As with any industry, internet marketers tend to use a lot of jargon and acronyms. This can be overwhelming if you’re new to the field, so I’ve put together this little glossary of hotel internet marketing terms & definitions.

Hotel internet marketing jargon

• Buying cycle: the research process your potential guests go through
• Guest personas: profiles of the buying habits of an imaginary, but typical, guest
• Content marketing: publishing useful information with the purpose of attracting new guests
• Permission marketing: coined by Seth Godin, this refers to getting a customer’s consent to receive marketing messages
• Relationship marketing: similar to permission marketing, this approach seeks to build long-term relationships with people
• Viral marketing: a campaign that is so useful, interesting, or funny that people share it
• Crowdsourcing: outsourcing a task to an external group of people

Website jargon

• Domain name: yoursite.com (hotelmarketingstrategies.com is my domain name)
• Web hosting: publishing a website so it is viewable by others on the internet
• Usability: website ease of use for visitors
• HTML: a programming code used to display content on the web
• CMS: Content Management System, or a tool that lets non-technical folks create & update web pages without knowing HTML
• META tags: HTML code that gives information about a web page; most often seen in the title area of your web browser & in search engine results
• Link: a connection from one web page to another one
• Flash: an animation technology that can create attractive, but generally less useful, websites
• Splash page: a web page that precedes the home page of a website
• Above the fold: the portion of a web page viewable without scrolling
• Landing page: the first page on your website a visitor sees after clicking an ad
• Cloaking: giving search engines different content that what humans see on a web page (something frowned upon by search engines and could get you banned)

Search engine marketing jargon

• SEM: search engine marketing, the broad practice of using search engines to bring visitors to your website
• Local search: a web search to find a business in a specific city or geographic area
• SEO: search engine optimization, or the process of making your website easier to find in search engines like Google
• Black Hat SEO: optimization techniques that (intentionally) go against guidelines from Google and other search engines
• SERP: Search Engine Results Pages, or a list of websites returned by a search engine in response to a query
• SEP: Search Engine Position – your website’s position among search engine results
• PR: Page Rank, Google’s measure of a web pages’ importance on a scale of 1-10
• Keywords: the words and phrases people use in search engines to find things
• Long tail keywords: obscure or very targeted keywords (coined by Chris Anderson)
• Keyword research: the process of finding which keywords are most popular & relevant to your hotel
• On-page or On-site Optimization: things you do on your hotel’s website to make it rank higher in search engines
• Off-page or Off-site Optimization: tactics performed on other websites to increase your site’s ranking
• Inbound/Outbound Links: links from other websites to your websites, and vice versa
• Link building campaign: an organized effort to get more inbound links (to increase search position)
• Reciprocal linking: the practice of exchanging links with another website to get referrals and increase search rank
• Algorithms: the way a search engines sorts & positions websites

Pay-Per-Click advertising jargon

• PPC or Pay Per Click: an method of advertising – usually on search engines – where you only pay for people who actually visit your site
• AdWords: Google’s popular PPC advertising program
• Keyword match types: different settings with various levels of focus (broad=all queries containing keyword; phrase=only those keywords in that order; exact=only that exact keyword phrase, and nothing else)
• Negative keywords: terms added to a PPC campaign to prevent ads from showing for queries including these words
• Keyword bid: the maximum amount of money you are willing to pay for each click for a particular keyword
• CPC: Cost per Click, or how much you actually pay for each click
• Impressions: the number of times the ad has been displayed
• CTR: Clickthrough Rate, or percentage of people clicking your ads
• Average position: ranking among other PPC ads (usually in the right-hand column of search results pages)
• Relevancy: the similarity between your ad and a search query
• Quality score: in AdWords, this is determined by relevancy, and plays a role in your ads’ price and position
• DKI: Dynamic Keyword Insertion, or the ability to automatically update your ad to include a searcher’s keywords in the title
• Geo-targeting: displaying your ads only in selected geographic areas
• Click fraud: malicious clicks made to banners with no intent of purchasing

