You have a solid list of email contacts that you’ve built up over years, but do you have any other information about the recipients besides their email address? Did they travel with kids, on business, for a particular conference or on a romance package? All of these little details can help you improve your email marketing results and your relationships with your guests. Today’s tech-savvy travelers are used to personalized, targeted messaging and they are expecting you to deliver the same level of service to their inboxes.

A recent e-Dialog survey of US and UK internet users revealed that email recipients are interested in emails that show the company’s knowledge of their likes, dislikes and if they were a returning customer or not.

If you do have some of this personal information about your guests it is time to start segmenting and creating emails around specific traveler types. Here are a few ideas to get you moving in the right direction.

Identify Segments – Take a look at the calendar from last year. Map out particular conferences or events that may be happening again this year. How about weddings? One-year anniversaries are a happy time to send out special romance deals.    Did you run any popular children packages? Target those folks with a kid-friendly promos and watch the tikes toddle through the doors. Internet users love deals so hit up past guests with a fantastic “Thank You” rate to come back and they will.

Be Consistent When Highlighting Interests – From your subject line to the imagery and text within in the emails, keep your targeted group in mind when developing creative. Your road warriors may not respond well to photos of the pool filled with kids and your returning families won’t find a romantic candle-filled suite appropriate for pillow fights.

Close the Loop – Most marketers believe that their job is done once the email has gone out. But to really wow guests and remind them that you have their interests in mind you need to follow through. Make sure the front desk staff is aware of specialized email promotions that have gone out so they can actively look at the profiles of those checking in and offer them the appropriate amenities and services according to their likes and dislikes.

Clean Up Your List – You can’t get a good idea of who your guests are and what they like if you have a list littered with duplicate names and ancient email addresses. Make de-duping and updating your contact info a habit so that you have a better sense of the actual data you have.

Is Your CRM Light on Details?

It is never too late to start collecting more information on the likes and dislikes of your customers.  There are a few easy touch-points to hit up guests for more personal data.

-Reservations Desk - Adding a few questions to the end of your reservations script can make a huge difference in being able to segment your customers for email marketing purposes.

-Front Desk - Check in can be the perfect place to fish for details. It may add a few seconds onto your average check in time but it will be well worth it. Offering guests an incentive to fill out a quick card for you can also do wonders for data collection.

-Online Reservations – While you don’t want to delay potential guest from hitting that “Buy Now” button, you can still ask for a bit of info on the confirmation or “Thank You” page or even follow up with them in the confirmation email.

Our clients often ask us if they should use Facebook ads. Many hotels are skeptical about using the ads and question if they will be effective or not. We recommend that hotels do use Facebook ads, but that they do so with clear goals in mind, and that they follow best practices when it comes to designing, targeting, testing, and tracking their ads.

Before using Facebook ads, hotels should understand the advertising platform. As with any advertising medium, the objective of using Facebooks ads is to increase your business. Facebook ads have the power to do this, but as their representatives often state, their platform is primarily in demand generation rather than demand fulfillment.¹

In other words Facebook considers itself to be a platform where you can generate interest in your brand – demand generation, which typically happens at the top of the sales funnel. Once consumers have decided to take action, they may conduct more specific searches on Google, which can be used for demand fulfillment.  Facebook ads are used more to stimulate interest in a brand, and engage with customers early in the buying & decsion making cycle.  As the Facebook marketing slogan states, ‘Find your customers before they search.’

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook ads appear on the right-hand column of the Facebook pages and are highly targeted to the users’ profiles and interests. Advertisers can easily create ads through their own account, and can set a minimum budget for as low as $1 a day. You can choose to bid by CPC (cost per click), or by CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

Only three ads may show at a time on a page, and the ads to be displayed are determined by an algorithm that takes into account the ad performance and the bid. Advertisers can run multiple ads simultaneously, and can set up start and end dates up to 30 days in advance. You can then track the performance of your ads through the Facebook reports and your analytics software.

How can my hotel benefit from using Facebook Ads?

Targeted Messaging

Facebook compiles personal information from its users’ profiles and interests, and will display your ads to people who match the criteria you specify. This is extremely beneficial for hotels, because they typically have different segments with different target audiences that will require different ads.

For example, you may want to create an ad to promote weddings at your hotel. You can specify that your ads be shown only to females, who are engaged, between the ages of 20-35, and who live in a specific state, or province. You could also create ads about your spa, restaurant, or meeting space, and select different demographics for each ad.

The targeting options you can choose from include location, age, birthday, sex, keywords, education, workplaces, relationships, interested in men or women, languages, connections, and friends of connections. Below is a brief description of how these options can help your hotel send targeted messages:

Target people in different countries, cities, or states: This option is very useful to hotels. For example, a beach resort that is a short distance from a city may run a summer campaign targeted exclusively to people who live in that city. You may also want to run an international campaign to promote your hotel to an overseas market.

Create ads that will appeal to different age groups: Different types of hotels may appeal to different age groups.  For example, a golf resort may want to target an older demographic than a modern urban hotel.

Send people special offers on their birthdays: Create a separate ad with a birthday image and perhaps a special offer.

Target to men or women: Different ads will appeal to different genders. For example, you could create two ads for the same weekend getaway, one that would appeal more to women, and one that would appeal more to men.

Use keywords that match users’ interests: This is the most important targeting option. When a Facebook user sets up an account, they can reveal a lot of personal information about themselves, including their basic information, where they went to school, and where they work. There is also a personal profile where users can list their favorite activities, interests, favorite music, favorite TV shows, and favorite books.

As an advertiser, you can select words (keywords) to target, and your ad will be displayed to people who have used that word somewhere in their profile. For example, if I am creating an ad to promote my hotel restaurant, I would need to think of the words that someone interested in food and dining might include in their profile, such as such as, ‘dining out,’ ‘gourmet food,’ or ‘cooking.’ If I include these words in the keyword section, my ad will be displayed to people who have used these words in their profile.

You should create different versions of your ads to match different profiles. For example, think of the city or town you are in. Why do people go there? Some go to ski, to see a sports event, to shop, to see the sights, to go to a show, to visit a museum, etc. You could create an ad for your hotel that includes an image of a museum in your city, and display it to people who are have expressed an interest in art or in visiting museums. You could take the same ad, and include an image of a famous sports event in your town, and display it to people who are interested in sports, a specific team, or a specific event.

Customize your ads to students of specific universities: Send an ad to students of a specific university, and offer them a special discount for family members. For example, if I was a student at Emerson, and I saw an ad that said, ‘Hey Emersonians – Special Discount for Your Parents!’ it would get my attention. The National Center for Education Statistics can give you a list of all the Universities in your area.

Include the name of a specific workplace in your meetings ads: Create a meetings ad and include the name of the company that you are targeting. For example, employees of ‘Compstar Rhode Island’ would be interested in an ad that stated, ‘50% Discount on Weekend Retreat for Compstar, Rhode Island Employees!’

Target wedding ads to couples who are engaged, or offer weekend getaways for married couples: Relationship targeting is very useful to hotels. You could promote weddings at your hotel to couples who are engaged. You could even go a step further and create a separate ad for the bride-to-be, and another one for the groom-to-be. With Facebook ads you can also target married couples of various age groups, and offer weekend getaways.

Create ads targeted to the gay and lesbian community: Facebook ads allow you an excellent opportunity to create ads that will reach the gay and lesbian community. Most ads on the market are very generic and cannot target specific groups. People in the gay and lesbian community will become more aware of your hotel, and perhaps choose you over your competition.

Create ads in different languages: People respond better to ads that are in their own language. Create ads that will appeal to foreign language speakers and tap into new markets.

Create ads exclusive to your fans with Connection Targeting:

Connection targeting allows you to send ads targeted to people who are fans of your page, people who have used your applications, members of any groups you may have, or people who have RSVP’d to one of your events.

Send your connections a special offer, and encourage them to share it with their own network of friends and family. Your connections have already proclaimed their interest in your brand, and they will be happy to engage with you. You also have the option to exclude your connections from seeing an ad, for example if you are sending an ad to promote your Facebook page, you may not want to send it to people who are already fans of your page.

You can even send ads that target the friends of your connections:

One step further than connection targeting, you can also target friends of your connections. For example, let’s say that Sally is a fan of your hotel Facebook page. When your hotel sends an ad, you can select the ‘friends of connections’ option, and all of Sally’s friends will receive your ad. Even more exciting, the ad will also announce that their friend Sally is a fan of your hotel Facebook page. Sally’s friends are more likely to click on your ad because they trust Sally, and they will be curious about your hotel.

