HeBS digital Blog

Part 4 of 4 from the Hotels Magazine Blog Article: “Hoteliers’ Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand.”

HeBS President and CEO Max Starkov has been invited to lead the “Successful eMarketing” blog on HOTELS magazine’s website. The following is an excerpt from Part 4 of 4 of Starkov’s article: “Hoteliers’ Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand.”

Action Plan: Measure your return on investment (ROI)

Take a hard look at what you are doing: are you taking chances with new and unproven marketing formats? Is your Internet marketing budget ROI-centric? Are you a smart marketer, or are you advertising blindly, distributing limited marketing dollars in unproven or incalculable areas? Are you measuring conversions and ROIs from your marketing campaigns?

• Focus on marketing formats that generate above industry-average returns.
• Implement the latest website analytics+ campaign tracking technology:
  • Track post-impression and post-click activity
  • Track bookings, roomnights, revenues from every campaign
  • Adjust marketing spend instantaneously based on ROIs
  • Don’t fall for “free” analytical tools–they simply do not work

• Remember, no matter which channels you use, make sure you are tracking results and conversions (e.g. Omniture, DART, etc). Phone tracking is now easier than ever (e.g. a unique 1-800 number to be used for calls resulting from your Google AdWords, another from Yahoo, etc.), and even with print you can send people to private landing pages or use promo codes.

Action Plan: Establish achievable objectives for the remainder of the year and 2011

The sky is the limit when hotel internet marketing is concerned. There are so many formats and initiatives, “hot news” and sensational claims that the industry is justifiably confused as to where to start and what the priorities should be.

The litmus test for any marketing initiatives hoteliers do should be a.) revenue generated, and b.) return on investment (ROI). In other words, before budgeting for or embarking on any marketing initiative, hoteliers must answer a simple question: “Which initiative will generate the most revenues and the best ROI?”

Here are a few objectives achievable in the remaining months of 2010 and early 2011 with re-allocation of funds in the existing hotel budgets or included in the 2011 budget:

Website re-design:
Time and again this has proven to be the single most effective initiative to boost hotel bookings and engage your customers via Web 2.0 enhancements on the site. This is a 90-120 day process so you can start it in 2010 and complete it in early 2011.

Direct online channel:
There is no doubt this is the most cost-effective distribution channel. The hotel budget should be especially generous to any direct marketing initiative: from search engine marketing (SEM) to email marketing, strategic linking and online sponsorships, to the new emerging formats like social and mobile marketing.

Social marketing:
Start by enhancing your hotel’s presence on the social networks. Creating or optimizing your hotel’s Facebook fan page and twitter and LinkedIn profiles is a good start. Engaging your customers on the social networks via interactive contests and sweepstakes, cross-promoted via the hotel website, email and SEM campaigns will make your efforts in social media worthwhile.

Mobile marketing:
Launching a 10-20 page mobile site for the hotel should be a top priority in 2010. Even if your booking engine provider does not have a mobile version of the booking engine, your mobile site will generate a lot of telephone leads and bookings. Start building the mobile opt-in list for customer service alerts and SMS text promotions. Experiment with simple mobile contests, quizzes and sweepstakes as part of the hotel’s multi-channel marketing initiatives to gain experience with this new channel.

Website analytics and campaign tracking:
Measure and re-measure conversions and ROI of every marketing initiative. Before you invest in any marketing campaign or website re-design, make sure you will be able to track conversions and ROIs. State-of-the-art technology like Omniture SiteCatalyst (website analytics) or DART (banner campaign tracking) is easily accessible today. This will not only make you a smarter and better marketer, but enable you to justify current marketing spend and defend future budget increases.

Conclusion:
In this uncertain economic environment, focusing on marketing initiatives with proven ROIs is the hotelier’s most prudent marketing strategy. The Internet is by far the largest and most important marketing and distribution channel in hospitality. By using the step-by-step action plan outlined in this article, smart hoteliers can generate incremental revenues, increase market share, and outsmart the competition with a ROI-centric online marketing strategy.

As you re-evaluate your hotel marketing plans for 2010 and plan for 2011, seek advice from an experienced and ROI-centric Internet marketing firm to help you adopt industry’s best practices, implement latest trends, and utilize the Direct Online Channel to its fullest potential.

Read the full article, including case studies on the Hotels Magazine’s “Successful eMarketing” Blog.

By Max Starkov

Part 2 of 4 from the Hotels Magazine Blog Article: “Hoteliers’ Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand.”

HeBS President and CEO Max Starkov  has been invited to lead the “Successful eMarketing” blog on HOTELS magazine’s website. The following is an excerpt from Part 2 of 4 of Starkov’s article: “Hoteliers’ Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand.”

As the travel and hospitality industry emerges from its recession-induced coma, hoteliers need to develop an action plan to capitalize on resurgent travel demand. Last week, I discussed the importance of unlocking the marketing budget, but doing so smartly and strategically via direct online marketing. This week, we’ll explore multichannel marketing and the need for most operators to reexamine their own website offerings.

Action Plan: Embrace multichannel marketing—the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts

Today’s hyper-interactive travel consumers are seeing your marketing messages across a variety of different channels. Now more than ever, there is a convergence of new and traditional digital formats, of interactive and offline marketing channels such as social media and print, hotel websites and social media initiatives, mobile and email, etc. Hoteliers need to reach future and current customers at multiple touch-points. For instance, if you launch an email campaign to the hotel’s own opt-in list, combine it with a tweet on Twitter, a posting on Facebook, a promotion on your website (this is a must), and a paid search campaign on Google.

At the same time, some marketing initiatives, if judged on their own merits, generate disappointing ROIs. For example, many hoteliers are struggling to justify returns from social marketing initiatives. The same applies to display advertising and online sponsorships which rarely produce significant ROIs as stand-alone marketing formats. But unleashing a marketing promotional campaign simultaneously across all available marketing channels produces compounded effect and far greater returns than each individual marketing format.

Action Plan: Take a hard look at the hotel website

Due to economic considerations, many hotel websites have been practically abandoned during the past 2 years. Many hotel websites offer old photos and stale content and read more like an online brochure than a vibrant and engaging digital presence of the hotel.  When there is practically no Web 2.0 functionality on the website, there is nothing to stimulate interactivity with the user. This is contrary to the mere nature of today’s hyper-interactive Internet user who is tweeting, texting, emailing, communicating with friends and commenting on hotel and restaurant review sites.

Hotel Internet marketing starts and ends with the hotel website. The hotel website has become the first, the only, and in many cases, the last point of contact with the travel consumer. It is only natural that re-designing, enhancing and optimizing the hotel website should be the top priority. A website re-design is typically a 90-120 day project. Our experience shows that any website optimizations, enhancements or re-designs pay for themselves within 3-4 months.

Here are some important items to consider:

• Maximize the value of the site. It is the hotel’s most important marketing asset today.
• Make the site reflect 2010-2011 industry’s best practices: user-friendly, search engine-friendly, travel booker-friendly, and Web 2.0 friendly.
• Optimize, enhance, and re-design if necessary.
• If the site is over 12 months old, Web 2.0 and SEO optimizations are now due in order to take full advantage of the much cheaper organic search related visitors to your site.
• If the site is over two years old, a website re-design is a must and should be considered in Q3 or Q4 of 2010, or at least budgeted for early 2011. Typical ROI (Return on investment) from a website re-design is 10-15 times within the first 12 months of post-launch operations.

Read the full article, including case studies and a website re-design ROI analysis  on the Hotels Magazine’s “Successful eMarketing” Blog. I look forward to our continued dialogue. Next week, we’ll tackle the exponentially growing importance of social and mobile media.