The past year has been quite the ride for me as managing director of Gradigio. My team and I have had the chance to work with some amazing people around the world; many of whom found us through this blog. As a way of giving back to you, my loyal readers, I’m proud to announce our…

Hotel Marketing Makeover Contest

We’re going to be giving one lucky winner a complete internet marketing makeover…for free. The total market value of these services will exceed $25,000US.

What’s included

Everything. At least, everything I know your hotel needs to be successful online.

Through one-on-one planning sessions, group strategy brainstorming, and some hard work on our part, we’ll help the winner:

• Understand the current market situation for their hotel
• Perform an in-depth analysis of their website and overall web presence
• Oversee website changes (as agreed)
• Initiate a complete organic search optimization campaign (strategy planning & implementation)
• Initiate a complete paid search (PPC) campaign: planning, setup & 3 months’ management
• Collaborate on publishing a rock-solid content network that attracts visitors
• Plan and launch a blog marketing campaign
• Build a powerful presence in social networking sites
• Plan and oversee a systematic social media outreach effort
• Plan and oversee a video marketing strategy
• Evaluate mobile distribution options
• Build a localized web presence in important foreign markets (as needed)
• …and anything else we think of along the way that will help you reach more people

This will take place over a period of several months, and the winner will emerge with a powerful web presence that helps them increase direct bookings and overall sales.

The 4 ways to enter this contest

1. Upload a video to YouTube or Google Video explaining why you want to improve your hotel marketing. Title it “Gradigio Hotel Marketing Makeover.”
2. Upload a set of your hotel photos to Flickr, and name the set “Gradigio Hotel Marketing Makeover”
3. Write a post on your hotel blog announcing this contest (or) linking to this blog’s homepage & letting people know about it
4. Email 5 friends in the hotel industry a simple invitation to this blog (ex: “Hey, I thought you might find this blog helpful: hotelmarketingstrategies.com…”)

Whichever method you choose, just let me know of your entry by sending a quick email to enter@hotelmarketingmakeover.com that includes:

• Your name (& email)
• Your hotel’s name
• A link to your entry (video, photos, etc)

How the winner will be chosen

The winner will be selected randomly from all valid entries sent to the address above, and will be announced exclusively in the August 2009 issue of our Hotel Marketing Ideas newsletter.

If you enter this contest, I highly recommend you signup for the newsletter

Important dates

We will accept entries starting now (July 1) until the end of this month (July 31).

Enter now

The contest entry details are pretty simple, and described above.

To re-read this on the official contest website, please visit:

Hotel Marketing Makeover.com

Today it’s my pleasure to introduce hotel marketing expert and colleague, Keith West. First we’ll discuss what every director of sales & marketing must know…and then we have an exciting announcement at the end. Let’s get started.

Josiah: Can you tell us a little bit about your background in hotel marketing?

Keith: I’ve been marketing hotels online since 1996. When I first started it was rare to find a hotel that had its own domain name. Since then I’ve completed sites and marketing for over 200 independent and branded properties. The consistent theme over those years is a rising bar. When you’re the only hotel in town with a website, you’re the winner. Now to be the winner you need a site that connects with your visitors, that converts at a high rate, that plays nice with search engines. You need to know how to bring people to the site using free and paid methods. And you need to understand how your site fits in with your overall marketing strategy.

What’s the most common misconception about hotel internet marketing?

That it is something computer people do or is something can be completely outsourced. Much of it can be, but if you don’t understand the fundamentals, you’re being a poor partner to your vendor. It is not really possible for a vendor to have a full understanding of who your customers are. To be effective you need to be able to match up the range of Internet marketing techniques with the behaviors of your customers. Then consult with the vendor on the details of how to implement the strategy that works for you.

Are there core areas of internet marketing knowledge every Director of Sales & Marketing should know?

Increasing demands are being placed on DoSM’s to have a solid grasp of the full range of Internet Marketing strategies. That’s a hard place from some directors to get to because most of them are people oriented and quite a few have a fear of “technology.” That will change. It wasn’t long ago that most executives couldn’t type- that was a secretary’s job. Now most of us realize that a computer is a tool, and using it doesn’t make you a technologist. Internet marketing isn’t about technologies, it’s about understanding how people interact and make decisions online. You don’t have to be a programmer understand that. I’m not a programmer myself.