Facebook users who fit a specific profile will welcome your ad

There has been some controversy whether ads should appear on Facebook, because it is mainly a place to socialize, not shop. However, the Facebook ads targeting options allow you to target people who have already proclaimed an interest in things related to your hotel or to travel. For example, they may have expressed an interest in your city, an interest in an activity your city offers, an interest in dining out, or an interest in leisure travel. These are the people who will see your hotel ads, and they will welcome the opportunity to learn about a special offer at your hotel.

Awareness building

Another benefit to using Facebook ads is that your ad will gain a lot of exposure, which will build more awareness about your hotel. Every time your ad appears on a page it is called an impression. Even if your ad doesn’t receive many click-throughs, it will still be effective because the impressions will generate awareness.

Facebook ads can affect search behavior

Studies have been conducted that explore the impact of a brand’s exposure in social media on users’ search behavior. One such study, conducted by GroupM, revealed that searchers who engage with social media, especially those exposed to a brand’s influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms compared to consumers who do not engage with social media.² (Lower-funnel terms express action and loyalty including campaign brand terms and brand product terms. Upper-funnel terms express awareness and consideration such as industry relevant terms or general product attributes.)

You have less competition (if you advertise now)

Facebook ads are still relatively new, and many hotels haven’t figured them out yet, but they will. Some businesses are afraid to advertise on Facebook because they believe some of the other ads appear spammy or low quality. The flip side of the coin are the large corporations who also advertise on Facebook. If you create a well-designed ad with an attractive image and clever copy, your ad will stand out, and you won’t be competing with hundreds of other hotels.

It is wise to start advertising on Facebook now while you have less competition. Businesses are becoming more aware of the opportunities that Facebook ads present. Tim Kendal, Facebook’s Director of Monetization, stated in a September article from ‘Daily Finance,’ that the number of advertisers on the platform has more than tripled over the past 12 months.¹

FACEBOOK AD TIPS

Set up a Facebook business page

Regardless of whether you are using Facebook ads or not, you should definitely set up a Facebook page for your hotel. Encourage your guests to become fans of your page. Any action a fan takes on your page will go into the news feeds of all their friends’ pages. For example, if Sally signs up to become a fan of your page, all of her friends will be notified. They will also be notified if she takes some action on your site, for example if she RSVP’s to an event. You can also create ads to promote your Facebook page where users can sign up to become a fan without even leaving their own page.

Set measurable goals

Outline your goals. What do you want to achieve from your ads? Once you have identified your goals, you will have something to compare your ad campaign performance to.

Create compelling ads with relevant landing pages

Create copy and images that will stand out and capture attention. Specify what makes you different from your competition, and have clear calls to action that will tell users what they can do when they arrive at your landing page, i.e. ‘Book Now!’ It is also smart to include a special offer or promotion.

Facebook has outlined some suggested best practices you can follow. Make sure that your landing page is relevant to your ad, and allows users to follow through on your calls-to-action. You should also change your creative often to keep users’ interest. Don’t forget to optimize your ads and landing pages with your keywords.

Test, Test, Test!

As with most online advertising, you can greatly increase the effectiveness of your Facebook ads through testing. For example, you can send two different ads to the same audience to see which one performs the best. You can test ad copy, imagery, landing pages, and experiment with different targeting options. A trick of the trade is a tool called Facebook Ads Manager, and it can help you conduct split testing and multivariable testing. It can also help you automatically create thousands of Facebook ads.

Start big, narrow down

Start out by creating many ads, and then narrow it down to the ads that are most effective. You may also want to experiment with bidding by cost-per-click and cost per thousand impressions to see which option is most profitable for your ads.

Track your results

You must monitor your ad campaign’s performance. With your account, you can analyze data about your click-through-rates, impressions, and average cost-per-click or cost per thousand impressions. You will start to notice what works well, and what doesn’t, and then you can decide what action you need to take to improve your campaign. You can also integrate your ads with Google Analytics so you can track conversions on your website.

The best way to learn if Facebook ads are right for your hotel is to give it a try. Here at O’Rourke, we believe that Facebook ads are an effective way to build awareness about your hotel, and generate new business. It is an inexpensive platform to use, and if you test your ads, and follow best practices, you could have a lot of success with Facebook ads. According to the Facebook statistics, there are more than 350 million active Facebook users. That is a large audience that your hotel could tap into. The targeting options available, and the popularity of the site, make it a perfect advertising platform. Start advertising now to get ahead of your competition, and as the Facebook ad slogan states,  ‘Find your customers before they search.’

¹ Facebook revenue guru says demand generation is secret to ad success

² Group M, The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption

If you would like to learn more about Internet Marketing and Social Media Strategies, please call us at 978-465-5949 or send an email to info@orourkehospitality.com.

Ever since social media arrived on the scene there has been speculation that it would be the death of e-mail. Some claim that e-mail is on the decline, and it is the old way of communicating. That is not exactly the case. E-mail is not threatened by social media, in fact it is the home base of all accounts, it drives social web activity, and it can work in sync with social media to increase overall message reach and engagement. We will discuss how social media has affected e-mail usage, explain why your hotel should use the two in conjunction, and give you some tips on how to use the two tactics together.

There have been many research studies aimed at finding out which is the most popular online activity, e-mail or social media. These reports have had conflicting results. The Nielsen Company released a report in March 2009 which revealed that social networks/blogs rated 4^th in the most popular online activity – ahead of personal e-mail.¹ However, other reports reveal the opposite, such a September 2009 report from Pew Research which revealed that on an average day, 58% of internet users send or read e-mail, as opposed to the 27% who use social networking sites.²

This is not to say that internet users use only e-mail or social media sites, as many people use both. So the next question is, does the use of social media decrease e-mail usage? The Nielson Company speculated that it would, and set up a research study to prove their hypothesis. However the results of this experiment, released in September 2009, revealed that social media use makes people consume e-mail more, not less, as they had originally assumed.³ Below is a chart of their findings on how many minutes low, medium, and high social media consumers spent on e-mail over the course of a year.

This chart reveals that social media doesn’t decrease e-mail usage. E-mail is actually a driver of social web activity and the currency of all social media accounts. Most people who use social media sites have their settings set so that they will be notified by e-mail when there is activity on their social media sites. People who participate in social media may also make new connections, and once the initial contact is made, they often move their communication to e-mail.

Why Should your Hotel Combine Social Media with E-mail Marketing?

“The use of e-mail in social networks will be one of the biggest challenges for direct marketers. Over the next five years, marketers must bridge the gap between social and traditional inboxes with social sharing tools,” states David Daniels, Forrester Research Vice President.⁴ This challenge is here now. Your hotel can improve the reach and engagement of your messages by combining e-mail with social media. Below is an outline of why your hotel should use the two together.

• You can listen to your audience and develop your e-mail campaign accordingly

Before you speak, you should listen in social media. What are people saying about your hotel, your competition, your city, or travel in general? This could affect the type of message you want to send. For example you might learn that people are talking about an offer from your competition i.e. a hotel package that includes a free ski pass. You can then beat their offer by offering a free ski pass and include a free spa treatment.

• Social media comments now appears in search

Social media comments now appear in the search engine results pages which will increase your online visibility and drive more traffic to your website. Google has also added a real-time search feature which streams tweets and articles. Obviously you would never send out daily e-mails, but it is perfectly acceptable to send out daily Tweets which will reinforce your message and create a stronger presence in the search engine results pages.

• Social media can help your message go viral

Social media has a strong viral component and can help your message be transmitted to new audiences. It is important to build up your fans in Facebook and followers on Twitter. Encourage your fans and followers to send your message to their network.

• Social media can reinforce your message

A message that is seen various times will help your audience retain it. You can promote your offer through social media but it should be a softer version than the e-mail campaign, as most people don’t particularly like to be sold to on social media sites. You could also use social media to send out ‘teasers’ of upcoming offers. Social Media can be used to create awareness, and e-mail can be used to solidify a message or encourage a call-to-action.

• Social media allows for real-time, two-way communication

Contrary to e-mail, your fans and followers have the option to respond to your message with questions or comments in social media. This can build trust and help you develop a relationship with your audience.

