or society as a
whole.
In other words, if you’re managing a hotel brand, some of your work is being done for you.
Your guests are posting about you on Facebook, Instagram and online review sites, telling
their friends the good and bad about their stay with you. This isn’t just a free way to spread
the word about your brand. It’s also a great way to get information on where you’re doing
well, and where your hotel brand has room for improvement. And, it’s more effective in
establishing brand trust amongst potential guests than any advertising or social media
outreach your team can deliver.

Unfortunately, most hotel brands fall short on the social media front. In a ranking of 100
brands, only two hospitality brands — Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and The Ritz-Carlton
Hotel Company — ranked among the top 50 luxury brands on social. The likely reality is,
effective hotel social media is an area where your property has room to improve.

4. New Digital Touchpoints

Hotel brand managers are always thinking about the guest journey and the various
touchpoints at which they have the opportunity to deliver on their brand promise. But now,
with the rise of email marketing, social media, search engines, and online reviews, there are
exponentially more opportunities to optimize your guest experience via digital channels.

For example, think of what you could do with an email series that includes confirmation, pre-
arrival, welcome, and post-checkout messaging. Or, imagine what results you might get with
a “we miss you” campaign sent a few months after checkout to encourage the guest to come
back for their anniversary or birthday. This kind of tool is especially helpful for hotel
management group marketing teams, as it can easily be automated to extend the efforts of a
corporate team responsible for a portfolio of hotels.

5. The Bleisure Opportunity

Compell
ing stats from Bridgestreet Global Hospitality

Recent Expedia data shows that travelers adding leisure to their corporate travel trips take
more than six business trips per year. Additionally, almost two-thirds of their trips were
extended.

Brand managers at chains with large, loyal business audiences are waking up to the untapped
potential of this segment, targeting those identified as business travelers with promotional
offers to extend their stays.

Friday Freebie: When Guests Want to Pay…

Get out of the Way
This Week’s Freebie: Stop blocking bookings – be flexible and allow as many payment
methods as possible.
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Stop blocking bookings – be flexible and allow as many payment
methods as possible.

A booking in progress is a fragile and fickle thing. So many factors could derail the process
and cause people to abandon their reservation and head over to another hotel or OTA. In fact,
often it’s a complicated hotel booking engine process that pushes people to walk away from
their reservation.

This is especially true at the moment of truth… at checkout!

Most hotels are smart about giving their guests options – from room types to upgrades.
However, many hotels don’t extend their flexibility when it comes to paying. Instead, they
offer a rigid set of payment options.

Solution: Provide speedy, simple payment experiences. Offer multiple ways to pay beyond
the typical Visa, AMEX and Mastercard transactions. Accept as many other forms of
payment as possible (like PayPal). Some hotels even accept Bitcoin these days!

And some go even further – Couples Resorts offers the Love Away payment plan which
allows guests to place a $100 deposit, then enter into a layaway plan for their getaway.

Also, don’t forget to mention security clearly on your checkout page, otherwise you run a
serious risk of abandonment. Customers need to feel confident that their payments will be
handled securely. A statement of secure payment (or security badges) reassures your
customers and could be the difference between a new guest and a lost sale.

Mobile Bookings Are Up. Why Aren’t Yours?

Here are the three mobile booking tweaks you need to outperform your compset.

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Hotel booking engines need to look and feel more like apps.

Everybody is talking about the rise of mobile bookings.

In fact, a study by eMarketer estimates that by 2021, half of all digital travel sales will be
made from smartphones or tablets.

Chris Bendtsen, an eMarketer forecasting analyst, told Travel Weekly that consumers are
booking more travel plans on their smartphones and tablets for a variety of reasons:

1. Easier methods of online payment.

2. Larger smartphone screens.
3. A desire to react quickly to last-minute travel deals.

So why aren’t your mobile bookings growing as rapidly as the rest of the world?
Too many hoteliers may think a mobile version of their website & booking engine will
suffice. However, today’s consumers are not just looking for your website to ‘come up’ on
their phones. Your mobile experience has to match today’s modern consumer habits and
expectations.

Mobile bookings are the present and the future of the hotel industry. Here are the three
mobile booking tweaks you need to adjust to this new reality and outperform your compset:

1. Cut it Down

Real estate on a mobile screen is limited.

The first – and most important – step to maximizing the mobile guest experience is to cut out,
not add, features. Examine your hotel’s mobile booking funnel and streamline it as much as
possible. Strip your mobile site of any clutter, including links, ads, navigation elements, menu
options etc. Pare down the booking process to 3 screens or less.

Mobile is meant for the consumer-on-the-go… they have no patience for long-winded, self-
indulgent purchase processes! Since mobile screens are smaller than desktops or laptops,
minimize the amount of text on the screen. Trim content down to only what’s necessary to
convey (like calls to action or clear next steps), then use a single big visual per page to guide
guests through the process.

Multiple photos, videos, and pages of copy will not only make your mobile hotel booking
engine load slower, but possibly anger and turn away guests who are accustomed to faster
uploads from other sites.
2. Design for Thumbs

Call it modern intuition: smartphone users navigate mobile sites using one hand. Most often
with just their thumb. This is why the best mobile hotel ecommerce experiences are built like
apps, which allow guests to tap, swipe, scroll, and click using just one hand or thumb. Stay
clear of requiring guests to ‘pinch’ the screen to zoom in and out for content. This means
your graphics and text are not optimized for mobile users and are too small.

3. Simplify Payment Options

You pride yourself on giving consumers choices in room types, F&B venues, and other add-
ons. Your flexibility should extend to the most important element in the customer-acquisition
process: the checkout!

Yet, sometimes the simple reason shoppers don’t complete a purchase is that their preferred
credit card wasn’t accepted in your booking engine!

Smart hotels offer multiple payment options, going beyond Amex, Visa and Mastercard to
include as many forms of payment as possible, including third-party online payment services
like PayPal. Some even take it a step further like Couples Resorts, who offer a “loveaway”
payment plan. A complicated hotel booking engine process is often the reason guests
abandon their reservations, so provide a simple and speedy credit card experience.

Rebranding Your Hotel? Five Marketing

‘Gotchas’
These “gotcha” moments include the following five blunders, which hotel marketers should
avoid at all costs.

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Hotel rebranding requires more than pretty pictures…

Successfully rebranding a hotel isn’t usually as simple as just putting up a new sign outside
the property and slapping a new logo everywhere the old logo used to be…

A true rebranding is a massive shift in philosophy, company culture and audience targeting,
which has widespread implications for all marketing efforts going forward under the new
identity.

There are, unfortunately, some specific aspects of the rebranding process where marketing
commonly goes astray. These “gotcha” moments include the following five blunders, which
hotel marketers should avoid at all costs:

Gotcha #1: Before rebranding, forgetting to properly debrand!

The first step in a rebranding strategy is to wipe the slate clean and start fresh.

That entails removing all collateral, signage, uniforms, advertising and marketing materials
(online and off) that reference the hotel’s previous branded identity, including images, logos
and words or catchphrases. You’ll also need to revise your presence on all digital platforms
and sales channels, like Tripadvisor, the OTAs, AAA, etc., and share the news of the
impending change with your local travel and tourism ecosystem, such as CVB partners, area
vendors, chambers of commerce and the like.

Gotcha #2: Failing to build your new brand around the TRUTH!

Just like your mom used to say… Don’t try and be something you aren’t.
Instead, root the identity of your rebrand in experiences and amenities you can actually
deliver. Travelers are no longer drawn to sterile facts, puffy promises of a wonderful stay or
mentions of your recent industry awards. They want to be a part of something that intrigues
them, connects with them and gives them something to brag about. Consistently and
creatively telling a meaningful, truthful story is what can truly attract travelers. However,
many hoteliers simply don’t know what their story is, much less how to convey it.

Correctly telling your story means knowing your audience, being honest about your assets
and getting all stakeholders into consensus about your property’s unique identity, so you can
convey it poignantly across all marketing channels. Cement that strategy by taking the time to
author a brand manifesto, or brand promise document.

Gotcha #3: Not having enough time and money.

Just take a deep breath and remember: You only get one chance to launch.

Celebrate it! And expect to spend money.

It’s costly to create and activate new websites, digital media, advertising, signage, collateral,
sales material and messaging for a rebranding. If you are transitioning from a brand to
independent, make sure you have the team in-house, or external vendors, who can replace the
vital marketing services your remote brand team was performing for you. This also
includes managing the redirect schema of your legacy search engine rankings. Not to
mention, meetings are booked years in advance, so you’ll need to publish new sales/meeting
collateral ASAP.

Gotcha #4: Failing to retain legacy assets.

Don’t get too carried away when purging the hotel’s past.

Make sure you keep all assets from the hotel’s former brand days that you may need to reuse,
like photos, video, newsletter templates, guest email databases, web addresses (for redirects),
social media accounts, TripAdvisor and metasearch log-ins, and Google Analytics data.
These valuable assets (and legacy performance results) will help your marketing efforts in
many ways going forward, particularly in reducing time and expense, regardless of the name
change.
Gotcha #5: Forgetting what really matters….

No amount of marketing, no matter how clever it may be, can make up for a lackluster
product. There are far too many hotels that attempt to rebrand to over-compensate for or to
cover up an aging, lackluster, or grungy hotel product. Sadly, as long as those hotels delay
improving or – in some cases – completely overhauling their hotel appearance, service or
amenities, they will continue to have an uphill battle when attracting and retaining guests.

As Robert Stephens (founder of Geek Squad) famously said: “Advertising is the tax you pay
for an unremarkable product.” Marketing can only do so much. The less you pay attention to
improving your service and your hotel product, the more you’ll be spending in marketing and
advertising to make up for it.

Serve your guests better by working on your hotel first. By refusing to cut corners, investing
in quality from the front desk to the back of the house, and by presenting the best guest
experience that your staff can deliver, guest sentiment will go up, your number of repeat
guests will go up, profits will go up and your marketing cost per booking will go down.

Friday Freebie: How Smart Hotel Marketers

Convince Owners to Reinvest
This Week’s Freebie: The most important aspect of marketing is the product itself.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: The most important aspect of marketing is the product itself.

But what happens when hotel marketers are asked to bend steel with their bare hands and
meet lofty revenue goals with a tired and inadequate product? How can hotel marketers
contribute evidence to ownership that there is a problem and it’s time to reinvest?

Here’s a few ways to support your case with real data:

1: Show past guest reviews (and aggregated guest sentiment scores) regarding common issues
reported at your property, such as uncomfortable beds, old bathrooms, dirty carpets or tired
decor.

2: Prepare a summary of new supply or newly refurbished compset properties, as well as your
STR index trends against those properties.

3: Pull PMS or CRM data that illustrates the decline in repeat visitation from past guests as a
result of inferior product experience.

Without a commitment to property upgrades, hotel marketers are facing an uphill battle,
while owners are facing a decline in profits and ultimately… a decline in their property value

OTAs Hitting Hotel Owners Where It Hurts:

Real Estate Values
Costly third party bookings are eroding profits and overall hotel asset values.

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A new report from the AHLA has sent a ripple of concern through many hotel owners.
According to the report, entitled: Demystifying the Digital Marketplace, “the revenue retained
by US hotels after paying all customer acquisition costs declined by almost .4% or $600
million… That $600M in additional cost would have contributed directly to net operating
income. Using an 8% capitalization rate (which most investors require), these additional
acquisition costs of $600 million reduced the asset value of the overall hotel industry by at
least $7.5 billion.”

Translation: Costly third party bookings are eroding profits and overall hotel asset
values.

The situation for many owners is even more serious in markets with new supply and growing
Airbnb listings. Meanwhile, pricing power and occupancy everywhere seem to be peaking,
which restricts revenue even further. All of this, in conjunction with acquisition costs rising,
appears to be signaling an impending slowdown in RevPar. All of these factors mean
hoteliers are left with less net revenue each month, with only one smart option to pull them
out of the sinkhole of eroded margins: to drive bookings from the hotel’s direct channel.

The only way for hoteliers to increase their margins is by reducing the fees they pay to third
parties and focusing their efforts on increasing direct, higher margin bookings.
You may not be able to ditch OTAs altogether, but you can leverage them as a customer
acquisition tool and convince the guest to remain loyal from that stay forward. Not only then
do you “own” the customer, guests who book direct tend to be more loyal, spend more and
stay longer.

Friday Freebie: Stop Giving Money Away,

Kill the Promo Code Box Today
This Week’s Freebie: Stop giving away money in your booking engine… kill the promo code
box!

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Stop giving away money in your booking engine… kill the promo
code box!

Modern travelers are savvy, deal-seekers.

If a hotel deal exists, they’ll find it, use it, then expect it every time.

Such is the case with that prominent ‘promo code’ field found on practically every hotel’s
booking engine. That prominent discount or promo code field makes online visitors doubt
their purchase decision and will convince them that if they start trolling coupon sites, they
can get money off of the room rate.

If they’ve made it far in the booking process that means they were likely dead set on
completing the reservation before the irresistible appeal of a promo code field sent them off
on a search for elusive promo codes!
There IS a place for promo codes in smart hotel marketing.

Here’s How to Use Them Instead:

1. To Lure Back Unfinished Reservations

When travelers don’t complete their reservations, which can happen for several reasons, lure
them back by offering a promo code through your reservation abandonment system and
retargeting ads. This way, promo codes will only be shown to a highly engaged audience and
will not show up in search results across the web. Use the principle of scarcity to make this
even more appealing by adding a deadline to use the promo code before it expires. For
example, “Come back and complete your booking within 24 hours and we’ll take 15% off.”

2. Create Your Own Page of Current Promos and Link Back to It

Macy’s has a brilliant solution to keeping shoppers on their hotel website while they’re
looking for promo codes. Next to their Promo Code box, they invite shoppers to take a look
at all of their current promotions and provide a convenient link to the list of codes. In your
hotel’s case, include a direct link back to your special offers page where travelers can look at
all of the promos you have available at the moment. By offering an internal link to your own
promotions, you’ll reduce the number of visitors who would have abandoned their
reservation to search for a discount or promo code on another site. Plus, you’re also showing
transparency to the guest by letting them know you are willing to help them find travel
savings.

SEE MORE: The Perils of Promo Codes

3. Track and Measure Advertising ROI

You can use coupon and promo codes to track and measure the success of your advertising.
The concept is easy – just publish a different code for your different ad buys. For example,
use a different code in your email marketing versus Facebook versus pay-per-click. This way
you can track how many sales are generated from your various media placements.

Get Rid of the Promo Code Box All Together and Replace with Auto-Fill

Customize your advertising links so that if there is a promo code available, the inbound ad
link into your website will take prospects directly to your booking engine where the promo
code will automatically be plugged in. This way, you don’t have to have the promo code box
on your hotel website at all. Which means, shoppers won’t leave your site to go find a
discount somewhere else on the web.

The Little Box That Is Costing Hotels Millions

Think promo codes are a magic bullet that will give travelers that extra shove to make a
reservation? Think again.

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Modern travelers are savvy, deal-seekers.

If a hotel deal exists, they’ll find it, use it, then expect it every time.

Such is the case with that prominent “promo code” field found on practically every hotel’s
booking engine. Widely used by hotels (check out the example from Hilton above) to close
the gap during slow periods, to compete with deal-heavy OTA rates and to entice travelers to
book direct, promo or discount codes also hold dire consequences when it comes to getting
travelers to book at all.

The Perils of Promo Codes

Think promo codes are a magic bullet that will give travelers that extra shove to make a
reservation? Think again. Here are some of the most likely scenarios you’ll face instead:

After researching for hours for the perfect hotel for her family’s next vacation, a mother
finally makes the decision to stay with you. She goes to your site, plugs in her vacation dates
and selects a room type. She’s almost done – all she has to do is fill out her information and
reach for her credit card. Then, she sees the box asking for a promo code.

“Oh, there’s a promo code?” she asks herself. “Where is it? How big of a discount can I get?
I better find it so I can save money.” She tucks her credit card back into her wallet and opens
a new window in her browser in order to search for the elusive promo code. Then, it goes
from bad to worse.

She has already abandoned her initial reservation and left your site, even as she was in the
final stages of booking. In fact, a study by ComScore showed that 27 percent of online
consumers end up abandoning shopping carts in order to go search for a coupon or discount.

She’ll find a discount for your hotel from another site, perhaps even an OTA, since she is
now convinced that your published rate is too expensive and that she can get a room there for
cheaper.

Her search may lead her to another property entirely, where she’ll end up booking instead
because she’s convinced they’ll have a better deal.

She’ll find a promo code, use it, then expect a similar special offer for all future visits.

That prominent discount or promo code field makes online visitors doubt their purchase
decision and will convince them that, if they look hard enough, they can get money off of the
room rate. If they’ve made it far in the booking process, which is usually the case since that is
where promo code boxes are placed, that means they were likely dead set on completing the
reservation before the call for a promo code changed their mind.

There IS a place for promo codes in smart hotel marketing. Here’s how to use them:

1. Lure Back Unfinished Reservations

When travelers don’t complete their reservations, which can happen for several reasons, lure
them back by offering a promo code through your reservation abandonment system and
retargeting ads. This way, promo codes will only be shown to a highly engaged audience and
will not show up in search results across the web. Use the principle of scarcity to make this
even more appealing by adding a deadline to use the promo code before it expires. For
example, “Come back and complete your booking within 24 hours and we’ll take 15% off.”

2. Create Your Own Page of Current Promos and Link Back to It

Macy’s has a brilliant solution to keeping shoppers on their Website while they’re looking for
promo codes. Next to their Promo Code box, they invite shoppers to take a look at all of their
current promotions and provide a convenient link to the list of codes. In your hotel’s case,
include a direct link back to your special offers page where travelers can look at all of the
promos you have available at the moment. By offering an internal link to your own
promotions, you’ll reduce the number of visitors who would have abandoned their
reservation to search for a discount or promo code on another site. Plus, you’re also showing
transparency to the guest by letting them know you are willing to help them find travel
savings.

3. Track and Measure Advertising ROI

You can use coupon and promo codes to track and measure the success of your advertising.
The concept is easy – just publish a different code for your different ad buys. For example,
use a different code in your email marketing than your Facebook and pay-per-click. This
way, you can track how many sales are generated from your various media placements.

4. Get Rid of the Promo Code Box All Together and Replace With Auto-Fill

Customize your advertising links so that, if there is a promo code available, the inbound ad
link in your website will take prospects directly to your booking engine where the promo
code will automatically be plugged in. This way, you don’t have to have the promo code box
on your website at all. Which means, shoppers won’t leave your site to go find a discount
somewhere else on the Web.

Turnover: The Hidden Killer of Hotel

Marketing (and What to Do about It)
One of the greatest obstacles to successful hotel marketing lurks within your own office.

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Hotel marketing is hard enough without constant turnover.

Sometimes, one of the greatest obstacles to successful hotel marketing lurks within your own
office…

Staff turnover, especially when it’s excessively high, can be an absolute killer for most
businesses, and your hotel marketing team is no exception. So learning to attract, cultivate
and retain marketing staff—instead of churning through them—may have a wider impact
than even the smartest of ad campaigns.

At hotels, specifically, there are a number of reasons why turnover of marketing staff makes
it hard to achieve ownership’s revenue targets:

1. Consistency Is Vital to Success

In the hotel business—which is built largely upon brands and properties delivering on a
standardized promise to meet guest expectations—few things are as important as consistency.
Beyond just a flag’s amenities or service experience, that consistency clearly extends to
marketing, particularly the frequency and content of consistent product messaging. It’s
difficult to achieve that desired consistency if there is a revolving door of staffers creating
those messages.

2. Familiarity with Guest Personas, Seasonality and Periods of Weakness

See #3. Learning the nuances of your hotel’s demand patterns requires time and experience,
which won’t be the case if turnover is high. By keeping marketing staff long-term, those
same patterns will become a cyclical strategy, where marketers know exactly how to fine-
tune efforts.

3. New staff Is Hard to Find

There’s a dearth of quality marketing talent in the hotel business, especially digital talent, for
a number of reasons. For starters, many top-notch digital marketers have gravitated to other
industries or start-ups with a higher “cool factor” or earning potential. Corporate hotel
cultures, often viewed as overly traditional, can dissuade younger marketing pros seeking
more of a Silicon Valley workplace vibe.

4. New Staff Don’t Understand the Hotel’s Product or Message

It takes time to educate new hotel marketing staff on your property’s unique history, message
and product experience. If your marketing staff is perpetually changing, you’re constantly
putting new employees through the same learning curve, without reaping the benefits.

How does a bad hire hurt your organization? Here are the responses, according to a Career Builder
study.

5. They Have to Build Relationships with Team Members in Other Departments (I.E.
Revenue Management)
No team is an island, and for marketing staff, it is increasingly important to foster and
maintain strong relationships and communication with other departments, especially with
revenue/yield management personnel. Again, that’s tough to achieve in a high-turnover
environment.

6. They Often Have to Pick up (on the Fly) Existing Campaigns, Vendors and
Marketing Programs That They Did Not Create

The learning curve for a new marketing staffer is multiplied when they are asked to shoulder
—often rapidly—campaigns, agreements and initiatives that were formulated by previous
employees. That can lead to a huge difference in vision and background on these projects
once the new staffer is in charge. Especially if their predecessor had a jumbled mix of
disparate vendors in place.

7. They Inherit Someone Else’s Goals

Marketing objectives can be highly personal (and stressful) to the marketer who set them.
When a new employee inherits those goals, it may not be the best fit for that marketer’s skill
set and vision for what they hope to achieve at their new post.

8. Departing Staff Take Lots of Proprietary Knowledge and Investment with Them

Sure, you can ask departing staffers to turn over all materials, notes and other information
they have before they leave for good, but there will still be untold amounts of knowledge and
experience they will invariably take with them when they leave. Sometimes the best solution
to this problem is convincing them to stay, or at a bare minimum, asking them to be available
to brief their replacement.
 A
Study from Paychex revealing why employees leave.
Thankfully, there are ways to combat the turnover dragon. Successful strategies include:

1. Hire Wisely

One of the most effective means of reducing turnover on your hotel marketing team is to
make smart hiring decisions in the first place. That means thoroughly interviewing and
vetting candidates before extending offers, factoring in the candidate’s compatibility with
your office culture, management and fellow staffers.

