[Important: This is time-sensitive - I can only provide this to the first 10 hotels that apply at the bottom of this post]

I just posted about the future of web ads, and want you to try this for your hotel. You need to see for yourself the revenue that can be made.

Plus, I’d like to create some case studies with some hard, dollars and cents numbers.

Here’s the thing: I’ve already beta-tested some of these techniques with a handful of pilot hotels, and we brought in a lot of money. Now, I’d like to try this with a few more locations. For this experiment:

• I’ll personally handle the entire campaign setup process (research, keywords, ad copywriting, structure, etc)
• I’ll personally manage and monitor the campaign as it runs
• I’ll pay all the click costs to Google

Since I’m going to be trying some experimental tactics, I don’t expect you to pay me up front.

Instead, let’s do this: you just give me a cut of the revenue I bring in. When you get paid, I get paid. Sound fair?

Just a few simple criteria:

1. You need to have a coupon code function – or similar field – in your website booking engine to track bookings through this channel
2. You need to provide a coupon code for 5%, 10%, or $10 off the lowest available published room rate
3. You cannot have an existing Google Adwords campaign running
4. You need to be willing for me to use your campaign results as a public case study here on the blog

All clear? Apply now…

The first 10 hotels that apply below will get this free Google campaign setup.

If you meet the criteria above, and want to give this a try, please enter your details here…and we can discuss:

A few colleagues and I are starting a new community to encourage innovation around social responsibility and environmental sustainability.

Here’s the video intro:

This community will start out on this Facebook page: I invite you join here. In fact, I’ll make it super-easy for you by including the Facebook widget here – just click the “like” button below:

A note about Facebook privacy: Joining does not open up your personal network. We’re just using the Facebook Connect platform to get as many people involved as possible. It’s just to let you plug into the community without separate registration.

Once you’ve “liked” our page, please share links, articles, or examples that you think would inspire innovation in this space.

Hotel marketing is changing

Providing responsive communication, remarkable service, and memorable experiences isn’t something you can just farm out to an outside consultant or agency. And this means my work with hotels is evolving.

You need your employees involved

The hotels that use social media best nearly always have people on-property as their online representatives. In most situations, it makes little sense for me to try to be your online voice from thousands of miles away. Using social media from a distance is less authentic: it’s hard to absorb company culture when you’re not working onsite.

Working as a team

Because of this, I now prefer to come alongside a team of 2-5 people at a hotel, and empower them to use new media themselves. My team and I provide training, planning, advice, support, progress tracking, and oversight for the whole program.

Most of the hotel managers I talk with are extremely smart – they just don’t have enough time to oversee a comprehensive new media marketing initiative. But if we assemble a small team of your people who spend 10-20 minutes each day on new media, you can make a lot of quick progress. With this system, you make full use of your talent, and ensure online communication isn’t separated into one department or job title.

That’s why I created the Hotel Marketing Strategies Insider’s Circle: which is a combination of a library, community, and advisory services.

What we can work on together

Depending on what you want to accomplish, we can work on:

• Campaign strategy design
• Reputation monitoring and management
• Market research
• Website optimization
• Search optimization and web visibility
• Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc)
• Email marketing
• Blogging and web publishing
• Analytics, measurement, and testing
• Guest service and experience design

If you want to discuss how this might look at your hotel, let’s talk.

Running a blog and a business are both full-time endeavors, and I don’t want the quality on either one to go down.

That’s why I’m really excited about bringing on Katie Clapp to join me as editor of this site. She’ll be helping me assemble the articles, arrange the interviews, and basically make everything run smoothly.

If you want to get in touch to arrange a story, you may contact her by email: editor[at]hotelmarketingstrategies[]com

Welcome, Katie!

I’m talking with a major hotel software company about producing a monthly benchmarking report on how hotels (and their guests) are using social media.

Which metrics would you find most helpful in a study like this?

The big challenge is coming up with numbers that are useful across the wide range of properties out there.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and we’ll try to put this together for you.

Not many people in the hotel industry know this, but my very first venture was an RSS software company. I saw RSS as the direct distribution channel of the future, but it turned out Twitter largely fills this purpose.

You don’t have to be a Twitter power user to set up searches and lists that provide you with a customized flow of information and content. This was the vision of RSS, and I’m pleased to see this come true – even if through a different technology.

I used to promote Feedburner. Today I set up @HMSblog for those who want new post notifications from this blog… and none of the thoughts, ideas, and chatter on @HMarketingHelp

Today the Hotel Marketing Strategies Insider’s Circle opens up for registration.

I’ll still be posting content here regularly, but there are a number of reasons I’m moving most of the “how to” content to this private membership site:

1. Creating detailed tutorials and guides is a very time and resource-intensive process. Subscription revenue will allow me to create world-class materials for members.