• Social media allows you to communicate at point-of-need

People often send tweets to their friends when they are traveling and they often ask for hotel recommendations. If you listen in social media you can catch this, and immediately send a tweet back saying you’d love to have them at your hotel. Tweetbeep is a free tool that allows you to receive alerts on the the words you choose. For example, you could choose to be alerted whenever your city is mentioned in conjunction with the word ‘hotel’.

Tips on Using Social Media and E-mail Marketing Together

• Co-ordinate your messages and have clear calls-to-actions

Don’t just rush into sending an e-mail out and then tweeting about it. Think about what your message is, and how you can communicate it to your audience most effectively. For example you could develop a social media campaign to generate interest in an upcoming promotion, and then send an e-mail with more details. Co-ordinate your messages and have clear calls-to-action.

• Follow a communication flow

Follow a communication flow and send e-mails to individuals, not a one-size fits all mass mailing. For example if someone has inquired about your hotel meeting space, or your wedding services, or your spa, you know they have purchasing intent and you can send emails with specific information, reviews, and offers about that particular segment. Once a guest has booked at your hotel, you could send them e-mails with more details.

You can also send direct messages to your audience on Twitter and let them know you are there to answer any questions they may have. Social media allows you to communicate with your guest before, during, and after their stay with you. Listen to what individuals are saying on their own social media sites to learn more about them. The more information you have about your audience, the more targeted your e-mails can become.

• Put social media links on your e-mail signature

Add icons to your e-mail signature that link to your social media sites. By doing so, you encourage your contacts, through your daily communication, to follow you on Twitter or become a fan of your Facebook page.

• Add Share With Your Network (SWYN) links

Add links on your e-mail campaigns that make it easy for recipients to share your message with their own networks. Most marketers are familiar with the Forward to a Friend (FTAF) feature, but many users may prefer to share your message through their social media sites because it is often easier than sorting through e-mail addresses. Many e-mail service providers include a sharing option that allows your e-mail subscribers to share your message with their friends or followers. The key to motivate people to share your message is good content.

• Promote e-mail with social media and vice versa

You can use e-mail to encourage people to sign up for your social media sites and use your social media sites to encourage followers and fans to sign up to receive your e-mails.

• Create profiles on your audience and learn what social media sites they use

Keep a database of the e-mail address of those who have chosen to opt-in. Create profiles of each person and track if they also follow you on Twitter or are fans of your Facebook page. You can conduct this research yourself or there are also tools available such as Forrester’s Social Technology Profile Tool⁵ which can help you identify where your target audience is online.

• Measure success

It is very important to measure the success of your campaigns to see what is working and what isn’t. Use Google Analytics to track your social media campaigns. There are many free tools available such as Twitter Analyzer which can help you keep track of shared links. For a longer list of tools see the blog post, ‘16 Ways to Track Links Shared on Twitter or Friendfeed’ by Chris Martin.⁶

You can also measure the success of your social media campaign by creating a Bit.ly account which is a free link shortener. You can use the shortened links in your tweets and then track how many times your link was shared.

• Incorporate social media in your offline campaigns

Incorporate social media in all your offline campaigns by letting your audience know that they can follow you on Twitter and become a fan of your Facebook page. You may even give them an incentive to sign up. For example if you send a direct mail piece about weddings at your hotel you could then offer a discount on a spa service for brides-to-be who opt to follow you on Twitter. They could enter a special code and you could track the effectiveness of the campaign. You could then follow up with a more personalized e-mail.

Future Trends in E-Mail Marketing

In summary, e-mail marketing is still a very effective way to reach your audience, and it is not being replaced by social media. However, it is no longer a stand-alone effort and should work together with SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Traditional Marketing. Many companies are increasing their e-mail marketing campaigns for 2010. Forrester Research forecasts that spending on e-mail marketing is growing in the low double-digits annually, and could hit 2 billion by 2014. They predict that each of us will be receiving about 9,000 e-mail marketing messages a year.⁴

Below is a chart from the Center for Media Research that shows the type of media marketers are aiming to include in their 2010 Plans.⁷

It is very important that you send only relevant messages to people who have opted-in to receive your e-mails or you may be losing money. Forrester Research Vice President David Daniels claims that, “by 2014 direct marketers will waste $144 million on e-mails that never reach their primary target.”

Hotels need to become very strategic with their e-mail marketing campaigns going forward. Take a step back and look at your own e-mail campaigns. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you building a database of guests who have opted in to receive your e-mails?

• Are you profiling these guests and only sending them e-mails that are relevant to them?

• Are you sending e-mails that are effective at each stage in the buying process?

• Are you including links that encourage recipients to share your message with their network?

• Are you developing a campaign that works together with SEO, PPC, Social Media and Traditional Marketing?

• Are you measuring the results of your efforts with analytics?

If you answered no to any of these questions, we suggest you include these tactics in your new year’s resolutions. You do not have to include everything at once. Start by taking baby steps. Any improvements you can make to your e-mail marketing / social media campaign will pay off and put you ahead of your competition.

If you would like to learn more about how you can improve your hotel’s e-mail marketing campaigns please call us at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com.

References

¹ Social Networks & Blogs Now 4th Most Popular Online Activity

² Pew Internet & American Life Project

³ Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email?

⁴ Forrester Forecast: US E-Mail Marketing Spending to Reach 2 Billion in 2014

⁵ Forrester’s Social Technology Profile Tool

⁶ 16 Ways to Track Links Shared on Twitter or Friendfeed

⁷ Percentage of Marketers who Aim to Include the Following Media in 2010 Plans

Jeff Jarvis, author of ‘What Would Google Do?’ kicked off the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago last Monday.  He spoke about Google bigotry and how some traditional news corporations view Google as a monster, or Godzilla, and Google views itself as Snuffleupagus, who is harmless and just wants to help. He also addressed media as a process, not a product, and outlined some traits that make Google so successful. We took a look at how hotels can apply these same philosophies to build a better brand.

‘Vampires, Google Parasites, Content Kleptomaniacs,’ are terms that media baron Rupert Murdoch used to describe online news aggregation sites. Google’s defense is that Google is a great source of promotion, and they send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News, and more than 3 billion extra visits from their other services such as Web Search & iGoogle. That is 100,000 clicks every minute.

Jarvis states that there is a fundamental shift happening in the media economy today in regards to website content and distribution. He stressed that content by itself is nothing, and it is the links to the content that bring it value. He identified the imperatives as follows; content must be searchable to be found, online content forces specialization (do what you do best, and link to the rest), it forces efficiency when you specialize in a subject you are an expert in, and the recipient of links monetizes links.

structural change in media process v. product
There is also a structural change in media process verses product. In media we usually think of content as a product, there is a start and a finish, and in the end we put it up. When content is considered a process it changes the structure. Jarvis thinks that Google Wave¹ will allow an opportunity to create content as a process. He believes that Google may have made a mistake by introducing Wave as a new e-mail. He sees that it also has potential to be a news distributor where people can constantly update content that can be presented on one page.

The problem with ‘the article,’ he says, is that it’s imperishable. However, news changes quickly, and the value of the article goes away. The idea of a news stream is more real-time, and tools such as Twitter and RSS feeds allow for more current information. Content should be thought of as more of a process. The idea of the beginning and the end is over.

distributed vs. centralized
Jarvis states that the audience and developers have becomes the new news distributors. ‘The Guardian’ launched Open Platform² last March, which is a feature that allows content to be repurposed in different ways. There is an API (Application Programming Interface) available that will allow third party developers to access their articles in formats that are geared towards integration with other internet applications.

Today the Guardian announced they are launching an Open 100 competition where you can nominate your top open/organizations in the world. As stated on a Guardian blog post,³ the competition celebrates the power of openness and mass collaboration. While there is no clear-cut definition of ‘openness’ there is undeniably a trend to democratize and de-centralize previously closed business processes. Some are formed from the start around communities, while others are opening up their intellectual property to share with others. This promises better, faster and more efficient innovation.

Google understands that collaboration from users, and input from developers, are necessary elements. Many applications and tools are in a ‘beta’ status where tests are being performed on the product, and users and developers can give their feedback.  As a Google spokesperson explained, “On the web, you don’t have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update to become available, improvements are rolled out as they are developed.”⁴

Jarvis states that Google sees the world differently and that is what makes them so successful. He referred to his book, ‘What would Google Do?’ and said it isn’t just about Google, it’s about the profound changes taking place today and how you and your company should approach them. He highlighted some traits that have allowed Google to excel.

New Relationships

-give the people control, we will use it

-do what you do best and link to the rest

-join a network

New Public-ness

-if your not searchable, you won’t be found

-everybody needs a little SEO

-life is public, so is business

-your customers are your ad agency

New Economy

-Small is the new big

-Manage abundance

New Business Reality

-atoms

-new ethic

-make mistakes well

-life is a beta

-be honest

-be transparent

-collaborate

-don’t be evil

These philosophies apply to different fields in different ways. As a hotel marketing manager, digital media has opened up a whole realm of possibilities and your approach and attitude of how to work with your online audience will come through in every point of contact. Look at the four points listed above; new relationships, new public-ness, new economy, and new business reality. These should certainly resonate with the hotel industry.

Hotels now have the ability to create relationships with their customers. This can be done through many different channels such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Put some effort into developing these relationships with your guests, and you will be creating evangelists for your hotel who will speak highly about you to their own personal networks.

New public-ness, for better or for worse, is here to stay, and it has had a huge impact on hotels. It is now common practice for guests to write reviews and post their own photos and videos of your hotel online. Hotels have to embrace this public-ness and view it as an opportunity to learn how they can improve their hotel.

The new economy has affected hotels, but even small things you can do through internet marketing, such as posting images on a flickr account, can go a long way in helping create your brand image and direct traffic to your site.

Finally, the old ideas of how to market and brand your hotel need to change to fit the new business reality. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, be honest, be transparent, collaborate, and your guests will recognize this and feel a greater brand loyalty. When in doubt, ask yourself, “What would Google do?”

If you would like to learn more about Internet Marketing, call us at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com.

References:

₁ About Google Wave

₂ Open Platform

₃ The Open 100 Competition

₄ Google defends its definition of ‘beta’

Even though you are not directly promoting your hotel in the video, your brand will still be associated with the content, and you could have a link back to your hotel website. Once you discover and create the content your target audience is searching for, you must also take steps to promote your video online, and optimize it with keywords so it will appear in the search engine results pages.

Why should brands create online videos?

Video plays a significant part in internet marketing, and brands can use video to increase their online presence, engage viewers, and direct more traffic to their websites. Internet users enjoy watching videos, which is proven by the statistics that YouTube receives over a billion views a day, and that 20 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Corporations are starting to see the importance of using online videos and the great opportunities it provides them. Online video is considered ‘lean forward’ content because it is something the viewer has searched for, and elected to watch. The traditional T.V. ad is more ‘lean back’ content because the viewer didn’t choose to watch it, and often considers it to be an interruption of their television program.

It is also less expensive to create internet videos than T.V. spots. There are many sites where a corporation could place their videos, and many of them are free. There is also a chance that a video could go ‘viral’ which means other sites may pick it up, and people may forward it to each other.

How are brands using video?

Brands should create content specifically for the internet, and not just re-purpose television ads. Online videos are different than T.V. ads, and they should contain more authentic content with real people and real situations. One brand that works well with online video is Victoria’s Secret. Yes, perhaps this is no surprise, and they may have an upper hand here. However, they have created a fantastic Facebook page for Victoria’s Secret PINK line and have posted 16 videos. They have more than 1 million fans.

Sears was not as successful, and simply re-purposed their television ads and placed them on their facebook page. It is obvious to the viewer that they are watching an ad, and most people instinctively loose interest when they feel they are being sold to.

Brands shouldn’t rely on just one video, but should create a whole portfolio of videos. Red Bull has a video section on their website with videos that were produced years ago but are still getting views.

The Home Depot publishes educational how-to videos which indirectly promote their products without pitching them. The content of the video is focused on providing the viewer with information on how to make small repairs. Therefore, if someone is searching on ‘how to fix a toilet,’ a Home Depot video may come up. If the viewer watches that video they will see some of the Home Depot tools that they may then want to purchase.

InterContinental Hotels produced over 700 online videos about the cities where their hotels are located and posted them on their In The Know website. These videos are narrated by the concierge of the hotel who takes the viewer on a tour of the city and points out the monuments, restaurants, and points of interest. The videos were produced for relatively the same amount of money it would have cost to produce one T.V. ad. The videos were also picked up by numerous sites and were shown on an in-flight program. InterContinental Hotels thought about what the consumer would want to know and created content around it. To read more about the InterContinental videos see our blog.

How will your video be found?

Once you have discovered what travelers may be searching for, and have created video content around that, it is time to ‘seed’ your videos so they will be found by your target audience. Do some keyword research to find out what terms your target audience may be searching on. For example if you created a video about restaurants in Chicago brainstorm the various ways a person may search for that term such as; restaurants in Chicago, places to eat in Chicago, or Best Restaurants Chicago.

You should strive to have your video appear on the first few pages of Google for your selected keywords. Videos can appear organically in the search engine results pages and they can also appear in the videos tab on the navigation bar at the top left of a results page.

There is no cut and dry formula to ensure your video will appear in organic search, but there are some steps you can take that will increase its position in the search engine results pages. When you upload your video to a site such as YouTube, make sure to put your main keywords in the title of the video. You must also place your keywords in the ‘tag’ box and include them in the description of your video. Your video ranking is also affected by the number of views and votes your video has received.

Google has also just announced two YouTube features this month that could help your videos appear in organic search. The first is a preliminary roll-out of automatic captioning or auto-caps. YouTube will be able to create captions for videos using the current automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. Auto-caps was developed mostly to allow videos to be accessible to the hearing-impaired, and to enable people around the world to access the content in 51 languages. However, the captions will also help your video appear in the search engine results pages for relevant keyword searches. Auto-caps is a work in progress, and sometimes the captions are correct, and other times they are not so good, but as Google says, it is better than nothing.

The second feature Google is launching is called automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, which will make it easier for people uploading video to create captions manually. In the past it was a bit difficult and time-consuming to add captions so most people avoided it. With auto-timing you just need to create a text file of your transcript and Google will use ASR technology to match up the captions to your video. For more information, see the Google blog post on Automatic captions.

Other video hosting services are looking for ways to incorporate Search Engine Optimization tactics as a feature of their site. One such company is Fliqz.com which just released SearchSuccess this month, which is a set of tools and applications for video search engine optimization. One of their clients, Design World Online, has submitted 1,000 videos and 700 of them are already on the first page of the search engine results.

Apart from having your video appear in the search engine results pages, you should also promote your video on other sites. Place your video on your website and facebook account. Send tweets on Twitter that link to your video. Find similar videos on the same topic and post a video response with your video. Join discussion groups and post your video with your thoughts. You can also tag your video on social bookmarking sites such as delicious and StumbleUpon. Submit articles to travel-related magazines and embed your video.

Upload your video to video-sharing sites. There are hundreds of video sites available but some of the most popular ones are YouTube, Yahoo video, Vimeo, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Veoh, and Blip.tv.

A good free tool to help you upload your videos is called Tubemogul. All you have to do is upload your video once, and Tubemogul can distribute it to over 20 different sites. You have to spend some initial time setting up accounts in the various video-sharing sites, but after that it can save you a lot of time. You will also be able to see the analytics of your video and learn what keywords viewers used to find your video.

We recently met up with Brett Wilson, CEO and co-founder of TubeMogul, at Ad Tech New York and conducted a brief interview. Tom O’Rourke CEO/Founder of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing asked Brett what his advice would be to hotels in terms of creating content and then optimizing the content to appear in the search engine results pages.

Brett responded that hotels need to be thinking about what their target audience is searching for, and create content around that. He believes that video is the best medium to engage guests with your hotel. Although Brett stated he wasn’t an SEO expert, he stressed that Google looks for relevancy so your keywords must be relevant to the content. He also suggested that hotels post a video and then observe what happens. Look at the keyword reports to see which terms viewers used to find your video and then go back and iterate the keywords that are most effective.

If you would like to learn more about creating videos for your hotel please see our blog post Create Videos for Your Hotel

It’s been two months since Google introduced Sidewiki on September 23, but it hasn’t really caught fire . . . yet. When it was first announced, there was a lot of buzz on blogs and news sites, and it felt that the internet would be taken over by user-generated comments and opinions, but so far it hasn’t gained that much traction. We believe it will catch on soon, and that your hotel should be prepared for when it does.

What is Google Sidewiki and will it go mainstream?

Sidewiki is part of a Google Toolbar browser plug-in that allows users to open a sidebar on any website they are visiting and comment freely on anything they like; the website, the content, how they feel about the topic or the brand, or what they had for breakfast. These comments can then be seen by other visitors to the site (provided they have downloaded the Sidewiki toolbar) and they can leave comments as well. Users can also add links and videos, and share their comments through E-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Will Google Sidewiki go mainstream?  We cannot predict the future, but given the success of other user-generated sites such as Trip Advisor, Yelp, You Tube and Wikipedia, we have reason to believe that it may.  As it is now, users have to sign up for a Google account and install the Google Toolbar to be able to see and write comments, and many people simply don’t know it exists.

However, Google has made an API available, which means that third party developers can access Sidewiki data and integrate it into their own applications or on their websites. Surely some tool will be developed soon that will catch the public eye and bring Sidewiki into the limelight.

People aren’t quite sure how to use Google Sidewiki yet, or what kind of comments they should be leaving. Really it all depends on the purpose and content of the website. Google recently wrote a blog post reviewing the first 50 days of Sidewiki, and shared 10 examples of ways users have written comments that will benefit others who visit the same site. For example Jason Young gave his own tips on how to tune a bass guitar on a guitar website, Matt Cutts from Google warned visitors about a deceptive website that claimed that Google is hiring people to work at home, and Jesse Poe added his personal reviews to a review of an iPhone application.

In a perfect world, the idea is great! If users can supply informative, relevant, quality comments that add knowledge and insight to the website content then that’s fantastic. We believe there will be some quality commentaries with useful information. People like to share their knowledge, or experience, on a topic they feel passionate about. We can just look at Wikipedia to see that.

However we don’t live in a perfect world and many companies see Google Sidewiki as a reputation management nightmare that will open up a new channel for malicious comments and reviews, or just create nonsense clutter. It could also be used by spammers. The companies and website owners have no control whatsoever over the comments. They do not have the right to approve or delete comments, as they can with blog comments, so they are really defenseless in a sense.

We also feel the temptation is too high and it’s too easy to write. Anyone could write anything just to be heard or to vent. What’s to stop people from airing dirty laundry, or bringing up personal information? I read one comment from a woman who owned a company and was concerned that as soon as her ex-boyfriend learns about Sidewiki he will surely try to bring her company down with his comments.

What about jaded employees, competitors? Sure they can write negative things about you on external sites but these will not likely be seen by the masses. To me, it is similar to a heckler during a speech. Who is to stop the Joe Wilsons of the world yelling ‘You Lie!’ everywhere.

Google is trying to control this, and has set up a voting system that allows users to vote if a comment is useful or not. There is also an option to report abuse where users can report a policy violation such as spam, illegal content, or any post that advocates hate or violence.

Google Sidewiki also has an algorithm in place that will put the highest quality, most relevant entries first, taking into account the votes, previous entries by author, and relevance to page.

Can I block Google Sidewiki?

There is currently no opt-out option for Google Sidewiki, but given all the controversy it has caused I would not be surprised if Google considers adding the option in the future.

Many companies have found ways to block Sidewiki, and they are selling their script. Google has actually found a way around some of these sidewiki blockers.

Some companies have even modified their server settings to block any user who even has the Google toolbar installed. This is probably not the best idea if you have a commercial website.

Other companies have elected to redirect visitors to a secure page. So when visitors type in http://www.yourhotel.com they would get redirected to an https site with the same name. Sidewiki cannot run on the secure site.

Less extreme, some third party developers have created tools that can block spam from the sidewiki.

How will Google Sidewiki affect my Hotel?

In regards to hotel websites, we believe users will begin to leave reviews of the hotel right on Google Sidewiki. This should not scare hotels, as they have been dealing with user-generated reviews for years on popular sites such as TripAdvisor and Expedia. The main difference is that these reviews will be closer to home, and visitors will be able to see reviews without navigating away from your site.

As is the case with other review sites, Google sidewiki could be an asset to your hotel or detrimental, depending on the types of reviews your hotel receives. And as we discussed in a previous post about TripAdvisor, negative reviews can actually be helpful at times.

Let’s look at the positives, the negatives, and how your hotel should manage these reviews.

The Positives

• Good reviews will encourage visitors on your site to make a reservation

• You will be able to respond to these reviews unlike some of the external review sites

• Visitors who read the reviews won’t be distracted by ads from your competitors

•  Sidewiki content can rank in the Search Engines, which can drive more traffic to your site

• Visitors who comment on your site can also share their comments through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook which can also rank in the Search Engines and contribute to your web presence

The Negatives

• Similar to any review sites there is an opportunity for a guest to leave a negative or unfair review which you will be unable to remove

• It is just one more place you must monitor every day

• Comments may be too general or unstructured. On a standard review site there are different areas that the guest has to review such as cleanliness or service. Sometimes a guest will give a top rating to one area and a lower rating to another, which will often balance it out. On sidewiki, a guest may just mention what they didn’t like. There may also be reviews mixed in with other comments or perhaps even questions.

• Some review sites require proof that a guest has stayed at your hotel before they can write a review. This is not controlled with Google Sidewiki.

• Some review sites threaten to blacklist competitors if they are found out writing false negative comments about your hotel. Again this is not controlled with Google Sidewiki.

• On the flip side some review sites threaten to blacklist companies that write positive reviews about their own company. What is in place to stop you from enlisting people to write positive comments on your site, or voting on all the positive comments? Your competitors could be doing the same on their sites. Users may begin to distrust the comments altogether.

• Who is to stop a competitor from writing a comment on your site trying to lure visitors away with their own offer?

What We Recommend Your Hotel Do

• First of all install Google Sidewiki. It’s free and it only takes a couple of seconds. You must have the latest Internet Explorer or Firefox. For Google Chrome and other browsers you can use the sidewiki bookmarklet.

• Experiment using Google Sidewiki. Once installed, you will see a blue box with arrows on the top left of the page. Click on this to open the sidewiki bar to see any comments. There is a ‘Write an entry’ option at the bottom of the bar which will allow you to write your own comment. Below is an example of sidewiki written on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. The commenter highlighted the content on the website he was adding to.

• Look at other examples of comments. As Sidewiki is still new there are not a lot of websites that have comments yet. You can see a list of 10 examples from a recent Google Blog post. You can tell if posts have been written on a page or not by the color of the sidewiki icon in your toolbar. If the icon is yellow there are posts about that webpage. If it is white with a pencil image no posts have been written.

• Take ownership of Sidewiki by being the first to comment on your own site, and set the tone for future comments. Google allows the website owner to write a comment that will always appear first at the top of the Sidewiki page, and it will be highlighted in a green box. To do this follow the instructions in this webmaster sidewiki post.

• Monitor comments on your site as you would any review site. You most likely do not have any comments yet as Sidewiki is still new, however you need to be on the lookout for comments in case they do come in. You aren’t alerted when there are comments, however Google has introduced an API feature where you can subscribe to have comments sent to you on your site, or any website, via an RSS feed. A third party developer vedovini.net has already created a site which makes this easier. http://www.sidewikirss.com/ You just need to enter in the URL of the website and it will give you a feed to subscribe to. You can then see when new comments are written.

You subscribe to sidewiki comments the same way you would for any RSS feed. I subscribe with my iGoogle. As an example, I subscribed the Mayo clinic sidewiki comments seen below. If you would like to learn more about how to set up an RSS feed we have described it in detail in our post on how to subscribe to blogs.

• Think about setting up your own system on your website for guests to enter reviews. This could be more structured and allow them to comment on all aspects of your hotel, not just freely write anything.

In conclusion, what will happen with Google Sidewiki is a bit of a mystery at the moment. There have been other attempts from other companies to let people annotate websites which never caught on. However, those other companies were not Google.

There are many positives and negatives to Google Sidewiki, and a lot of controversy.

Most companies do not like the idea of giving up control of what is seen on their website. However, the public likes to read ‘real’ comments and reviews of products and services, and that isn’t going to change. Perhaps Google Sidewiki will catch on, perhaps it won’t. Either way, Google Sidewiki is here right now, with no opt-out, and it is up to your hotel to start monitoring your comments.

If you would like more information about Google Sidewiki please feel free to call us at 978-465-5955 or write to us at info@orourkehospitality.com.

We would like to hear your opinion on Google Sidewiki. Have you tried it? Do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea? Please feel free to respond below:

If you have analytics installed on your website then you have access to this information. However, our research this month revealed that 41.8% of New England first class and luxury hotels don’t have analytics installed on their website!

What is Analytics Software?

Analytics software is a tool that gathers information about how people find your site, how they navigate through it, and how they become customers. You embed a JavaScript code into your web pages which will collect data from your users. You will then be able to view and analyze a great deal of data including how people entered your site (i.e. a banner ad, an article, or the search engines), what pages they visited, how long they spent on your site, what pages they exited on, what percentage of people left your site quickly (bounce rate), what content and keywords are most successful, and much more.

There are many software packages available, but the most popular are Google Analytics, Webtrends, and Omniture. Google Analytics is a very effective software that covers all the basics of tracking, and it is completely free. Omniture and Webtrends are paid software which will allow the user to delve deeper into the analytics and are best for very large e-commerce sites.

We recommend hotels use Google Analytics because it is a quality software that will provide you with a high-level of data at no cost. If your hotel brand has hundreds of properties, or a large complex website, you may consider paying for Omniture or Webtrends, however those sites may be overkill for most properties.  For purposes of this article we will focus on Google Analytics.

Why Does My Hotel Need Analytics?

If you aren’t tracking your website and internet marketing efforts you will never know if they are effective or what your return on investment is. You should decide what to track, set goals, and create reports that show how results tie back to goals. Below is an outline of why your hotel should use analytics:

• Analytics can help your hotel detect problems with your website

Tracking allows you to analyze user behavior on your site which will help you identify if there are any problems on your site that need to be fixed. Analytics will tell you what the most popular pages on your site are, the average time users spend on each page, the pages a user visited before and after, and where the user exited your site. It will also show you the bounce rate which is the percentage of people who entered your site but left immediately without looking at other pages or links. If you analyze this data you can learn a lot about the content of your website and what works and what doesn’t.

If a user is on your site and proceeds to the reservations page, but then exits before booking, perhaps there is a problem with the reservations page. Maybe it is too difficult to use, or there is a trust issue, or the user was distracted by a link. If a certain page has a high bounce rate, or exit rate, you should also analyze the content on that page. Ideally you want users to exit only after they have booked or made some other conversion such as providing you with their e-mail or downloading a PDF.

Make sure your booking engines can integrate Google Analytics. Some booking engines have their own tracking system which can help hotels see conversions from PPC ads and other sources. However these systems may not allow you to track what users are doing on your site, or where they are clicking. Therefore you aren’t able to detect potential problems with your website.

On a technical note, you can also see what type of computers and web browsers your visitors are using and test to see if your site functions correctly within those browsers.

• Analytics will show your hotel how people are directed to your website

If you aren’t tracking your internet marketing efforts such as your search engine optimization strategy, PPC campaign, banner ads, e-mail campaigns, or press releases/articles, then you will never know if they were effective. Google Analytics will show you exactly where your traffic came from. You can see the percentage of direct traffic (when the user directly types in your URL), traffic from referring sites (links from articles, social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and traffic from the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

You can also link Google Analytics to your AdWords account to track your PPC campaigns. Once linked, Analytics will automatically tag your AdWord links for detailed campaign tracking reports. You must manually ‘tag your links’ on all your banner ads, e-mail campaigns, and newsletters so they can be tracked by Analytics. You can learn how to do this on the Google Analytics help page. You do not have to tag links from referral sites because Google Analytics can detect the site automatically.

• Analytics will help your hotel learn about its audience

The visitors reports can show you what countries and cities your users are from, and the languages they speak. This can help you identify where your target audience is, and help you make decisions on your campaigns. Perhaps you have a lot of visitors from local areas, but not enough nationally. Therefore you may decide to do a national campaign. If you see there is a high percentage of Spanish speakers looking at your site, you may want to make want to make your site available in the Spanish language.

• Analytics will tell you which keywords are most effective

The  keywords report will show you overall trends regarding your keywords. You can see which keywords drive the most traffic to your site, and more importantly, which keywords direct users to your site who then make a conversion (take an action you have specified in your goals, such as make a reservation, download information, or submit e-mail). It is important to look at the words that lead to the highest conversion rates as opposed to the ones that drive the most traffic. You should also look at the words that have the highest bounce rate, perhaps users find your site is not relevant to that word.

How do I use Google Analytics?

Google Analytics was designed for specialists and non-specialists to be able to track and analyze the reports. However, as with anything new, it takes a little practice and you need to familiarize yourself with the software. Below we have outlined some steps that will help you get started:

Step One: Set Up a Google Analytics Account for your Hotel

Go to Google.com/analytics and select the blue button on the right that says Access Analytics.

Enter in the URL of your website, account name, country, and time zone. Google will then supply you with a code which is about 4-5 lines of javascript. You need to copy this code and place it in the footer of every page on your website. You may need to ask your web developer to help you with this, or if you want to attempt it yourself you can follow the instructions on the Google Analytics help page, or watch an instructional video on YouTube.

Step Two: Define Goals for Hotel Website

A goal, or conversion, is an action you want the user to take on your website. It can be an e-mail sign-up, an article download, or a reservation. You can also set up an optional sales funnel with up to ten pages. A funnel path is a series of pages which the visitor is expected to pass through before reaching a conversion goal. The funnel could help you see exactly where visitors drop off before making a conversion.

Every set of goals in a Google Analytics profile allows you to create up to 5 goals. You can have four sets, so that’s a total of 20 goals.

Goals & funnels will help you see if your website is performing in line with your business objectives. You will be able to make more informed marketing decisions once you see which campaign or referral brought visitors who made conversions, where the visitors live, and what keywords were most effective in attracting these visitors.

For detailed instructions on how to set up goals and sales funnels see How to Setup Goals in Google Analytics or the Google Analytics help page.

Step Three: Read Analytics Reports

Now that you have taken the time to install Google Analytics and establish goals, you must become familiar with reading and analyzing the reports. Avinash Kaushik, author of the recently published book, ‘Web Analytics 2.0,’ and the best-selling book ‘Web Analytics an Hour A Day,’ came up with a 90 – 10 rule. He says you should spend 90% of your budget on people to analyze data and 10% of your budget on the actual tool you are using.

There are over 80 reports you can customize in Google Analytics, and you can also create your own. You can group all the reports that you like together on one dashboard which you can also e-mail to others. You can also send individual reports and schedule the days and frequency you would like them to be sent out.

Whether you will assign someone at the hotel to produce the reports, or have a third party send them to you, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the dashboard and the reports available. The best way is just to log into your analytics and see what’s available.

Below we have outlined the basic reports you should view on your dashboard:

Traffic Overview/Site Usage

The Traffic Overview shows you:
• the number of visits to your site
• how many pages were viewed
• the average number of pages viewed during each visit
• the bounce rate (when a user looked at your site but exited without looking at any other pages or clicking on anything)
• the average time visitors spent on your site
• the percentage of new visitors to your site

Visitors Overview

The Visitors Overview is similar to the traffic overview but also allows you to see:
• the number of unique visitors (A unique visitor is one person. A ‘unique visitor’ is different than ‘visits’ because one person could have visited your site 5 times.)
• You can also see the Visitors Segmentation on the right hand side which allows you to see the languages of your visitors, as well as a profile of their browsers and operating systems.

Traffic Sources Overview

The Traffic Overview shows you where your traffic is coming from:
• percentage of direct traffic (users who typed your URL directly into their browsers)
• percentage of referring sites (those who clicked to your site from another site)
• percentage of traffic from search engines results pages (either organic or paid)
• the traffic sources can also show you which keywords drive traffic to your website and which ones are most effective in making conversions. You should also look at the keywords that have a high bounce rate and see if they are relevant to your site.

Content Overview

The content overview will show you how users interact with your site. You can see the following:
• the top content tab will show you which pages are most popular
• top entry pages
• exit pages (where people left your site)
• bounce rate of each page
• average time spent on each page
• on the right hand side you can click on the Navigation Summary to see how people click through your website.
• the site overlay button takes a picture of your page and can show you what people click on.

Step Four: Analyze Analytics Reports

It is one thing to ask what happened, but another thing to ask why it happened. These Analytics reports can show you how many people came to your site, how they found your site, what actions they took on your site, how long they stayed etc., but you are the one who has to interpret this information to find out what is effective and what isn’t.

Once you understand the data, see if your site is living up to the goals you established. Are visitors making the desired conversions? If not, compare your ideal sales funnel to what is actually happening on your site, and see where you may be losing people.

Analyze your traffic sources to see which campaigns are working, and where you need to improve. Perhaps you need to boost your SEO efforts to get more traffic from the search engines, or maybe your banner ad isn’t performing well.

