Facebook Introduce Call to Action Button

If any hoteliers have logged on to their Facebook Business page today you'll have noticed a new addition on top of the main header image.

Hoteliers  can now add a Book Now Button to their site whilst other retailers can drive traffic directly to their online stores or whatever conversion landing page they wish in fact.

As always it is about Reducing Friction and if that means simplifying the journey from Facebook to your booking page then we would say that's a pretty decent move and it will only takes a few minutes to achieve but do remember not to link back to your homepage - it says Book Now so take the visitor to where they expect to be taken!

We've created one of our Tourism Matters Briefings to guide you through and make sure you link to the right place.

Download Tourism Matters Briefing

How Much Social Media Do I Need?

For as long as we can remember we have been discussing the merits of increasing distribution of content through as many channels as possible.

Of course every business can control their own channels and what information goes through those channels - websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, photo sharing sites, video channels and even online travel agents - but what is unclear is where that information then goes. The whole reason for uploading content into the cloud is to try to get it shared as widely as possible. Put it up and let it go.

This requires a distribution strategy and a positive content creation strategy and it is clear that individual businesses can never reach all distribution channels with a single message nor hit all niche markets with a standard line of promotion. 

A successful content distribution strategy therefore requires others to start talking about you. The more chatter there is out there the more chance you have of being found by the customer you had never even thought existed. Keep your distribution to normal channels and you by definition narrow your target market and will keep fishing in the same pool with an ever diminishing number of fish to catch.

It is therefore our belief that nurturing partnerships who wish to talk about your product positively is the best PR possible, of course you don't control the message but if that partner is a trusted one then the benefits are always likely to outweigh the benefits.

If that is accepted then you can never have enough positive distribution channels across multiple media. Your product may be doing well but it requires new markets to replace old in an ever changing marketplace and not looking beyond the present distribution may be seen as being very ricky. Make sure therefore that you develop these third party relationships, that you provide the resource that they need and encourage their positive PR whenever and wherever possible. It is the lowest cost of marketing available and third party non aligned recommendations are often the most effective in terms of return on investment.

Share Press Releases. Make images copyright free and accessible online. Share video. Offer incentives. They all will help build third party content distribution and increase your exposure.

Set up costs for social media may be small but the investment you need to make to ensure its effectiveness is time. And time is expensive. If someone else is doing this for you and indeed with you, that reduces risk and increases potentials reach. Win win scenario.

Search is a moveable feast and changes in logarithms has the potential to wipe out some of your best and most effective channels overnight. By increasing the routes to market you again by default reduce the risk of exposure to negative change. 

So in short, can you ever have too many social media and content distribution channels? 

Never.

Good Practice is... well simply good practice!

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself." (Oscar Wilde)

Sometimes you find great articles by external writers that give you hope! This was one of those. Why?

Well as much as you think that you are pointing the customer in the right direction the very nature of online marketing strategies for hospitality clients leads you sometimes towards the sense of despair that the omnipresent reach of the massive multinationals cannot be loosened. We are always telling our clients that there is a Plan B but sometimes you can't help but feel as though the advice is taken with a large pinch of salted scepticism.

It is always therefore quite nice to read something that just hits the button, that communicates and reinforces your own beliefs and that helps break bad habits.

The article below (by Sara O’Brien, Senior Manager for Marketing at HeBS Digital, one of the hospitality industry’s leading digital marketing firms) is one of those and speaks a language we understand. Please read and then by all means give us a call on 01294 233713.

In early January, in this year’s Top 10 Digital Marketing Resolutions, presented by HeBS Digital for the 15th consecutive year, we provided an action plan to follow during 2015. Created to help alleviate the complexity of our industry’s most recent innovations, this action plan was designed to help you concentrate on what’s most important: engaging your key customer segments and increasing direct online conversions and revenues! 

We went a step further and last week we presented an interactive webinar “Action Plan 2015: The Smart Hotelier’s Top 10 Digital Marketing Resolutions”, attended by hundreds of hoteliers. We received some great feedback and questions while we covered how to increase your online revenues/ROIs, gain market share, and stay ahead of the competition and OTAs in the coming year.