Blog jargon

• Blog: a journal-style website
• Post: an entry published to a blog
• Blogger: the author of a blog
• Blogosphere: all the blogs on the web
• WordPress: a popular free blogging software tool
• Theme: code that changes the visual appearance of a blog
• RSS or News feeds: a method of publishing regularly-changing web content (commonly blog posts)
• FeedBurner: a popular service from Google that makes it easy for blog publishers to share their RSS news feeds
• Feed reader: tool that combines all your RSS subscriptions in one place for easy reading
• Microblogging: a style of blogging that uses very short posts
• Podcast: audio content that can be subscribed to & downloaded automatically to listen to offline
• Videocast or Vlogging: same as a podcast, but with video content
• Trackbacks: a notification that another blogger wrote about a blog post
• Comment spam: comments left on blogs with the sole purpose of getting links to another website
• Blogroll: a list of links in the sidebar of a blog (usually other blogs the author reads regularly)

Social Media jargon

• Social media: tools that people use to publish and share web content
• Web 2.0:  a term that describes blogs and social networking sites that emphasize collaboration and sharing
• SMO: Social Media Optimization, or making yourself more visible in social media networks
• UGC: User Generated Content – text, photos, video, and other media that consumers produce
• Conversation: probably more a buzzword than anything else, this refers to a two-way dialog between companies and their current or potential customers
• Listening: the practice of tracking what people are saying about you online
• Reputation management: a combination of listening (above), and proactively responding to feedback
• Transparency: buzzword alert! this simply means being honest and less ‘corporate’
• Influencer: someone highly recognized in social networks, with the ability to persuade many others
• Social bookmarking: saving web content to a web-based service (instead of your browser) where you can share it
• Creative Commons: a license that allows other people to republish your content with attribution (increasing your influence)
• Tags: keywords attached to content that help other people find it easily
• Mashups: two tools or pieces of content combined to make something new (such as a map and guest-written hotel reviews)
• Wiki: a web page (or set of pages) that anyone can edit & improve
• Flickr: a popular photo sharing site
• Twitter: a popular microblogging network
• Tweets: updates to Twitter
• Tweetup: a Twitter meetup, of course!

Metrics & measurement jargon

• Hit: a file request from a web server, which is not nearly as accurate as a….
• Page view: a request to load a single web page, which is not nearly as important as…
• Unique visits: the number of different people who visited your website, which is much less important than…
• Conversion rate: the percentage of people visiting your website that perform a specific action (for hotels, it’s usually making a reservation)
• Referral sources: the websites people visited immediately before visiting yours
• Stickiness: attractiveness of web content that makes a guest return again and again
• Bounce rate: the number of people who visit your website and leave without going to any other page

Okay, that’s about as far as 4 shots of espresso will take me…did I leave out anything important? Are my definitions completely wacky? Let me know in the comments!

There are some important lessons hotel internet marketers can learn from their colleagues in ecommerce. In many ways ecommerce is more competitive than hospitality – with more focus on price and less flexibility to differentiate your offering with an exceptional guest experience.

This level of competition forces some ecommerce websites to the cutting edge of internet marketing tactics. Here’s a few ideas you may want to try:

Focus on the landing pages

A “landing page” is the first page a website visitor sees on your site. Building custom landing pages is often used together with a special promotion or advertising campaign to increase conversions. The page’s content can be uniquely written to tie into your campaign’s message. The landing page gives the visitor a good first impression and clear next step to take.

Is there collaboration between your hotel’s marketing and web development people to create relevant landing pages for each campaign?

Focus on the content

I talked about content marketing for hotels in depth yesterday, so I’ll just add this: ensure your hotel description pages are very compelling. If your room descriptions are boring, considering hiring a talented copywriter to freshen them up. (Armando wrote a nice post on writing descriptions that sell.)