SEE: The Seven Traits of Great Hotel Digital Marketers

2. Pay Generously

Offering candidates a fair and market-competitive salary and benefits package is another
important means of ensuring staff retention. Take some time to research prevailing wages,
while brainstorming benefits, perks and incentives to sweeten the deal, if necessary. That may
include concessions like flexible work schedules and various bonuses.

3. Revisit Annually

It’s a good idea to review staff salaries and benefits annually, in order to ensure you are
keeping up with the marketplace. If possible, tap your HR team as your news pipeline to this
end.

4. Get Flexible

Devise methods of offering greater flexibility to your hotel marketing team in order to foster
a healthy work/life balance. That may include flexible and/or compressed schedules,
telecommuting and on-site daycare. Embrace communications tools like Skype and chat
applications such as Slack to keep remote teams/staffers in touch throughout the day.

5. Maintain Interest Levels

An engaged employee is a happy one.

Foster a challenging and rewarding work environment, filled with learning opportunities and
potential for advancement, and your employees will thank you. Nurture healthy levels of
social action among the staff, as well as proper praise and recognition from management,
when deserved. Sometimes little compliments and courtesies go a very long way.

6. Praise Excellence

It’s extremely important to properly recognize employees who are performing well, whether
the praise comes in the form of verbal recognition, emails, awards and/or special perks.
Monthly company-wide emails detailing team/staff achievements are great, as are peer-
recognition programs. Don’t hesitate to report those achievements up the chain to superiors,
either; even when emailing a thank you note to a subordinate, consider CCing higher-ups for
a added recognition. If you need to get a handle on what to praise, ask staffers for regular
updates on their accomplishments, including some data and figures when and where possible.
7. Stress the Big Picture

Help your staffers visualize a future direction for them beyond just their current day-to-day
responsibilities. Outline the wider career track they are headed down, spotlighting goals and
achievements those staffers should target along the way. Use annual reviews and mid-year
check-ins as a means of opening these discussions, as well as spontaneous chats. Always
encourage everyone on your hotel marketing team to speak with you regarding any questions
or concerns they may have.

Friday Freebie: Do This Instead, Tap into

Consumer Fears about OTAs
This Week’s Freebie: Stop competing on rates. Win back bookings from OTAs.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Stop competing on rates. Win back bookings from OTAs…

by reminding guests of how unreliable, uncertain and problematic OTA reservations can be.

Think hotel consumers are always driven by the lowest price?

Think again.

Travel decisions are also based on emotions, not just practicality. And, there’s one emotion
that hotel marketers need to tap into more: FEAR.

According to a recent JD Power & Associates’ North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index
Study, people are more likely to have a bad hotel experience (ie: hidden fees, unfair
cancellation policies, and canceled reservations) if they booked through a third-party, like
Expedia or Travelocity.
In fact, it doesn’t take long to find legions of complaints and horror stories of travelers left in
the lurch because of strict OTA policies or apathy from OTA call centers. Travel plans are
likelier to be unraveled by OTAs, not hotels.

So, tap into that fear to remind customers that you offer two things that OTAs don’t:

1. A reliable reservation from a trusted source

2. AND a staff that actually cares about them

We should remind prospective guests at every opportunity that booking direct is the safer
play. That your family vacation, business trip or long-awaited romantic weekend is too
important to risk in any way!

Hotel marketers should communicate this critical message in key touchpoints with
prospective guests during the research phase of their purchase journey:

• On your direct hotel website home page

• In your search/PPC ads

• In your retargeting ads that follow consumers after they visit your website

• In social media posts

• In call/reservations center training

• Inside your booking engine, where most abandonment occurs

10 Killer Hotel Website Conversion Hacks

Make these fixes and watch your conversions increase.

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Hotel website conversion is key to any direct booking
strategy.

There’s a good chance you’re killing the conversion rate of your hotel website.

Right now, potential guests are bouncing off your hotel website as you read this.

What good are your brilliant marketing strategies if you can’t hold onto the customers’
attention once they get there?

Your hotel product is not to blame.

Most likely, there are holes that need to be taken care of on your hotel website.

Make these fixes and watch your conversions increase.

Hack 1: Use Dynamic Personalization

Too many hotel websites use sliding graphics to showcase different messages, amenities and
promotions. If the first screen isn’t right for the visitor… maybe the next one will be!

Unfortunately, it turns out that sliders kill conversion rates. Instead, we recommend using
simple dynamic personalization to deliver the right message/promo to each visitor.
An example of dynamic personalization welcoming past direct bookers with their previous date
search.

For example:

• By using campaign tracking codes to identify various inbound traffic sources, you can
customize the messaging of your homepage to be more relevant to your visitors. For example,
if you are promoting an in-state resident sale, you can dynamically set your home page to
detect website visitors from your state and display that promo first.

• You can prevent abandonment to OTAs by dynamically showing gated/loyalty rates (see
example above) to users who are automatically identified as consumers who have used your
direct booking engine.

• When a guest from London visits your website and moves into the booking engine, your
website can automatically pass the user’s location and localize room rates in the booking
engine to the guest’s native currency (i.e. instead of charging $100 USD for a room, you
could charge 100 British Pounds, which is worth $1.32).

Hack 2: Keep Offers Consistent

Using promos across all your digital channels to drive traffic is nothing new, but if you don’t
keep the offer consistent throughout the purchase journey, you are causing dissonance and
inhibiting your direct hotel website conversion rate.

This is especially critical when guests expect to see the promo they clicked on reflected in the
pricing inside your hotel booking engine. If an offer disappears during the booking engine
conversion process, visitors can lose confidence in their purchase and abandon their
checkout.

Here’s a great example from Couples Resorts showing a 7th Night Free promo on their
Specials page, then carried forward all the way through into the booking environment:

The jump between your website to your booking engine is a dangerous place. If the transition
isn’t seamless, it’s notorious for causing people to ditch their reservations. One thing to
blame for the abandoned reservations: Mismatched online experiences.

The best booking engines are the ones that go unnoticed by the guest. If you transfer guests to
a booking engine with a different design, different colors, different fonts than that of the
website, it will cause guests to feel uneasy about moving forward. Even the smallest of
differences can be jarring to the customer and will slowly chip away at the trust that you
worked so hard to establish. So, keep things consistent to boost both customer trust and
conversion rates.

Hack 3: Keep Messaging Consistent

Sure, setting rates and keeping content consistent across the vast array of digital channels can
get overwhelming. But maintaining STORY parity is vital to your hotel’s bottom line.

Smart hotel marketers also know that their USP (unique selling proposition) has to be
consistent across all brand touchpoints and channels. If consumers see your property
described as “urban chic” in one place and “a traditional business hotel” in another…
dissonance occurs, causing erosion and attrition.

People are often distracted and impatient when they’re shopping for travel online. They’re
eager to find information that gives them confidence in their purchase decisions. In the early
days of the web, researchers at the Xerox PARC laboratory in Palo Alto defined this
as “information scent.”

According to the conversion gurus at Unbounce, people follow visual and information clues
that help them find what they’re looking for. If they lose the scent, they’ll abandon the trail. If
the information scent is strong, they’ll keep going. The question is: How consistent is the
information your hotel provides across all your digital channels?

Hack 4: Offer Live Chat

Smart customer service can give you a serious bump in bookings. A recent study found that
62 percent of online customers are more likely to make a purchase if you offer live customer
support.

Let’s be real:

Most of the people who visit your website will have questions. Don’t assume they will read
every word on your website to find the answer. They want answers now. And offering them
instant responses and open dialogue will make them more confident in booking. Online chat
is even more important within your booking environment itself. Up to 98 percent of guests
looking for availability on a hotel website will end up NOT BOOKING. Invest a few dollars
a month in online chat to reduce attrition and guide your most valuable prospects to booking.

Hack 5: Fix Your Clunky Checkout

The faster a guest can get through the booking process, the higher your conversions. A long
and complicated booking process can derail all of your efforts to get the guest across the
finish line. Studies show that 28 percent of customers abandon their online purchases because
they were frustrated with the long checkout. So, simplify, simplify, simplify. Take out
irrelevant steps, mandatory sign-ups and upsell pages. Reduce the number of room types.
Pare down as much as you can.

Also, sometimes the simple reason shoppers don’t complete a purchase is that their preferred
credit card wasn’t accepted in your booking engine. Smart hotels offer multiple payment
options, going beyond Amex, Visa and Mastercard to include as many forms of payment as
possible, including third-party online payment services like PayPal. Some even take it a step
further like Couples Resorts, who offer a “loveaway” payment plan.

Also, don’t forget to mention security clearly on your checkout page, otherwise you run a
serious risk of abandonment. Customers need to feel confident that their payments will be
handled securely. A statement of secure payment (or security badges) reassures your
customers and could be the difference between a new guest and a lost sale.

Hack 6: Be Very Picky About Photography

Don’t shrug off hotel photography as simply pretty pictures. They carry far more influence
than that: They convey your experience with a single glance. A study by Cornell University
School of Hotel Administration and Penn State’s School of Hospitality Management found
that travelers thoroughly inspect photography to see if your room rates match your
experience. And, that photography has the potential to change a guest’s mind. So skip the old,
dated, blurry photos and kill the cheesy stock images. Invest in a legit, professional hotel
photographer with a compelling portfolio of previous work at similar properties.

Hack 7: Harvest Social Proof

Modern travelers, especially millennial and affluent guests, are highly driven by user-
generated content. In fact, a recent marketing study found that UGC is 20 percent more
influential than any other type of marketing when driving purchases among millennial
shoppers. Leveraging your guests’ own images (especially images from Instagram) in your
marketing materials not only shows authenticity, it brilliantly demonstrates ‘social proof.’

Also, potential guests turn to sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook and OTAs to research
what others are saying about your property. Our advice: Beat them to it. Select and showcase
some of your best reviews directly on your hotel homepage to amp up conversions. Scour
through guest feedback for the most poignant reviews, skip those that are too generic or lack-
luster. The idea is to add credibility with authentic guest feedback, as well as build
excitement about what’s in store.
Hack 8: Automate Your Best Rate Guarantee

Having a Best Rate Guarantee badge on your website is no longer enough. Instead, smart
hotel marketers now show 3rd party rates alongside their own direct rates, so that customers
aren’t tempted to leave and compare prices on other sites. Widgets like TripTease make it
easy for hoteliers to show rates form third parties… and (shameless plug) our very own
booking engine takes the concept a step further by auto-matching third-party rates when
direct rates are showing higher than third parties.
Booking engines, like Tambourine’s, can now auto-display third-party rates and auto-correct direct
rates when they are out of parity.

Hack 9: Speed Things Up!

Attention spans online are at an all-time low.

If you want to turn lookers into bookers, every second counts. The ramifications of a slow
hotel website are swift, and often permanent as well. About 25 percent of visitors will
abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Almost 50 percent will abandon if
the site takes more than 10 seconds to load. Worse, once they leave, they will
likely never come back. Today’s consumers expect immediacy online, so this is essential to
your conversion rate.
Hack 10: Be Mobile-Friendly

Mobile bookings are up. According to eMarketer, by 2021, half of all digital travel sales will
be made from smartphones or tablets. So, why aren’t your mobile bookings climbing, too?
It’s not enough for your website to just ‘come up’ on a smartphone or tablet. Or, to merely
offer a mobile version of your hotel website. Your hotel’s mobile experience has to match the
expectations and habits of today’s consumers on-the-go. So, streamline the booking
funnel. Design for one-hand navigation. Allow for alternate payments. Then, watch your
mobile bookings rise.

Friday Freebie: Recognize Your Hotel’s

Expensive Marketing Channel
This Week’s Freebie: Start smart in 2018. Examine and document how much your hotel pays
for each OTA booking versus other marketing channels.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Start smart in 2018. Examine and document how much your hotel
pays for each OTA booking versus other marketing channels.

Even if you were to scour each line of your P&L statement, it’s unlikely you’ll find your
biggest marketing cost – OTA commissions. With fees of 15-30%, the cost of working with
third-party websites surpasses all other marketing channels. But most hoteliers don’t
acknowledge this expense, simply because it doesn’t show up as an expense!

OTA commissions are opaque. Hotels generally receive a net rate, only AFTER the OTA
collects their commission.

Here’s the Danger:

Because these high marketing costs are invisible, they remain undetected. Even when they
cost your hotel significantly more than direct bookings. They’re a threat to your other
marketing expenses, too. When owners cut back on your marketing budget, they’ll start
chipping away at the legit marketing costs (that do show up on the P&L) even when they are
responsible for driving more lucrative direct bookings.

This includes hotel social media, SEO, PPC campaigns and your hotel website.

This year, pull these OTA commissions out of their hiding place and get clear on exactly how
much you’re spending on those lower value OTA bookings. Calculate the marketing cost per
booking (MCPB) for all of your marketing channels and stack these costs up to actual
conversions.

Start tracking and documenting these costs now. By turning the tide on what marketing
channels your hotel invests in, you’ll considerably increase profitability. Plus, come budget
time, hotel owners will see how much more lucrative it is to invest in channels other than
third parties.

4 Things Every Branded Hotel Should Be

Doing on Facebook Right Now
Facebook is now an advertising powerhouse that allows you to target anyone in their global
database with laser-sharp precision.

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New hotel social media tools can help differentiate flagged properties….

As a property flying under a global brand flag, you enjoy several key benefits:

Worldwide name recognition and consumer trust.

Access to millions of loyalty members.

Exposure on the Brand.com global website.

But unfortunately, due to scale and volume, remote, corporate brand marketing teams are
often unable to tell your property’s unique story and differentiate you from sister properties in
your region.

New advancements in hotel social media can help.

No longer just a means for ‘liking’ and holding goofy contests to attract more “followers,”
Facebook is now an advertising powerhouse that allows you to target anyone in their global
database with laser-sharp precision – even users who are not following your hotel!

But Facebook’s advertising platform can be overwhelming and complicated… so we spoke to

Tambourine’s social media directors Thomas McDermott and Elle Andress to break down 4
key tactics for flagged properties to tap into the power of Facebook’s juggernaut advertising
platform:

1. Targeting Loyalty Program Members

Facebook’s paid advertising platform enables hotel marketers to emplace unique content,
inspirational images, promos and offers in the newsfeeds of highly targeted consumers with
pinpoint precision. Ads can target by demographics, geography, interests, hobbies, and
behaviors. For branded properties, this means you can target your social ads to folks who are
interested in (or members of) your flag’s loyalty program (see screenshot below). This
enables you to create awareness and preference for your property vs other similarly branded
properties in the area.
 Elle Andress: Director of Social Media at
Tambourine

2. The 28-Day Pixel

Until recently, hotel marketers were unable to track the success of their paid Facebook
campaigns unless a guest booked directly from Facebook in the same session.

But the relatively new 28-day pixel feature now allows flagged hotel marketers to track a
user’s path for 28 days after they have either viewed or clicked on your hotel’s Facebook ad.
This tracking tool gives you insight into how well your Facebook investments are moving
potential guests down the sales funnel. “Most importantly, it allows for more revenue
attribution to your Facebook ads,” said Elle. “You can gauge if your ad campaigns are
contributing to conversions or not.”

3. Reach & Frequency

Facebook’s new Reach & Frequency tool allows branded properties to pre-purchase larger
audiences at a lower cost and ensures those users see the ad a fixed amount of times. You can
customize a message, pre-purchase a minimum of 200K users within your chosen market and
ensure those Facebook users see your marketing message however many times you like…
typically 5-6 times.
 Thomas McDermott: Director of Content
Marketing at Tambourine

“This is also particularly useful for properties that are new to the market and want to
introduce their product or have a very particular feeder market,” Tom explains.

“Most recently, we’ve leveraged this tool for one of our Caribbean clients. We conducted a
winter campaign to saturate northern markets. Plus, we’re currently working on a campaign
to introduce a new property to the Florida market.”

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) drops significantly compared to traditional

performance ads, and ads achieve higher impact through repetition.

4. Canvas Ads

While not entirely a new marketing tool, Facebook’s Canvas Ad is a great way for flagged
properties to differentiate themselves in the absence of a custom-designed experiential
“vanity” website.

Canvas allows you to create a custom mobile web experience that lives inside of Facebook,
doesn’t require IT or coding, but still delivers a custom experience that’s in line with brand
standards.

“This is an ideal avenue to really go in depth and highlight the unique attributions of the
property,” Tom explained. “From there, you can send them to the brand channel to book.”

Bonus: What Facebook tactics should you stay away from?

Tom and Elle also suggested which tired practices to avoid:

“I think a lot of properties are still using too much hard sales language for their organic
posts on Facebook, which is a big turnoff to the consumer. The place to do the sales style
pitch is in the paid ads platform. For organic content, hotels should keep the copy light and
relatable and show a human voice to the brand.”
– Elle

“I think there is still too much hype on fan growth. Yes, it is still worthwhile to build a
network of relevant users. However, the audience builder tools really help you identify users
who have expressed an interest in the property or who show relevant or valuable behaviors.
You have access to those users whether they are fans or not.”

– Tom

The Hotel Brand Manager’s Checklist for

Success
Based on our experience, here are the 10 things that set the most effective brand managers
apart.

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After 34 years in hotel marketing, we’ve worked with hotel and resort brand managers up and
down the chain scale all over the world. Based on our experience, here are the 10 things that
set the most effective brand managers apart.

1. They understand the evolving desires of travel consumers

Within the last five years, the term “travel like a local” has surfaced as a resounding mantra
among modern travelers. Travelers no longer seek souvenirs, they covet unique experiences.
Today, leisure and business guests are spending their hard-earned travel dollars on hotels
where they’ll have front-row access to authentic, locally inspired experiences – not simply a
room with a bed.

In Google’s landmark report, “The Traveler’s Road to Decision,” the search engine giant
revealed that destination-related terms far surpassed brand name searches when consumers
began to plan their travels.
Forward-thinking hoteliers are responding to this new hunger for local experiences by
moving beyond their traditional normal hotel marketing efforts.

And according to a TripAdvisor study, experiences and the promise of an

enhanced perspective are what ultimately drive travelers to pull out their wallets. Check out
this chart from the TripAdvisor study, which shows the disparity between what travelers
actually want vs. what hoteliers THINK travelers want:

2. They study the compset

As a hotel brand manager, it’s smart (and career-prolonging!) to invest time in consistent
compset analysis and market research. And we’re not just talking about monitoring
rates, checking in on your compset gives you insight into the smart moves they’re making to
draw more direct bookings and more group business.
One of the easiest and most revealing ways to keep tabs on other hotels is to find out what
their own guests are saying about them. Check in on their latest guest reviews on
TripAdvisor and make a special note of what annoys their guests, as well as what delights
them. (Your own review analysis tools may even allow you to monitor compset properties as
well).

Aside from monitoring compset Trip Advisor reviews, here are a few other free ways to
stay on top of competitive intelligence:

• Check out MOAT: an awesome free tool that displays ads served by other hotels across the
web. You can view not only the actual creative unit, but also other details like what website it
appeared on, dimensions of the ad, file size of the ad, and file type of the ad. Here’s a
screenshot of a MOAT search for Four Seasons brand.
• Set-up Google Alerts for each competitor
• Subscribe/follow their social media feeds
• Subscribe to their email list

3. They are fearless budgeters

One of the most vexing questions posed to brand managers in any industry is: “how much
should our budget be?”

Whether you are being asked to submit next year’s budget or a funding request for your next
campaign, knowing how to answer your management or ownership’s budgetary questions is
vital to your success (and job security)!

Smart brand managers know that if they need more marketing staff or outsourced vendors to
help you achieve revenue goals, they ask for them.

If their hotel is in dire need of upgrades and updates in order to effectively compete with
newer properties and win market share, they ask for them.

If they depend on another department’s performance to help you reach targets, they ask to
oversee them.

Here’s an example of how fearless brand managers ask for a budget:

“For me to achieve the revenue targets set forth by management/ownership… I need
$_______ in funding, these specific resort upgrades to be made, and _______ new staff
(contractors). And because of _____, I would like the ________ department to report to me.”

The road to achieving your property’s revenue goals begins with your ability to ask for what
you need. Show your management team that without these items, you won’t be able to deliver
the results they’re looking for…

4. They constantly evaluate guest sentiment

Before you can improve your offerings, you need to know what your guests think.

Are there patterns in your online reviews and guest surveys? If so, what are guests
consistently complaining about or praising? These data points can give you action items on
where you need to improve your product. They can also show you the specific desirable
attributes on which you should focus your hotel digital marketing.

And don’t forget to check the review/sentiment of your compset as well. You may discover
weaknesses to use to your advantage.

5. They are insatiably curious about their guests

Killer hotel brand managers LOVE getting out from behind their desks and meeting real live
guests!

These are the people that matter the most to your brand, so start a conversation and see how
things are going. Chat with guests in the lobby or walk your meeting spaces and chat with
attendees during their downtime.

Start a conversation and see how things are going.

Ask what could make their stay or meeting experience even better.

Discover what really matters to them.

Jot down and collect their responses and use that as inspiration to drive your sales and
marketing efforts. All of this intelligence can be used to attract more transient bookings or
group business in the future.

6. They KNOW their most profitable distribution channels

The best hotel and resort brand managers know they’re only as good as their metrics…
measurement and tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) are an ongoing commitment.
Savvy players are constantly evaluating their efforts, budgets and staff in relation to business
mix targets.

Why?

Because hotel owners can’t control many of their rising costs, particularly debt service, brand
fees and credit card fees. That’s why hotel owners and asset managers are looking more
closely than ever at marketing costs—particularly the cost of guest acquisition—which are
also rising fast.

According to experts (see chart from Kalibri Labs below), acquisition costs (especially from
3rd parties and OTAs) have far outpaced overall revenue growth. If a hotel cannot acquire
guests at a tolerable, sustainable rate, then the property is worthless as a long-term asset.
7. They obsess about the guest journey

Sophisticated hotel brand managers think about the guest journey from the dreaming stage to
the post-stay “sharing” phase.

What are the different touchpoints you currently have with them?
What are the possible future touchpoints you could have?

Have you mapped the journey from end to end?

Fortunately, there are now additional opportunities to create digital touchpoints before,
during and after the stay. Some hotels are using chatbots to connect with prospective guests
on their resort websitesbefore they’ve even booked. Many are also now designing an email
series to create additional touchpoints throughout the guest journey. This may include a
promotional/upsell offer the week before check-in to capitalize on the guest’s excitement
about her trip.

It also might include a welcome email upon check-in to provide information about services
the hotel has to offer (or offer an in-stay/on-property texting capability), or an offer to extend
the stay for certain guests like business travelers who are likely to want to do so. The
possibilities are endless, and savvy hotel brand managers are putting every touchpoint under
the microscope to increase guest delight and loyalty.

8. They collaborate with Sales and Revenue Management

All too often, revenue management and marketing teams operate in silos. Although the two
disciplines use different toolsets and metrics to execute their strategy and measure their
performance, they have a common goal: driving revenue!

For many hotels and hotel management companies, one of their main challenges is shifting
the culture of the organization and the mindset of each department so that collaboration
becomes routine.

Hotel marketers should at least be doing these five things with their peers:
1. Building revenue targets together
2. Informing revenue management and sales of impending campaigns
3. Examining periods of weakness together
4. Identifying segments that are causing shortfalls
5. Determining what can be done as a unified team… then doing it

9. They master the key metrics

One secret to success for brand managers is strong reporting skills and transparency with key
stakeholders within the organization. They pay particular attention to hotel marketing metrics
that show their contribution to revenue, and other critical metrics that really matter to your
hotel’s owners and asset managers.

Some of these include MCPB (marketing cost per booking), DRR (direct revenue ratio),
website conversion rate (from unique visitor to entrances into the booking environment),
variance from revenue target, and TripAdvisor sentiment score.

CLICK HERE to learn more about these metrics.

10. They invest in people

In our 34 years of working with leaders in the hospitality industry, we’ve found that the
majority of them will say that hospitality is about the people.
You can have the most comfortable beds, the prettiest property, or the best hotel digital
marketing strategy. But, if you have high employee turnover, your staff isn’t trained well, and
you’re not connecting with guests on a human level at every opportunity, you’re going to fail.
Be sure to take the time to invest in the training and general well-being of your staff to ensure
top performance.

DOSM Checklist for 2018

Here are the 15 things we recommend to hotel DOSMs seeking better results in 2018.

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15 essential activities for hotel sales and marketing leaders.

We work with a lot of DOSMs across a wide variety of properties of all sizes in many
countries.

Some are good, some are great… and some are working hard to improve.

What do the great ones have in common?

Which activities and disciplines deliver better results?

The answers might surprise you!

Based on our experience, here are the 15 things we recommend to hotel DOSMs seeking
better results in 2018:

1. Assess Your Top 20 Sales Opportunities

Successful DOSMs constantly scrutinize their monthly and yearly group business goals and
know where they stand on any given day with each pending opportunity. Leave the fluffy
weekly sales meeting to the other hotels; instead, keep track of the progress toward your
group sales goals by meeting with your team every day. Review top opportunities, get a no-
B.S. status on critical deals and determine what each salesperson can do that day to edge
closer to winning that piece of business.
Do you know your current closing percentage? And how long the average deal takes to close?

You should!

A daily check-in is paramount to hitting your group room night goals.

2. Be Vigilant About Your product

With all the sales and marketing strategies and technology you have in place, at the end of the
day, it’s an exceptional guest experience that will attract bookings again and again. So, it
makes sense to get your head out of the computer and leave your office to simply walk your
property at least once a day.

Be mindful and try to see the property with fresh eyes. Talk to guests!

Scrutinize any flaws or opportunities for improvement. Notice what’s missing or what is
possibly holding your property back. Is it the restaurant’s uninspiring menu? Or a cluttered
spa entrance? Or dismal hallway lighting? Maybe it’s outdated staff uniforms or
procedures? No amount of brilliant marketing can cover or compensate for property
shortcomings, so it’s up to you to start there first. Submit a report to ownership at least once a
year detailing the product shortcomings that are affecting results.

3. Embrace the Metrics Owners Care About the Most

Every day, you should be checking key performance indicators (KPIs) that hotel owners and
asset managers consider high priority, such as marketing cost per booking (MCPB), direct
revenue ratio (DRR) and your STR index vs. the compset. Monitoring these KPIs will help
you and your owner understand how your sales and marketing team is actually contributing to
the hotel’s revenue targets. Plus, these numbers will ultimately drive performance each day.
Most hoteliers tend to wait until a slow season to pay attention to these metrics, then
scramble to frantically catch up when the numbers reveal how behind they are in reaching the
hotel’s goals.

4. Monitor Guest Sentiment

In addition to speaking to real-life human guests, online guest reviews are another direct link
to your hotel’s future success. They tell you what went wrong (and right) in the past, and
what you need to do moving forward. Even if it is someone else’s job to read and respond to
guest reviews, successful DOSMs need to know what guests are saying as well. Do the same
with mentions of your hotel on social media, such as photos taken by guests and posted to
Instagram or Facebook. These posts can be extremely revealing and give an unfiltered view
of guest sentiment. Notice what comes up most often, and then outline how you and other
management staff can make improvements.

5. Speak to Actual Guests

Pardon us for repeating ourselves: Resist the urge to stay glued to your computer or attend
your own meetings all day. Get out and talk to guests, especially attendees of groups and
events if that segment represents a large chunk of your revenue projection!

You are a host, first and foremost. So, talk and mingle with the people who really matter:
your guests. Chat with guests in the lobby, or walk the meeting space and chat with attendees
during their downtime. Start a conversation and see how things are going. Ask what could
make their stay or meeting experience even better. Discover what really matters to them. Jot
down and collect their responses, and use that as inspiration to drive your sales and marketing
efforts. All of this intelligence can be used to attract more transient bookings or group
business in the future.

6. Build Your Story

Travelers are no longer drawn to facts, promises of a wonderful stay or mentions of your
recent industry awards. They want to be a part of something that intrigues them, connects
with them and gives them something to brag about.

Consistently and creatively telling a meaningful, truthful story is what can truly attract
travelers to you. However, it’s a common problem for many hoteliers to not know what their
story is, much less how to convey it.

Correctly telling your story means knowing your audience, being honest about your assets
and getting all stakeholders into consensus about your property’s unique identity so that you
can convey it poignantly across all your marketing channels.

7. Get Closer to Your Revenue Manager

The most successful DOSMs confer with their revenue manager almost every day, not simply
once per week. Just like your top sales opportunities, you need to stay on top of your hotel’s
pace reports, upcoming low periods, performance vs. budget and the strategies to drive more
revenue from ancillary products. The days of sales/marketing operating in separate silos from
revenue management are firmly over. Check out this brief article on how to connect all the
departments that affect your property’s revenue.

8. Wrap Your Property in Local Color

The desire for unforgettable and authentic travel experiences isn’t going away anytime soon.
Modern travelers want to experience a destination like a local would, and are replacing trips
to cliched attractions with visits to mom-and-pop shops, farmers markets, art walks and
hidden local spots. And, they’re looking to pick a hotel at the epicenter of all those things.
Don’t sit back and simply rely on your concierge to stay abreast of all the local activities that
are possible. Stay on top of it by skimming the publications that locals tend to read, such as
weeklies like San Diego Reader or city magazines like Seattle Met. This will give you ideas
for possible partnerships, room packages and unique off-site group options.

9. Study Your Compset

In the battle for bookings, never take your eyes off the competition. In addition to monitoring
rate, checking in on your compset gives you insight into the smart moves they’re making to
draw more direct bookings and more group business. One of the easiest ways to keep up with
competition is to follow their social media accounts, not just for the property itself, but of
each salesperson, too. (Each salesperson at your property should follow their counterparts at
competing hotels.) What is getting the most engagement? What are they bragging about?
Then, read their latest guest reviews and find out what their guests love and hate about their
experience. Use this data to gauge what their customers and guests respond to and determine
if you can use their successes to inspire change at your property as well.

10. Stress Balance and Reduce Stress

Smart DOSMs also find ways to reduce stress at work. They hire positive, high-achieving
staff and fire negative, poor performers. They set expectations clearly with those
below and above them. They eliminate vendor fatigue by consolidating their needs with as
few vendors as possible. They surround themselves with people who can get things done with
little to no hand-holding. And most importantly, they know that despite their non-stop, 24/7
job, work should never be their only source of pride and enjoyment. The most successful
DOSMs have vibrant, fulfilling lives outside of work, balancing the demands of their work
life with family, friends, exercise and travel.

11. Tech Enable Your Sales Team

Group planners/buyers are now using digital methods for some 80% of their pre-purchase
research and planning, so hotel DOSMs need to scrap the traditional, relationship-based
methods of the past and arm themselves with every digital tool available. This includes
gathering customer data from social media, blogs and other aspects of their respective digital
footprint, as well as tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Knowland Group’s market
intelligence. It also means syncing sales efforts with the hotel’s marketing team, especially
through marketing automation and a joint customer relationship management (CRM) system.

12. Stop Competing with OTAs on Price

Instead of making price parity your lead strategy for combatting the online travel agencies
(OTAs), recent data suggests another tactic can be much more effective: targeting consumer
fears regarding using OTAs.

It turns out that OTAs have built a lousy reputation for poor customer service, and many
travelers worry about reservations, cancellations, changes, room selection and refunds when
booking through OTAs. In response, you should harness the power of emotional
messaging across all transient marketing touchpoints, reminding prospective guests at every
opportunity that booking direct is the safer play, and you have a 100% commitment to
customer service in the event something does go wrong.

13. Augment Your Brand’s Basic Marketing Program

Brand affiliation offers many potential sales and marketing advantages; however, these
benefits aren’t often enough all on their own, as each brand’s national marketing team
generally can’t reach specific target markets on a timely basis, convey unique property
experiences or synthesize authentic local culture. Hotels need to augment their brand’s core
program with timely campaigns and custom direct “vanity” websitesthat help fill periods of
need, instead of solely relying on their brand’s standard marketing program, which is
duplicated for every other sister hotel in the region. Take a proactive approach that focuses on
differentiating your property, customizing your website, boosting your search engine
optimization (SEO) and social media efforts and elevating the authenticity of your marketing
message.

Also, if your property heavily depends on group revenue, consider adding technology,
training and lead generation tools from outside vendors.

14. Consolidate Vendors

Working with multiple hotel marketing vendors means none are accountable. Meanwhile,
hotel marketers waste a lot of time delivering messages from vendor to vendor, in a struggle
to get everyone on the same page. Then further complicating things is the issue of vendor
technology often not working well with others, blocking real-time data from being shared
amongst the entire team.

The solution?

Pare-down your vendors to as few as possible, favoring hospitality marketing partners who
have an expertise and proven success in several areas—not just one—so they can optimize
multiple marketing functions. Most importantly, ask them the necessary questions to find out
if they have the chops and systems in place to drive bookings and deliver ROI.

15. Know Your Cost-Per-Booking

Today, hotel owners expect their hotel marketing departments to contribute to the hotel’s
revenue targets in ways that can be measured. Without tracking and showing the numerical
evaluation of your marketing efforts, you’re going to face a difficult time later in the year
when you need to request next year’s marketing dollars.

To prove how your marketing efforts are adding to the hotel’s revenue, you’ll need to
calculate your marketing cost per booking (MCPB) by segment. Use this number to show
your marketing team’s value and to ensure you’re given the proper amount of marketing
dollars to continue bringing in business for the hotel. Be especially vigilant to know your
cost-per-booking from OTAs as well… avoiding the trap of viewing OTA bookings as purely
revenue with no cost of acquisition.

The Official Gift Guide for Hotel Marketers

Listen up hotel owners and asset managers, we know what hotel marketers really want for the
holidays.

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Forget the silly gadgets and fancy chocolates!

Listen up hotel owners and asset managers, we know what hotel marketers really want for the
holidays…

Here’s our annual list of the things that hotel marketers tell us they crave the most:

1. They Want to Be Rewarded for Driving Measurable Revenue

Hotel owners expect their marketing team to contribute to the hotel’s revenue targets in ways
that can be tangibly measured.

And hotel marketers are responding!

By tracking their marketing cost-per-booking (MCPB) and return on ad spend, they are
showcasing the marketing team’s direct ROI… this new breed of “revenue marketer”
is moving away from the squishy, legacy metrics of hotel marketing into a new era of
accountability (and hopefully increased compensation)!

2. They Want the Budget Correlated to Targets

Nothing would make hotel marketers happier this holiday season than a budget that was
actually correlated to the targets being set for them (by segment)! Unfortunately, there are
still many hotel owners who believe their sales and marketing teams can hit increasingly lofty
revenue targets with less money and resources than the year before.

This year, hotel marketers are hoping to convince upper management that their ambitious
revenue goals need to be supported with bigger budgets (and maybe even more staff). Let’s
hope hotel owners realize that investing in marketing is one of the smartest moves they can
make to boost revenue.

3. They Want Continued Investments for Direct Booking Campaigns

The launch of major campaigns by industry giants this year further reinforced the industry’s
message on the benefits of purchasing directly through a hotel website rather than an OTA.
But to rely solely on the AHLA, Marriott and Hilton to communicate these advantages to
travelers is insufficient. Every property, regardless of size, affiliation or location, should be
showcasing the benefits of booking direct and changing their message to expose the real
weakness of OTAs.

4. They Want Standardized Metrics That Really Matter

Instead of leaning on squishy metrics, most hotel marketers crave consensus on KPIs that will
actually measure important things, including:

1. MCPB (Marketing cost per booking): Tracks the cost of each sales and marketing channel
versus actual conversions. (Try using this for OTA commissions as well… and see how that
channel stacks up versus your other campaigns.)
2. DRR (Direct revenue ratio): Measures percentage of online revenue from direct sources
(your website) versus pricey third-party sources, like OTAs. If you’re not generating more
than 60 percent of your transient revenue from direct reservations, you still have work to do!
3. Website Conversion Rate (from unique visitor to entrances into the booking
environment): Converting a higher percentage of visitors into booking searches (or phone
calls) is critical to reducing your cost of revenue and MCPB.
4. Variance from Revenue Target BY SEGMENT: This metric showcases revenue goals
versus actual results.
5. TripAdvisor Sentiment Score: Using a reputation/sentiment monitoring tool allows hotels to
measure guest satisfaction. This reflects whether your guests are enjoying your product, along
with alerting you to hotel deficiencies. A bad hotel experience will outweigh any of your
clever sales and marketing tactics.

5. A Better Product… Please!

Successful hotel marketing depends on a great product.

Period. Full stop.

If you’re trying to sell a tired, flawed, aging or otherwise inferior hotel experience, no amount
of marketing – no matter how innovative or brilliant – can avoid the inevitable downward
spiral.

There are far too many hotels that continue to sink millions of marketing dollars to over-
compensate for or to cover up an aging, lackluster, or grungy hotel product. Sadly, as long as
owners delay investing in the appearance, service or amenities of the property, hotel
marketers will continue to fight an uphill battle in attracting and retaining guests.

6. They Want to Celebrate Authentic Local Experiences

The vast majority of hotel marketers understand that today’s traveler cares as much or more
about the EXPERIENCE than the thread count of the hotel’s sheets or the convenient
parking. But not everyone is on board with converting the focus of a hotel’s marketing to
focus on life-enriching experiences. Hotel marketers unanimously tell us they crave more
time, resources and freedom to celebrate their properties’ connection to local experiences.

7. They Want Better Photography!

Like it or not, we’ve become a very visual society.

Just as important as a hotel’s service, extraordinary hotel digital marketing requires

extraordinary photography because it plays such a strong role in consumers’ travel purchase
process, from the inspiration phase to booking. Images define guest expectations and poor
quality shots are the equivalent of telling potential guests that the hotel’s offerings are subpar,
especially if the competitive set has better visual content on its website.
8. They Want to Decrease Their Dependence on OTAs

Yes, we know… statement of the obvious.

Everyone wants this, but rather than complaining, it’s time to change the overarching hotel
industry strategy from emphasizing price parity to tapping into consumer fears of OTAs.

Instead of obsessing about Best Rate Guarantees, we all need to start focusing instead on how
reservations, cancellations, changes, room selection and refunds are perceived by consumers
when they book direct vs indirect.

Many consumers (especially older ones) have preexisting concerns about third-party
bookings and fear that one mishap with an OTA could unravel their travel plans in seconds.

9. Can We Get a Little Acknowledgment Please?

It’s not about ego.

It’s about progress… Marketers aren’t looking for a pat on the back!

What they want is for executives, owners, and hotel asset managers to understand all that
falls on the shoulders of marketing. Because, when management truly understands the
resources required, the marketing department usually gets the resources and the budget
required to keep up with their compset and meet the revenue requirements of ownership.

10. They Want an End to the Rising Cost of Guest Acquisition!

Owners can’t control many of their rising costs, particularly debt service, brand fees and
credit card fees. That’s why hotel owners and asset managers are looking more closely than
ever at marketing costs—particularly the cost of guest acquisition—which are also rising fast.

According to experts, acquisition costs commonly in the range of 5% to 10% less than a
decade ago have jumped to between 15% and 25%. If a hotel cannot acquire guests at a
tolerable, sustainable rate, then the property is worthless as a long-term asset.

And one of the reasons that marketing costs are rising so quickly is because hotel marketers
are often unable to create perceived value in their product, which ends up being treated like a
commodity instead. Part of the problem lies with the brands, many of which have become
redundant, overdone and difficult to distinguish from one another, prompting travelers to
book solely based on price.

Happy holidays!

We hope all your wishes come true this holiday season too!

Friday Freebie: If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It:

Showcase Your Best Reviews!
This Week’s Freebie: Curate your best guest reviews to build social validation and encourage
new bookings.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Curate your best guest reviews to build social validation and
encourage new bookings.

No matter how brilliant your marketing, how stunning your photography or witty your
marketing copy, it’s the authentic, unvarnished opinions of past guests that hold a large sway
over future bookings.

If you’re going above and beyond for your guests, you’re likely pulling in wonderful reviews
that perfectly and poignantly sum up your hotel experience.

That’s good news!

The bad news: In just a few days, those 5-star reviews on TripAdvisor will get buried and
forgotten once new reviews come in.

Instead of allowing those ultra-positive reviews to be pushed further and further down within
the review sites, publish the best of them directly on your website.

Instead of using TripAdvisor’s automated widget on your website (which shows ALL
reviews – both negative and positive), scour through your reviews and personally select 4-6
of the best to showcase on your website.

Here’s an example from Hotel Hugo in NYC

The best reviews are the ones that are brief, yet thorough enough in describing why they
enjoyed their stay so much. Skip the reviews that are generic, such as, “It was the best! I
loved everything!” And try to identify reviews from the key segments that drive your
business: romantic getaways, families or business travelers.

Posting several glowing reviews directly onto your homepage will not only build immediate
trust with your online visitors (social proof), but it will also discourage those visitors from
leaving your site entirely to check on TripAdvisor themselves.

For more social validation, showcase accolades or awards that your hotel or staff have won.

Highlight, don’t hide, the positive opinions that others have of you.

SSL: The Latest Threat to Your Hotel Website

Hotel digital marketers have yet another headache to deal with.

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Hotel digital marketers have yet another headache to deal with….

Here we go again….

In hopes of fostering a safer internet, Google has moved toward new security standards for its
Chrome browser, which requires a significant update to hotel websites in order to achieve
compliance.

Under the new specifications, Google now requires all websites that collect any type of
personal data (i.e. forms, email addresses, credit card info, etc.) to migrate websites to
HTTPS and upgrade their security technology in the form of “SSL Certificates,” or suffer the
consequences.

Right now, that consequence is primarily a security alert, which Chrome users see when they
reach a web page that Google has deemed a “Non-Secure environment” when the mandated
SSL certificate isn’t present. Considering roughly 60% of web surfers currently use Chrome,
this is no matter to take lightly; it’s best to make the required changes as soon as possible, to
ensure your site traffic isn’t at risk and/or potential guests being scared away.

Can Someone Please Explain Why This is Happening?

The new Google security standards are intended to safeguard sensitive personal information
exchanged over the internet, making it harder for hackers to steal this data.

The data lockdown is achieved by migrating websites from the unsecure HTTP (hypertext
transfer protocol) platform to the safer HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) format. In
order to make the switch to HTTPS, websites need an SSL/TSL certificate (Secure Sockets
Layer and Transport Layer Security) in place.

An SSL connection offers enhanced security because it encrypts data to hinder

eavesdropping, protects data integrity to prevent corruption during transfer and enables
authentication, ensuring users only communicate with the intended website. Some of the
security risks that the HTTPS/SSL standard hopes to mitigate include:

 Intruders attempting to exploit unprotected communications to trick your users into providing
sensitive information or installing malware (“phishing”).
 Hackers and/or legitimate companies attempting to insert their own advertisements into your
website.
  Intruders who passively listen to communications between your website and your users.
 Hackers who look at the aggregate browsing activities of your website’s users, in order to
make inferences about their behaviors and intentions, and to thereby de-anonymize their
identities.

The new security standard is also becoming a prerequisite for a number of leading-edge
technologies, which are increasingly requiring permissions obtained in a secure setting.
SSL/HTTPS is considered the future for all web communication, so it pays to get on board
now.

The Penalties

At the moment, Google is “motivating” hotel website owners to comply with the new
standard by placing an information icon in the Chrome address bar that warns “Your
connection is not secure” when site visitors arrive at a page not using HTTPS.

This may seem like a small detail, but it may have a huge impact on hotel website conversion
rates. You don’t want to scare away customers with an unsecure website. Google has
indicated that warnings may become even more pronounced in future browser updates.

You also don’t want your customers’ data being compromised because you failed to provide
a secure setting. As recent data breaches among numerous major hotel companies have
proven, hacks can cause extensive damage to brands and they erode consumer trust, which
can be disastrous to the bottom line. Given those risks, taking the steps to comply with the
SSL/HTTPS standard is a no-brainer.

The Solution

The first step in meeting the standard is for hotel digital marketers to obtain an SSL
Certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA). The certificate permits your website to
communicate using encrypted, non-corruptible data, while also acting as a stamp of approval.

Many providers offer free SSL/TSL certificates; (Shameless plug: Tambourine provides SSL
certificates for all clients included in our monthly service package).

With an approved certificate in place, the next steps are to conduct a full backup of your hotel
website, change all your internal links, check code libraries, update external links and create a
301 redirect. It’s also important to claim all four versions of your site URLs (HTTPS, HTTP,
www. and non-www.) on Google Search Console Analytics, AdWords and other paid ads,
plus social profiles and business citations. Since there are multiple complex steps, you
definitely want your digital marketing team or external hotel digital marketing firm to handle
this.

