Who should be on your social media team? At least one person from every department…

The ‘social media ambassador‘ may be the public face of your social media presence – but building a team with someone from each department will make participation more effective.

[Feel free to download and use the full size version from Flickr]

This illustration was planned with Michael Hraba and drawn by the talented Carlo Tolentino – our new artist. Making digital communications simple is very important to me, and we look forward to sharing more illustrations like this.

Twitter has finally begun to gradually introduce an advertising platform - Promoted Tweets – allowing businesses to publish promotional tweets. Since Twitter has revolutionized how we communicate online, it only makes sense their advertising program is a little different.

What do hotels need to know about Promoted Tweets?

There are 3 core principles of the program:

• Twitter will insert the ads into the Twitter stream, clearly label them as promotions, and give them all the functionality of standard tweets
• Ads are confined to the standard Twitter character limit (140 characters)
• Promoted tweets that aren’t attracting attention are to be pulled out by Twitter.

I listened to a number of insiders here at ad:tech San Francisco, and some of the key points that are emerging…

It works best if you’re already doing well in Twitter

Twitter CEO Evan Williams:

[Twitter ads] will definitely work best for companies who Twitter works well for generally

In other words, if you don’t adopt the mindset of being interesting and useful, you can’t simply buy your way into the Twitter community.

Relevance is key for success

Relevance is the big issue when it comes to Twitter advertising. Advertisers will bid on keywords based on a CPM basis initially, but Twitter intends to use a “resonance score” metric to see how much reach and impact individually sponsored tweets have. User interaction with ads will determine the price and longevity of specific ads.

On the Twitter blog, Biz Stone says if your message doesn’t connect with your audience, you’ll be removed:

There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don’t interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.

Relevance – as measured by audience interaction – was core to the success of Google’s advertising model. Twitter’s development of the Promoted Tweets program seems to be the next step in the online advertising evolution. I see a strong chance for it to influence other advertising platforms.

Ads will begin in search results

ReadWriteWeb calls the scheme “delightfully boring“:

Advertisements will begin in search, with keywords being bid on and a single advertisement appearing with frequency dependent on its performance. Then the ads will be extended to 3rd party applications like TweetDeck and others…Finally, ads will begin to appear on Twitter.com, tailored to the interests of users, as easily observed by their messages published and received.

The benefit of Twitter advertising

The ads could become a good way to maintain visibility for important keywords (searches) if the stream is “polluted” with a lot of noise.

For example, many “hotel” related Twitter search queries are full of chatter useless to someone looking for (or working with) a hotel. Sponsoring a tweet that sits on top of this chatter stream could significantly raise your visibility and prevent it from being ‘drowned’ in other tweets.

Program timeline

Messages are currently limited to a small group of test marketers, including Red Bull, Starbucks, Virgin America. (All strong Twitter users already) Expansion of the platform depends how users will react to the Promoted Tweets platform.

Twitter hopes to eventually insert advertisers into the timelines of messages that users see from people they network with – when the message seems appropriate.

Key point to remember

Promoted Tweets values personal interaction. Advertising isn’t enough. You’ll have to focus on creating quality content that your fans love.

Dallas Lawrence says this well in his Mashable article:

During the past year, Twitter has trained successful online brand marketers, reputation managers, and digital thought leaders to focus on the “value of providing value.” Unlike almost any platform to date, Twitter has urged, nudged and down-right forced messengers to infuse value into the dialogue, 140 characters at a time. With Twitter now offering an expanded road map for pay-for-play engagement, those entrusted with managing online reputations forget these lessons at their own peril.

Jim Zito is Vice President of Interactive Marketing for the Morgans Hotel Group, based in New York City. At last month’s EyeForTravel Social Media Strategies for Travel conference, Jim talked a little bit about how they are moving social media management responsibilities away from the corporate office and towards the local level. I sat down with him to ask a few questions and clarify his strategy.

“It’s a transition process that we’re involved in right now. We engaged the services of an outside Social Media agency, and we’re putting together training programs that will be used at a local level. Depending on what we deem appropriate, social media marketing will probably take place mostly on the local level. And I’m discussing with our Local PR agencies how what they work on locally at the hotels can be complimented by the social media agency.”

Josiah: What are your objectives in moving social media marketing to the property level?

Jim: A lot of the time at our hotels there a lot of things going on that we’re just not aware of at the corporate level. So there are obviously corporate-level initiatives, but locally there so many other things that are happening that the hotels are more in touch with, as well as the local fans/followers are engaged on a different level.