Is your hotel’s website full of vivid descriptions and exciting content?

Have a strong call to action

A call to action is where you clearly ask for the reader to take a step leading to the sale. In direct marketing, this may request the recipient call for more information. On a hotel website, it begins by giving prominence to the booking module. (You’ll need to know usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s f-shaped pattern for reading web content.) I see too many websites that lack clear directions for their visitors.

Is your hotel website providing a clear “next step” for visitors?

Build the list

Many of the top internet marketers credit opt-in mailing lists as one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal. I know people that build a product, announce it through their mailing list, and make hundreds of thousands of dollars within 24 hours.

That may not be realistic for many hotels, but it doesn’t detract for the fact that email list building is essential for keeping in touch with potential buyers. You’ll probably even want to create a few lists – including one rewarding your best guests.

Is your hotel actively building an opt-in email list?

Craft an “iron-clad” guarantee

Especially with independent and boutique hotels, one of the biggest reasons people don’t book a room is because they fear making the wrong decision and wasting time and money. Online guest reviews and social media have helped eliminate some of that fear, but anyone selling anything can improve by offering a strong guarantee.

Home page of Zappos.com

In ecommerce, creating an “iron clad” guarantee is very important. In retail, Zappos.com has achieved success by offering a 365-day return policy along with free shipping both ways. This eliminates the fear of buying the wrong shoe size – something very important to their customers.

Sites selling digital information often go a step further – since their products are intangible. I’ve seen offers like “double your money back” or “money back & keep the product” work well. Of course, this more costly to do with tangible products, but it’s an undoubtedly compelling offer.

Is your hotel guaranteeing a great experience in a meaningful way?

Provide live help

Again, the Zappos screenshot above is a great example of this: “Have questions? We’ve got answers right now!” When people are traveling, they often cannot (or don’t want to) make a phone call to your hotel. But having a live person provide an answer to their question in real time may be the difference between making the sale and losing it.

Is your hotel offering some form of live help to potential guests who cannot call you?

Include real guest reviews

Again, the point here is to make a potential guest as comfortable as possible with creating a booking. TripAdvisor makes this easy with a few options for review syndication.

Important note: Only publishing positive comments isn’t nearly as powerful as including both good and bad feedback. (My radical proposal)

Is your hotel putting un-edited guest reviews on your website?

Cross-sell & upsell

Many ecommerce websites I buy from have sophisticated engines that suggest other products I may be interested in. This often has the effect of increasing the overall order amount, and is excellent for building revenue. You do need to use caution here though: Get Elastic shares the do’s and don’ts.

Is your hotel cross-selling and upselling rooms and hotel amenities?

Test, test, test

Top ecommerce sites are continually testing new things. It’s the only way to achieve continual improvement. I’ve seen examples where changing one word in a headline increased sales over 3x. What difference could a seemingly insignificant change like that do for your website?

Tools like the free Google Optimizer make this process simple – there’s no excuse to not be testing.

Is your hotel actively split-testing new website features?

Flickr is perhaps the web’s most active community of photographers, currently hosting around 3.5 billion photos viewed by over 76 million visitors last month. The site was started in Vancouver in early 2004, and bought by Yahoo a year later in March 2005.

It’s interesting to note that Flickr is not the largest photo sharing site – ImageShack, Facebook, and PhotoBucket all host more photos. But those services do not provide the same level of exposure for photos, and are largely used as online storage or for sharing with a few friends. Flickr, on the other hand, is an online photography community, and is built to share photos with as many people as possible. Photographers such as Trey Ratcliff, James Neeley, and Kris Kros regularly get thousands of views for each image they post. This focus on sharing and distribution makes it ideal for hotel marketers looking to build their web media presence.