Without a doubt, DoSM’s need to control the message. You can have someone design a banner ad for you, but you have to tell them what it should say and what it’s supposed to accomplish. You can’t ask a technician to do a marketer’s job.

Perhaps there are topics a Marketing Director does NOT need to know…either because it can be delegated or is irrelevant?

All site design should be outsourced. It’s deceptively easy to build a site, but there are many places to make big mistakes without realizing it. Most anything that is tedious, repetitive or time consuming should be automated or outsourced. Pay per click advertising for example. I think everyone should set up a campaign and operate it for a while to understand the process. But once you know what you’re doing, it could make perfect sense to turn over the daily operation to someone else. Most hotel managers need to know what to do, not how to do it.

I’ve written before about traits of an effective hotel e-marketer. In your opinion does a Director of Sales & Marketing have to know these technical skills? Does it depend on the hotel size and type?

That’s a good post. The fact is any DoSM needs to have a detailed understanding of how things work. That’s different from knowing how to do it. You don’t need to be able to design a website to know that it should have text that is accessible by search engines, that just because it looks one way on your screen doesn’t mean everyone sees it that way, and that your preference for a particular look or color is not as important as what actually results in a reservation. There is definitely a sliding scale. The smaller the property the more likely it is for any particular function to be in house.

Typically, what are the biggest obstacles facing DoSM when starting an internet strategy?

Jeff Bezos says Amazon is confronted with “insurmountable opportunities.” That describes the feeling of anyone working an Internet marketing campaign. There are too many options. The media doesn’t help with the endless parade of the fad of the day. Without some handholding, it’s easy for a GM or DoSM to get pulled off on interesting but unproductive tangents.

How do you recommend they avoid this?

Study. Test small. Learn. Repeat.

What’s the most exciting trend you see in hotel marketing? Why?

This is the most exciting time yet in hotel marketing. Quite honestly, a few years ago it had become boring. Build an optimized site, get some links, walk away. Now a site/campaign needs to be actively managed. Marketing is becoming more conversation than monologue. Hotels have to hold up their end of the dialogue. The website now is the primary public face of a hotel and not an afterthought. That places more demands on the staff, but ultimately the benefits to the customer and the hotel are huge for the hotels that figure it out.

Speaking of exciting, I think now is a good time for our announcement. This summer we’ll be offering two hotel marketing workshops together in Las Vegas, Nevada (July 23&24) and Orlando, Florida (August 13&14). These 2-day training sessions will be intensive and very practical – designed to show you how to use the internet to attract more guests.

Tell our readers a little bit about these events: who it’s for, who it’s not for, and what the benefits are.

“Internet Boot Camp for Hotels” is designed to get more online reservations for hotels. It’s straight to the point- clearly identifying what you need to know and what you don’t. It’s important to me that Boot Camp deliver actual results and not simply be a theoretical exercise. Graduates will walk away with a systematic step by step plan for turning their Internet marketing into a selling machine.

The program is intended for General Managers, Directors of Sales and Marketing, and Sales Managers with a good overall understanding of their hotel’s marketing. No technical knowledge is assumed or required, but attendees should have a good overall grasp of how to use (not program) the Internet.

I’m excited to announce the arrival of my new email newsletter, Hotel Marketing Ideas.

What it is: A monthly email with highlights from this blog, along with any other information about hotel marketing I think you may like.

Who it’s for: People who like this blog’s content, but don’t want to receive the daily updates I currently provide via email and RSS

When it’s coming: The first issue will be published the first week of July

Instead of asking you all to sign up, I’ll be the first to tell you this isn’t for everyone. I’m publishing it for the hotel owner or marketing manager that is interested in trying new tactics and technology to promote their hotel online.

If that’s not you, please ignore this message. If it sounds like something you’re interested in, you can sign up using the link above.

Since the best way to learn is through real life examples, I’m going to start a series of blog posts reviewing hotel websites and blogs. (Inspired by Copyblogger’s brilliant Landing Page Makeover Clinic)

Every couple weeks for the next few months, I’ll deconstruct a different hotel website, pointing out changes that could be made to improve effectiveness.