Also remember that the analytics numbers are trends. Expect to see the numbers rise and fall. Gather the information, analyze it, and focus on what you can do to improve your site and internet marketing strategies. As Avinash Kaushik said in a recent post about Analytics, “It’s all about Outcomes baby!” He goes on to say that there are only three types of outcomes any website delivers and they are: increase revenue, reduce cost, and improve customer loyalty/satisfaction. Tracking and analyzing your website and internet marketing efforts with analytics software will help you achieve these outcomes.

Would you like to learn more?

We hope you have found this information useful. As you can see, reading and analyzing Analytics is a very important factor in the success of your hotel website and internet marketing campaign. We have discussed the basics of what analytics is, how to install it, and how to read basic reports, but there are many more features and reports you can explore. If you would like to learn more, we recommend you visit some of these sites:

Google Analytics Education Page

• access a free online course that offers comprehensive training in analytics.

• access Google Analytics videos

Google Analytics Help Center

Google Analytics Blog

Getting Started Guide

Please feel free to contact us at 978-465-5955 or send us an e-mail at info@orourkehospitality if you would like more information about how Google Analytics can help your hotel website

Rather than produce one television spot, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts chose to produce online videos which showcase more than 150 cities where their hotels are located. Working with TurnHere, they were able to produce more than 700 stunning videos for the same price it would have cost to produce just one television spot.

These intriguing videos are narrated by the concierge of the hotel who takes the viewer on a tour of the city. The videos have been extremely successful and have been used across the brand’s online marketing initiatives. The videos have also been picked up by numerous editorial sites which is free publicity for InterContinental. Below is a video clip where Jared talks about the concept, process, and result of this innovative video project.

Tom O’Rourke, Founder/CEO of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing, encourages his clients in the Hotel Industry to use online video because it is a very powerful and inexpensive sales tool that can build a hotel brand and attract new business. Tom wanted to share Jared’s insight on internet videos with the hotel industry and asked him to discuss the InterContinental Hotels & Resorts case study.

Jared explained why InterContinental decided to produce the videos instead of a television spot. He said that InterContinental had a marketing budget, for example a million dollars, that they could have spent creating a really nice television spot that touted their 1000 count bed sheets as opposed to Hilton’s 1000 count bed sheets. They could have spent that money on a great spot and put it out on television where everyone would probably TiVo through it and didn’t want to see it in the first place.

InterContinental decided in a really forward thinking way to take the same money and produce videos that created a sense of their local market knowledge. So rather than tout their bed sheets, or the size of their rooms, or the quality of the hotels, they wanted to tout their market knowledge of every city where they have a hotel. The concierge of each hotel narrates the video and takes the viewer on a tour of the city and showcases the best things to do, the best things to see, and the best places to eat.

Jared then explained the production process and said TurnHere created really interesting video content around these tours, and then chopped them up into the various component pieces. So for example they have a video about a restaurant in London, a video about a nightclub in Hong Kong, and a video about a park in Dubai. They then posted the videos broadly throughout the web and meta-tagged them correctly so the videos would be found for multiple keywords in Search.

The result is that InterContinental now has thousands of pieces of content on the web which will be found by travelers searching the internet. For example, if someone is thinking about traveling to Dubai and they conduct a search on Google for great places to eat in Dubai, several results will show up – one of which may be an InterContinental video showcasing restaurants in Dubai.

Jared explains it this way:

It’s super-relevant for me as a consumer, super-relevant for InterContinental, because while they’re not talking about the hotel itself, their concierge is in there, their brand is on that content, they are associated with content that is super-valuable to their consumers without shoving down a brand message, or without selling to any of these consumers and they’ve received a remarkable bang for the buck in doing all this.

Because it’s content, because it’s not viewed as advertising, it’s been picked up on editorial sites from all across the web, it’s shown on some in-flight entertainment systems now. The content is incredible and they didn’t pay for any of that (publicity), they just paid to create the great content.

What their insight was – here’s my consumer, here’s what my consumer wants to know, and obviously if I’m thinking about traveling I want to know about that market. So I am going to create great content to give that consumer what he or she wants to know, and I’m going to associate my brand to it, rather than selling to those consumers.

As Tom said, “That makes so much sense!”  Tom also wanted Jared to speak to the hotelier at a smaller, independent property who doesn’t have a big budget for video. He asked him what he would recommend to this group as far as producing video themselves or having videos professionally shot.

Jared doesn’t promote producing user-generated videos and says for a video to be engaging and compelling it must be produced by professionals. He stressed that you want to make the content very authentic and real, not a glitzy ad spot, but if you want to make it authentic in a high-quality way that takes a talented professional. He advises hotels to figure out what people want to know, figure out a story they’d be interested in hearing, create content around it, and associate your brand with it. He states that any hotel can do that – big or small.

Here at O’Rourke, we agree with Jared that if your videos are a central component of your internet marketing plan, such as the Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts videos, then they should be professionally produced. However, we do encourage hotels to create their own videos about special events at their hotel or guest interviews that can be posted on their blog. This can give the hotel a personal touch and generate more traffic to your website.

You can see the videos at the Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts ‘In The Know’ Website, but be warned, you just may be tempted to take a vacation!

Google’s goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant, and fastest search in the world. It doesn’t get much faster than if you are including up to the minute data. Their view is that the next time you search for a hotel, you can be aided by a real-time observation.

For illustration purposes we conducted a search query on the ‘Roger Smith Hotel’ in New York. The third result in the organic section, highlighted in yellow below, returned a query related to Twitter. Admittedly, this result links back to the Roger Smith Twitter profile, and not a live tweet, but we surmise that this could happen.

What a great service that would be for the user. Not only do they get a result that will bring them to the hotel website, but they would also have the opportunity to look at a social comment like, ‘Great night stay at the Roger Smith Hotel, service was amazing and the staff was very courteous.’ Highly useful information for the end user, but equally as important to the property for organic search engine optimization.

As the saying goes, ‘There is no time like the present.’ As hoteliers, you need to be participating in social media now. Start building a network of fans, followers and friends who trust you and your hotel. If you don’t move in this direction, you may quickly become irrelevant in not just social media, but in search as well.

]]> http://blog.orourkehospitality.com/2009/11/what-social-search-can-mean-to-your-hotel/feed/ 0 http://blog.orourkehospitality.com/2009/11/sir-martin-sorrell%e2%80%99s-forecast-for-2010-is-your-hotel-looking-ahead/ http://blog.orourkehospitality.com/2009/11/sir-martin-sorrell%e2%80%99s-forecast-for-2010-is-your-hotel-looking-ahead/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:35:22 +0000 Sara http://blog.orourkehospitality.com/?p=900

Sir Martin Sorrell finally appeared at Ad Tech NY this year, after turning down the invitations of the last three years. He opened Ad Tech with his keynote presentation on ‘What’s coming in 2010.’ He focused on New Markets, New Media, and Consumer Insights.

Sir Martin Sorrell is the founder of WPP, one of the world’s leading communications services groups and a member of the FTSE-100, FTSE-Eurotop 300, the MSCI and BusinessWeek’s Global 1000 companies. GroupM, JWT, Ogilvy and Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey are all part of the WPP Group.

Sir Martin holds an MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration and an Honorary Doctorate from London Guildhall University. He is on the Board of Dean’s Advisers of Harvard Business School, and on the Board of the Indian School of Business. He is a governor of London Business School, a member of the advisory board of IESE in Spain, and also on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Boston University School of Management, and Deputy Chairman, London Business School.

Sir Martin was under the impression that he would be speaking to a small intimate group ad Ad Tech but that was not the case as the large room was completely filled. He chose not to have a formal presentation on stage, and instead he walked through the crowd as spoke about the future of advertising in today’s changing landscape and how to work with these changes. We have compiled Sir Martin’s thoughts on the topics below and how they are relevant to your hotel.

Sir Martin’s Forecast

Mobile Phones

Sir Martin began his talk with a theme that was repeated throughout the conference, and that is the mobile phone. Mobile phones play an important role in the world today and this will continue in the future.

He stated that China and India have the largest growth rate in mobile and that the corporation China Mobile rated number 5 in the top most powerful valuable brands in the world.

He said that growth in mobile in the more traditional markets of Western Europe are led by the following five countries; The U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

As far as WWP is concerned, he stated that mobile advertisements have not been as successful as quickly as they would like to see.

Change from Traditional Agencies

Sir Martin stressed that agencies need to change from their traditional structure and adapt to the global markets and digital media.