Photo by Stuck in Customs on Flickr

Before I dive into the “how” of promoting your photos on this site, let’s go over the “why”…

The 5 most compelling reasons for hotels to use Flickr in their web marketing

1. Flickr increases your web presence, building awareness among potential guests and travel planners
2. Flickr can link back to your hotel website, encouraging direct bookings and helping your search engine position
3. Flickr hosts your images for free
4. Flickr syndicates your photos across other websites (important in Google’s universal search – which includes media)
5. Flickr provides the opportunity to build relationships in your online community

As a bonus, Flickr has a large international following…particularly as a percentage of its users. Many social media networks are heavily weighted in one country, so this diversity is helpful if you’re trying to reach an international market. Art really does cross the language barrier:

Search data from Google Trends

Registering your Hotel Flickr Account

Registration is easy. Since it’s part of the Yahoo network, an existing account there will speed the process.  I recommend you use your hotel name as your Flickr username for search optimization purposes.

Customizing your Flickr Profile

One of the first things you want to do is change the URL of your photos. By default, it will look something like http://flickr.com/photos/96576897@N00345/. That’s not very friendly to search engines or regular people. Change it to include your hotel name or important keywords. You want your permanent URL to be something like http://flickr.com/photos/yourhotel/

The rest of pretty straightforward. You can upload a small image for your hotel’s avatar. You’ll probably want to fill out the “about” section with a brief description of your hotel, and then enter your website URL.

Ideas for your Flickr Photostream

• Professionally shot photographs of your hotel’s interior and exterior (example: Tiara Hotels)
• Professionally staged theme photos (see Witt Istanbul’s vintage travel-themed photos for a good example of this)
• Photos of your neighborhood
• Photos of your city (landmarks, little-known attractions, etc)
• Directions to your location in photos (guests arriving by foot from a nearby train station may want to know which landmarks to orient themselves by, for example)

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Optimizing Flickr Photos for Increased Exposure

Just as there are adjustments for making your website appear higher in search results, there are steps you can take to optimize your Flickr photos so more people see them. As with any search optimization project, it involves putting your important keywords in prominent places:

• Put keywords in your image title (instead of the ugly camera-generated DCGW100322…or whatever)
• Include keywords in your image description
• Place a keyword-rich link back to a specific, related page on your website
• Tag your photo with relevant keywords

Here’s an example of an image from Lawrence Travel Center that is doing a pretty good job with image optimization. They have keywords in the right places and have a keyword-rich link in the description back to their website. I feel they could add a few more relevant keywords to the image, but they have the basic idea.

Power Tips 95% of Flickr Users Don’t Know About

Shhh…here are techniques that few people share, but that Flickr’s most effective users have been using to generate massive profile views and gain huge followings. I’ve noticed them by being a Flickr user myself and working with several other top accounts. If you just create an account, upload some photos, and leave you can’t expect to gain huge traffic. You have to do a little extra.

• Be smart with your licensing. “All rights reserved” is an old mindset that doesn’t work well in new media. Creative Commons offers a great alternative – select a license that meets your needs best. Allow anyone to download or republish your photos on their site with attribution. This spreads your brand much faster than if you reserved all rights and prohibited republishing. (See David Meerman Scott’s free ebook on ‘losing control’ for more on this topic.)
• Embed Flickr photos on your website whenever possible. Embedding increases your view count, and ‘interestingness‘ according to Flickr’s algorithm. This is why you want to use the open licensing described above.
• Use conceptual tag themes creatively. Don’t just tag photos with obvious hotel terms. Use as many relevant keywords as possible…describing the room, your property, and so on. Top photos will also have seemingly abstract terms like “light,” “design,” and “relaxing”…because those conceptual terms are what people search for.
• Participate in lots of groups. Groups focused around a subject like hotels or your city can be a great platform for boosting the popularity of your images. But don’t just dump your photos in the group pool and leave: get to know the other members and interact with their photos. Participation in the community is true in any social media situation, and applies here as well.
• Create varied content. This is seldom practiced by organizations on Flickr, but very important. For example, with Witt Istanbul Suites we included a great image of the Istanbul Skyline. Not everyone will be searching for ‘Istanbul Hotel’ on the site, but quite a few searches take place for ‘Istanbul Night Skyline.’ Having a hotel-produced image of that phrase enables them to capture some traffic there.
• Geo-tag your photos. Quite simply, this is placing your photos on a map showing visitors where the pictures were taken. It’s important for reaching people looking for photos in the area your hotel is located. (There’s a tutorial from Flickr describing the process.)
• Create great content. That should go without saying, but developing fascinating images will make your promotional efforts much easier. If you’re taking the pictures yourself, learn how to use different lenses, lighting, and processing techniques to create captivating images. Great photography will spread organically and virally.

