Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2011

As has become my tradition at the end of each year and beginning of a new one, here’s my summary of 111 marketing ideas to consider as we enter 2011.

Planning & strategy

• The #1 purpose of marketing is retaining your customers. Focus on that before pursuing new markets.
• Read The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing
• Why you? Why now?
• Personalization is a growing trend - use it wherever you can
  
• Make a stop-doing list
• Make sure you’re signed up for fresh new ideas from me each week (if you haven’t already)
• Talent is everything. Spend all you can (and then some) recruiting, retaining, rewarding the best people.
• Do you have a list of allstars you want to hire? Always be casting. (Good Seth Godin post)
• Recruit from clubs
• Offer new hires $2,000 to quit before they begin
• Are you prepared to let 75% of your new initiatives fail?
• “The most important trait for innovation today isn’t creativity, but curiosity.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Consistency is everything
• We’re all stock traders now
• Post a list of customer suggestions in action
• Read Peak by Chip Conley

Social Media

• Appoint a social media ambassador to “own” your efforts in this area
• When building your social media team, include person from every department: management, marketing, PR, product development, customer service, etc. ““Employees can take brand message, localize it, and put their personality behind it.” – Claire Elias/STA Travel
• Read my free report – Beyond Account Setup: 29 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
• Don’t try to buy social media fans. Avoid the “campaign” mindset, and understand that forming the relationships for a great online community will take years.
• The one-line recipe for success in social media: An inside story from a real person that loves what they do
• Turn guests into content producers
• Turn your loyal fans into celebrities
• Put a Flip camera on every property
• Make sure to have a human identity behind your corporate social media profile
• Don’t outsource Twitter
• Retweet your own important content (people could miss it otherwise)
• Try using Twitter to collect testimonials. Save positive tweet mentions as favorites you can refer back to.
• Use TwitterSheep to find what your followers care about
• Create a Twitter background with contact/sales information
• You don’t always have to make sales offers in social media to make a lot of money – go 0ff-topic every once in a while
• Try some of these Facebook plugins from Involver
• Think twice about advertising your Facebook page URL – it only builds their brand, makes you even more reliant on them. Instead, send traffic to a landing page hosted on your site.
• Get creative in the way you share photos on Facebook
• Used LinkedIn to generate sales leads
• If you’re opening a new hotel, consider using a Flickr group to build pre-opening buzz
• Social media is the richest focus group that ever existed
• Learn from Fairmont and have social media followers create your next promotional package
• Social ROI is from insights, not necessarily sales
• Google and Bing have confirmed that Twitter/Facebook postings do help with search engine placements
• Understand the basics of social CRM
• Start observing the best hotels on Facebook, like Joie de Vivre
• Start following the best hotels on Twitter, like @FairmontHotels @Kimpton @ApexHotels
• Learn from Fierro Hotel on how to use Tumblr: InsideBuenosAires.com and WeLoveFierro.com

Website

• Don’t celebrate the launch
• Be compatible with Google’s Instant Previews
• Build content through partnerships
• Buy a .TV domain name and create a video channel there
• Look at these 15 well-designed websites – and see why they work so well
• Try optimizing landing pages around ‘who’ you know, not ‘what’ you know. (Including connections from networks like Facebook gives a personal connection to the company.)
• Drive traffic by reaching out to past guests
• Make sure you do 3 things in 3 seconds: 1) load the page quickly 2) Visually WOW them 3) Get them involved
• Use this checklist of 43 questions if you’re going through a re-design
• Take advantage of “white hot” online touch points when asking for action
• Use video creatively throughout the revenue cycle
• Think about using travel webcams like Starwood is doing with RoomWithAView.com
• Search optimization is more important than ever, but the rules have changed. Learn and adapt.
• Know how Google instant affects your marketing
• Use live chat on your website to close more sales
• Maintain consistency (in everything) across all booking channels
• Encourage direct bookings by verifying website security, offering multiple language and currency support
• Read Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto

Mobile

• Create a mobile-friendly website to avoid platform issues
• Know that 81% (to 19%) prefer mobile websites to mobile apps for researching products and prices (eMarketer 2010 survey)
• Make sure you don’t run a mobile ad, and then send traffic to a page on your site that’s not mobile-friendly
• Use QR codes to bridge the online/offline gap (Example from Tailor Made Hotel)
• 4 important things to do with mobile for customers: learn, recognize, reward and personalize
• You’re not going to succeed in mobile on your first try. Experiment now – learn by doing.
• A big opportunity for mobile is rewarding loyalty.
• Look at TopGuest
• Creating great mobile experiences requires you to get out in the world and interact with your environment. Don’t design in a cubicle.

Reputation Management

• Tracking online reputation should not just be aggregating reviews. Use a tool that gives you insight into trends and patterns.
• I recommend you start using ReviewPro (Why I am)
• Begin tying online reputation to your staff bonuses
• Know that 86% of consumers are using reviews as a deciding factor in their purchasing decision
• An unhappy customer used to tell 3 people, now they tell 3 million. This highlights the importance of quickly catching and resolving issues.
• On the brighter side, the majority – two-thirds, actually – of online reviews are positive [research from Keller Fay Group]
• Increase customer confidence by monitoring, collecting, and re-publishing positive reviews
• Monitoring for online mentions sometimes provides you with some great promotional material
• Write better post-stay “thank you” emails to encourage online reviews
• Get creative in how you ask for reviews. Like a banner on your WiFi network login page.
• “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Advertising

• Run a brand ambassador campaign in social media (Mashable examples)
• Let a customer write your next ad
• Experiment with strong risk-reversal messages in your copy
• Embrace behavioral ad targeting in PPC and elsewhere
• Banner ads are quickly evolving
• Partner with websites that attract people already decided to visit your destination
• Barter unsold rooms for advertising

Email

• Social media use has not replaced email for sales (Just look at Groupon)
• Make sure to use good landing pages
• Add some security indicators (like a sample email screenshot) to increase email subscription rates
• Segment your email list by personas (not just purchase history)
• Build a preferences center to help subscribers receive more relevant emails
• Permission isn’t forever

Service

• Customer service is the new marketing
• Understand the “Brand Butler” trend
• Ask your guests if they would recommend you to a friend
• Create a buying experience centered around the customer
• Re-think your guest check-in process
• Real-time responses are crucial on the social web. Have systems and processes to deliver timely information and support to your guests.
• Try a service like CoTweet to share support responsibilities among staff
• Read Experience Economy by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore

Amenities & Technology

• A poor hotel Wi-Fi experience influences 36 percent of business travelers on whether they re-book that specific hotel in the future [more research on hotel WiFi]
• iPads are the #1 most-wanted tech amenity guests want from a hotel [USA Today poll]
• Consider virtual meeting technology as a way to profit from lower business travel volume

Press & Media

• Send out social media news releases
• Try PitchEngine – a social media PR builder
• Start offering more unique hotel amenities that get people talking
• Listen to the PR 2.0 chat

Measurement & Analytics

• Understand travel booking isn’t usually a linear process
• Learn how Barbara Pezzi improves her marketing with analytics segmentation
• Run these 10 reports in Google Analytics
• Social media should shorten your sales cycle. Watch your number of sales leads, cost per lead, sales closing ratio, channel conversion rate, and time to closing to measure improvement.

Source: http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/hotel-marketing-ideas-for-2011/

Editor: Alex Rojas writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica