eHospitalityMarketing Blog

eHospitalityMarketing’s CEO Teaches Class at the Rady School of Management

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:55:21 +0000

San Diego, California, June 8, 2009 — eHospitalityMarketing’s CEO Scott Lavelle taught a class on Internet marketing strategies and best practices at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management on June 1, 2009. Scott provided an overview of the latest and greatest Internet marketing strategies with an emphasis on ROI. Given the audience (first and second year MBA students), the talk focused on implications for managerial decision-making, not implementation (e.g. “how-to guide for SEO).

The class covered topics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising management, post-click marketing strategies including pre-conversion segmentation landing pages and the conversion funnel, email marketing (including strategies for improving ROI such as welcome programs) and Social Media Marketing (SMM)

The class was well received. For additional information or to book Scott for a speaking or teaching engagement, please send an email to press@ehospitalitymarketing.com.

About eHospitalityMarketing:

eHospitalityMarketing provides Internet marketing services and strategic consulting for small to medium size hospitality companies.

Public Relations

eHospitalityMarketing
(800) 557-9047
press@ehospitalitymarketing.com
www.ehospitalitymarketing.com

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Hospitality Internet Marketing: Post-Click Marketing for the Hospitality Industry

admin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:29:49 +0000

You might have heard the term “post-click marketing” floating around the Internet marketing world recently. Basically, post-click marketing refers to any marketing initiative that takes places between the time someone clicks on an ad and the actual conversion. This is called the “conversion funnel”. There are many possibilities. Here someone clicks, goes to a first landing page, then a second landing page and finally the main website and purchases:

Here is a typical conversion funnel in post-click marketing.

An awesome strategy in post-click marketing is called pre-conversion segmentation. Basically, you have customers segment themselves into groups they identify with before purchasing. Companies like Dell do this really well:

Dell laptop pre-conversion segmentation strategy

Here I typed in “dell laptop” and got the PPC ad you see at the top. After I clicked, instead of going right away to a list of products I went to a landing page where I was asked to choose between the “home” or “business” stores. After choosing a group, I went to a landing page appropriate for that group. You can see that the “home” landing page has a very different look and feel than the “business” landing page.

So why do this? Well, by simply having people choose a group conversion rates are up to 300% higher than having them go straight to a product list. It makes sense when you think about human nature. People generally like to self-identify with a group. Also, this strategy offers easy engagement, more focus, signaling (“I’m in the right place”) and opportunities for market research. This is a great strategy for hospitality Internet marketing too; it really works in any industry.

Hospitality Marketing Strategy: 5 Ways to Get Creative in an Economic Downturn

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:37:58 +0000

Although it’s a fun buzz term, the “staycation” is a scary concept for the hospitality industry. More and more leisure and business travelers are simply staying home in these tough economic times. Hotels and other hospitality businesses are faced with decreasing occupancy and revenue. As a marketing professional or hospitality business owner, how can you be proactive and tackle the situation head on?

First of all, you can’t stop marketing! Studies have shown that you should actually increase your marketing budget in an economic downturn. We believe that you need to get creative with your hospitality Internet marketing strategy and smarter with your marketing mix and spending. We don’t think you should immediately cut rates, since this significantly affects RevPar and thus profit margins. In addition, cutting rates can start a price war with competitors, weaken your brand perception (especially for boutique or luxury businesses) and it is difficult to reverse once customers are used to lower prices. We’ve put together a list of smart and creative hospitality marketing strategies below to help you out.

5 Ways to Get Creative With Your Hospitality Marketing Strategy in an Economic Downturn:

1. Target new customer segments: try to direct your sales and marketing efforts towards customers you may have never targeted before like students and seniors. While discounted rates for these customers will decrease your margins a bit, you should be able to make up the difference through other services and by not losing occupancy.

2. Get creative with your promotional strategy: Promotional strategy is particularly important in an economic downturn; look for creative ways to run promotions without lowering your brand perception or cutting into your profits. For example, bundling services into package deals is a great strategy. If you can creative extra value for guests, e.g., by offering free or discounted spa services or meals packages, you can maintain occupancy without cutting room rates too much.

3. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO): many hospitality companies who haven’t previously implemented SEO or who need to improve their hospitality SEO results are finding that now is a perfect time to invest. Rather than wasting your precious marketing dollars on paid search campaigns with limited effectiveness, why not take the time to invest in a highly effective and proven long-term strategy?

4. Work on building a unique and dynamic online brand: your website is your brand. Studies have shown that customers generate all of the perceptions and feelings they have about your business and your brand within the first 30 seconds of looking at your website home page. And customers are twice as likely to make purchase decisions based on emotions than product or service features. With the right website design and feel, features and user experience, you can get customers excited about your hospitality business and what you have to offer that is truly unique and valuable. Get that “wow” factor!

5. Develop an effective Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy: Social media sites are becoming more and more important in marketing. Facbook alone currently has 175,000,000 active users. Use viral marketing strategies with the right message that will build buzz and brand awareness for your hospitality business on social media sites such as Facebook, TripAdvisor, Twitter, YouTube and Yelp. In addition, SMM campaigns have a great crossover benefit with your hospitality SEO strategy because they bring you a large amount of quality “backlinks” that will increase your search engine rankings.

For more information, check out our hospitality Internet marketing services and strategies.

Google Analytics: The Top 4 Reasons You Should Use It For Your Hospitality Business

admin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:12:51 +0000

Given the economic downturn, marketing dollars are more precious than ever. You want to be able to precisely measure the results of your Internet marketing campaigns, not throw darts. So how can you do it? Large hospitality companies can buy expensive Web analytics data from providers such as Omniture® or invest massive resources into developing their own proprietary Web analytics systems. That’s the bad news. The good news is that small and mid size hospitality businesses can use Google™ Analytics, a powerful and sophisticated Web analytics tool that has all the same features you would expect from a high-end offering. Best of all, Google™ Analytics is free and easy to use. A Google™ Analytics consultant (yes, like us!) can set you up on the system, train you and get you started on analyzing the effectiveness of your website, email marketing, banner advertising, organic search and paid search (PPC) campaigns.

The Top 4 Reasons You Should Use Google™ Analytics:

1. Learn more about your customers and their preferences: with Google™ Analytics you can find out who visits your website, clicks on your sponsored links ads and looks at your email promotions. Also, how long they look, where they are and whether they click through and book.

2. Experiment with your website design and copy, measure the results: when you make changes to your website such as different layouts, colors, images and copy you can see if the changes increase traffic and bookings or not. Same with your emails and ads.

3. Easily measure your paid search ROI: Google™ Analytics is integrated with Google™ AdWords. This means that it calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data. Make changes to your PPC strategy and instantly see if they boost ROI.

4. Boost revenue and ROI by targeting the right customers with the right message: for example, see what types of customers click through your email promotions and book. By making smart decisions and changes based on real data, your revenue and ROI will increase.

For more information, take a look at the benefits of Google™ Analytics and our services.

Hotel Spas Targeting Locals

admin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:56:18 +0000

As the economic downturn hurts the hotel business, spas are trying to maintain their revenue by marketing their services to a local and regional clientele. This seems like a smart strategy for hospitality businesses in general, in the sense that it is always better to get creative and target new customer segments rather than severly cut prices and eliminate profit margins. This strategy sounds especially prudent for small to mid size hotels and hospitality businesses, who can’t make up for a drastic price cut with huge volumes like the national hotel chains.

According to the article, hotels like the Ginn Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, Florida, the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn in Sonoma, California, have all begun offering promotions and incentives for local residents like reduced admissions fees or discounts on treatments at their spas.

In addition, many hotels are offering spa packages as a way to incentivize guests. By bundling a number of spa services into one package, hotels are able to bring revenue into the spa without drastically cutting prices and they’re able to increase room bookings without substantially lowering room rates. Package deals are a highly recommended hospitality marketing strategy to provide extra value to guests without cutting room rates.

Hotel spa packages appear to be catching on as a hospitality Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy as well. A discounted massage and facial package that was heavily promoted via Facebook has been extended twice due to demand at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, California.

Get the full story at The New York Times.