Friday Freebie: Copy This Tactic From

Luxury Hotels
Hotels up and down the chain scale are taking this page out of the luxury segment playbook
to drive bookings.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s Freebie: Luxury hotels know how to focus on health and wellness-enhancing
amenities… but now, hotels up and down the chain scale are taking this page out of the
luxury segment playbook to drive bookings.
Behind every luxury hotel is a marketer who understands exactly what the affluent customer
seeks in a travel experience.

Besides VIP treatment, exclusive amenities, remarkable cuisine and unfettered access to
service staff, affluent guests expect luxury hotels to enhance their health and wellness, from
arrival to departure.

Luxury properties continue to answer this call with complimentary outdoor yoga classes,
farm-to-table organic meals, guided nature walks and sumptuous spa treatments.

But offering the benefit of wellness isn’t just for luxury properties with deep budgets or
wealthy guests. Industry research reveals that just about EVERY traveler these days
wants to stay healthy on the road and is drawn to hotels that offer unique ways to do
that.

Even if your hotel can only offer complimentary bike rentals or cucumber water in the
lobby, emphasize any and all of your healthy offerings on your hotel website to stimulate
consideration.

Here are some ideas:

 Provide maps and photos of where guests can explore the area on bike or by foot
 Emphasize any local ingredients and where they are sourced from in your menus
 Do your rooms have air purifiers or organic bathroom amenities?
 Create partnerships and packages with local yoga, pilates, barre and other fitness
studios
 Have specialized equipment in your fitness center? Highlight what they are instead of
loosely describing it as ‘state-of-the-art equipment.”
 Create an online list of vendors offering ways guests can stay active, including bike
tours, paddle board lessons, snowshoe rentals, etc.

Hotel Marketers and Accidental Narcissists

How do we provide these “accidental narcissists” what they need to engage with our
properties?

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Always-on, empowered consumers require a new digital strategy.

The rise of digital and mobile and its impact on commerce has given consumers more
information, and consequently more power, than ever before, as well as an ever-increasing
expectation for instant gratification.

Marketing experts have dubbed this mass-consumer evolution happening right before our
eyes “The Age of Assistance,” and adapting to it is currently one of the greatest challenges
marketers face, in virtually all commercial industries.

The hotel business is no exception, and in some ways, is at the forefront of this
metamorphosis.

In the past, consumers undertook greater effort to research expensive and/or important
purchases, like homes, cars, major appliances, etc. But nowadays, experts say all kinds of
purchases are being researched online, regardless of size, making online authority crucial for
companies, as customers move through each stage of the sales funnel without salespeople (or
human travel agents) involved.

The hotel business is particularly entrenched in this revolution, since traveling has always
been a research/planning-heavy purchase, and there are more resources than ever at your
guest’s fingertips.

In a recent article in Forbes, well-known author, Brian Solis points out that: “In the age of
assistance, consumers are now relying on what they find in mobile-first “micro-moments” to
help them take the next step. They’re seeking utility, information, direction and not classical
marketing.”

“I refer to this new generation of mobile, connected customers as “accidental narcissists.”

It’s a term of endearment. Everything they want, they can have, in any moment. Literally,
there’s an app for just about everything, consumers are plugged into an on-demand economy
that delivers products, services, experiences, validation, gratification, et al., in the moment.
This presents an opportunity (and a need) for marketers to become truly customer-, not
marketing- or technology-, centric.”

So how do hotel marketers deal with this new age marketing scramble? How do we provide
these “accidental narcissists” what they need to engage with our properties?

1. Know Their profile

You can’t assist potential guests unless you understand them first. You should have a fairly
detailed “profile” of your ideal guest (or meeting planner or corporate buyer).

You should know:

– Where they live

– How often they visit
– When they visit
– Which guests are most lucrative
– What they like (and don’t like) about your property

2. Know Their Media Habits

Starting with mobile, you need to learn about the discovery process used by your customers,
starting with where they go to find their information, what they are searching for, where those
searches take them, what engages or converts them from there and where they visit next.

For more insight, try using Google’s insightful micro-moments playbook.

3. Think Like a Publisher

Armed with greater knowledge of your customer, their journey and research process, you can
then begin tailoring content that engages them.

Your content should offer solutions, versus selling rooms. And promise to change the
viewer’s perspective on the destination and enrich their lives.

Modern travelers are driven to book based on what lies outside your hotel walls, not just
what’s inside. They want to experience your destination like a true local and crave front-row
access to cool discoveries and remarkable experiences, unlike anything they can find at
home.
So, your website and marketing content should not only focus on your property; It should
share the spotlight with your destination. Your hotel website should position your property as
the epicenter of your destination.

You need to show what experiences guests can look forward to and which are within reach.
What cool wine bars or quirky, local coffee shops are within walking distance? What local
secrets can your staff share? What should guests know about your immediate neighborhood?

4. Know What Your Guests Want

This next directive pertains to embracing data and listening to what your guests (and your
compset’s guests) are saying in public spaces. By paying attention to keyword searches,
social media posts, Trip Advisor reviews, CVB data and responses to your post-stay surveys,
savvy hotel marketers can see threats and trends that will define how guests want to “be
assisted.”

– Are your guests complaining about certain aspects of your property?

– Are travelers to your destination talking about the new museum?
– Is there a rapid spike in keyword volume for hotels near a certain hot neighborhood?
– What are the top attractions near you (and how are you partnered with them)?

These are priceless digital breadcrumbs for you in building a consumer path to your door!

5. Assist During the Transaction

Consumers also expect their transaction experience to be seamless. Hotels are expected to
simplify life, not confuse it… especially at the most critical point in their purchase journey!
So make sure your hotel website booking experience is flawless, by avoiding these pitfalls:

• Accessible Communication
Giving people what they want quickly and easily amps up your value. Follow the example of
luxury hotels and resorts, who offer instant access to reservations staff using online chat,
phone or email. Consumers are always more likely to pay a premium to properties that
respond quickly to questions and establish high service expectations BEFORE the guest even
arrives.

• Hidden Costs and Sticker Shock

Studies show that nothing kills a sale – and trust – like unexpected costs. Mostly surprise
hidden costs that many hotels like to sneak into the transaction right before asking for credit
card information. Today’s travelers have no patience with additional charges and will be
ruthless in abandoning any property that tries to spring on pesky fees.

• Your Mobile Experience is Poor

Google studies show that 36% of business travelers and 40% of leisure travelers book hotel
rooms on their mobile phones. And, bookings originating from users on iPads and other
tablet-sized devices are growing fast.

• It’s Too Frustrating to Make a Reservation

It’s a lesson hoteliers rarely hear, but should immediately heed: Your booking engine must be
a simple process. Visitors are already uncomfortable giving out their information online, if
your forms are cumbersome, consumers will exit before a purchase is completed. Yet,
thousands of hotels are still cluttering their booking engines with too much text, too many
pages and endless steps.

• Slow Means No
25% of visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Almost 50%
will abandon if the site takes more than 10 seconds to load. In our fast-paced, instant-
gratification culture—fueled by high-speed internet—consumers expect your web pages to
load immediately!

• You’re Not Speaking Their Language

This seems painfully obvious, but far too many hotels treat everyone as an English-speaking
American. Imagine the frustration of your overseas website visitors when they enter a
booking environment that is not automatically defaulted to their native language or currency.

• Limited Payment Options

Smart hotels offer multiple payment options, going beyond Amex, Visa and Mastercard to
include as many forms of payment as possible, including third-party online payment services
like PayPal. Some even take it a step further like Couples Resorts, who offer a “loveaway”
payment plan

Friday Freebie: “Bridge the Chasm” To

Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
This Week’s Freebie: A jarring transition from your website to booking engine environment
is one of the biggest causes of online booking abandonment.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.
This Week’s Freebie: A jarring transition from your website to booking engine
environment is one of the biggest causes of online booking abandonment.

The “chasm” between your hotel website and your booking engine needs to be seamless and
frictionless!

Even the smallest details can derail a booking in progress.

The best hotel booking engines are the ones that load quickly and give the viewer no
indication that they have been sent to another environment (usually managed by another
vendor entirely as well). They are seamless: with the same look and feel as your hotel website
– down to color, to font size, to photos.

Consistent user experience (UX) is vital to eCommerce transactions, especially for a

marketplace as competitive as the online hotel marketplace.

If your booking engine loads slowly, projects a different look from your website experience
or fails to present the expected promo/package/rates…. you will create dissonance and
customers will feel uneasy and doubtful about their purchase decision.

Don’t give guests a reason to abandon their reservations.

Keep their confidence high by delivering a smooth and uninterrupted transition once they
decide to book.

5 Things Hotel Marketers Are Thankful for

This Thanksgiving
Here are 5 things hoteliers are feeling thankful for this Thanksgiving.

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Hotel marketing pros are counting their blessings…

For most, Thanksgiving is a time for football, traveling to see relatives and diet-busting
feasts.
It’s also the time of year we ask clients, colleagues and industry experts what they are feeling
good about. And once again, we heard that the economy, industry dynamics and hotel
consumer behavior are working in our favor like never before.

Based on our informal survey, here are 5 things hoteliers are feeling thankful for this
Thanksgiving:

1. Evidence That Direct Booking Campaigns Are Working

In 2016, major hotel brands and smaller hotels went after OTAs with a fervor and pushed
aggressive campaigns to convince travelers that booking direct was best. Now, we finally
have proof that the preaching paid off. Kalibri Labs compiled data from more than 12,000
U.S. hotels and 52 million transactions during the run of these highly publicized campaigns.

In their recent report “Book Direct Campaigns: The Cost & Benefits of Loyalty,” Kalibri
measured a significant net revenue benefit due to a shift in bookings from OTAs to
Brand.com. While this certainly calls for a massive celebration, the momentum shouldn’t
stop here. Experts agree that discounting to create loyalty can’t be the end-all, be-all of your
book direct strategy; creating online and on-property experiences that the OTAs cannot must
be the neverending quest for hotel marketers seeking to reduce OTA dependence and
improve bottom line profitability.

2. Owners’ Willingness to Invest in the Product

Hotel marketers know this best: No amount of brilliant marketing, guest data, or up-to-the-
minute technology can compensate for an aging and run-down hotel property. Now, with
property values on the rise and an overall healthy real estate market, hotel owners have the
renewed confidence in investing in upgrades, redesigns and renovations that will help hotel
sales and marketing teams compete with the new supply entrants in their market.

And with so many major hotel brands launching new or re-imagined brands, it’s more vital
than ever to keep up and hold onto your market share by offering compelling amenities,
aesthetics and experiences.

3. Demand and RevPar Still Going Strong

Despite the threat of Airbnb’s climbing success (especially with their new focus on offering a
complete travel experience, both in and outside of their hosts’ homes) and a ballooning hotel
supply, RevPAR and demand are still holding steady.

Based on a strong economy, hotel occupancies are still at an all-time high and the hotel
industry is still experiencing an unprecedented string of record results. To date, RevPAR has
increased year-over-year consecutively for 92 months, according to STR.

4. Social Evangelism

Over the last few years, storytelling and “content marketing” has become one of the most
popular (and cost-effective) ways for hotel marketers to win guests’ hearts and wallets.
Why?

Because consumers no longer trust advertising… they trust each other. As an article in Ad
Age so aptly put it: “Your brand is defined by the interactions people have with it.”

User-generated content (UGC), especially photos, videos and posts about on-property
experiences are more authentic, less sales focused… and let’s face it, more creative than
anything you could ever dream up yourself.

Hotel marketers are feeling blessed to have guests who gush and brag about their stay on
Facebook and post foodie pics to Instagram. Not only have they made marketing travel
engagingly personal and authentic, they come at no cost to the hotelier.

5. Metasearch: An Attractive and Less Expensive Option

It’s easy to see why travelers love metasearch, such as Google and TripAdvisor: They receive
all the key details needed to research and book their stays all in one place, like real-time
pricing, availability, hotel information, guest reviews and location.

But, hotel marketers are loving metasearch too.

They are using these sites to boost direct bookings instead of relying on OTAs and paying
high commissions. You can pay-per-click or pay booking commissions (still less expensive
than traditional OTA fees) – all while getting brand exposure and access to travelers who are
just entering the consideration and booking funnel.

Friday Freebie: A Creative Way to Offset

Shorter Booking Windows
This Week’s Freebie: Counteract shrinking booking windows with a smart (and simple)
reservation recovery campaign.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.
This Week’s Freebie: Counteract shrinking booking windows with a smart (and
simple) reservation recovery campaign.

Smartphones, deal-hungry consumers, last-minute booking apps and penalty-free

reservations.

These are just some of the reasons why people are now booking hotels closer and closer to
their check-in date. In fact, according to most experts, booking lead times have shortened
dramatically, with last-minute U.S. travel consumers making up 13% of all bookings in their
recent study.

If your hotel constantly leans on these last-minute bookings, especially those booked on
OTAs, you’re sacrificing revenue and losing even more (fast!) by paying expensive third-
party commissions.

Here’s one way to deal with this new reality of the rapidly shrinking booking window:

Put Intelligent Reservation Recovery to Work…

Rather than fretting about shrinking booking windows, focus on converting your best
prospects SOONER with a dynamic reservation recovery campaign.

Every day, hotels ignore millions of consumers WITH LONG BOOKING WINDOWS at the
very edge of converting to real revenue. Prospects who have already visited your website and
searched the booking engine for travel dates that coincide with your traditional periods of
weakness.

There is a massive opportunity to re-engage those lost visitors, convert them to bookings and
ameliorate the periods that suffer from extremely short booking windows!

Here’s How You Can Use Reservation Recovery to Mitigate the Effects of Short
Booking Windows:

1. Know the Booking Window for Every Day of the Year

Your booking engine, CRS or PMS provider can easily provide you with book-to-arrival data
for every day of the year. Armed with this, you can identify the days/weeks that cause
internal panic and low ADRs

2. Use Reservation Recovery Tech That Immediately Captures Email Addresses

Once an online visitor searches for their dates and chooses a room type, smart reservation
recovery technology will require their email address as the first field in the booking process.
That way, you now have the contact info necessary to retarget them if they abandon their
booking.

3. Create a Custom Campaign for the Periods with the Shortest Booking Window (and
Lowest ADR)
After a visitor abandons a booking that falls in your target low period, your reservation
recovery system should send out a specific email with a personalized greeting that thanks
them for considering your property and offers a limited-time incentive for booking with you
directly. Sure, these incentives eat into net room revenue, but they are still far less than the
commissions on OTA bookings or other sources of last minute bookings.

By Incentivizing the Visitors Who Have Already:

1. Demonstrated their willingness to book farther out

2. Nearly completed a booking in a target period

You can close more bookings sooner… alleviating “short-booking window anxiety” for
everyone on the revenue management and marketing teams! Studies have proven that
reservation recovery systems can recapture millions of dollars in lost revenue… in some
cases, up to 30% of abandoned bookings were reactivated!

The Big Squeeze: Why Hotel Owners Are So

Concerned About Marketing Costs
There are a number of reasons why the cost of acquisition continues to spike (along with the
blood pressure of some owners).

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And why hotel marketers are feeling the pinch…

Hotel owners are feeling the squeeze from rising operating costs, at a time when the U.S.
hotel industry is posting record revenues.

Debt service, brand fees, management fees, credit card and intermediary fees and capital
improvement programs are all costly contributors that have many fearing that when the next
downturn comes, things could get ugly.

Owners can’t really control debt service, brand fees and credit card fees. That’s why
hotel owners and asset managers are looking more closely than ever at variable marketing
costs—particularly the cost of guest acquisition—which are also rising fast. According to
experts, acquisition costs commonly in the range of 5% to 10% less than a decade ago have
jumped to between 15% and 25%. If a hotel cannot acquire guests at a tolerable, sustainable
rate, then the property is worthless as a long-term asset.

There are a number of reasons why the cost of acquisition continues to spike (along with the
blood pressure of some owners) including:

1. Lack of Differentiation and Low Conversion Rates

One of the reasons that marketing costs are rising so quickly is because hotel marketers are
often unable to create perceived value in their product, which ends up being treated like a
commodity, and bought by consumers on price alone. Part of the problem lies with the
brands, many of which have become largely homogenous and difficult to distinguish from
one another, further prompting travelers to book solely based on price.

But blame also falls on the shoulders of hotel marketers themselves, who often fail to
highlight the unique and compelling aspects of their properties. Instead of just listing
amenities like an indoor pool and free Wi-Fi, it’s far more effective to focus on unique
differentiators like popular or noteworthy foods and services at the hotel, proximity to
favorite attractions and neighborhoods, packages that incorporate local products/services and
any other aspects that make one’s hotel different from the rest.

If hotel marketers could create a more powerful story in the minds of potential guests and
convert lookers to bookers at a higher percentage, their marketing costs would decrease.

2. Fighting the Neighborhood Bullies

One of the main reasons marketing costs are out of control is that (despite the proliferation of
tech and channels) there are actually a limited number of places from which hotels can attract
significant traffic. Sure, the internet is a big place, but other than the OTAs, the vast majority
of relevant traffic and bookings for hotels emanate from metasearch portals, Google and
Facebook… where hotels find themselves in a David vs Goliath battle against the mega-
budgets of the OTAs yet again!

The deep-pocketed OTAs spend more on marketing than most hoteliers can keep up
with. This problem is particularly pronounced in the Google AdWords/pay-per-click (PPC)
world, where the OTAs can easily outspend the competition. Therefore, it’s essential to spend
wisely, choosing times and places when either the OTA marketing spend is lower, or the
payback from outspending the OTAs is high enough to justify the short-term expense.

That philosophy also applies to controlling how much, and when, OTAs are used for
bookings, depending on the time of year and the demand factors in the local market. The
ideal percentages for third-party distribution can vary widely, and need to be closely
monitored either internally or through a manager with acute revenue management skills.

3. OTA Commissions Are Not Viewed as Expenses

Yet another reason marketing costs are running rampant is the apathy of many hotel
marketers, who refuse to ditch their OTA crutch and invest more in driving direct revenue
through their own proprietary activities. A core reason for this lack of action is the vague at
best sense that many operators have as to exactly how much OTA bookings cost, and the
impact of that cost on the property’s P&L.

There are other marketing expenses, unfortunately, which are much more tangible on
financial statements, including hotel digital marketing, hotel SEO, online media and
retargeting, email marketing, advertising, social media and reservation abandonment
programs. All of those expenditures can greatly help a hotel drive its own direct revenue, yet
since these expenses are more visible on paper, they are generally cut first by owners, rather
than OTA expenses, which are largely invisible. In many cases, the reverse tactic would be
significantly more profitable.

4. A Focus on Flipping

Ultimately, many owners themselves are partly to blame.

By having short-term goals of flipping the property, many tolerate their property’s
dependence on costly OTAs and ignore the long-term benefits of investing in building a
healthier inflow of direct revenue. Having such a direct revenue stream only increases the
value of the property, by boosting its prominence in the marketplace and fostering a more
profitable bottom line.

According to a recent AHLA report, entitled: Demystifying the Digital

Marketplace, “revenue retained by US hotels after paying all customer acquisition costs
declined by almost .4% or $600 million… That $600M in additional cost would have
contributed directly to net operating income. Using an 8% capitalization rate (which most
investors require), these additional acquisition costs of $600 million reduced the asset value
of the overall hotel industry by at least $7.5 billion.”

Friday Freebie – Do this: an easy trick for

higher organic traffic
This Week’s Freebie: Elevate your SEO strategy by creating answers to travelers’ most
common questions.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Elevate your SEO strategy by creating answers to travelers’ most
common questions.

Recent Google developments have made it harder and harder to rank on the first page of
search engine results with short-tail phrases like “hotels in Nashville” or “San Jose hotels.”

While you can’t control Google (if only!) or where exactly your hotel ends up in the search
results, you DO have control over your hotel’s website content that Google crawls and
indexes.

One simple strategy to boost your SEO effectiveness is to build relevant content that answers
guests’ questions about your hotel and destination, making use of more specific, long-tail
keywords.

And the best way to do this is to leverage your website’s secret SEO weapon: the
FAQ/policies page.

Most hotels keep this page generic or barren of any targeted SEO phrases, then end up
copying and pasting text from another hotel. Major mistake – this page is vital to Google and
to you. Google scans hotel policy pages to determine if your hotel website is relevant to
searches like the one above. So if you have an FAQ or policy about pets, make sure your
answer to that question is keyword-rich, for example: “Looking for a pet-friendly hotel in
Nashville? Hotel Acme loves pets!”

And when writing destination content, don’t be afraid to promote other businesses, such as
restaurants or activities outside of the hotel (ie “hotels near Fenway Park”). Your hotel is
more likely to rank for long tail searches (with fewer competitors) for these external
attractions and with content that addresses guests’ questions.

Why Hotel Sales Teams Need to Up Their

Digital Game
Here are the three most effective ways hotel salespeople can elevate their digital game.

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Hotel group sales teams need better digital skills to capture more deals.
Advances in digital have dramatically altered the ways group planners/buyers do business.

Today, B2B customers are doing 80% of their pre-purchase research in the digital world.
Meeting planners/buyers are relying far less on hotel salespeople for information, instead
choosing to educate themselves on potential venues via the web and peer referrals.

These clients no longer want cold calls, or even emails; 90% of C-level executives claim to
never respond to these tactics, according to Salesforce.

Quite simply, hotel salespeople have to adapt… and quickly.

Traditionally, hotel sales teams use classic old-school textbook techniques, relying heavily on
relationship selling and cold calls to book business. At branded hotels, sales teams often
receive very little digital help or “air cover” from their corporate parents (other than lead
flow). While Independents tend to be a bit more resourceful, since they’re wholly responsible
for leads. But both hotel types need to enhance their digital skills, to keep up with the latest
evolution of B2B buyers.

Here are the three most effective ways hotel salespeople can elevate their digital game:

1. Get Data

The first step of a digital sales effort starts with conducting digital research, to obtain key
information about both your customers and competition. Discovering where to go on the web
and various databases to research potential clients and do your homework on prospects’
needs should be done before you engage with those prospects. Take some time to read their
blogs, LinkedIn pages, website and other “digital footprints.”