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Examples of Hotels on Flickr

I’ve linked to several photostreams earlier in this post, but here are a couple more examples of hotels and hospitality companies on Flickr:

• Happy Hotelier (Guido has a set with photos of his Haagsche Suites, but is a good example of someone who publishes a diverse range of interesting content)
• Royal Ramblas Hotel
• St. Martenslane’s
• Domes of Elounda (suites in Crete)
• Hyatt Hotels (they have decided to put all their properties under one account)

Hotel Groups on Flickr

• Hotel Design <- My group
• Hotels
• Hotel Rooms
• Great Hotels of the World
• Hotels & Resorts – Around the World
• Luxury Hotels
• Hotel Chatter

Helpful Tools for Hoteliers Using Flickr

• Flickr uploading tool (free) – a must if you’re uploading lots of pictures
• Flickr badges allow you to automatically update your hotel website with new photos
• Flickr plugin for WordPress
• Big Huge Labs produces a few very helpful tools (along with many fun ones)

Further Resources about Flickr

• Killr Flickr Tips Blog
• Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr
• How to Rock Flickr Like a Champ
• 100+ Tools for Flickr Addicts
• 60+ Tools to Enhance Your Flickr Experience
• FlickrLeech (my favorite tool for creative inspiration)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you’ve found it helpful, please consider bookmarking or stumbling it. For more hotel marketing ideas, you can subscribe to this blog via RSS.

Photo by Rashley on Flickr

If you’re in the process of redesigning your hotel website, it’s important to do so with search marketing in mind. Search engines bring potential guests to your website for free, and play an important role in driving direct sales.

Why is search optimization so important?

3 statistics:

1. The top result on a search page gets clicked 42% of the time (compared to 3% for result #10)
2. The top 3 results get 79% of the total clicks
3. The top 5 get 88% of clicks

Alright, so how do you build a search-friendly website?

First, understand which keywords you need to target

Keywords are the words people use in web searches to find you. Which ones are most popular in your market? Which ones apply best to your hotel?

Keep in mind that phrasing is very important. Use keyword research tools to avoid getting mislead by industry terms. For example, according to Google…

• 37,200,000 searches where performed in January for cheap hotel vs. just 60,500 for budget hotel
• 11,100,000 people searched for luxury hotels vs. 74,000 for luxury resorts

Don’t rely on brainstorming a list of terms for “building your brand.” Use historical data for real insight on customer behavior.

Remember: Focus on the words your potential guests actually use, not what you want them to use.

Second, develop keyword themes for each page

Group your top keywords into sets of two or three related terms. Each page on your website should be focused around a different, unique set. As you structure your page, you’ll use these phrases extensively.

Remember: Search engines love pages with singular themes.

Third, place the terms in your keyword themes prominently throughout the page

1. Page title: 8-10 words, specific to general, with your brand name last
2. Description META tag: this is what people see in web searches, so sell specifics in 25-30 words
3. H1 and H2 headings:include the keywords as part of attention-grabbing headlines

Remember: Keyword position is far more important than keyword density.

Fourth, develop useful, content-rich pages

On each page, include relevant text content. Search engines only read words, so weave your keyword themes into the copy. But don’t overdo it. Of course, write for your customers first and speak to their needs.