A couple ground rules to ensure fairness & equality:

• To avoid bias, I won’t review any clients’ websites
• I won’t talk with – or get approval from – the website or hotel owner before publishing (to avoid them influencing my analysis)
• I won’t take any money for the reviews (of course)
• All reviews will clearly contain what I like and what I don’t like: nothing will be “sugar-coated”
• I’ll select websites from a wide variety of hotel types – to reflect the diversity of people that read this blog

For a chance to have your hotel reviewed for free, send me with the URL. I cannot guarantee that I’ll review it, but would rather review a loyal reader’s site than someone who isn’t aware of this blog yet.

Okay, that’s probably one of the worst headlines I’ve written.

I’ve decided to reduce my minimum posting frequency from 5 times per week (daily) to 3 days per week…and it’s NOT because I’ve run out of things to say. (I actually have a list of several hundred posts I plan to write, and that list grows faster than I can use it.)

Why I am doing this:

* The #1 reason people unsubscribe from a blog is too many posts. HotelChatter posts some interesting stuff, but the frequency & volume has made me unsubscribe/resubscribe several times….and I often find myself just ignoring new items in my feed reader.

* Forcing quantity can reduce quality (who me?!). Put another way, this should allow me to produce more useful content for you.

* More meaningful conversation takes place with less volume. I’ve found that when a post can sit on the homepage for a day or two, much better discussion happens. People have some time to think about it, and share interesting thoughts with each other. I like that.

Actually, Write to Done has said it better than I ever could with 7 Reasons Posting Less Frequently can Increase Your Blog’s Popularity.

Not many hotel bloggers I know have trouble with too many posts, but it’s something to think about. The important thing about blogging is making sure you have your own regular posting routine. Even if it’s just twice a month, it’s very helpful to use a schedule that keeps you accountable.

Of course, if there is a breaking news story or I find something I need to pass along immediately, I’ll do that. My point here is that I hope to increase this blog’s value through a lower minimum posting schedule.

As I alluded to earlier, Emma Johnson interviewed me for a piece on crowdsourcing she wrote for Entrepreneur.

An excerpt:

Nearly every retailer and service provider has an internet presence whether they promote a website or not, thanks to the ballooning popularity of sites like Yelp, Citysearch, TripAdvisor, and Angie’s List where customers rate and comment on businesses. If you don’t harness these sites, they’ll lasso you instead, says Josiah Mackenzie, managing director of the San Francisco-based marketing firm Gradigio, which advises its hospitality clients on how to make the most of this seemingly unwieldy force.

“Companies don’t have a choice whether or not to be involved in crowdsourcing,” Mackenzie says. “People are going to be talking about them and creating content about their firms–whether they like it or not.”

You can read the whole article here: Crowdsourcing: Free Problem-Solving for Your Biz

See also:

• Can hotels use crowdsourcing?
• Crowdsourcing example: bmi uses Flickr photos in web design

In order to make this blog even more interactive, I’ve added a new rating feature at the end of each article. For each post you read, please take a second to rate how good you think it is.

As Alicia and I see your feedback, we’ll be able to make adjustments and serve you increasingly better content.

Thanks!

P.S. If you want to use this on your own blog, you can download the WordPress plugin.

Photo by Rene Ehrhardt

Thanks to Phil Caines, I’ll be attending The PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin March 11-12. From looking at the program, you’ll see this is a great opportunity to interact and learn with other like-minded travel professionals.

If you’re a blogger, click the button below to submit your application.

Later, I’ll be representing Gradigio at the main conference. Let me know if you’ll be attending, and we can meet up.  See you there!

To help you promote your hotel, we’re now offering free hotel marketing consulting through a dedicated Twitter channel.  Send us your questions, and we’ll give you advice in 140 characters or less.

Try it: @hmarketinghelp

I’m excited to welcome Alicia Sheber to the Hotel Marketing Strategies blog as a contributing author. Alicia brings a wealth of cross-cultural experience as a marketing consultant to hotels around the world. Her past projects have included online brand positioning for hotels in London and Paris, design projects throughout Europe, and contributions to several guidebooks. Alicia holds an MBA in International Marketing from École Supérieure Libre des Sciences Commerciales Appliquées in Paris.

I know you’ll enjoy reading her insights in the days ahead, as we work together to bring you the latest hotel marketing ideas.