You can also employ affordable, easy-to-use tools to better understand prospects’ profiles
and behavior. Helpful tools include:

 LinkedIn Sales Navigator – LinkedIn’s subscription-based sales tool helps sales reps target
buyers and companies, with features to save leads and create various contact lists. The system
contains an algorithm that helps find the best potential leads for each user, while sales
research and insight tools help reps study their prospective clients. Communication tools are
also built into the software, and it seamlessly logs and imports sales activity to and from CRM
systems.
 Knowland Group Data – Knowland Group’s market intelligence products help sales reps find
targets that meet their group revenue maximization goals, understand trends in the market and
tap into undiscovered opportunities. Their data includes planner buying behavior, group
booking patterns and market benchmarking, as well as actionable leads, educational resources
and an archive of lead contact data.

2. Get in Sync with the Marketing Team

Hotel sales leaders need to work closely with their marketing and IT colleagues to create an
ideal digital workflow and lead flow. A proven method is to implement a CRM system to
track activity, append clean targeting data and track lead behavior. There’s a huge payoff
from the approach: An App Data Room and Marketo study found that sales and marketing
alignment can improve sales efforts at closing deals by 67%.

Both sales and marketing departments should also cooperate on marketing automation, which
can send the right message, at the right time, to the right meeting planner or group lead, while
keeping teams informed as target prospects engage with company websites and marketing
materials. In addition, sales teams should provide marketing with guidance and feedback on
which digital channels, social media, etc., that sales prospects are currently using.

3. Get Social

Embracing digital doesn’t mean the longstanding practice of relationship-based selling no

longer applies; it’s just moved into a different medium. According to LinkedIn, three out of
four B2B buyers now rely on social media to engage with peers about buying decisions. More
than three-quarters (82%) of B2B buyers say vendor content shared on social channels (like
LinkedIn) has a significant impact on their buying decision, while B2B buyers are five times
more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights about their business or
industry, according to LinkedIn research.

With that in mind, today’s sales teams should be using digital to enable “social selling,”
which essentially means building relationships and nudging leads along through the sales
process via savvy, helpful, UNSELFISH social media interaction, rather than outdated and
ineffective methods like phone calls and email.

This is primarily done by providing content that solves the problems and answers the
questions of customers, as well as by interacting one-on-one with leads through social media.
It’s different from wide-swath “shotgun marketing” on social, where branding-related content
is shared everywhere in hopes of going viral and building awareness; social selling, rather,
makes the customer the key dictator of the type of content shared, based on their specific
wants and needs.

And remember, social interaction doesn’t end with that sale, either.

Social platforms are also employed post-sale to retain and upsell customers, especially by
creating a channel for customers to share feedback and vent frustration. Referrals are now
essential to lead generation, with 84% of B2B buyers beginning the buying process with a
referral and more than 90% of purchase decisions influenced by peer recommendations,
according to a 2016 Harvard Business Review article.

So now, more than ever, the time you spend on digital sales efforts—especially building and
maintaining your social media network and reputation—will have a direct and meaningful
impact on your sales pipeline. This is one game you want to be sure you’re playing to win.

What’s Scaring Hotel Marketers This

Halloween?
Back by popular demand… for Halloween, we once again asked hotel marketers from coast
to coast, representing properties of all sizes, what they’re most spooked about right now.

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Back by popular demand… for Halloween, we once again asked hotel marketers from coast
to coast, representing properties of all sizes, what they’re most spooked about right now.

Here is what they said:

1. Unrealistic Goals on Tight Budgets

(This one tops the list two years in a row!) Hotel marketers’ plates aren’t just full – they’re
stacked sky-high with multiple marketing priorities to oversee, manage and implement. This
upcoming year, the number of channels, campaigns, audiences, assets and tools will only get
bigger and wider. This obviously calls for more marketing dollars, more staff and more
assistance, right?

Not exactly.

More and more hotel owners are holding their managers and marketers accountable for
driving measurable conversions… and demand they somehow top last year’s results. Yet,
those same owners are not opening their wallets any wider to fund the needed resources to
reach those higher revenue targets. This leaves hotel marketers under an avalanche of
pressure to produce more with less.

2. Product Deterioration vs The Compset

What really scares hotel marketers we spoke to… are things that are out of their control.

Boundless creativity, clever marketing concepts and even a robust marketing budget are
essentially useless if your hotel is crap. Great marketing can only begin with a great
product. If your hotel is showing its frayed edges and providing lackluster experiences (or no
real experience at all), no amount of brilliant marketing will save you from a downward
spiral.
(Our advice: scour your hotel reviews and find out what guests complain about the most.
Then, present this to your owners and champion the improvements your hotel needs to turn
the tide and rise above the comp set.)

3. The Cost of Guest Acquisition

Hotel owners are feeling the squeeze from debt service, brand fees, management fees, credit
card fees, intermediary fees and capital improvement programs. And many are squeezing
their marketing and management teams to step up.

Owners can’t control many of their rising costs, particularly debt service, brand fees and
credit card fees. That’s why hotel owners and asset managers are looking more closely than
ever at marketing costs—particularly the cost of guest acquisition—which are also rising fast.
According to experts, acquisition costs commonly in the range of 5% to 10% less than a
decade ago have jumped to between 15% and 25%. If a hotel cannot acquire guests at a
tolerable, sustainable rate, then the property is worthless as a long-term asset.

And one of the reasons that marketing costs are rising so quickly is because hotel marketers
are often unable to create perceived value in their product, which ends up being treated like a
commodity, instead. Part of the problem lies with the brands, many of which have become
redundant, overdone and difficult to distinguish from one another, prompting travelers to
book solely based on price.

4. The Pace of Change

Keeping up with all the changes in the digital world continues to challenge the hotel
marketers we spoke to… The hotel industry has long been a fertile market for new whiz-bang
technologies and amenities, all purporting to revolutionize the guest experience and become
the must-have asset you need to attract more guests. The constant barrage of hyperbole from
tech vendors, media reps and industry press about the latest and greatest stuff has caused
tremendous stress and anxiety in hotel marketers who increasingly suffer from “FOMO” (fear
of missing out).

(Our advice: be sure any time and/or money invested is truly in line with your marketing
goals and guest profile. Sure, travel-related virtual reality content generally sparks high-
interest levels in the media. And yes, Snapchat is tops among 12- to 24-year-olds. But if it’s
not specifically bringing sales to your door, devote your attention elsewhere.)

5. Lack of Integration

The ever-growing array of hotel tech/vendors continues to frustrate hotel marketers. Most
have a legacy hodge-podge of different providers for each critical marketing technology need
(ie: CRS, website, hotel booking engine, PMS, and CRM). This jumbled mix of disparate
systems prevents seamless integration and simplified reporting.

Worse, it often causes stress, job dissatisfaction and premature job departures.

6. Shaky Job Security

Hotel marketers are once again expected to know more, do more and react faster than ever
before. Hotel owners are mounting more pressure on hotel marketers to contribute their share
of the revenue pie. This continued stress on marketers has resulted in an all-time high
turnover rate averaging 23 months. Owners now expect bigger payoffs, with a shorter amount
of time and funding. Meanwhile, hotel marketers have to fight to stay relevant by mastering
rapidly evolving marketing technology, leaving them struggling to keep up, flustered and
overwhelmed with an avalanche of marketing channels and tools.

Friday Freebie: Win More Group Business by

Being a Good Loser
This Week’s Freebie: Win more meeting and event business by conducting a loss analysis
and figuring out what went wrong with your failed bids.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one, FREE impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Win more meeting and event business by conducting a loss
analysis and figuring out what went wrong with your failed bids.

Winning is easy.

Get the deal, pop the champagne.

When you win, you think every move you made in the sales process was genius.

And then you replicate that winning formula on future deals.

But what happens when you lose deals?

A majority of hotel sales teams fail to ponder why certain groups chose another property.

Whenever one of your sales managers loses a piece of business, they need to ask the meeting
planner, “Why did we not win this business? What went wrong? How are we not the best fit
for your group? How could we have done better?”
This simple follow-up to all lost bids could dramatically empower, alter, and inform your
future sales efforts, sending your sales skyrocketing in the future.

Friday Freebie: It’s a Mobile Phone, Where’s

Your Number?
This Week’s Freebie: Don’t forget the importance of the PHONE component of mobile
phones.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Don’t forget the importance of the PHONE component of mobile
phones.

The number of people who own and depend on their smartphones continues to skyrocket,
with no signs of slowing. Today, 75 percent of Americans own a smartphone, says The Pew
Research Center.

We all know travelers use their smartphones to research, text and post to social media. But,
don’t forget a smartphone’s primary purpose: To make calls!

Every hotel mobile site should include a telephone number that is embedded in a “click-to-
call” button. Think about it: why make your website mobile user hunt for a phone number
when the number can be embedded in a prominent “Call Now” feature?

Further, sites with phone numbers are perceived as more trustworthy and transparent as well.
Prominent number/calling features suggest that you WANT to talk to your guests!

Best of all, calls initiated from your hotel mobile website are easily trackable… giving hotel
marketers another way to quantify their contribution to bookings.

And one more tip from almighty Google itself: “Always embed the phone number using the
international dialing format: the plus sign (+), country code, area code, and number. While
not absolutely necessary, it’s a good idea to separate each segment of the number with a
hyphen (-) for easier reading and better auto-detection.

Using a hyphenated international dialing format ensures that no matter where the user is
calling from, whether a few hundred meters away or thousands of kilometers, their call will
be connected.”

Hotel Digital Talent: Why Is It so Hard to

Find?
It’s more important than ever for hotel companies to attract and retain world-class digital
talent.

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Hotel digital marketing requires an increasingly hard-to-find skillset.

If you want to be successful in the hotel business, it’s now mandatory that you outperform
your compset in the digital world.

So these days it’s more important than ever for hotel companies to attract and retain world-
class digital talent. In most cases, the first place guests now interact with your hotel
is not inside your lobby—it’s within the digital world—yet all too frequently, we aren’t fully
prepared to greet that guest accordingly. Hotel websites, CRM systems, data analytics, email,
social media and search marketing all require deep expertise to deliver real ROI.

Sure… digital talent is in high demand everywhere, but beyond that, there are other reasons
why skilled digital professionals are sorely needed in the hospitality industry.

Here Are the Five Hiring Challenges We See… and What to Do about Them:

1. Many Digital Experts Have Gravitated to Other Industries And/Or Start-Ups

There are seemingly endless opportunities right now in the digital space, and the required
core skills are adaptable to various industries, so digital pros can literally work anywhere that
a business has a digital presence. That may be a huge Silicon Valley mega-corporation or a
basement startup and everything in between. And in many cases, the Googles and Facebooks
of the world are offering the hip, informal vibe of a startup that millennials crave, with the
stability of a steady paycheck and job security and the cool factor of working at the digital
avant-garde.

2. Hotels Are (Unfairly) Viewed As Stagnant and Non-Innovative

Like other components of the traditional business sector, hotel companies are frequently
perceived as stalwart, non-evolving dinosaurs, dragged kicking and screaming into the digital
age. Brands, which have to carefully explore changes due to the sheer size of their operation,
are perceived as being especially sterile places to work. While there are advantages to being
dependable and maintaining steady growth, winning over top digital talent sadly isn’t one of
them.

3. OTAs Are Killing Innovation

The online power of the OTAs—driven in part by their massive marketing budgets—has
severely hampered most hotels companies’ ability to innovate and try new things, since the
cost to compete against everything the OTAs do is just too high. With the price tag associated
with competitive digital marketing efforts like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns becoming
simply too expensive, too few industry players are doing anything extraordinary, aside from
just trying to keep up.

4. Compensation and Turnover

True, there are perks from working in the travel industry, but the pay isn’t always one of
them. Averages for industry compensation are not among the highest, because profit margins
are increasingly compressed (those darn OTAs again!), causing hoteliers to focus on cutting
expenses and controlling costs. That means the best hotel digital pros are often leaving to take
higher paying jobs elsewhere, because they can.

5. Digital Skills Vs Business Skills

The millennial digital natives who are now in high demand by recruiters often have little to
no experience yet delivering on the intense ROI expectations of an agency or corporate hotel
marketing setting. This is especially true for recent graduates: Universities tend to focus on
theory, and for many marketing majors, the specific skills used in online marketing are
mostly learned on the job, through experience. So, for the young talent you do end up
courting and successfully hiring, there will be a significant learning curve, provided they
decide to stay.

Look for These Three Things:

For the hotel companies that can work through the issues listed above, the struggle isn’t over
just yet. Once your company is successfully generating employment interest from digital
mavens, it’s important to ensure those professionals have adapted their talents to the many
nuances of the hotel industry.

Therefore, it’s critical to find smart, capable digital pros who understand the following three
essential things:
1. The Hotel Experience

It is exceedingly difficult to understand how to market travel unless the marketer has traveled
significantly themselves. This applies to digital marketing, too. The best professionals in
digital travel marketing have personal travel miles to draw from, particularly when it pertains
to the hotel experience and the digital booking process.

2. The Hotel/Travel Purchasing Funnel

On the surface, it may appear as though there are only two stages of the hotel/travel
purchasing funnel—researching and booking—but there are actually five distinct phases:
dreaming, planning, booking, experiencing and sharing. Properly targeting your audience
with the right media and message during each of the five stages is an integral part of
extending your company’s digital reach.

3. How to Turn the Funnel into Tangible Digital Action

Lastly, and most importantly, digital professionals need to understand which digital media are
relevant for each stage of the hotel/travel journey, and how to gauge the ROI for each.
Wherever possible, seek to eliminate guesswork: quality hotel digital marketers need to fully
embrace data reporting and analytics, in order to properly track results and develop actionable
strategies for the future.

Friday Freebie: One Way Hotel Marketers Can

Be Sales Heroes
This Week’s Freebie: Beef up your website with the tools and content that attracts and assists
meeting planners.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Beef up your website with the tools and content that attracts and
assists meeting planners.
Revenue from group business can make or break your hotel’s annual performance. So, why
does your hotel marketing team spend the majority of their efforts on marketing mostly to
leisure travelers, while your sales team is left to generate their own leads?

Let’s change that. There are several ways hotel marketers can drive more group business,
contribute to group business revenue, and champion their sales managers’ efforts. All it takes
is using the hotel marketing strategies you already know, and customizing them to the
meetings market.

Here’s one smart and simple method:

Optimize your website for meeting planners, not just leisure guests. This is your central
marketing vehicle, so pack your meetings and event page with all the resources and tools
meeting planners need, including floor diagrams, room measurements, 360-degree venue
tours, attendee destination guides, photos of past events and detailed testimonials.

A vital step to winning a meeting planner’s contract is making their life easier, so give them
what they need upfront so they don’t have to waste time chasing after this themselves.

We’re Using the Wrong Message to Fight

OTAs
It’s time to change the overarching hotel industry strategy from emphasizing price parity to
tapping into consumer fears of OTAs.

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Have hotel marketers squandered their primary weapon?

Looks like we might have been going about this all wrong.

The thought that a guest’s primary travel concern is saving money is an assumption that
needs to be reexamined.

According to JD Power & Associates’ North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study,
guests are more likely to be dissatisfied with their hotel experience and come across more
problems (like canceled reservations or last-minute changes) if they book through a third-
party, such as Travelocity or Expedia.
So, what does this mean for you?

It’s time to change the overarching hotel industry strategy from emphasizing price
parity to tapping into consumer fears of OTAs.
Instead of obsessing about Best Rate Guarantees, we all need to start focusing instead on how
reservations, cancellations, changes, room selection and refunds are perceived by consumers
when they book direct vs indirect.

Many consumers (especially older ones) have preexisting concerns about third-party
bookings and fear that one mishap with an OTA could unravel their travel plans in seconds.

Meanwhile, hotels offer two vital things that OTAs do not: a secure, direct reservation and a
dedicated staff that truly cares. (Smart marketers like Hilton have taken this dynamic to
another level by enabling loyalty members to select their own rooms. This is a powerful
differentiator, which adds even more peace of mind and diminishes OTA value.)

Trust Issues: Many Consumers Don’t Like OTAs

It doesn’t take much to prove how unhappy customers are with OTAs.

Both Expedia and Priceline have consistent and dismal 1-star ratings on a popular review site:
Consumer Affairs. There are legions of horror stories by guests left in a lurch when they
arrive to their hotel with an OTA reservation in hand, only to discover their hotel is sold out
and there are no more rooms available. Or, even worse, that the hotel has no record of the
reservation at all!

The internet is flooded with examples of angry OTA customers, such as this family who
spent almost 7 hours on the phone with Expedia customer service reps to get a partial
refund when their reservation was canceled due to overbooking at the hotel.
Or, this traveler who booked a room in New Orleans on Priceline, only to have Priceline
switch his reservation to a hotel of lesser standards, without an option to cancel.

How to Take Advantage:

The best hotel marketers have learned how to appeal to guests’ emotions, rather than
rationale. Emotional messaging resonates more than simply selling physical amenities.

One way to leverage emotional messaging is to reposition OTAs in a guest’s mind.

In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, marketing gurus Jack Trout and Al Ries teach
businesses to build messaging around their competitor’s weaknesses.

For example, Tylenol went after the aspirin business by adopting this message: “Aspirin can
irritate the stomach lining, trigger asthmatic or allergic reactions and cause small amounts
of hidden gastrointestinal bleeding… Fortunately, there is Tylenol.”

In the case of hotels vs OTAs, we should remind prospective guests at every opportunity that
booking direct is the safer play. That your family vacation, business trip or long-awaited
romantic weekend is too important to risk in any way!

Hotel marketers should communicate this critical message in key touchpoints with
prospective guests during the research phase of their purchase journey:

1. On your direct hotel website home page

2. In your search/PPC ads
3. In your retargeting display ads that follow consumers after they visit your website
4. In social media posts
5. In call/reservations center training
6. Inside your booking engine, where more than 95%+ of date searchers will abandon before
booking

The Bottomline:

Price parity is important, but tapping into consumer fears of booking with OTAs provides
smart hoteliers with ample opportunity to migrate bookings back to the hotel direct.

Hotels should remind prospective guests at every opportunity that their direct websites and
call centers are 100% dedicated to handling the needs of their property… While OTA
booking engines and call centers are servicing tens of thousands of properties (including your
compset’s)!

Friday Freebie: Cut the Fat to Fast Track

Mobile Bookings
This Week’s Freebie: Cut out all unnecessary fields, steps, content, graphics and clutter that
stand in the way of streamlined mobile bookings.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Cut out all unnecessary fields, steps, content, graphics, and clutter
that stand in the way of streamlined mobile bookings.

There’s no denying that mobile bookings are rapidly rising in many segments of the hotel
chain scale. (Urban/city hotels, are you listening?) In fact, an eMarketer study shows that by
2021, 50 percent of all online travel sales will be made from tablets and smartphones.

So, why are your mobile bookings languishing, while everywhere else they are exploding?

One glaring reason is that your hotel’s mobile experience doesn’t match up to the online
habits and expectations of modern travelers.

Here’s a simple tweak to fix this: Cut the fat.

Real estate on a smartphone or tablet screen is minimal, so instead of adding features, erase
them. Streamline your hotel’s mobile booking funnel as much as possible. Get rid of the extra
elements that aren’t vital to making a reservation. This includes extra fields, upsell features,
navigational elements, ads, and superfluous links.

Remember, mobile bookings are being made on-the-go. Travelers don’t have time, nor the
patience, for lengthy procedures. So, whittle down the booking process to 3 steps or less.

And don’t forget to pare down the content inside the mobile booking environment too. Only
include copy that is necessary or a clear next step. Feature just one hotel image, versus a full
gallery or video, which can slow down mobile load times even more.

Why Hotel Management Companies are

Obsessed with Marketing Costs
The focus among hoteliers is now shifting toward closely controlling costs, especially among
management companies, whose earnings are directly tied to property performance.

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Hotel marketing costs are affecting profitability more than ever.

With profit growth slowing in the lodging industry, the focus among hoteliers is now shifting
toward closely controlling costs, especially among management companies, whose earnings
are directly tied to property performance (and incentives are tied to profits).

As the pressure to find cost savings mounts, experts say one of the most significant expenses
to watch is marketing, which has only grown more expensive with the rapid growth of digital
media.

In general, hotel management companies care deeply about costs, which have a direct linear
effect on their ability to achieve profitability/incentive targets. And these days, marketing
costs (especially OTAs and third-party channels) are rising at an alarming rate. Industry
averages for marketing expenses typically range from about 4% to 7% of overall expenses,
but can vary widely depending on the hotel and its management.

“Marketing is a minimum of probably 6% of your expenses, so it’s a

pretty big number,” said Richard Millard, Chairman and CEO of Trust Hospitality. “It could
be as high as 8% to 10%, depending on what you’re doing.”

Between just internal staffing, OTA commissions, digital marketing programs (paid search,
banner ads, etc.) and other forms of advertising (print, radio, TV, billboards, etc.), hotels are
currently fighting a rising tide of seemingly obligatory marketing costs. And all too
frequently, it forces managers to scrimp elsewhere.

“Marketing is costing more and more, and that means the training and service level of people
on the hotel side suffers, because some way, somehow that money has to be saved,” Millard
continued. “So what we as an industry often cut back on, instead, is human resources and
training.”

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

Finding the Right Balance

Smart management companies can still find methods to keep marketing costs from getting
out of hand, while continuing to do all the right things to get their properties noticed in the
marketplace. It requires careful planning, but it’s not impossible.

Experts say one core strategy for reducing and controlling hotel marketing expenses is to
strategically outsource certain aspects of hotel marketing to third-party vendors and
consultants, based upon the management company’s need and resources. For example, while
it may clearly pay to hire a skilled, full-time revenue manager for internal staff, it may be
more cost-effective to hire an outside agency for critical recurring functions that drive direct
bookings such as email promos, search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search/pay-per-
click (PPC) and metasearch campaigns.

