Dealing With Conflicting Hotel Marketing Advice

If you are frustrated by an onslaught of conflicting hotel marketing advice, you are not alone.  Every hotelier faces this constant barrage of salesmen and marketers trying to pitch their services by any means necessary.  Differentiating between the poor marketing advice and the advice that is is spot on can be the difference between having a successful hospitality property or a failed one.

Often times, understanding the person who is providing the advice and their motives for doing so can go a long way in helping a hotelier determine if the advice they are receiving is correct.

In general, there are five types of marketers/salesmen who you will receive advice from:

The Crooks

These are the people who are just trying to rip you off.  They know what they are doing is wrong but they don’t care; they are just trying to a make a buck.  They are easy to spot because they will most often contact you by email or, if it is in person, they will be rushed and not spend much time with you.  Anything that involves their business will generally appear unprofessional.  That’s because it takes an investment of time and money to create a business that provides value to its customers.  Crooks just want a quick buck.

Crooks generally make exaggerated claims such as having  automated software that will have your hotel ranking number 1 in Google immediately, that they have personal connections with the search engines to get your hotel ranked number 1, or that they have the hidden secret to making millions of dollars and they will let you on the secret… for $77.

The Outdated

The outdated are people who mean well and believe what they say, but their information is outdated.  Internet marketing is an extremely rapidly evolving industry.   The speed at which the Internet is growing and evolving causes almost daily shifts in which marketing tactics are effective and which ones will get your web site banned from the search results.   Given this rapidly evolving environment, it is easy to see how anyone could be outdated.  Just keeping up with the changes in Internet marketing alone can be a full time job for anyone.

The problem with The Outdated comes about most often from other industries who are trying to multi-task.  For example, web site designers and computer programmers.  When Internet and search technology was brand new it was easy for people to dabble in both worlds.  Today, all of these niches are growing so complicated it is difficult to be an expert in all of them.   A web programmer who also says they are an Internet marketer must keep up with the changes in programming as well as Internet marketing, as well as hospitality marketing (phew!).  Today, that is nearly impossible.  Although The Outdated mean well, the end result is the same as with the crooks, the user customer gets little to no return on their investment.

People who tout things like keyword density, meta keyword tags (different from meta descriptions tags), placing hidden text on your hotel’s web site, and building link farms are all working off of outdated information.

The Survivalist

It is much easier to sell a client on something they think they already know rather than to tell the client that they are wrong and to reeducate them.  The rapidly changing atmosphere of the Internet it makes it difficult to sell Internet marketing services because clients that did know a thing or two about Internet marketing a few years ago now have outdated information.  The problem is the client does not know their information is outdated nor would they believe a salesman who told them so.   For example, it was popular a few years ago to create “links” pages on a web site and then exchange links with as many people as possible in an effort to build page rank (the authority of a site in the eyes of Google).  This is no longer effective and may now violate Google’s terms of service; however, many hoteliers believe it is a good technique because it was effective a few years ago.

So, The Survivalist comes to the realization that the only way he can survive is by selling the customer on what the customer already knows.  It is easier and much faster to make a sale that way than by trying to reeducate someone.   The Survivalist justifies it to himself because he says he is only providing the services that his customers want; regardless as to whether or not the services are effective.  And to some degree, he is correct.  There are plenty of hoteliers who think they are right no matter what and don’t want to hire someone who tells them otherwise.

You can spot The Survivalist because they either always agree with you (also known as a “yes” man) or they tout many of the same techniques as The Outdated.

The Inexperienced

The inexperienced are also people who mean well but offer bad advice because they simply have no practical experience implementing the techniques they have only read about.  For the hotel industry, the inexperience can either revolve around a lack of experience in marketing or with good marketers who are not experienced in the hospitality industry.

• Inexperienced In Marketing

These are people who would like to make a living with marketing and have read a lot about it but just don’t have any actual experience implementing marketing in real world situations.  Street smarts are far different from book smarts and you don’t want someone learning how to market on your dime.