The hotels are also the best point of contact for response if there’s an event going on – they can coordinate with the local talents. They can tie in social media activity with the DJs or the music performers.

How do you encourage staff at the local level to share the stories? I know there are many front-line staff that could become aware of stories developing… do you have some sort of a mechanism to capture all this and then distribute it in social media?

Because we are a fairly small organization, we are fortunate – there are such ongoing contact daily between all the departments that it’s really easy to capture information on what’s going on. There’s no formalized structure right now, but I think it’s still too early for that.

I was interested in the social media triage concept you mentioned in your presentation. Do you have a ranking system to prioritize social media responses?

We can monitor if they are in influencer or a blogger – even their Google ranking. Fortunately, there’s not usually enough volume that we have to use that, it’s more one-on-one. Each customer is just as important as the others.

We just have this triage system in place in case there was an onslaught of online feedback, and we had to deal with a lot of responses quickly.

You mentioned the concept of having a ‘social media champion’ at each property. How do you select that person? What if some of their personality traits?

It’s the personality. First it’s usually interest for them, they tend to be the person on property that’s the most engaged and service oriented. All the staff may be great, but is usually one standout. And then we’ll ask if they have an interest to do this. If they do, we train them accordingly.

So it could be the concierge it could be assistant to general manager, could be the general manager. Or could be the front-office manager that has the most one-on-one relationships. It’s easy for them to address and respond to feedback – both positive and negative – that we get online.

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.

Google Buzz has received a lot of, well, buzz over the past couple weeks. When it comes to reviews, we have everything from Jason’s sugary love note to the Wall Street Journal’s piece on why Buzz isn’t humming along.  I wanted to take an open-minded look at it from a hotel marketing perspective.

What is Google Buzz? How is it different from every other tool out there? How should we use it?

Google Buzz is a an alternative way to share updates with your contacts, whether they be links, photos, videos, or status updates. Everything is integrated and accessible within your Gmail account.

Let’s start off with Google’s own 2-minute introduction video:

The Features

What Google buzz reminds me of is an RSS reader combined with social networking tools: all within your Gmail inbox. Some of the key features that you can expect from it are the following:

• There’s no set-up required. Since it’s already integrated with Gmail, you automatically follow the contacts you’ve already made. Google starts off by showing updates of the people that you’ve emailed and chatted with the most.
• The option for public and private sharing. You can either set up your feed to be viewable by anyone or just close contacts like friends and family. If you’re going to use Buzz for marketing, you’ll choose the former.
• Inbox integration allows you to view all updates from your contacts within a single Gmail feed, instead of flooding your inbox with updates like most social networking clients.
• A “Recommended buzz” which shows friend-of-friend content in your stream, showing media with the most feedback from your contacts or which has content of similar interest to your own.
• An option for direct comments. This feature’s similar to Facebook’s status updates where you can carry a conversation in real-time and keep it monitored by sending the message to your email. You also have the option for direct replies to posters, which is done simply by placing an “@” sign before a user’s name to have a message addressed to them (much like Twitter).
• Buzz seems to work well on mobile phones – particularly on Android and iPhone browsers – so that you can view updates on the go.
• Rich media sharing allows you to combine networks like Picasa, Flickr and Twitter into a single feed. I like the way Google displays large images:

The benefits

I enjoy how Buzz shows “just the good stuff.” (Something I love on Facebook as well) As you start working in social media full time, the sheer volume of content can be overwhelming. Buzz, on the other hand, can be ‘trained’ to your preferences. Don’t like what you see? Just click “dislike” and Buzz will start to learn the types of content that interest you.

Read more…

To help you prepare for the upcoming year, I’ve assembled my annual list of hotel marketing ideas.

They say 80% of results come from 20% of work. It’s more like 95% from 5%. I spend several hours blogging each day, yet my “120 Marketing Ideas for 2009″ was many times more popular than any other post I published this year. Thousands of people found this blog each month through this list of marketing strategies.

Well, today I’m going to create an all-new version for 2010…with even more ideas. I’m proud to present:

130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

Strategy

• 90% of purchasing decisions begin online (Forrester)
• Educated buyers now solve problems through Google searches
• Marketing goals in the past: create brand awareness, target mass media, interrupt and repeat. Marketing now: create behavior change, create conversation, communicate directly
• New goal: 100% engagement (not 2% conversion)
• What should you publish online? Anything that saves people time and gives info that positions you as a good source. Understand what your customers need to know, and deliver it in a compelling way
• What online channels does your demographic spend time in? Find out, then develop a strong presence there. Don’t make people come to you – put content where they already are online.
• Think like a “content DJ”: use and reuse your content in many different formats: blog posts, email, newsletters, articles, PDFs, press releases, case studies, video, and social media updates
• Spend the large majority of your time trying to reach the most likely buyers instead of the entire market. “The smaller the target, the bigger the bulls eye.”
• If you’re small, you can be quick & nimble. Capitalize on that.
• We have 3 jobs as marketers: obtain profitable customers, keep them, and expand their lifetime value
• People admire complexity, but reward simplicity
• Don’t do something unless you’re the best in the world at it. If someone else does something better, use their services. Focus only on what you do best, and outsource everything else.

Planning

• The #1 failure in marketing plans: no clear measures of success
• You must differentiate to avoid becoming a price-driven commodity
• Not a lot of hotels know where their market position is. Define and position yourself.
• On metasearch sites, hotels should move away from price commoditization by providing product-level custom messages to differentiate their offers
• To find differentiating factors, thoroughly study the service you offer and interview the people that provide it
• If you spend your resources like everyone else, you’ll get results like everyone else. Breakthrough campaigns often require unusual approaches.
• Selling to your best guests is the best way to maximize profits.  Setup systems for recognizing and rewarding these people.
• Identify and test the key strategies your marketing plan hinges upon. The more facts and research you can include in your plans, the better. Hard data is far more valuable than guesswork.
• Decide what success means to you. It’s different for everyone.

Read more…

A reader recently wrote me with this common dilemma:

We are a 15-room boutique hotel, that is a bit off of the main travel area – especially during the winter months. A 103-room resort recently opened close by, which has been extremely hard on us, not to say the least about the economy problems.  Now, we are on a no-budget marketing expense lockdown, heading into the off season, and trying to attract business. Any advice?

How can you run a marketing campaign with no budget?

I covered a little bit of this in my free hotel marketing article, and you need to be very creative and resourceful.

Zero Budget Marketing Strategy

* If you’re going to promote successfully with no budget, you’re going to need to use word of mouth: people talking about you.

* Get a strategy together for guest review sites like TripAdvisor. Reviews by your past guests gives you extra online exposure, and can encourage people to stay at your hotel. Read the marketing guidelines from TripAdvisor (and Qype) before getting started.

* Build a referral system that lets your guests spread the word for you

* Partner with other businesses to refer guests. Look for ‘piggyback’ marketing opportunities.

* Get involved with your community through volunteering. (Here’s how David McConnell does it)

* Avoid mass promotion. Instead, focus on a very small market and practice mass personalization. “The smaller the target, the bigger the bulls eye.”

Zero Budget Marketing Tactics

* Start blogging (Seriously, this works) Have your own employees write the blog – readers find that much more credible.

* Repurpose your existing content in ways that help you attract new guests

* Social media may be the answer. (And it may not be.) Understand that it often takes a lot of time to promote effectively on these ‘free’ websites. Track results and see if it’s worth your while.

* Plan an email marketing system for travel agents and corporate travel planners – people who could send you lots of business

* Look into pay-for-performance tools such as MeetingsBooker

I’ll bet you have more ideas – how do you create something with nothing?

I’ve made it clear earlier how PPC is one of the most perfect advertising methods in existence. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can cause more harm than help. When done incorrectly, PPC can run up a huge bill with nothing to show for it.

That’s why I’m putting together this big list of all-too-common mistakes: so you, my savvy reader, know what to avoid.

The Big Bad List of Expensive PPC Mistakes

Mistake: Throwing together a huge list of generic keywords

Avoid just putting together a big keyword list of terms that are not related to your business. The traffic generated from those is unlikely to lead to sales. Instead, seek to dominate the market for a few, highly specific terms. (How to perform effective keyword research)

Mistake: Only using broad match keywords

Exact matching keywords improves your targeting ability, and usually, performance.

Mistake: Not bidding for your hotel name

Usually it’s cheap, and is a good defensive marketing move.

Mistake:  Spending on unqualified clicks

Use negative keyword matching to exclude searches from people unlikely to buy.

Mistake: Not highlighting the unique selling point of your hotel in ad copy

Failing to identify what makes you unique from your competitors will make it less likely for your potential guests to understand the difference.

Mistake: Not including keywords in your ad copy

Putting keywords in your ad copy increases relevance and typically leads to more clicks.