“Marketing as a discipline has grown exponentially in how you reach

a potential guest or interact with a guest. The reach has become enormous,” said Michael
Tall, president and COO at Charlestowne Hotels.“There are certain disciplines and
components of marketing that we feel are better left to those that specifically do that as their
discipline. The key is figuring out what it is that you want to do internally as a management
company, and what needs to be outsourced, and then it’s just selecting the right vendors and
hiring the right people inside.”
Another critical method is managing OTA relationships and working to drive customers
toward booking directly, rather than through OTAs. OTA commissions can run anywhere
from roughly 14% to 25%, depending on the scale of the relationship (rates tend to be higher
for independent, unbranded hotels) and the company’s contract with each OTA, but savvy
managers can save considerably by optimizing this particular channel.

“We want people to book in the lowest cost channels,” said Tall. “Understanding whether
you are able to get a guest or enough guests to book on the lowest cost channels, versus
having to go out and market or pay for acquisition to OTAs, is really the balance that you try
to understand. That’s a huge part of our business: understanding what it is we desire from
the OTAs, and what are we willing to pay to the OTAs to acquire the guests.”

It also comes down to making sure hotel marketers are constantly up to date on the latest
marketing techniques and trends, and then both planning and acting accordingly. (This is
another area where a mix of both internal and third-party guidance can prove effective.) Most
importantly, marketers need to regularly analyze their various channels for a firm
understanding of what’s working and what isn’t, as well as where the future lies.
“You can only cut so many corners. It’s not just about trying to save marketing dollars; it’s
about spending those marketing dollars wisely,” said Millard. “The secret is to be on top of
it. Marketing is changing and you can’t depend on one thing. Experience is great, having
people who know what they’re doing is great and having the right technology is great. But
you’d better pay attention. Don’t be too sure that what’s working in September 2017 is still
going to be here in January 2018.”

Friday Freebie: Hotel PPC, 7 Ways to Improve

ROI
This Week’s Freebie: Seven expert tweaks for your hotel’s PPC.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Seven expert tweaks for your hotel’s PPC.

Managing hotel PPC campaigns can be a beast.

From researching extensively for keywords, to monitoring which terms convert into traffic or
bookings, to making adjustments depending on the season, weather, destination, special
events…yikes.

It’s a lengthy and thorough process that requires more time than most hoteliers realize.

The good news: Hotels that take the time and effort to learn what really matters will see an
uptick in their ROI and conversions.

Today, Raisa McDonald, Search Engine Marketing Manager at Tambourine, gives us 7 ways
hoteliers can boost profitability and improve their hotel PPC campaign performance.

1. Use Both Broad and Exact Match Keywords

This is about quality over quantity. “Be sure to include exact match and broad match so your
ads are displayed whenever someone does a search that is relevant to your keywords,“ Raisa
points out. Many hoteliers waste money investing solely on broad match keywords, which is
Google’s default option. However, this means you are spending money on irrelevant traffic
that isn’t converting or qualified in the first place. Broad keywords will pull up in searches
that include your key terms in any order and even with misspellings. For example, a broad
search term of ‘Nashville hotels’ means your hotel will come up even for ‘Nashville
Schools,’ ‘nashville gyms’, ‘san diego hotels’ or ‘hotels.’

Instead, turn to more restrictive match types, like exact match keywords. Your volume will
decrease, however, your hotel ads will be shown to a more relevant audience, meaning more
conversions and clicks.

2. Avoid Going Over Your Daily Budget Early in the Day

It’s important to stay on top of your PPC spend. “Going over your budget too early can limit
the amount of potential customers seeing your hotel’s ads, which can mean you may be
missing out on conversions,” warns Raisa. To avoid this from happening, she suggests using
an ad schedule to control when your ads are displayed.

3. Monitor and Track Conversions

The foundation of any successful hotel PPC campaign is analytics and tracking results. After
all, having a strategy in place for conversion tracking is key to knowing how well (or poorly)
your campaigns are performing. “Not all conversions are the same nor are all conversions
about immediate bookings,” Raisa explains.

So, if your conversion goal is to get more calls from your ads, you should make sure your
settings are properly configured to track when and where the calls are coming from, she
suggests. Only with this insight will you know which placements, ads and key terms lead to
conversions and are actually worth bidding on.

4. Max Out All Possible Extensions

Google AdWords extensions allow you to add more information to your hotel ad beyond the
basic URL, ad copy and headline. The more space your ad takes up and the more details you
include makes it more likely for your ad to stand out and get clicked on. And more clicks
usually means you’ll pay less per click, as well as boost your conversions. “So, make sure
your ads have all the extensions possible to get the most ad real estate on the Google search
page,” Raisa advises.

5. Bonus Tip: Add in Information About Recent Hotel Promotions

One of Google’s newest Adwords features is called the promotion extension, which can be
used by advertisers to show a current promotion or sale going on at their property. This
extension is displayed as a part of the search ad and can help to bring more customers to the
site and increase bookings.

6. Test, Test, and Test Again

Frequent adjustments are usually necessary throughout the lifetime of your PPC campaign.
So, testing is the best way to optimize your PPC spend. “Implementing different ad copies to
see which one performs better is a good way to see what works for your campaign and gets
the most conversions,” Raisa explains.
Alter just one variable at a time to get the test data you need. “Be sure to write quality ads
and check for any grammatical errors,” Raisa adds. Also, don’t leave your test running for
too long. A common mistake is allowing the ‘losing’ ad too much screen time which
diminishes the visibility of the ‘winner.’

7. Tap Income Levels

One of Raisa’s advanced tactics includes household income targeting. “This is a good way to
advertise to users within a certain geo-location based on their average household
income,” Raisa explains. Data gathered from the IRS is used with this strategy to help your
ads reach a more qualified audience.

Friday Freebie: Why Siri Loves Hotel FAQ

Pages
This Week’s Freebie: Turn up the volume on organic traffic by creating an FAQ page on your
hotel website.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one simple hotel marketing tactic that you can implement immediately
to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Turn up the volume on organic traffic by creating an FAQ page
on your hotel website.

Just within a span of a few years, voice-driven search and virtual assistants like Amazon’s
Echo, Apple’s Siri and Google Home have made their way into millions of homes around the
globe.

In fact, out of the 11 billion searches made on Google every day, about 20 percent are
conducted by voice. The future is clear – the number of people conducting voice search will
only get larger. And hotels will have to adjust their hotel copy to meet this growing practice.

Here’s something simple you can do now:

Create an FAQ (or policies) page addressing questions matching the typical voice queries
guests use to find hotel info online. The FAQ’s should address the who, what, when, where
and how. For example, “Which hotels offer valet or free parking?” or “When is the best time
to visit Nashville?”

Then, address these questions with clear, precise answers (no lengthy sales copy) and
property and destination content that give guests the information they’re looking for.

Make sure to write conversationally, answering typical voice search questions (“What hotel
offers free breakfast in Boston?”) with relevant, direct language that is not overtly self-
serving or filled with self-indulgent adjectives.

We Need to Talk About Hotel Marketing

Metrics
We’ve outlined 5 popular marketing KPIs that are currently distracting you from what really
matters.

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Unfortunately for hotel marketers, our industry is drowning in metrics.

From “look-to-book,” to unique visitors, to sentiment scores, to clicks…the list of stats goes
on and on. With so much to measure, it’s easy to get caught up in the wrong metrics.

Don’t waste precious time and resources by analyzing metrics that don’t matter in the grand
scheme. It’s time to get perspective.

So we’ve outlined 5 popular marketing KPIs that are currently distracting you from what
really matters – driving traffic into your direct booking environment and call center.

(As a bonus, we’ve also included the metrics that we think hotel marketers SHOULD actually
obsess over!)

Approach With Caution:

1. Bounce Rate
According to Google Analytics, a ‘bounce’ occurs when someone visits a single page on your
hotel website, then leaves without visiting any other page. A high bounce rate can seem
devastating. After all, that shows that visitors aren’t interested in pursuing you any further,
right?

Wrong.

This is a quick, singular metric that depends on context. This implies that a guest could go to
a page on your website (for example, meetings and events), consume everything on that page
for 5 minutes, leave the page and still count as a bounce. Simply because the visitor didn’t
click to any other page on your hotel website during that same session. But what if they end
up emailing your sales team a few moments later? Or, return the next day to submit an RFP?
That one visit will still be deemed unsuccessful since the visitor “bounced.”

Bounce rates can also vary according to page content and whether someone is using their
smartphone or desktop. Mobile traffic bounces at a higher rate than desktop traffic. Plus, if
you sent traffic to a specific landing page, like a promotions page, the goal is for the audience
to engage ONLY with that one page. In that case, a bounce would be a good thing.

2. Online Traffic/Page Views

An overall increase in traffic to your website is a great thing. But, don’t let this metric
mislead you to believe your hotel website is performing better than it actually is.

Ultimately, success comes down to quality, not quantity. Is all that traffic resulting in booked
rooms, submitted RFPs, dinner reservations? Traffic is worthless if it is irrelevant or doesn’t
convert.

Aim for action, not attention.

If you have to pick one thing to focus on to measure your hotel website’s
performance, make it entrances into the booking engine AND calls driven by digital to
the call center.
Smart hoteliers would rather have 25 page views that resulted in 25 booking searches/calls,
instead of 1000 page views without any action.

3. Email Open Rates

Email is still one of the most efficient and persuasive hotel marketing channels out there.

However, tracking your emails’ success isn’t as cut and dry as it seems. First off, open rates
aren’t reliable. The biggest problem is the way your open rate is calculated. Most email
marketing tools add a small, invisible image to every message sent. The email is only
considered opened when that undetectable image is brought up from the server where it sits.
But, because most email providers allow you to turn off images, this skews open rates
dramatically and renders them difficult to track at best.

And, even when someone opens your email, is it still considered successful if they read just
one word, then delete it immediately?
Just like your web traffic, ultimately you want your audience to perform an action, such as
clicking through to the booking engine.

4. Social Media Followers

It’s thrilling to see thousands of people excited enough about your hotel to follow you on
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. This is purely a vanity metric. Yes, a large
number of followers means a better reach. But, just slightly.

Organic reach on social media channels has been declining for years. It’s standard now for
hotels to invest in social media advertising just to consistently reach a small fraction of their
followers. Which means your followers mean nothing until you actually reach them by
paying to play. Plus, if your huge social media following isn’t translating into leads, traffic or
conversions, then what’s the point? Instead of boosting ‘likes,’ focus on optimizing your
channels for lead generation and on increasing on converting the followers you already have.

5. Display Ad Impressions

When you are investing in digital advertising, it’s vital to know how many people actually
see your hotel ads, right? Unfortunately, using impressions as a metric of advertising success
doesn’t actually tell you how many people viewed your ad. It’s only a measure that shows
how many times your hotel ad was displayed, whether or not it was clicked on.

According to Google Research, about 56 percent of your hotel impressions weren’t actually
viewed by anyone! Stop using impressions to measure the reach of your hotel advertising
campaigns. Because impressions don’t measure action, they lack any real value. Instead, use
conversions and actual clicks that lead to calls and entrances into the booking environment as
a yardstick to measure the success of any display advertising.

METRICS THAT MATTER

Instead of leaning on metrics that only sound impressive on paper, pay attention to
the numbers that will actually measure your contribution to hotel revenues. Every day, you
should be checking the KPIs that actually matter to your hotel’s owners and asset managers.

1. MCPB (marketing cost per booking): Tracks the cost of each sales and marketing channel
versus actual conversions. Try using this for OTA commissions as well… and see how that
channel stacks up versus your other campaigns.
2. DRR (direct revenue ratio): Measures percentage of online revenue from direct sources (your
website) versus pricey third-party sources, like OTAs. If you’re not garnering 40 percent of
your revenue from direct reservations, you still have work to do!
3. Website conversion rate (from unique visitor to entrances into the booking environment):
Converting a higher percentage of visitors into booking searches (or phone calls) is critical to
reducing your cost of revenue and MCPB.
4. Variance from revenue target: This metric showcases revenue goals versus actual results
(by segment).
5. TripAdvisor sentiment score: Using a reputation/sentiment monitoring tool allows hotels to
measure guest satisfaction. This reflects whether your guests are enjoying your product, along
with alerting you to hotel deficiencies. A bad hotel experience will outweigh any of your
clever sales and marketing tactics.
Friday Freebie: Creating Perceived Value to
Stimulate Direct Bookings
This Week’s Freebie: Use generic amenities and perks to create perceived direct booking
benefits.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Use generic amenities and perks to create perceived direct booking
benefits.

One of the more impactful, yet simplest, ways you can convince people to book direct is to
create perceived value. OTAs have hundreds of thousands of properties on their websites,
they cannot keep up in real time with the perks and inclusions at all of them.

By cleverly showcasing a few of your generic, everyday perks as special book-direct-only

rewards (i.e. “Book direct and get free parking!”) you will create the perception that free
parking is a special, direct-only benefit…. without jeopardizing your OTA relationships over
promo parity issues.

Most hotels are savvy enough to offer these amenities to entice business away from OTAs,
however, they bury these reasons several pages into their website. Or, only display them once
the guests make it to the booking engine.

Your direct booking benefits need to be obvious and displayed in areas where online visitors
can’t miss them. Right on your homepage, directly in your advertising (including PPC), in a
prominent place on all of your marketing emails, in your employees’ email signature,
retargeting ads, etc.

Here’s an example of one hotelier, Couples Resorts in Jamaica, creating perceived value in
booking direct right on their home page:
Bring out your direct booking benefits front and center to amplify your chances of guests
booking direct.

How Hotel Website Design Affects ADR

Let’s take a look at how hotel web design justifies higher room rates.

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Smart hotel websites can stimulate higher perceived value and ADRs

Your hotel website is the first place virtually all of your future guests will engage with your
property and set expectations. But more importantly, as hotels struggle to increase rates in the
face of new supply and maxing occupancy… your hotel website can actually help you to sell
guestrooms at higher rates (And possibly even higher than what is already posted on

OTAs )

Today, savvy hotel marketers and their web designers are relying on psychology to guide
their design decisions. Only then, can they build a website aimed at increasing revenue from
the very start. After all, the right psychological cues can influence guests to click where you
want them to and book when you want them to. Conversely, the wrong cues can send them
fleeing faster than a slow loading page.

Poor design, complicated navigation and cluttered pages can prevent your property from
reaching its full revenue potential. And remember, the cost of fixing these mistakes is always
higher than getting it right in the first place!

So let’s take a look at how hotel web design, tone and layout can strengthen your hotel’s
appeal and justify higher room rates.

1. Clear and Compelling Value Proposition

Every hotel should have succinct, provocative and incisive message immediately obvious at
first sight. These statements, done well, generate higher perceived value for your property.

Who are you and why should prospects care?

A mistake that many hotels make is using “me-too” cliché phrases that many of their
neighbors can also claim, such as ‘located in the heart of downtown Nashville’ or ‘oceanfront
dining.’

A good example of how to do it right is The Grafton on Sunset in LA, which immediately
tells viewers what they should expect, where the property is and encourages further
interaction without hyperbole:
2. Social Proof

The influence of friends and family is another big factor in what people purchase. With 7 out
of 10 Americans using social media sites, travelers will often pay a premium for properties
their peers have praised.

One way to integrate social proof beautifully into your website design is through share-
worthy user-generated content. There are a number of tools to seamlessly identify and collect
guest images from Instagram and display them on your site, as well as other marketing assets.
These visual “testimonials” compel customers to trust your brand even more and prove that
you are worthy of their travel dollars.

3. Arresting Imagery
Have lackluster or outdated photos on your website?

People will automatically assume that your hotel is also lackluster and outdated and mentally
price it accordingly. Studies show that hotel photography has the power to change a guest’s
mind – making them consider a property that before was not in the running or to drop a hotel
they were once interested in. Photos aren’t just pretty pictures, they matter to your bookings
and your bottom line.

So, dump all the stock photography, delete your old images and establish higher standards for
all new photography. Hire a photographer with an established portfolio of hotel or
architecture work. Then, dip into your most valuable photographer pool – your own guests.
Your guests are Instagramming their favorite moments from their trips, and some are pretty
stunning!

4. Clutter Free Usability

The most profitable hotel websites follow the de facto mantra of luxury branding: Less is
more. Cluttered webpages will only confuse your audience and drive them away. Keep your
site intuitive and user-friendly, two key design factors that influence conversion.

Usability is measured by how easy it is for online visitors to navigate your hotel website and
find what they need, such as researching rates and reserving a room. Time is a precious
commodity and smart hotel websites save their visitors time. Generally, a person can gauge
your hotel website’s usability in the first few seconds and they will choose to move forward
only if they deem it ‘easy’ enough.

Not only does a ‘clean’ layout make it easier for a guest to explore and book, it also generates
better SEO results and faster download speeds.The best web design in the world can’t
convince guests to stay and pay on a slow-loading hotel website.

Take a look at this site for Hotel Henri in NYC, an excellent example of uncluttered design
that elevates perceived value:
5. Accessible Communication

Giving people what they want quickly and easily amps up your value. Follow the example of
luxury hotels and resorts, who offer instant access to reservations staff using online chat,
phone or email. Consumers are always more likely to pay a premium to properties that
respond quickly to questions and establish high service expectations BEFORE the guest even
arrives.

6. Dynamic Personalization
Personalization is a big industry buzz word right now. But cutting through all the hype, one
place where personalization can truly make an immediate impact is on your direct website
and booking engine, where personalized content can lead to more bookings at higher rates.

For example:

• Your website (and booking widget) tracks user behavior and auto-configures the booking
engine with images and messages relevant to that demographic (i.e. family vs business
traveler)

• You can prevent abandonment to OTAs by dynamically showing gated /loyalty rates to
users who are automatically identified as past guests

• When a guest from London visits your website and moves into the booking engine, your
website can automatically pass the user’s location and localize room rates in the booking
engine to the guest’s native currency (i.e. instead of charging $100 USD for a room, you
could charge 100 British Pounds, which is worth $1.32)

Losing Focus: Six Things Hotel Marketers

Should Avoid
Here’s a few of the common pitfalls and distractions we recommend hotel marketers avoid:

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Hotel marketers face endless daily distractions. As a hotel marketer, it’s fairly easy to lose
focus.

You can spend countless hours each day doing different things just because you
think everyone else is doing it. Or, there’s FOMO, “fear of missing out,” driving some hotel
marketing professionals to jump on every hot new bandwagon that rolls by, just in case it
turns out to be next big thing. Some clarity and direction is sorely needed.

Here’s a few of the common pitfalls and distractions we recommend hotel marketers avoid:

1. Returning emails all day

The average American white collar professional spends an average of 4.1 hours each day
checking email, for a total of 20.5 hours per week, according to a recent study. That’s
roughly half of the standard 40-hour work week. Imagine what you could achieve if you
spent even a portion of that time thinking about your hotel marketing campaigns and results,
instead.

Helpful methods for cutting down on inbox time include scheduling specific times of day for
mail purging, organizing messages by priority, making better use of templates and simply
sending out less self-fulfilling email yourself (e.g. limiting the CCs and BCCs), which will
reduce your hours spent on unnecessary responses.

2. Chasing shiny objects du jour

The hotel industry has long been a fertile market for new whiz-bang technologies and
amenities, all purporting to revolutionize the guest experience and become the must-have
asset you need to attract more guests. While this may sometimes be true, it’s easy to lose
focus while perpetually chasing these dangling techno-carrots, so be sure any time and/or
money invested to this end is truly in line with your marketing goals and guest profile. Sure,
travel-related virtual reality content generally sparks high interest levels among survey
respondents. And yes, Snapchat is tops among 12- to 24-year-olds. But if it’s not specifically
bringing sales to your door, devote your attention elsewhere.
3. Having a jumbled mix of disparate vendors

The more marketing systems/vendors you work with, the more complications and chaos you
can expect. Managing several, disconnected vendors to handle separate marketing functions,
like advertising campaigns, hotel website design, email marketing or social media, can hurt
you in several ways: First, you’re most likely paying more for each vendor’s separate
services. You’re wasting time by managing and relaying messages from vendor to vendor.
And, worst of all, no single vendor is held accountable for overall success. Instead, they
likely point fingers at each other.

4. Failing to KNOW metrics

Many marketers remain ignorant as to what is truly working in their marketing mix and are
unable to define their true marketing cost per booking (MCPB). To better understand ROI
and cost of acquisition, devote more time and resources to enhancing your team’s reporting
and analysis efforts, carefully exploring each channel in order to ultimately arrive at the
optimal marketing mix

5. Not getting to know your customer.

Some marketers also suffer from a critical lack of understanding as to who is their most
lucrative guest profile. Investing in the systems to help identify these “bread and butter”
customers should be a top priority, including when and why they visit, where they come
from, when they come and from which segment? This plays into systems integration—
specifically integrating your hotel’s PMS with a modern CRM system—as well as working to
obtain as many direct bookings as possible. When your guests book through OTAs instead,
crucial guest profile data is essentially lost.

6. Giving traffic and revenue to 3rd parties

Spending money driving traffic to any digital property other than your hotel’s own direct
website is ultimately hurting your bottom line, and as mentioned above, limits the data you
can gather on customers, which only perpetuates the problem. Sure, OTAs have become a
vital business partner for many, but it’s important to be mindful of just how much effort is
spent on selling through their engines. Develop systems and vendors to help you maximize
your presence on OTAs, metasearch engines and other third-party sources as quickly and
inexpensively as possible. Then devote the time and resources you just saved to building up
your own online direct bookings.

Friday Freebie: Three Ways to Keep Meeting

Planners Away from New Competitors
This Week’s Freebie: Three ideas to keep group business clients from moving to a new
compset hotel.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Three ideas to keep group business clients from moving to a new
compset hotel.

Meeting plannersThe opening of a new hotel sends shudders among hotel sales managers at
surrounding properties because new venues are a magnet for meeting planners looking for
fresh group experiences.

How do you prevent your own steady group business clientele from running to the new kid
on the block?

Jeff Spaccio, DOSM-in-Residence at Tambourine (former regional director of sales for The
Procaccianti Group and Pyramid Hotel Group) suggests three ideas to keep your meeting
planner clients coming back:

1. Help Planners Give Back: Create a charity rebate and offer a 5-10 percent rebate on all
group revenue. That total will then be donated to a charity of the organization’s choice.

2. Make the Planner Look Good: Offer spa certificates, complimentary room nights, or
complimentary dining experiences that the meeting planner can pass along to the client
company for employee giveaways and incentives.

3. Organize a Creative Night Out: Create a package offering a group night out (not at your
own hotel) to a fun spot in town, including bus transportation.