“People who run agencies tend to be resistant to change. If you spend 10 to 20 years trying to get to the top, you don’t want to change. You want to spend the last 3 years of your time to go around the world and enjoy yourself with some stability. The last thing you want to do, as I do, is get up and deal with massive change every day,” said Sir Martin.

Recession

Sir Martin wasn’t very encouraging about the recession and stated, “I have worked in Advertising for 33 years and I have never known times more focused on cost than there are now.”

However he encouraged companies to invest in brands in times like these and said they will come out stronger when the recession is over.

He stated that corporations are more open to digital media now because it gives them quantitative opportunities to evaluate spending in ways they never have before.

Growth and L-U-V

One of the main points of Sir Martin’s keynote was how the growth of developing countries and new markets are affecting us, and he stated, “100% of the growth in our 2007 – 2008 came from growth in China and growth in India. In 2009 growth in China has been more than 100%.”

In regards to economic recovery Sir Martin stated that the world is operating at different speeds and he referred to the idea of L-U-V, first coined on a blog entry by Stella Dawson, Treasury correspondent of Reuters. L-U-V is meant to represent economic recovery in the following way:

• The L-shape represents the recovery in Western Europe where there is slow recovery after a long drop.

• The U-shape represents the recovery in the U.S. (he included Spain in this category and then noted they have dropped down), where there a feeble recovery that takes a little longer than a V-shaped one.

• The V-shaped recovery represents the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China (often referred to as the BRIC countries which was first used by Goldman Sachs) where there is a short recession with a quick rebound again.

New Markets, New Media & Consumer Insights

Sorrell said if he had to sum up WWP strategy in one sentence it would be: New Markets, New Media, and Consumer Insight.

• New Markets

The shift in the market is clear with the focus on the fast-growing developing economies of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). There is a large population growth in these countries and an increasing percentage is joining the middle class. South America is also an emerging market.

Sorrell said that every single client they deal with is focusing on those parts of the world for growth. He said that 26% of WPP business was in these countries and he predicts that will increase.

• New Media

Sir Martin states that digital and new media are the strongest forces of growth and the majority of his clients spend 12% to 13% of their world-wide budgets in new media in one shape or form. He believes this will increase significantly over the next five years to 20%.  New media accounts for almost 25% of WPP’s revenue.

• Consumer Insights

Sir Martin stated that a large part of WPP’s business is data information. He said they are the fourth largest information service in the world. “If we were starting from scratch we would have tried to bring these three elements more closely together; media planning and buying, digital piece and the data piece,” said Sorrell.

He referred to a market research project his company will be doing with Google on validating the importance of web-based marketing. Sorrell stated that he believed that Google has become even more important in the last 6 months as they have focused more on core products of Search and Mobile Search.

Sorrell also brought up product overcapacity and stated that most industries, such as the auto industry, is working with an overcapacity of products. He also stated that there is an under capacity of talented workers and he expects that this will worsen as a huge part of the population begins to retire.

Growth in Retail

Growth in retail will become a powerful thing. Some of the most fundamental change is in retail. He stated that Walmart controls 8-10% of the US in retail services and Tesco is the leader in the U.K. Companies that have immense power in the domestic market will have stronger buying power as they move to markets around the world.

Doing Good is Doing Good Business

Sorrell states that corporations will embrace environmental friendly policies and fair business practices. Corporations today are becoming more responsible and are working towards creating products that are more environmentally friendly. Consumers would rather buy from companies who are more environmentally conscious than those who aren’t.

Governments Have Become Major Clients

Governments around the globe are taking initiatives to supply financial stimulus packages to accelerate the growth of the sustainable economy globally.  He stated that the governments are spending trillions of dollars on sustainability related spending.

Branding

There are many new opportunities for brands in this new era. A cultural shift means corporations can change their point of view, or how the consumers perceive them. Sir Martin states, “You can have innovation without branding, but you can’t have branding without innovation.”

Internal Communication & Structural Change

Sir Martin said the biggest problem for a chairman is communicating internally strategic and structural change. New Media has given the CEO opportunities to communicate in a quick flexible way like they never have before and that has implications. He used WWP as an example and said that communicating in a corporation that is multi-branded is very difficult.

He said it was true that companies are becoming more global, it is true that we are seeing consolidations, but as companies become larger and become more complicated, at a country level there is still an intriguing role for country managers. We are not going to go back where we were 10, 15, or 20 years ago, but we are going to see country managers almost as ambassadors, or stronger, dealing with governments, dealing with technological change, dealing with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), dealing with education, and dealing with research & development at a company level.

See video at end of this article of Sir Martin Sorrell discussing this topic.

What’s the Role of the Agency in the Changing Landscape?

It’s about strategic thinking. We are embracing technology in a way that traditional media hasn’t done before. Agencies must plan, place, and measure media. It’s about creativity in a much broader sense. He also stressed that the lines between advertising and editorial are becoming more blurred.

What Does This Mean for the Hotel Industry?

Much of what Sir Martin discussed is very relevant to the hotel industry. Although he didn’t discuss specific industries let’s look at what his forecasts for the future can mean to your hotel.

Incorporate Mobile Phones in Your Marketing Budget
Many people are now ‘on the go’ and they use mobile devices such as the iPhone, to search the web, send emails, and use the thousands of apps available. Many markets such as Asia Pacific are worlds ahead of the U.S. in mobile usage, but we will catch up.  Hotels must take this into consideration for the future and integrate mobile websites and mobile marketing into their budgets.

Expand to New Markets and The BRIC Countries

The BRIC Countries (Brazil, Russia, India & China) are projected to dominate the global economy by 2050. You may already have properties in these countries or you may be considering acquiring some.

At the Global Travel & Tourism Summit last May, Luiz Barretto, Brazil’s Minister of Tourism stated the following about the travel industry in Brazil:

The flow of international tourism also rose in 2008.  More than 5 million foreigners visited Brazil last year, leaving here almost US$6 billion, or 16.8% more than in 2007 – an historic record.

In addition to the flow of overseas tourists, it is important to point out that Brazil is like a continent, with a potential internal market of 100,000,000 tourists.  Eighty-five per cent of tourist activity in this country is sustained by Brazilians themselves.  It is this great internal consumer market that explains the good results for Brazilian tourism, even in the face of the adverse international scenario and the economic downturn in the most important tourism source markets.

We have shown a robust performance since the beginning of 2009, when Brazil was at the peak of its summer.  The sector has grown by about 20% in comparison with the same period in 2008.  The increase has occurred in almost all segments of the tourist chain: hotels, airline companies, car rental and among tour operators and travel agencies.

I am certain that these results are a reflection of the combined actions of private companies and the Brazilian Government.  In the past six years, the Ministry of Tourism has invested US$2.5 billion in infrastructure for tourism destinations.  And that number does not include the significant contributions of the Brazilian Government in the context of the great national investment plan for infrastructure that is fully underway.

In the next few years, in addition to the resources that are in the budget of the Ministry, we will have another US$1 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank, to be spent exclusively on tourism infrastructure.

Brazil is also preparing for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and it is estimated that it will bring in 500,000 overseas tourists. Then of course there is the 2016 Summer Olympics. According to CNN the games will be held in four zones with varying socioeconomic characteristics; Barra, Copacabana, Maracana, and Deodoro.

Market Your Hotel With New Media
There is unlimited potential to market in Digital Media in the Hospitality Industry, and hotels need to incorporate this in their marketing strategies. This includes Internet Marketing, Videos, Social Media, Organic Search, Paid Search and Reputation Management, just to name a few.

Consumer Insights
Hotels now have an ability as never before to gain insight about their consumers. There are so many inexpensive and effective ways to do so. Collect your guests’ email addresses and create profiles which you can segment into groups (i.e. type of traveler, age, marital status, and personal preferences). You can manage these profiles in your database and send out very targeted email campaigns to the separate groups.

Interact with your guests in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Read their reviews of your hotel on review sites such as Trip Advisor and respond. Find out who they are, what they like, where they spend their time. When you know who your guests are you can target your message to them in the places where they go, online and offline.

Go Green – Go Global
It is a given that corporations should be practicing policies that are environmentally friendly and culturally aware. Your guests will appreciate this as well.

Branding
In this new era you have new opportunities to brand yourself, whether it be to create a new brand or re-invent and existing one. Be creative and create a niche.

Watch Video

Below is a clip from Ad Tech of Sir Martin Sorrell’s presentation.

If you would like to learn more about Internet Marketing for the Hospitality Industry please call at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com