Mistake: Not building landing pages for each campaign

Building landing pages is an under-used part of PPC marketing, but very important. Here’s ten tips to improve your landing pages.

Mistake: No relevance on the landing page

There must be a clear link between PPC ad copy and the first page people see on your website. Don’t confuse them.

Mistake: Running only one ad campaign

Don’t launch just one campaign – multiple campaigns allow you to specify different geographic or content distribution options.

Mistake: Using just one ad group

Campaigns are made up of ad groups – and there should be more than one. Using multiple ad groups lets you write ad copy that is more targeted…and likely to earn clicks. Using multiple ad groups is also important for reporting purposes.

Mistake: Not keeping an eye on distribution coverage

Use a service such as AdGooRoo to make sure your ads are being shown every time someone searches for your target keywords. Otherwise, you’re losing out on ad impressions and additional exposure.

Mistake: Not lowering bids for the content network

The content network often generates lower quality traffic, and it’s important to adjust your bidding strategy accordingly.

Mistake: Failing to track performance data

Search engines – Google in particular – provide such a wealth of information to their advertisers, that you’re missing out if you’re not taking advantage of it.

Mistake: Not testing regularly

You must perform ongoing optimization on your campaign to maximize performance. This should include regular split testing of ad copy, and constant keyword adjustments.

Mistake: Overpaying for the top ad spot

Research shows ad positions #3-7 typically has best ROI.

Mistake: Not using geo-targeting

Even if your product and services performs well worldwide, you should still use a geo-targeting strategy for best results.

Mistake: Not monitoring fraudulent clicks

Search engines are cracking down on click fraud – but it still exists. If you suspect it, cross-check your PPC reports with website analytics data.

Mistake: Not employing content network reports

Content network campaigns can be lucrative if managed well, so make sure you run reporting that gives you insight here.

Mistake: Trying to bid your way out of poor quality score

Quality score is a feature Google uses to gague the relevance of an advertiser’s campaign. If your quality score is low, fix it by improving relevance – not just paying more.

Mistake: Not using the Search Query Performance Report

To enhance CTR and ROI, companies should review the Search Query Performance Report weekly to find out what keywords inappropriately lead to your ad so you can include these in the negative keyword list.

Mistake: Not reporting policy violation to Google

Don’t let your competitors cheat and put you at an unfair disadvantage!

Mistake: Focusing on CTR instead of Conversion Rate

Unless your strategically focusing elsewhere, make sales a priority. In your testing, optimize for the highest sales conversion rate…not just high ad clickthroughs. (Extreme example: using the word ‘free’ may attract lots of clicks, but not from people looking to buy)

With all the hype over social media during the past several years, e-mail has taken a backseat role in many ways.

That’s a shame. E-mail remains a very powerful marketing tool when used correctly. It can serve as the cornerstone of permission-based relationship marketing — the concept Seth Godin explained in his 1999 book Permission Marketing.

E-mail usually has a higher psychological value than other social media communication. If you are consistently delivering value in your messages people will listen to what you have to say. They may even take action.

This may sound like just theory, but in this article I will show you concrete examples of how hotels are using e-mail marketing to make money. We will look at ways your hotel can use email, how to build your list and create a campaign, benchmarks for testing, and finally some case studies of other hotels.

Part 1: Ways your hotel could use email

Use it as a direct response tool. When done correctly, e-mail allows you to communicate with laser-like focus to specific groups of people. This is one of the best ways your hotel can drive direct bookings.

Use it as an automated sales force. More than any other marketing tactic, email lends itself well to automation. You can create a powerful sales system, and then sit back and let it do the work for you. (At the end of this article, there is a case study of how the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado used this tactic to generate $245,000 in revenue from a $15,000 investment.)

Use it as a feedback and research tool. Many hotels send an automatic survey link to gather guest feedback. That’s a good start. But I think there are also other ways you can use e-mail to get feedback… not only on the guests stay, but also for new ideas and other market research. This depends on the type of list that you have developed, but the potential is there. Be creative about it.

Use it as a relationship building tool. You can send loyal guests special offers. You can notify them of new amenities or features. You can provide insider information. You can use email to give your organization some personality. The opportunities are endless for building top of mind awareness.

Use it to provide superior guest service. There is so much potential for hotels to use e-mail to improve their guests’ experience. A series of e-mails could be triggered whenever someone makes a reservation: leading up to the stay, and then following up after they leave. Putting everything on autopilot insures every guest has an excellent experience interacting with your hotel. It reduces staff busywork and the potential for errors.