The Secret Weapon Page on Your Hotel

Website
It may be the most boring place on your hotel website today, but your policies (and/or FAQ)
page represents a major magnet for SEO traffic.

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Hotel marketing pros are amplifying their SEO power on this critical page.

It may be the most boring place on your hotel website today, but your policies (and/or FAQ)
page represents a major magnet for SEO traffic.

Why is that?

Because Google pays serious attention to the content on this page.

And, OTAs can’t.

Expedia, Priceline and all the others simply can’t keep up on every hotel’s policies and can’t
compete for searches for information on pet policies, cancellation policies, etc. Use this to
your advantage and get more people to land on this page, while gaining an edge on the OTAs
in the process.

Too many hotels skimp on content on their hotel policies page. But, it’s one of the main
anchors that Google uses to deem if your website is relevant or not for searches like: “dog-
friendly hotels in Denver,” or “early check-in hotels in Boston.”

Shannon DeFries, Director of Search & Analytics at Tambourine, shows us how to transform
a typical and bland hotel policies page into a destination for valuable guest content, while
also earning Google’s trust and boosting your search engine rankings.

Here Are Shannon’s Top Tips:

 Fill your policy page with relevant information that explains your policies, rather than just
listing them.
 Link back to your hotel policy page for specific marketing campaigns. For example, for
#NationalDogDay (August 26), promote your hotel’s love for its four-legged guests on your
social channels. Then, link back to the policy page where it outlines your pet program, instead
of just pointing to the homepage or amenities page.
  Write your policy page in a conversational tone, similar to an FAQ. Stay away from robotic
jargon, like ‘covered parking – yes.’ By writing with a conversational voice, you are making
it easier for mobile users to find you through voice search.

 Use the policy page to target long tail keywords, such as ‘pet friendly hotels in Miami’ or
‘hotels in Nashville with free airport shuttle.’
 Make sure your hotel policy page has unique content not written anywhere else. Lifting
another hotel’s policy page content and slightly rewording is a big Google no-no. You can be
penalized for publishing duplicate content. You can even double-check that your content is
unique by using tools like Siteliner, SEO Review Tools and Copyscape.
 Avoid being indexed by Google if your hotel is a part of a brand or collection that uses the
same policy verbiage for every property. You can do this by placing a “No Index” code on the
page.

Budgets Are Coming: 7 Lessons from Game

of Thrones
Budget season is looming in the real world and hotel marketers all across the kingdom are
arming themselves for battle.
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Hotel marketers are sharpening their pencils for battle.

Just as winter (and a terrifying army of the dead) descends on Westeros in Game of Thrones,
budget season is looming in the real world and hotel marketers all across the kingdom are
arming themselves for battle.

To help hoteliers prepare, we turn to the lessons, themes and quotes we’ve learned while
watching the battle for the Iron Throne between power-hungry lords and ladies:

1. GoT QUOTE: “When you play the game of thrones, you live or die.”

LESSON: Your budget is your armory. Ask for everything you need to survive.

Hoteliers usually only think dollar amounts when working on their budget. How much will
this marketing technology cost? How much should we dedicate to advertising spend? How
much will our hotel website designcost?

But, here’s the surprise: you are not restricted to only asking for marketing funds during
budget time! If you need more marketing staff or outsourced vendors to help you achieve
your hotel’s revenue goals, then ask for them!

If your hotel is in dire need of upgrades and updates in order to effectively compete with
newer properties and win market share, then ask for them. If you depend on another
department’s performance to help you reach your targets, then ask to oversee them.

Here’s an example of what that request could look like:

“For me to achieve the revenue targets set forth by ownership… I need $_______ in funding,
specific hotel upgrades to be made, and _______ new staff (contractors). Plus, I would like
the ________ department to report to me.”

The road to achieving your property’s revenue goals begins with your ability to ask for what
you need. Show your management team that without these items, you won’t be able to deliver
the results they’re looking for.

2. GoT THEME: Three Dragons versus Everyone Else

LESSON: Focus on quality, not quantity.

Forget the mass of Lannister soldiers that Queen Cersei has under her belt or the thousands of
eerie wights brought back to life by the White Walkers. All it takes are three massive, fire-
breathing dragons to wipe them out completely.

This year, vow to keep your budget uncluttered and uncomplicated. Your 2018 hotel
marketing plan should be built on a few powerful initiatives, not on a mess of disjointed
marketing tactics that just produce small bursts of wins and revenue. Build a strong budget
that includes only marketing tactics that will have a measurable impact on your audience and
the bottom line.

3. GoT QUOTE: “Words are wind, my friend…”

LESSON: Getting what you want takes proof.

Asset managers, hotel management firms and GMs are under more pressure than ever to
deliver real bottom line results. However, many hotel marketers still shy away from being
accountable for any revenue responsibilities. Instead, they lavishly tout their “rebranding
initiatives,” number of social media followers or new hotel photography. This continued
disregard for numerical evaluation will put you in a difficult position next year, when you
attempt to request a larger marketing budget. Without measuring your success, owners and
managers will be more apt to cut back on marketing expenses and staff, believing that your
intangible branding results can be achieved with less.

So it’s important to have complete fluency in the KPIs that affect the bottom line. For
example, if you know last year’s marketing cost-per-sale (CPS), you should be able to
extrapolate that against future revenue targets to determine the budget required and make
statements like this:

“Last year, we achieved a marketing CPS of X.

To achieve next year’s budget, I need $_______ .”

But remember, you will also be expected to reduce your CPS over time as you learn and
tweak your programs.

4. GoT QUOTE: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

LESSON: You have data. Use it.

This catchphrase, originally spoken by the red-haired Wildling Ygritte as she aggressively
flirted with Jon Snow, has become one of the show’s most popular. But, don’t let it become
your catchphrase. You should know everything about your marketing program results and not
be guided by assumptions or gut feelings.

You should rely on data culled from the right sources to guide all future hotel marketing
decisions.

And again, data is your ally when you need to ask for more marketing funds! Some data that
you should always have on hand include key performance indicators, like DRR (direct
revenue ratio), MCPB (marketing cost per booking) and your STR index versus the compset.
All of these numbers will show you, and your hotel’s executive team, how much your
marketing team is actually contributing to your hotel’s revenue.

5. GoT QUOTE: “Winter is coming.”

LESSON: Apathy about 3rd party costs is dangerous.

For a while, it seemed like winter would never come to GoT, despite numerous warnings
with this ominous phrase. Yet, it was still on everyone’s minds. In hotel marketing, this
means: Don’t ever be too comfortable in the here and now. For example, if more than 15-
20% of your revenue is coming from OTAs, you need to prepare for the eventual downturn
and start investing in programs, campaigns and assets that will deliver higher margin
bookings.

When “winter comes” to the hotel industry and AOR goes from 75% to 50%, you don’t want
to have the majority of your bookings incurring a 20% OTA commission!

6. GoT Quote: “A Lannister always pays his debts.”

Lesson: Ask hotel owners exactly what they expect from you.

Before you determine what marketing resources you’ll need for 2018, you need to find
out the exact amount your hotel owner (or hotel management company) expects your
marketing team to contribute to the hotel’s revenue.

Don’t move forward on a budget without knowing exactly what goals your team is beholden
to. Get as much clarification as you can, including how many room nights, booked meetings,
corporate bookings, etc. should be attributed to your marketing efforts. Ask
management/ownership early on in the budget process, because this one question will give
you clarity and insight to build out any other projected expenses.

Don’t waste time or make costly guesses, nor should you allow your hotel owner to
determine how much they want to give you. Don’t place your hotel marketing in a dangerous
position of always being underfunded, but tasked with lofty goals. Instead, use your hotel
owner’s revenue goals to correlate the assets you need to achieve them.

7. GoT QUOTE: “I may be small, but I won’t be knitting by the fire while others fight for
me.”

LESSON: Don’t surrender your property’s destiny to 3rd parties.

Spoken by everyone’s favorite young spitfire, Lady Lyanna Mormont of Bear Island, this
empowering quote hits at the heart of every hotelier. OTAs have had their moment, but now
it’s time to take back control of your booking destiny. So, stop depending on third-party sites
to fill the house. Instead of paying commission fees of 15-30 percent, invest in the right tools
and technology for your hotel to pull in your own reservations. One place where hotels will
see big ROI is by investing in their hotel’s mobile experience. Offer a mobile-compatible
booking engine. Have a responsive website and hotel marketing emails. Offer immediate
online chat. Investing in mobile is paramount to your success in 2018.
Friday Freebie: Ignoring Your Hotel Website
Heatmap Can Put You in Hot Water
This week’s freebie: Find out what your hotel heatmap can reveal.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Find out what your hotel heatmap can reveal.

Your hotel website is more than just pretty design and colorful photography.

Every page is carefully constructed and arranged to achieve a specific goal, such as getting a
visitors to sign up for your email list, to look at your hotel’s special offers, or, of course, to
make a reservation.

This requires constant testing and knowing exactly how people are interacting with your hotel
site. One of the keenest tools to figure this out is called “heat mapping.”

Despite what the name implies, a website heat map has nothing to do with weather patterns.
Instead, it is a powerful tool that reveals some pretty useful, granular data. You can determine
how people are using your hotel site, what content they’re consuming and what updates you
can make to put your most profitable information where they are already looking. An infrared
display uses color variations to show where on any web page there is high and low activity
(based on mouse movement and scrolling behavior).

Here’s what your hotel heatmap can reveal:

Where Visitors Are Looking

While there are several types of heat mapping tools, they all share this common feature. In
fact, the entire point of a heat map is to show the ‘hot areas’ of your hotel’s website that get
the most attention.
This intelligence is especially important if you have buttons, calls-to-action or forms that
aren’t receiving the high amount of engagement you expected. By using a heat mapping tool,
you’ll be able to see what is actually catching a visitor’s attention. If the low-performing
features are located outside of these ‘hot areas’, you’ll know where to move them.

Where Visitors Are Clicking

You can track your web pages’ engagement based on where visitors are clicking. Similar to
eye-tracking, you’ll find out if visitors are clicking where you actually want them to click on
the hotel site. If not, you’ll determine where to place important elements to get the most
interaction.

Who’s Currently Visiting

Some heat mapping and tracking tools offer a real-time view that allows you to see how
many visitors are currently on your hotel’s website. In some cases, you’ll also be able to see
where the visitors are on the website and what they’re doing. Other tools use past data so you
can see trends over a certain time period, according to a certain page, where they came from,
and their type of visit.

How Far They’re Scrolling

You can also see how far visitors are making it down your hotel’s individual web pages. This
is extremely helpful when your pages include an interactive element or a call-to-action below
the fold. Using a heat map tracking tool, you can see where exactly visitors begin to drop out
of the content, then leverage this insight to rearrange the page so it is more appealing.

How They Navigate

Some heat mapping tools allow you to see the path visitors take throughout your site. This
reveals if visitors are getting stuck on a certain part of your hotel’s website or if they’re
having difficulty finding the information they need. Some tracking tools even allow you to
record a user’s session, so you can watch how a visitor moves throughout your site.

Mobile Bookings Are Up. Why Aren’t Yours?

Here are the three mobile booking tweaks you need to outperform your compset.

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Hotel booking engines need to look and feel more like apps.
Everybody is talking about the rise of mobile bookings.

In fact, a study by eMarketer estimates that by 2021, half of all digital travel sales will be
made from smartphones or tablets.

Chris Bendtsen, an eMarketer forecasting analyst, told Travel Weekly that consumers are
booking more travel plans on their smartphones and tablets for a variety of reasons:

1. Easier methods of online payment.

2. Larger smartphone screens.
3. A desire to react quickly to last-minute travel deals.

So why aren’t your mobile bookings growing as rapidly as the rest of the world?

Too many hoteliers may think a mobile version of their website & booking engine will
suffice. However, today’s consumers are not just looking for your website to ‘come up’ on
their phones. Your mobile experience has to match today’s modern consumer habits and
expectations.

Mobile bookings are the present and the future of the hotel industry. Here are the three
mobile booking tweaks you need to adjust to this new reality and outperform your compset:

1. Cut it Down

Real estate on a mobile screen is limited.

The first – and most important – step to maximizing the mobile guest experience is to cut out,
not add, features. Examine your hotel’s mobile booking funnel and streamline it as much as
possible. Strip your mobile site of any clutter, including links, ads, navigation elements, menu
options etc. Pare down the booking process to 3 screens or less.

Mobile is meant for the consumer-on-the-go… they have no patience for long-winded, self-
indulgent purchase processes! Since mobile screens are smaller than desktops or laptops,
minimize the amount of text on the screen. Trim content down to only what’s necessary to
convey (like calls to action or clear next steps), then use a single big visual per page to guide
guests through the process.

Multiple photos, videos, and pages of copy will not only make your mobile hotel booking
engine load slower, but possibly anger and turn away guests who are accustomed to faster
uploads from other sites.
2. Design for Thumbs

Call it modern intuition: smartphone users navigate mobile sites using one hand. Most often
with just their thumb. This is why the best mobile hotel ecommerce experiences are built like
apps, which allow guests to tap, swipe, scroll, and click using just one hand or thumb. Stay
clear of requiring guests to ‘pinch’ the screen to zoom in and out for content. This means
your graphics and text are not optimized for mobile users and are too small.

3. Simplify Payment Options

You pride yourself on giving consumers choices in room types, F&B venues, and other add-
ons. Your flexibility should extend to the most important element in the customer-acquisition
process: the checkout!

Yet, sometimes the simple reason shoppers don’t complete a purchase is that their preferred
credit card wasn’t accepted in your booking engine!

Smart hotels offer multiple payment options, going beyond Amex, Visa and Mastercard to
include as many forms of payment as possible, including third-party online payment services
like PayPal. Some even take it a step further like Couples Resorts, who offer a “loveaway”
payment plan. A complicated hotel booking engine process is often the reason guests
abandon their reservations, so provide a simple and speedy credit card experience.

Friday Freebie: How Free Parking Can

Reduce OTA Commissions
This week’s freebie: Capture more DIRECT Labor Day bookings from drive markets by
showcasing free parking on your hotel website.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Capture more DIRECT Labor Day bookings from drive markets
by showcasing free parking on your hotel website.

Millions of travelers will be hitting the road this Labor Day weekend, looking to celebrate
their last summer weekend. Your drive markets are your best audiences to promote a last-
minute getaway for the holiday.

Travelers are already enjoying the lowest gas prices in years. Sweeten the deal by including
free parking in your Labor Day packages and specials ACROSS ALL CHANNELS…. But
emphasize it on your direct hotel website.

OTAs have hundreds of thousands of properties on their websites, they cannot keep up with
the promotions at all of them! By prominently showcasing the free parking perk (“Book
direct and get free parking!”) you will create the perception that free parking is a special,
direct-only benefit, without jeopardizing your OTA relationships.

The Seven Traits of Great Hotel Digital

Marketers
The most successful hotel digital marketers we’ve worked with have these 7 traits in
common.

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Hotel marketing requires a quirky blend of skills.

Virtually every one of your future guests will discover and engage with your property in the
online world before they ever walk through your doors. That’s why digital marketing has
become such a prerequisite skill for hotels that want to outperform their compset.

But this job isn’t just limited to running ads and managing channels; digital marketing
managers are also responsible for launching their own programs, managing external vendors
and many other activities.

As one of those external vendors, we’ve worked with hundreds of hotel digital marketers
over the years… and during that time we’ve seen that it takes a very special set of skills to be
successful in such a demanding position.

The most successful hotel digital marketers we’ve worked with have these 7 traits in
common:

1. They Multitask

On any given day, a digital marketing manager has to take care of a wide variety of tasks,
ALL while overcoming sudden crisis drops in occupancy. To be successful in such a hectic
environment, that person needs to be an excellent multitasker, with an uncanny sense of
recall.

This combination lets them pick up on where they left off on other tasks from previous days
and make steady progress towards their goals – all while being pulled in multiple directions.

2. They are Caffeinated

Digital marketing managers often need to help fill hundreds of rooms, every night, or face
vanishing assets. But accomplishing that task, in a business that often sees many of its
bookings occur in the last 48 hours before arrival, requires someone with a lot of energy and
stamina (it’s not uncommon to see them go through 5 or 6 cups of coffee every single day).

3. They Should Be Well-Traveled

You can’t market a product when you have no experience as a user/buyer.

With this in mind, it’s only natural that successful hotel marketing managers should be able
to use their own travel experiences to speak to prospects on a personal level.

4. They Should Have Experience in Other Industries

For an industry like ours, one that’s been resistant to change on many occasions, attracting
digital marketers with skills and knowledge from other industries is essential. Hotels have
long depended on a few core channels for their revenue, while other industries (think
software and tech) have to develop innovative ways to build audiences, users and market
share. By borrowing best practices, tactics and tools from other industries, hotel digital
marketers can turbocharge your property’s marketing strategies and give you a serious
advantage on the compset.

5. They Should Speak Geek

It’s cool to be part geek these days, especially in the hospitality marketing sector. That’s
because everything is constantly evolving, so there’s always so much to learn. That’s why it’s
a good indicator of success when you hear your digital marketing manager talking with their
friends about things like; CRS, PMS, CRM, CMS, SEO, PPC or SEM. It shows their real
interest in these subjects.

6. They Shouldn’t Be Scared of Data and Reporting

That’s the only way they know what’s working in their campaigns… and what’s not.

Being comfortable with data and reporting also enables successful hotel digital marketers to
make strong business cases to management and ownership for additional funds and marketing
assets.

7. They Should Present Well

Digital marketing managers need to be seen as leaders who are able to bridge ‘the
departmental divide’ and bring revenue management, sales and GMs together. Presentation
skills and confidence are the keys to building consensus and cooperation across departments.

So, which one of these 7 skills is most important for your property? How do you keep
your competitive edge? We’d love to hear more about this from your point of view in
the comments below!

Friday Freebie: Leverage Past Guests to Crush

New Hotel Competition
This week’s freebie: Get a leg up on new hotel competition by maximizing the one thing they
don’t have – past guests.
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one FREE impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Get a leg up on new hotel competition by maximizing the one thing
they don’t have – past guests.

With their modern amenities, fresh technology, and remarkable experiences that travelers are
clamoring for, new hotels are perfectly poised to steal a chunk of your market.

It’s hard to battle for bookings when you’re surrounded by exciting new properties that are
stealing all the attention and all the business.

Don’t rely on slashing prices to take those bookings back. This will just hurt your bottom line
and your reputation. Instead, turn to the one thing that they don’t have: past guests.

You have an AUDIENCE… monetize it!

While the new properties build up their profile and struggle to bring in new guests, create an
exciting offer exclusively for your most lucrative past guests.

Also, make sure you are using the positive reviews of past guests to create trust and
validation among new prospective guests as well; your hotel website should prominently
showcase testimonial reviews from leisure guests AND past meetings/groups!

Finally, follow new compset hotel developments closely and time your marketing
campaigns/promos to coincide with their opening and dampen the attrition of business due to
their launch!

Friday Freebie: Test Drive Your Booking

Experience As a First-Time Guest Would
This week’s freebie: Test and experience your website as a first-time guest would to spot
what makes guests bounce.
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Test and experience your website as a first-time guest would to spot
what makes guests bounce.

Your website is your digital front door. And, just like your physical front door, there are a
number of blockades that could, and do, get in a guest’s way.

Similar to an unwelcoming main entrance or a confusing front desk, hotel websites can have
their own unsavory traits. These include slow load times, cluttered homepages, complicated
booking procedures and a messy design.

However, most hotel marketers don’t see these traits in their own hotel websites. So, it’s
important to take a look and scrutinize your website experience with fresh eyes to make sure
nothing is getting in the way of changing a potential guest’s mind or blocking someone from
exploring your website or booking a room.

To get some ideas, watch this video to see what real consumers think when they are booking
a room on an OTA and directly on a hotel website.

Test your experience and look out for things that are likely to make your guests bounce.

Are Google and Apple Blocking Your Hotel

Ads?
Hotels need to understand the effects of new tech restrictions on their digital advertising.

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Hotel digital marketers will now have even more technology to deal with.

Major Takeaways:

 Hotels need to understand the affects of new tech restrictions on their digital
advertising

 The announced updates to Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari will not block ALL
advertising, just the most worst offending, spammy and intrusive ads

 Google is taking a collaborative approach and letting publishers know ahead of time
what type of ad content will be allowed and which will be blocked. Apple, on the
other hand, is taking a harder stance against ads they deem irritating. They have yet to
release more details.

Last month, digital advertisers (including most hotels) and their media partners were treated
to a serious surprise.

Google announced plans to block intrusive and annoying digital ads in the newest version of
Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser commanding 44 percent of the audience.
This default ad-blocker will soon block certain digital ads – including those that take up too
much of the computer screen, force readers to wait to view content they really want to see, or
auto play videos and audio.

Apple soon followed with their own announcement: They are updating their Safari browser
with radical new features aimed at protecting their users’ privacy and providing a friendlier
web experience. These include:

 VIDEO ADS: Preventing video or audio autoplay without the user’s permission.
Online video advertising is generally seen as more valuable to advertisers since they
attract higher engagement than static banner ads. This is especially noteworthy to
resorts, who often use vide-enabled ads to showcase the compelling sights, sounds,
colors and majesty of their properties.

 RETARGETING ADS: Disabling ad tracking from 3rd party ad networks, which

hotels would normally use to track people’s visits across different websites. This is
how ad networks can tell if someone looked at your hotel and can serve up retargeting
ads to keep your hotel top-of-mind.

 BARE MINIMUM CONTENT: Giving online visitors the option to only view the
main content of any website without any ‘extras’ like advertising, list of ‘suggested
reading’, and even design features like colors and fonts.
Some media experts and (let’s face it, virtually all) consumers are applauding Google and
Apple’s moves to protect and enhance the online user experience by weeding out obnoxious
ad interruptions.

People are fed up with crappy web experiences. They’re tired of companies tracking their
behavior. They’re tired of obtrusive ads getting in their way. And, they’re tired of worrying
about the possibility of hackers delivering malware through fake ads.

However, Google and Apple aren’t the first to intervene and block dreaded advertising
experiences. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, about 26 percent of web
visitors have already handled this on their own by installing plugins that block trackers and
ads. And, about 10 percent have installed ad and tracking blockers on their smartphones.