2. To make this a truly great resource, I’m bringing on a group of the best hotel marketing specialists, writers, and developers I know to give you access to some of the best material out there.

3. I don’t want everyone to have access. As much as I love the free exchange of ideas, a case can also be made for competitive advantage. There have been a couple situations where one of my competitors took my processes and used them against me. At the end of the day, our goal as marketers is to increase market share. A guest is either staying at our property, or at a competitor’s, right?

4. Supporting this site with a membership subscription helps me in turn support you in making your organization more profitable. If this blog doesn’t bring in revenue, I have to focus my priorities away from this blog. I’d rather focus here: creating great information for you to use.

Some of the new features I think members will love the most are:

1. A focus on interviews with the best minds in marketing today
2. Webinars where subject matter experts show you how it’s done
3. Forms, checklists, and startup guides you can give to your team
4. Ask for it, and we’ll make it: tell me if you need a tool, and we’ll try to make it for you

The purpose of this program is to give you the equivalent of a whole team of marketing professionals on your staff….for a fraction of the price. It will become your toolbox for increasing profitability.

There are four levels of access: you can select the access option that suits you best here.

For enterprise licensing or corporate discounts, please call me directly at +1 415 671 6235 and we can discuss.

I’ve wanted to re-design this blog for a very long time, and now its finally live! My friend David did a great job with the design, and I wanted to point out the marketing strategy that went into the layout.

“One Big Thing” on the homepage

Traditional blog layouts – with the newest post on top – can lack focus. There is no “One Big Thing” for a first-time visitor to click. With the new layout, I prominently feature one important post at the top of the homepage.

Quickly display new & best content

I wanted to adopt a magazine-style homepage for two reasons: 1) to quickly show what has been recently published, 2) to display some of the site’s most important content (we’re calling this “HMS 101″).

Encourage email signup

I’ve been talking a lot about email the past few weeks, so by now you should see why I want everyone reading this blog to receive my weekly email summary. Because of this, I’m making the email signup box a prominent part of the sidebar.  I have exclusive VIP content planned for email subscribers, and want as many people as possible to get in on this.

Encouraging participation

I really want to open up the content here to other voices and viewpoints. While I’ve tried to encourage this in the past, I’m making the options for participating very clear in the sidebar design.

Integrating video

Video will play an increasingly important role in the future, and it’s something I want to do a lot more of in coming posts. Our new YouTube channel will be a mix of me talking into the camera, live interviews, and how-to screen captures. Again, I wanted the design to reflect this new priority.

Improved comment area

Blog communities revolve around the comments section. Typically only a small percentage of readers post a comment, so I wanted to improve the comment area to encourage more discussion. The big things we added are threaded comments (so you can reply to others), and comment subscription (so you can be notified when someone replies to you).

Focus on new “Insider’s Circle” program

This is something I’m very excited about: a toolbox for hotel marketers. It contains everything my colleagues and I use for the day-to-day management of hotel marketing campaigns out in the “real world.” So it’s more than theory and strategy – it’s very practical use-it-now stuff.  The “Insiders’ Circle” is opening to the public on Tuesday, and I’ll post an explanation then…

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I would love your feedback on this new design: What do you think? Do you see any little improvements I can make on it?

The brand-new Savvy Hotelier’s Guide to Email Marketing is now available for purchase.

The guide contains quick and tested ideas on how you can get better results from your email marketing. It’s the result of a 3-hour brainstorming session between myself and some of the best email marketing professionals in the hotel industry. We cover topics such as:

• The role and importance of email in today’s web
• Steps to take before sending out an email campaign
• Planning an effective email campaign
• Criteria for selecting a good email partner (if you want one)
• List building tips and how to quickly collect email addresses from people that want to hear from you
• How to encourage front office staff to collect emails
• How to integrate email with your website
• How to integrate email with social media
• Tips for creating highly relevant offers through segmenting your database
• Ideas for creating email content
• Automating your email system for higher profitability and better service
• Numbers you should watch – and testing ideas to improve performance
• Plus: lots of samples, checklists, and insider’s tips

Learn more about this guide, or order your copy here

This Thursday, we’ll be releasing our next guide: the Savvy Hotelier’s Guide to Email Marketing. Each day this week, I’ll post a little excerpt – a new idea you can use to boost email profitability.

Why email?

With so many digital marketing options available, why focus on email?

Because it just may be the single most profitable marketing tool we have.

A few months ago, Omniture did a survey of marketing executives to rate the relative effectiveness of digital-marketing media. 78% said email marketing was their top performer.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, each dollar spent on email brings in an average of $45 in sales. The return on investment is unmatched.

As marketing professionals, we are held accountable for the results we bring in. And since email is the top sales performer for so many hospitality organizations, it’s a channel we should master.