Use email to communicate with other important stakeholders. Email communications don’t always have to be sent to guests. There are other groups you should focus an equal amount of time on.

Fairmont Hotels understands this. Nearly half of their email newsletters are written for and sent to other businesses. One newsletter goes to administrative assistants that handle corporate bookings. Another goes to travel agents. Reaching and working with these people plays a large role in generating revenue.

Thought: What business partners should you be communicating with?

Part 2: Plan your list building strategy

Even aside from the ethical considerations, getting the best results from your email promotional efforts requires you create a list organically and with the explicit permission of your prospects.

• You can include a signup form on your website. Just keep it short: email & first name is best.
• Your front desk staff can ask for addresses during check-in or check out
• You can leave a letter of invitation in their room

However you plan to collect email addresses, make sure there is a strong benefit for the person signing up.

The prospect of receiving generic updates from your hotel may or may not be enough. Exclusive discounts or preferred service is more compelling.

Read more…

Many hotels are working on their marketing budgets right now. I have received multiple requests for advice on budgeting this week, and wanted to put together this practical, straightforward guide. We will examine the biggest factors to consider when planning your Internet marketing budget, 11 major categories hotels should budget for, and finally 3 basic hotel budgeting approaches.

This advice comes from my own real-world experience as the marketing manager or consultant for dozens of leading organizations around the world — and also as the owner of three companies. When your own company’s money is on the line, you tend to take a very pragmatic approach to marketing, and that’s what I intend to do in this article.

Factors to consider while planning your hotel marketing budget

Many industry professionals recommend you start with the industry average marketing budget. I disagree. Every business success I’ve been involved with has been contrarian. If you spend your resources like everyone else, you’ll get average results. Breakthrough campaigns often require unusual approaches. You decide what works for you.

Be aware of industry standards, but don’t feel bound by them. It can be helpful to know the average prices hotels are paying for individual marketing tactics — if only for a point of reference.

Start with an internet marketing plan for the year. Sounds simple, but true. If you don’t know how you want to spend your money, calculating the amount will be extremely difficult! Some tactics to include are explained below.

A good budget will take into mind past results your company experienced — but will also realize that things change. What worked five years ago may not work over the next five years.

Remember your primary business objective. Do you want more overall sales, to build your brand, or consolidate your profits? Each requires a different approach, which we’ll cover later.

Know your marketing priorities. Separate the “musts” from the “wants.” So many things can happen along the way that cause you to deviate from a plan made months ago. Having priorities ensures the essential gets done.

Identify which marketing strategies you don’t need to implement. There are a seemingly unlimited number of marketing tactics you could try, so identifying the non-essential helps you focus and cut costs. Every hotel doesn’t need to do every tactic out there.

Be aware of trends, and budget appropriately. Some organizations on annual budget cycles approve money for trends way too late — and missed the boat. Make sure the resources that you’re dedicating to a tactic or strategy will be valid 1, 2, 5 years from now. You don’t want to outdate yourself.

I personally recommend most hotels abandon all traditional marketing and advertising in favor of any Internet focused strategy: 75% of budget for web-based communications, 25% for PR. You can discount this advice as someone who has worked in web marketing his entire career, but the numbers don’t lie. In the campaigns that I’ve been involved in, we have achieved phenomenal return on investment… and received media coverage an organization our size shouldn’t normally be entitled to.

Separate your marketing costs into two categories. Initial development costs include research and strategy development, website design, content creation, marketing systems set up. Ongoing expenses and maintenance include e-mail marketing, pay per click advertising, search visibility improvement, website maintenance and development, consulting fees, and analytics and tracking analysis.

Ensure that you are sufficiently capitalized. Many marketing tactics will take several months to show results, and often the best results are obtained by sticking with your marketing plan month after month — for the next 12 months. You may have to adjust your marketing plan to enable this, but make sure your budget is sufficient to accommodate consistent execution.

Be aware that your most important marketing investments may not even be under the traditional ‘marketing’ budget category. For example, introducing a fabulous collection of guest amenities can cause your guests to promote your hotel for you. At the end of the day, your guest experience is the marketing. Money you spend to create an amazing guest experience at your hotel has some of best ROI.

Finally, think of your marketing program as an investment. If you are promoting properly, every dollar that you spend on marketing will come back to you many times over. Good hotel marketing budgets are never an expense, and it’s important we remember this.

11 most important hotel marketing budget categories

Read more…