You can spot these folks by having a general understanding of marketing yourself and asking them a few tough questions, in person or on the phone, not via e-mail.  By gauging how easily they respond to your questions, you can get an idea of their true comprehension of the subject matter.  If you do this by e-mail though, you give them time to research the topic and craft a good response which defeats the point.

Another very common example of the inexperienced marketer is cold callers and account representatives for services like directories, online advertisers, pay-per-click managers, and large search engine optimization companies.  These people usually have no marketing experience what so ever.  They were merely given a short presentation about the product they are selling, a sales script, and a telephone list.  They generally make pointless statements to you like their web site being #1 nationally or their web site winning a certain award or any other “fact” that has nothing to do with sending you bookings.  Our Interactive Training Center cover’s dealing with cold callers more in depth.  For know, understand that cold callers are only interested in sales, not in providing customers with value.  Unless you know how to identify if a service is quality before you buy, it is best not to conduct businesses with them.

• Inexperienced In Hospitality

There are many smart and well intentioned marketers out there who gear their services to lodging properties like hotels, bed and breakfast’s, and inns but they don’t have any relevant experience in the hospitality industry.  This causes conflicting information with experienced hospitality marketers because the inexperienced will recommend techniques that are either not appropriate for a hotel (for example, blogging to build a readership base) or are just impractical given the time constraints an innkeeper experiences every day.  Someone who has worked with hotels has a completely different perspective than someone who actually ran a hotel.

You can spot marketers who are inexperienced in the hospitality industry by either asking them directly what their experience is or by learning Internet marketing yourself, or at the least learning the basics, so you can tell if the techniques they recommend are relevant to the hospitality industry.

Experienced Hospitality Marketers With Differing Opinions

Of those people who are truly experienced in the field of hospitality marketing, you are always going to have some differences of opinion.  This is common in any industry.  One experienced marketer may tell you that a specific lodging directory is important and another experienced marketer may tell you that a different directory is more important.  Chances are they both know what they are talking about and they will both get you to the same  end goal, just by taking different paths.  The important thing is to pick one person or company and allow them to implement your marketing plan through to completion.  Marketing is more of an art than it is a science and therefore it is important that you find someone you like and stick with them for a while.  Otherwise, if you keep jumping around on different paths, you will never get to your end goal…maximum occupancy.

Avoiding a Market for Lemons

I believe that no one can market a lodging property better than the owner or on-site staff can market it.  No one will be more frugal with money, spend more time getting things right, or be more realistic in their marketing approach than those who have the most to gain by the hotel’s success and the most to lose by its failure.  That is why I founded Occupancy Builders, to teach hoteliers and innkeepers how to manage their own properties.

This approach, however, is not right for everyone, especially larger properties.  If you must hire an outside third party to manage your hotel’s marketing, it is important that the person doing the hiring has some understanding of modern hospitality marketing techniques, including a good understanding of Internet marketing.   Failing to do so places a hotel in a market for lemons scenario, that is, a market where the only services they can buy are inferior services because they don’t know how to identify quality marketing service providers from the bad ones.

Increase Occupancy By Never Saying “No”

When someone calls you to make a reservation and you don’t have availability during the time they are requesting, don’t tell them “no” (unless you have the freedom to say no to that specific booking). This is a common mistake made by many hoteliers or their staff because it is natural to answer a persons request with a direct answer.

Rather than just saying you don’t have availability, a better approach is to provide them with alternative dates or rooms and a reason why these alternative dates work better. This is best accomplished by asking them the purpose for their visit before you tell them you don’t have availability.

Once you find out why they are making these travel plans in the first place, you can tell them you don’t have availability for that time period and suggest a new date. Along with the new date give them a reason why that new date would be better.

Examples:

• If they are booking for an anniversary, suggest another date for their visit and tell them it will be slower so they will have more privacy.