So, what does this mean for hoteliers who depend on digital advertising for reaching new
audiences and recapturing abandoned reservations with retargeting ads?

It’s time to adjust.

These ad blockers will definitely have a rippling impact on the hotel industry, but your
advertising can still succeed if you follow these guidelines:

1. Understand your ad formats…. and where they run

Reach out to your media buying team and make sure you understand the type of ads that will
run for your property and which networks/sites they run on. According to Google’s
announcement, the type of ads they will block in the next version of Chrome are autoplay
videos, pop-up ads and ads that cover most of the page.

In recent years, Apple has become more and more concerned with their consumers and
privacy. In fact, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has lashed out at internet companies that collect
user data, calling it an attack on privacy. The upcoming version of Safari will not block ads.
Instead, it will block a user’s browsing data from third-party tracking tools that specialize in
sharing audience data with other parties. This will make it harder for hotels to access
audience data and leverage the intelligence to shape future marketing campaigns, create
retargeting ads, and personalize marketing campaigns. From here on… essentially, any
company that doesn’t have a direct relationship with the consumer will be at a disadvantage.

2. Are you paying for blocked ads?

Work with your media buying team to track the success of your PPC and digital ad
campaigns.

Are your hotel ads published and actually seen? Or, are they being published (incurring
costs), then blocked by the end user’s browser?

This will require testing and having the ability to pivot and replace these blocked ads with
replacements that are more user-friendly. Plus, if you find that many of your ads are being
blocked within Chrome and Safari, it’s time to up your game and think of new ways to grab
your hotel audience’s attention.

3. Commit to quality

These radical moves by Google and Apple are meant to keep out the worst of the worst, while
giving quality ads more screen time and less noise to cut through. Hotels now have to be
accountable for creating advertising campaigns that are helpful, entertaining and stimulate
dialogue with consumers… rather than just self-indulgently interrupting them.

Friday Freebie: Use the “Rule of 9” to Capture

More Bookings
This week’s freebie: Change ONE number to make your room rates more appealing.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This week’s freebie: Change ONE number to make your room rates more appealing.

Normally, establishing your hotel’s room rates is a rational practice, based on current market
conditions, prior trends, weather, current occupancy and other hard data.

However, many hoteliers overlook a vital element when establishing prices:

The PSYCHOLOGY of what makes a hotel guest choose one price over another.

This is known to marketers as price psychology. And, one of the best tried and true price
psychology practices is using “The Rule of 9” in your room rates.

Here’s how it works:

People read numbers left to right… and since they tend to scan numbers very quickly, they
associate the price with the very first number they see. For example, $99 seems closer to $90,
even though it is just a dollar away from $100. This is why travelers consider room rates
ending in 9 or 99 or 95 as better values overall.

Even luxury brands such as Apple and Coach use this practice.

Give this tactic a try and experiment by changing your $305/night suite to $295 or $299.

6 Ways Hotel Marketing Can Generate More

Leads for the Sales Team
Hotel marketing departments usually stick to what they know: marketing only to leisure
travelers.

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Hotel marketing teams need to improve their support of group sales.

Achieving group and meetings revenue targets can make or break your property’s annual
performance. But incredibly, most hotel group sales departments lack consistent, effective
marketing support and are forced to generate their own leads. Hotel marketers often ignore
the need to boost their hotel’s revenue by accelerating the number of incoming sales leads.

As a result, hotel marketing departments usually stick to what they know: marketing only to
leisure travelers.

Let’s change that.

There are several smart ways for hotel marketers to generate more group business for their
hotel and champion the sales teams’ efforts. It simply takes using the hotel marketing
strategies you already know and use… and finessing them for the meetings market:

1. Be Accountable: Carry a Quota

What?!

Marketing people carrying a quota?

While this may be a strange and radical concept among hotel marketers, other industries (i.e.
Silicon Valley software companies) have been assigning lead generation quotas to marketing
teams for many years. Asset managers and property owners no longer want to hear about
“branding initiatives” or logo colors… they expect their hotel management firm’s marketing
team to contribute to revenue in a measurable way, communicate in number-speak and be
accountable for tangible results.

Quotas for marketing teams can be memorialized in terms of leads or actual closed deals
generated by leads driven by the marketing team. And marketers often receive bonuses based
on their performance against their quota.

Hotel marketers need to remember that having a quota is not only a burden but also an
opportunity: if they hit their assigned lead generation targets, they increase their value in a
demonstrably important way to their management and can ask for compensation increases as
a result!

2. Consistently Communicate with “HVTs”

Every hotel should have a Top 100 list of “high-value targets.”

Most hotel sales teams already work with a company like Knowland to access groups market
intelligence to identify the most relevant group opportunities for their location and venue
size. But the hotel marketing team should ensure these HVTs are loaded into a simple CRM
platform in order to send out a steady stream of entertaining, engaging and useful stories,
photos and videos that will help meeting planners do their jobs when planning a meeting in
your destination and beyond.

Meeting planners love to book venues they trust. And one way to build trust is by
communicating consistently in a selfless, helpful way. Hotel marketers should deploy a
steady “drip” of stories, photos and content that helps prospects understand the destination
better and do their job more effectively.

But under no circumstances should the content be self-serving!

Your content “stream” does not have to be restricted to email or digital content. Direct
mailing personal notes and helpful material often breaks through the clutter and differentiates
you from the thousands of emails your prospects receive each week!

Creating this cadence of content will establish you and your property as a trusted resource
and position you as THE leader of your destination!

3. Empower Sales with Marketing Automation

You’ve already been using marketing automation to boost leisure business for several years,
from post-stay surveys to reservation recovery emails. Now, you can use the same principle
to be a catalyst for driving meetings and events to your hotel. By placing a piece of code
(provided from your marketing automation vendor or hotel marketing agency) into your
website, you can monitor whenever one of your sales team’s key group business targets visits
and explores your meeting pages.

Plus, your marketing automation software will be able to determine what the planner’s
interests are by following their clicks. Did the planner spend more time looking at breakfast
catering menus? The section on government meetings and per diem pricing? Or, watch a
virtual tour of your largest ballroom? You can then provide this data to the sales team and
enable them to craft relevant messages and offers to match planners’ exact event needs.

4. Stay Top of Mind with Retargeting

Keep your hotel top-of-mind with meeting planners who visit, then leave your hotel website’s
meeting pages. If a meeting planner goes to your website, clicks around and leaves without
submitting an RFP, set up retargeting display ad campaigns to follow them online and remind
them what makes your venue a remarkable option for their group.

5. Create Compelling Destination Content

Establish your hotel and its sales team as meeting industry thought leaders in your city by
creating helpful, info-tainment content. This will position your hotel as being the most
experienced property to host meetings and events in your destination.

For Example: 5 Distilleries For Groups To Experience True Louisville Bourbon, 10

Waterfront Teambuilding Activities in Long Beach, or Most Unique Group Tours in
Philadelphia. You can also take content you’ve already written for the leisure audience and
customize for the groups market by giving it a meeting and events ‘spin.’

Then, pay to publish these into the LinkedIn newsfeeds of meeting professionals. Post these
onto your hotel’s own meetings and events blog or repurpose this as content for upcoming
sales newsletters (See #2 & 3 above).

6. Optimize Your Website for Meeting Planners

This is your main marketing vehicle, so don’t solely cater to leisure guests here. Pack your
meetings and events section with all the resources that meeting planners need. Our latest
meeting planner survey revealed that planners wanted relevant sourcing tools that could be
downloaded directly from hotel websites, including photos of past events, floor diagrams,
room measurements, capacity charts, testimonials, and 360-degree venue tours.

Friday Freebie: Hotel Website Copy That Sells

This Week’s Freebie: Convert more lookers into bookers by tweaking your hotel website
copy.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one FREE impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Convert more lookers into bookers by tweaking your hotel
website copy.

Today, no one has the attention span to read anymore.

Studies show that people online only have an attention span of 8 SECONDS.

This puts a lot of pressure on hotel marketers to entice, engage and convince all within that
tiny timeframe.

So, what’s a hotel marketer to do to maximize mere seconds when someone is on your
website–your ultimate marketing asset? How can you quickly push someone closer to
booking?

The Main Secret: Write for scanners, not readers.

So, write less, make every word count, and make it easy to read.

Here Are Some Tips:

 Cut the fluff, get to the point. Adjectives are the sign of a weak writer!
 Don’t feel the pressure to write in full, complete sentences all the time. It’s okay now
to write how you speak. Say what you mean and mean what you say!
 Break up content in at-a-glance, “snackable” chunks, instead of writing lengthy
paragraphs.
 Use subheads and headlines to break-up distinct topic changes. This makes it easier to
digest important points.
 Replace some copy with a fitting image or video instead.

Marketing vs Revenue Management: 4 Ways

to Bridge the Gap
Is there an unspoken divide in your hotel? Revenue managers and hotel marketers are often at
odds.

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It’s time to improve cooperation between hotel marketers and revenue managers.

Is there an unspoken divide in your hotel?

Revenue managers and hotel marketers are often at odds, one department focused on
balancing ADR and occupancy, while the other focuses on awareness, demand and
“branding.”

In this post, Noelani Berkholtz, Tambourine’s Director of Distribution Strategy and former
long-time hotel revenue manager, explains these differences and outlines what revenue
managers can do to assist and champion their hotel marketing teams to help both departments
achieve mutual success:

1. Understand Mutual Metrics

According to Noelani, one of the major sources of dissonance between revenue managers and
hotel marketers are the goals and responsibilities allocated to the individual
departments. “DOSMs are driven to work towards bonuses based on metrics that differ from
a revenue manager’s metrics,” she explained. “This skews what marketing initiatives should
actually be focused on.”

2. Share Results Regularly

Hotel marketers and revenue managers are on the same side, yet revenue managers tend to
keep crucial metrics, such as pacing, market mix, actualized occupancy, revenue, and ADR
closely guarded. This type of unwarranted secrecy leaves hotel marketers flying blind. “When
we withhold this kind of data, we are making the marketing team work in a smoke
screen,” Noelani said. “If they can’t see the landscape of what is going on, they can’t
proactively respond, or retroactively learn.”

Noelani also advises avoiding getting defensive over the numbers. Revenue managers are
aware of the shrinking booking window, but at the same time don’t want to be held
accountable for it.

Above all, communicate.

Noelani advises to not let your lack of modern marketing knowledge hinder you from
engaging with your marketing team. “Educate your marketing team on what has and has not
worked in the past,” she recommends. “And, keep them in the know with any initiatives you
are pushing out with the OTAs, even if you are simply mirroring the discount on your site.”
Share your STR report and other relevant reports, so the marketing staff can keep a pulse of
the market. Plus, let them know what your goals are and keep them abreast on how the hotel
is pacing towards those goals so they can alter their marketing initiatives to achieve them.

“Consistent communication will reduce the gap between initiatives and goals, and produce a
rockstar revenue-generating team.”

3. Talk About Other Channels

It turns out that revenue managers are already working successfully with other marketing
departments – OTAs! Revenue managers often run certain promotions targeting certain
demographics or need periods that end up producing a ton of business for the OTAs. Start
sharing how the OTAs have been successful in marketing your hotel to help your own
marketing department!

4. Be Brutally Honest

The marketing department wants to hear from you.

For instance, revenue managers often wish hotel marketers made things easier.“If a hotel’s
marketing department or outside agency made the process of launching initiatives as simple
as OTAs did, they would want to engage the marketing department more,” she said.

“When there are 8 different people to contact each time a need period is identified, revenue
managers are too busy to round them all up. They are more likely to just reduce the rate and
hope that helps their conversion on the different channels.”

Friday Freebie: Make Your Hotel Website

More Meeting Planner Friendly
This Week’s Freebie: Make it easier for meeting planners to consider and choose your venue
by providing the tools and data they expect.

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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Make it easier for meeting planners to consider and choose your
venue by providing the tools and data they expect.

Meeting planners are constantly on-the-go and juggling several projects at any given
moment. Make their jobs easier (and make it easier for them to see your venue’s potential) by
providing the valuable tools they need to select a site.

According to our recent meeting planner survey, these are the mandatory tools that meeting
planners expect to access directly from your hotel website:

 Capacity charts
 Floor diagrams
 Room measurements
 Virtual/video venue tours
 Photos of actual events

5 Things Hotel Marketers Are Celebrating

This July 4th
Hotel sales and marketing pros have a lot to be happy about this year.

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Hotel sales and marketing pros have a lot to be happy about this year.

This Independence Day, hoteliers are not only celebrating a long weekend bustling with
holiday travelers, but all the other indicators that prove there are more sunny skies ahead for
the industry:

1) A Winning Trifecta: Thriving Group Business, Stable Economy & A Positive Hotel
Market

The hotel industry’s up cycle has exceeded expectations. Occupancy rose 1.5 percent, driven
by an increase in demand of 3.4 percent. ADR increased 2 percent and RevPAR rose by 3.6
percent – making May 2017 the 87th month of consecutive RevPAR growth.
Even after two months with a declining pipeline of new rooms, the number of new room
construction reached 192,000. This is a small increase (April 2017’s count was 189,000) and
shows that the pipeline of new construction is flourishing, but at a slower pace.

Most of the new construction focuses on select-service hotels without substantial meeting
space, which is a boon for hoteliers overseeing full-service properties who continue to see an
uptick in their booking pace as large groups compete to lock in venues.

2) Owners’ Investment in a Remarkable Product

You can be out-of-this-world creative. You can have the wittiest, most clever and memorable
hotel marketing concept. You can even have a generous hotel marketing budget to pay for
massive exposure in front of all the right audiences.

Yet, all of that means nothing without a truly differentiated hotel product.

If your property is providing a lackluster experience with frayed edges, outdated décor, and
musty smells, no amount of brilliant marketing can save you from the downward spiral of lost
revenue.
New hotels with bold concepts and fresh guest experiences are springing up in all directions,
so hotel owners need to invest in their properties to keep up with modern expectations.
Thankfully, more and more hotel owners are realizing that the best hotel marketing
investment they can make is in enhancing their property, the experience and the service.

3) The Lowest Summer Gas Prices in Years

The start of summer is not normally a time for low gas prices, since so many people are
taking to the road and creating demand. However, with the recent drop in oil costs, travelers
are elated to find some of the lowest summer prices at the pumps for the first time in 12
years. In fact, this holiday weekend’s prices could be the lowest 4th of July gas prices since
2005. According to AAA, gas prices have been falling every day since June 2nd and are
expected to keep dropping. Consider us pumped for all the road travelers ahead.

4) Expanding Awareness of Book Direct Benefits

Fueled by affordable digital marketing tools and increasing comfort in deploying them, hotel
marketers are feeling more confident and emboldened to push for direct bookings instead of
relying on OTAs to fill their rooms.

In April, Hyatt Hotels became the latest brand to offer a discount to guests who book directly
from the Hyatt website, following similar programs by Marriott International, Hilton
Worldwide and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. These moves by the major chains are
heightening public recognition of the benefits of booking direct and are chipping away at the
myth that OTAs save money. With the stage set by industry titans and all the advanced
marketing tools and metrics available to hoteliers, we expect this momentum to continue to
swell.

5) Social Media Evangelists

Hotels now have small, private armies of unpaid marketing staff: guests who Instagram,
Snap, Facebook and Tweet while eating breakfast in bed, lounging by the pool, and watching
the sunset from their balconies. Each post boosts awareness for your hotel and bolsters your
hotel’s reach… all without your staff lifting a finger or spending a dime. And, even after
checking out, guests continue to post photo albums and videos of their vacations.

When guests gush about their travels, they’re creating content that is hotel marketing gold.
You can even easily discover and collect Instagram photos posted by your guests using a tool
like our new Tout.

Friday Freebie: Briefcases to Suitcases,

Compel Business Travelers to Stretch Their
Stays
This Week’s Freebie: Compel corporate guests to extend their stay by creating a targeted
‘bleisure’ offer.
Sharing is caring!
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Welcome to the Friday Freebie!

Each week we share one impactful hotel marketing tactic that you can implement
immediately to drive more conversions and more revenue.

This Week’s Freebie: Compel corporate guests to extend their stay by creating a
targeted ‘bleisure’ offer.

Out of a hotel’s three primary market segments, corporate clients often produce the steadiest
stream of room nights AND add-on revenue throughout the year. And better yet…. free-
spending corporate travelers alo tend to spend more on dining and other ancillary products
(since they are reimbursed by their companies).

Amplify your revenue opportunities with corporate travelers by compelling them to add on
leisure days to their stay.

Here’s One Way to Encourage Them to Stay Longer:

Create an exclusive offer only for corporate guests that extends the corporate rate a few days
pre- and post-reservation. Add perks during those extra days, such as complimentary bike
rentals, late check-out, discounted passes to a family-friendly attraction, free parking or
complimentary breakfast. Include a link to a calendar of fun local events happening before,
during, and after their original stay.

Share this offer with corporate guests a few times leading up to their stay. Include it in the
pre-stay email, at check-in… or leave a note during their stay.
The Ultimate Marketplace For Hoteliers is
Here
March 13, 2019 Hotelogix

Rate This

If the hospitality industry were to pick one time in history that really helped it grow
and evolve the most, it would have to be now. Hotel tech, today, is seeing such
dramatic transformation and in such quick succession that it is almost unfathomable
what the next decade or two will throw at us.

In this hyper-competitive age, hoteliers have a never-before kind of advantage, in

that they have a plethora of tools, software and systems that can help accelerate
their success. Property Management Software integrations, that address hoteliers’
every business pain point, promise of a future that is both exciting and extremely
tech-driven.

It is in this spirit that we, at Hotelogix, decided to launch a comprehensive

marketplace for hotels. An interface that includes every integration you would need
as a hotelier to automate and streamline key operations, boost room sales and
business to see the kind of revenue that you truly deserve.
Our marketplace is the one-stop shop for all your hotel technology
needs.
The Hotelogix Marketplace lists 75+ integrations across hotel technology categories,
including Channel Manager, Reputation Management Systems, Booking Engine,
Revenue Management Systems, Accounting Systems, Loyalty Program, Point of
Sale, Business Analytics, EPBX, Email and Key cards.

This first-of-its-kind platform by a PMS provider in the industry will connect hotels of
all sizes, to the right technology solution of their choice. Hotelogix Marketplace not
only allows you to choose from some of the best-in-class hotel technology
integrations but also gives you a thorough rundown on each of them, empowering
you to make well-informed decisions.

Channel Manager Integration

In today’s world of digital travel, most of the hotel bookings happen via OTAs. This
makes it inevitable for hotels to work with them to get maximum bookings. But it is
not an easy job when you work with multiple OTAs. Manual effort to feed OTAs with
real-time rates and availability can lead to overbookings/double bookings. That’s the
reason, Hotelogix has integrated its world-class cloud PMS with several
leading channel management integrations like:

 Vertical Booking
 HotelRunner
  STAAH
 SiteMinder
 RezGain
 Maximojo
 AxisRooms
 Seekda
 Busy Rooms
 RezNext
 Omnibees

Reputation Management Integration

In the digital age, online reputation plays an immense role in defining the long-term
success of hotel businesses. Your hotel’s reputation is the most important thing
when it comes to attracting guests to your property. Automating the process of
collecting and managing guest reviews is a reliable way to improve your brand’s
online reputation and ratings. To help you improve your online reputation and to get
more guest reviews, we currently integrate with:

 RepUp
 TripAdvisor Review Express

Direct Bookings/Booking Engine Integration

Driving direct bookings via hotel website matters a lot when it comes to saving on
OTA commission and increasing profitability. Moreover, your direct guests are more
loyal to your brand. To help you generate more direct bookings, the Hotelogix
marketplace for hotels allows integrations with popular booking engines like:

 TripConnect
 Vertical Booking

Revenue Management Integration

Imagine having a tool that helps you set the right tariff for each of your hotel room
categories based on market analysis and other factors that dictate the best price at a
given point in time. Appealing right? Hotelogix Marketplace for hotels will help you
with this, too. Here are some of our Revenue Management integration partners –
  BookingSuite
 Beonprice
 Buzzotel

Accounting System Integration

Accounting is one of the most important areas of hotel management. Efficient
accounting management helps you with measurable information of financial nature. If
this has been a challenge for your hotel, we have you covered. We offer integrations
with some of the best accounting systems like:

 Tally
 Xero
 QuickBooks
 ALIF
 Infor SunSystems

Loyalty Program Integration

Loyalty programs do play a major role in your hotel business when it comes to long-
term success. Repeat guests present a huge opportunity in not only improving your
revenue but also with word-of-mouth marketing which is a very powerful tool in the
hospitality space. This makes it crucial for hotels to try and nurture long-lasting
associations with their guests and loyalty programs go a long way in making this
happen. For this, we have integrated our PMS with:

 1Loyalty

Point of Sale Integration

Integrating a Point of Sale solution with a hotel PMS helps hoteliers manage multiple
POS outlets like in-house restaurants, spas, gyms, etc. through efficient automation.
It also helps you with granular insights on your multiple POS outlets. And in this
context, we are proud to be associated with industry leaders such as:

 POSist
 ShawMan

Analytics Integration
Data analytic capabilities is a ‘must have’ for hoteliers in today’s highly competitive
hotel business. You need to have the right data to improve your business operations,
guest service, marketing activities and much more. While the Hotelogix PMS in-built
reporting tool offers 100+ reports, we also integrate with partners who offer visual
business intelligence:

 SnapShot

In-room Devices Integration

In-room devices have emerged as the most important platform to offer top-class
services to hotel guests. Be it digital door lock or in-room Wi-Fi, we can efficiently
help you in this via our world-class integration partners –

 COMTROL
 Telesoft

Email Marketing Integration

Email marketing is a tried and trusted way to reach out to guests to engage with
them across their journey with your hotel – from pre-arrival to post-departure. This
helps you build good guest experience and promote your offerings. We have taken
care of this aspect for you too through our integration partner:

 Mailchimp

With the Marketplace interface, hoteliers have the opportunity to find everything they
need to successfully run their hotel, under one roof. This also resolves major issue
that seems to have taken over the industry – lack of awareness. Our Marketplace
gives you unbiased information, choice and the option to integrate with the leading
platforms.
In our effort to expand our offerings to Hotelogix users and in order to help you with
every technological requirement for your hotel operations, we will continue to add
new integrated solutions to our Hotelogix Marketplace.