Remember: On the web, people don’t read – they scan.

Fifth (and finally), understand structural best practices

The way your pages are built plays a part in your web rankings. This can be pretty technical, so you may want to ask your web designer to ensure this happens:

• Create a site map with text links to all pages
• Look into developing XML site maps as well
• Use a flat directory structure if possible (less sub-directories is better)
• Use keywords in the anchor text for internal links (not “click here”)
• Avoid flash & javascript navigation
• Place keywords in your file and directory names (You’ll notice this post is at /seo-for-hotel-websites – an important phrase for this article)

Remember: Your site architecture is important for your rankings.

Invest time now, receive ongoing benefits

Most studies show organic website search optimization provides the highest ROI of any marketing tactic. Spend some extra time now to make sure your site is built around search-friendly standards, and you’ll be repaid many times over in the future.

Everyone loves a good list.  To help you plan for the upcoming year, I’ve put together some of the best new marketing ideas for 2009.  Enjoy!

Note: This list has been updated as 130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

Website

Organic Search Marketing (SEO)

Paid Search Marketing (PPC)

Social Media

Measurement & Analytics

Customer Service

Technology

Miscellaneous

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

That’s the opening paragraph in a recent article by Wired that suggests blogging is dead.  Obsolete. More suited to 2004 than 2008.

I disagree.

Now, the author does raise a few valid points:

Writing a blog today isn’t the same as four years ago. This is true.  The blogosphere has become far more crowded than it used to be. Publishing a blog isn’t as unique as it once was, and you may not receive the same attention.

When blogging was young…posts quickly skyrocketed to the top of Google’s search results. Again, true.  I remember blogging during that time, and it was far more common for posts to achieve top rankings (along with the traffic and links that come with that).

Text-based websites aren’t where the buzz is anymore. Maybe, but buzz doesn’t always equal effectiveness. Besides, blogs should only be one part of your social media strategy and overall web presence.

These arguments against blogging fail to recognize how blogs can still be foundational to an effective hotel marketing plan.

The more useful information you publish, the larger your web presence will be. A blog is one of the most search-friendly publishing methods, and you can increase the number of visitors to your site by writing prolifically on useful topics.

Blogs provide the opportunity to be an authority of the subject you cover, whether it’s a destination or a niche in the hospitality industry.  Your writing is compiled into a library of knowledge that visitors can browse through, and you can re-use in future marketing material.

The popularity of social multimedia websites like Flickr and YouTube do not mean an end of blogging.  In fact, I recommend embedding photos and video content into your hotel blog, making it a destination resource.

So while blogging’s buzz factor may have worn off, its usefulness to a hotel marketer has not. (Just look at Bill Marriot, whose blog has brought in $5 million in additional revenue.)  This is just another reminder not to jump on the blogging bandwagon without carefully considering the advantages and disadvantages of hotel blogging.

To make smart marketing decisions, you need solid information. Of course, this is true in any economic climate, but with a possible slowdown ahead in the travel industry, the stakes are even higher.  All marketing expenditures must be justified by results.

If you’ve been marketing for a while, you undoubtedly know some metrics that work for traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.  However, the rules of the game change once you begin marketing online and encounter a wide variety of new media options.

What metrics should you use to measure the effectiveness of your digital hotel marketing campaign?  Let’s start off by putting aside a couple web marketing metrics that have been used in the past, but aren’t really that helpful anymore.

• Number of ad views – in the early days of the web, it was common to purchase advertising based on the number of ad impressions or views.  Now, there are other more effective ways (such as pay-per-click).
• Website visitors – the number of people that visit your website might have little correlation to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Should you track these?  Absolutely.  They just don’t provide enough insight.  So let’s move on to some more helpful metrics.