• If they are looking for a cheap getaway, suggest a new date during the slow part of the week and give them a discount on a better room.

• If they are asking for a specific room that is already booked, ask them why they want that specific room. Then provide them with alternative rooms that can meet their same needs/desires. (If this keeps happening for the same room and not other rooms, it can be an indication that you need to improve the marketing on your web site for the weaker rooms.)

• If they are looking for a group retreat and you don’t have as many rooms as they need, suggest a new date and tell them those dates are better because they can have their pick of rooms because you are not booked up yet during that time period.

Offering alternatives takes some getting used to but eventually it will be second nature to you or your staff.  Of course it will not work for the majority of bookings but even if you save 1 out of 10, it was worth the extra 15 seconds it took to suggest a new date.

As an Innkeeper, You Are in an Internet Based Business

According to Forrester Research, 83% of travelers are on-line, with that number expected to reach 90% by 2011.  In a survey conducted by HeBS, most inns are seeing the majority of their bookings coming from on-line marketing channels causing 63% of hoteliers to increase their Internet marketing budgets and decrease their off-line marketing budgets this year.  This data backs up the personal experiences of most lodging owners who have invested in their Internet marketing presence.   Even people who call in to book rooms have most likely viewed the hotel’s web site before calling.

All of this leads to one undeniable fact:  Today, hospitality has become an Internet based business.

No, you are not selling products on EBay.  You are not drop shipping from your house or providing a membership based service on your web site.   What makes hospitality an Internet based business is the fact that most travelers are researching their travel options on-line.  Therefore these potential guests are demanding that you sell your service (hospitality) on-line.  So although your actual service may be provided on-site at your property, the sale (where you make your money) takes place over the Internet.

By switching your mindset from having a physically based business to an Internet based business it makes it easier to put your marketing priorities in order.  For the vast majority of lodging properties, off-line marketing such as print advertising and radio do not provide nearly as great a value as on-line marketing does.

The value of on-line marketing compared to off-line marketing

Print advertising is very inefficient.  It requires advertisers to pay the costs for ad creation, paper, printing, and distribution; most of which will be distributed to people who will never be interested in your service in the first place.  This, however, is not the primary factor that makes it less effective than Internet marketing.

With off-line marketing, you are typically interrupting people to push your message in front of them.  Whether it is an advertisement in a magazine, a commercial on the radio, or hanging posters in local shops, the majority of people who come across your advertising are not actively looking for your service.  To most people, your off-line marketing is more of an interruption to their day than anything else and yet, you have spent money to market to each and every one of them.

Contrast this with Internet marketing.   People who come across your on-line marketing are generally people who are actively searching for your service.  They have performed some intentional action in which they were specifically inquiring about the services you offer such as typing “Los Angeles bed and breakfast” into a search engine or clicking on your listing from an on-line directory.  Subsequently, most of the leads you are paying for are far more qualified than with other forms of marketing.   This is called “pull marketing” because you are pulling people in who are actively trying to find your service.

Keep off-line marketing’s value in perspective

This is not to say that off-line forms of marketing are completely ineffective.  In fact, they can be great for branding your business and a few do directly generate some bookings.  A majority of small and medium size hotels, however, just don’t have the budget to advertise for branding purposes alone.  Besides, even for branding purposes, the Internet offers more concentrated opportunities, such as advertising on niche sites where your consumer groups typically visit (i.e., web sites that focus on skiing, nutrition, fishing, leisure travel, etc…).

When it comes to marketing for the purposes of directly increasing occupancy, the return on investment with Internet marketing is far greater than off-line marketing for most hotels.  Lower advertising costs, qualified leads, and consumer demands mandate you market your lodging property primarily on the Internet.

Keep your priorities straight

As you plan your marketing strategy, keeping a mindset that you are an Internet based business will help keep your priorities in order and occupancy on the rise.  Let your competitors blow their marketing budgets elsewhere while they wonder why you are doing so well.