“If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?” – Seth Godin

Either your advertising works or it doesn’t.  This is especially true online, where tracking performance is easier.

When is the last time you did an impartial audit of your campaign performance? It’s nice to do anytime, but especially important as we head into a new year.

Today, I encourage you to take a closer look at your marketing budget’s return on investment.  Ineffective advertising must be stopped immediately. For profitable campaigns, your budget should be unlimited.

Stop making advertising investments on blind faith or what you’ve done in the past.  Let numbers be your guide in 2009.

Many hotel owners I talk with are looking for ways to reduce expenses in 2009. Lean and mean to survive this economy, right?

While across-the-board budget cuts can hurt revenue, there usually are areas of waste that can be eliminated.  Marketing is no exception.  Here’s some basic ways smart hotel marketers are reducing their promotions budgets – while at the same time getting better results.

1) Track your marketing & advertising

What is measured gets improved.  New technology requires new metrics.  Create new, insightful measures of success.

2) Focus on what works, reduce (or eliminate) the rest

Expenditure must be tied to additional revenue.  Make sure your marketing budget isn’t going down the drain.

3) Invest in a top-quality SEO campaign

Search engine optimization allows you to get website visitors for free, and often starts a snowball effect.  For best results, go beyond a quick tuneup – aim to dominate your local search results.

4) Spend more on pay per click (PPC) ads

Perhaps the ultimate low-budget advertising method, PPC ensures you only pay for results.  You can develop a highly targeted campaign that only reaches regions you want.  [Free flowchart for hotel PPC campaigns]

5) Market to your existing best customers

Selling to your best guests is the best way to maximize profits.  Setup systems for recognizing and rewarding these people.

6) Expand your social media involvement

Building your presence in travel social networking sites improves your online visibility.  (Plus, people sort of expect it.)

7) Establish a PR campaign for new media

As more people use social media for trip planning, this can be a very cost effective way to increase your exposure.  Just make sure you pitch the top people correctly.

Take tech leadership for free press coverage

As we’ve seen, hotels that use innovative new technology attract a lot of free publicity.  Plus, it builds a better guest experience.  Often, the best upgrades are relatively inexpensive – and tie into a unique attribute of your hotel.

9) Outsource your marketing tasks

Hiring a marketing firm that specializes in the hospitality industry can be more cost-effective than using in-house staff.  Use insider questions to find the best agencies.

Let me ask you this: What changes do you plan to make in 2009?

The top concern of most hotel marketers right now is making sure their promotional efforts are working.  Marketing expenditure must be tied to additional revenue, providing a solid return on investment.

How would you know if your marketing budget is going down the drain?

Indicator #1: You’re not tracking the results

What is measured gets improved.  You already know that.  But are you tracking the right numbers?  Many traditional measures of marketing success have become ineffective with changes in media and consumer buying behavior.

Your job: Use meaningful metrics for your digital marketing

Indicator #2: You haven’t profiled your ideal guest

Knowing your customer is the first step in effective hospitality marketing.  Only after you understand their hotel selection process (what’s important to them) can you create a truly effective campaign.

Your job: Building an intelligent guest database, and rewarding your best customers

Indicator #3: You’re not targeting your marketing

Once you know your target market, you can select media that contains a high proportion of ideal guests.  The internet makes it easy to focus your marketing.  When optimizing your website, include keywords that your ideal guests are likely to search for.  When advertising on pay-per-click networks, use geo-targeting and include negative keywords to only show ads to people likely to stay at your hotel.

Your job: Selecting the right media formats and outlets that best reach your ideal guests

With the technology today, there’s no reason to waste time and money in your marketing campaign.  Use the suggestions above to ensure your marketing dollars aren’t going down the drain.

The snowball effect of organic search marketing works like this: The higher your hotel’s website ranks in search engines for relevant phrases, the more people will find you.  These people include prospective guests, reviewers, and journalists.  The more people find you, the more coverage and attention you’ll receive on other websites.   This in turn brings you even more links and a higher search ranking.

Once started, search optimization is a virtuous cycle providing long-term benefits to your hotel.

Still not convinced of the benefits of natural search marketing?  Here’s a few more reasons you need to start now:

1) It’s affordable.  You may choose to hire a specialist to optimize your website, but you won’t pay an ongoing monthly expenditure for advertising.

2) There’s no risk.  With other forms of promotion, you could make a wrong decision and find out (months later) that you’ve wasted thousands of dollars.  This doesn’t happen when you invest in search engine optimization (SEO).  Making the proper adjustments now will benefit you for years to come.

3) It provides the best quality of prospective guests – more than any other marketing or advertising medium.  People will come to your website are actively looking for you and what you have to provide.  Since the visit is guest-initiated, they will be more engaged with the message on your hotel website.

With all the turmoil the US financial markets are going through, what is your hotel marketing strategy for the months ahead? Do you plan to change marketing tactics, or continue existing ones?

I’d like your input.

Please take a moment to complete this completely anonymous, 90-second survey.

I’m going to compile all the results into a special report, which will be available for free download from this website.

People who share their ideas will be able to download the report first, so to reserve your copy please take the survey now.