1. Conversion rate – what percentage of website visitors are booking a room?
2. Cost per booking – actually, you should be tracking a wide variety of “cost-per” actions for any advertising campaign. How much does each click, visitor, and lead cost? Spending must be tied to revenue gains.
3. Referral source type – knowing the type of websites that provide the most visitors can help you decide the direction of your marketing campaign
4. Search engine rank – How high do you rank in search results for each important keyword phrases?  Search is still the #1 way people find websites, so you need to list high for key phrases.
5. Social media mentions – How many bloggers and social travel networking websites are talking about your hotel?

Those are the core metrics that are important for anyone doing hospitality marketing.  Other metrics that could be useful in your situation include:

• Percentage of positive mentions in social media – this statistic is a little harder to generate, but the results are more insightful.  What is the overall consensus on your facility?
• Average time on site – how long do people stay on your site?
• Bounce rate – how many people leave your website without visiting any other pages (the lower this number, the better)
• Reservation abandonment rates – you need to know when and where potential guests are giving up in your booking system
• Top referral keywords – which phrases do people use to find your website?
• Number of inbound links – your goal should be to increase the quantity and quality of inbound links each month
• Google Pagerank – Google’s measure of website authority

Whatever combination of indicators you plan to use, the important thing is that you track and save this information.  You can only make efficient marketing decisions by looking at historical data, and then focusing your marketing resources on what works.

Let me ask you this: What metrics do you use for digital marketing?

Hiring a professional marketing firm to promote your hotel online can be a wise investment. But before you select a consultant, it’s essential to have a checklist of questions ready to help you separate the legitimate, results-oriented firms from the inexperienced, amateur ones.

Here are some questions to begin with:

Question: What makes you unique?

What to look for: Unique differentiation of the consultant’s skills.

Why it’s important: To gain the competitive edge, you need innovative approaches to your internet promotions. Make sure the firm you’re considering possesses these.

Question: How long have you been doing this work?

What to look for: Significant, relevant experience.

Why it’s important: Asking “How long have you been in business?” isn’t especially relevant. In the internet marketing world, time spent perfecting a specific skill is far more meaningful.

Question: Do you have a backup team? If yes, where are they located?

What to look for: A local backup team.

Why it’s important: When a project deadline is critical, it’s nice to know that there will be others working on your project. Your company promotions cannot come to a standstill if the consultant is on vacation, for example.

Question: Who will be doing the actual work?

What to look for: Close proximity between your consultant and the people doing the work.

Why it’s important: When an issue arises, your consultant needs the power to take immediate action.  If the people conducting the actual marketing work for you are 12 time zones away, communication can be a challenge.

Question: What is your workflow process?

What to look for: A documented path to project completion.

Why it’s important: A work flow chart helps ensure consistent results and provides clear expectations for everyone.

Question: How will I be involved?

What to look for: Clear communication systems between you and the consultant.

Why it’s important: Having your input in the marketing campaign development is crucial. Look for consultants that will involve you as much as you want to be involved, and send you frequent progress updates.

Question: How can I contact you if I have a question?

What to look for: A full range of communications options – including a toll-free and personal cell numbers, email address, and physical office location

Why it’s important: When you need to communicate with your consultant, you should be able to use whatever method is most convenient.  Good consultants understand this, and will make it easy for you to contact them.

Question: How do you price your services?

What to look for: Results and percentage-based pricing.

Why it’s important: Your investment in marketing consulting should be tied to what your hotel will make in additional revenue, not on how many hours the consultant worked.

Question: Do you guarantee your work?

What to look for: A list of deliverables backed by a money-back guarantee.

Why it’s important: A money-back guarantee is a sure indicator of consulting legitimacy. You only want to work with individuals and firms that only accept payment for results. Insist on this in the beginning for untested consultants.

Question: What is the duration of your contract?

What to look for: No-penalty termination option (in the event of poor service).

Why it’s important: You don’t want to get locked into a long-term contract if the consultant isn’t providing the results you need. Good consultants will have enough confidence in the quality of their work to make a contract with a no-penalty, early-escape clause.