Here is a quick summary of the Smart Hotelier’s Action Plan 2015 Webinar and some practical action steps to monetize your digital marketing resolutions:

1. Budget for digital: be where your customers are.

Hoteliers should be spending a minimum of 4% of their total room revenue on advertising/marketing efforts, of which 75% should be spent on digital marketing. In 2015, over 50% of hotel rooms will be booked online! It only makes sense to put more money where your consumer is.

2. Focus on business needs: don’t be too quick to follow fads.

Make sure to focus on technology and marketing initiatives that achieve one single goal of driving direct online bookings and leads. This includes: website re-design and optimization, SEO and SEM/paid search, email marketing, customer segment marketing, direct-response banner advertising, as well as newer initiatives such as dynamic rate marketing, meta search, dynamic content personalization, multichannel campaigns, interactive applications and highly-focused display targeting and retargeting.

3. Invest in your property website. Optimize your presence on the three screens.

If your property website is two or more years old, does not offer responsive or adaptive design, does not support dynamic content personalization or dynamic rate marketing, or does not have state-of-the- art merchandising and reservation abandonment prevention capabilities, then it is time to make the upgrade.

4. Invest in a Content Management System with revenue-driving technology.

Choose a CMS technology that empowers you to seamlessly manage your website presence on the three screens via a single dashboard, engage users and maximize revenues from the direct online channel. Choose a CMS that enables your website to offer dynamic content personalization to fit the interests and preferences of website visitors and provides one-to-one marketing capabilities to drastically increase conversion rates and revenues. Your CMS should also feature a deep integration with the CRM and CRS to improve guest recognition and merchandising.

5. Personalize website content for the visitor.

Dynamic Content Personalization delivers unique and relevant textual, visual and promotional content to site visitors based on their demographics, location, website pathing behavior, past booking history, guest preferences, reward program affiliation or affiliation to a particular customer segment (transient corporate travel, leisure travel, family travel planner, corporate meeting planner, SMERF group planner, wedding planner, social event planner, etc.).

Dynamic content personalization based on geo-targeting is the logical first step and will benefit the property in the form of higher conversions and incremental revenues from those key feeder markets.

6. Reach guests throughout their travel planning journey with multi-channel marketing campaigns.

According to Google, the average site visits before the purchase is 21.6. Keeping the consumer engaged and reaching them multiple times throughout their journey requires using multiple channels. Begin by determining the business needs of your property. Then make sure to analyze results in the campaign entirety to see how the initiatives worked together.

7. Integrate real-time rates in your marketing campaigns.

Dynamic Rate Marketing (DRM), a next-generation direct-response marketing category, allows real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing to be inserted in various marketing initiatives including meta search, banner advertising via the top travel ad networks, retargeting, Google Adwords and email marketing.

A quick and easy way to start Dynamic Rate Marketing is to launch meta search marketing campaigns on TripAdvisor and Google Hotel Finder. Retargeting via the Google Display Network (GDN) is the logical next step. Taking this a step further and utilizing dynamic rate banners with concrete hotel rates and promotions on the GDN dramatically increases conversions and generates excellent ROIs.

8. Do not underestimate revenues from the search engines.

The reliable good old search engines generate over half of website revenue on hotel websites which is often forgotten when it comes to SEM/paid search and SEO budget planning. Create an ongoing SEO strategy to keep up with the new standards imposed by search engines. Make sure to budget sufficiently for SEM / Paid Search with at least 20-25% of the annual digital marketing budget.

9. Choose your digital marketing partner wisely.

A property’s digital marketing partner should become an extension of the hotel company’s team, work towards common goals and objectives, and provide solutions to business needs. This partner should also continuously bring forth new ideas, the latest best practices, and technology developments.

10. Do not be intimidated by the OTAs!

While it is true that OTAs have deep pockets and spend billions on digital marketing efforts, any property should realize they can outsmart and outspend any OTA on their property alone. Launching a comprehensive CRM program, including a simple Reward Program targeting and rewarding repeat guests, as well as budgeting for a robust direct online channel strategy, can shift the pendulum away from the OTAs. Develop a digital marketing strategy to “own” your destination and your destiny as a whole.

Question and Answer Session

The article also listed a number of questions raised in the seminare. It is a list of questions that arise time and time again and the answers when given honestly and without an agenda are so obvious.

Question: What advertising advice would you have for a highly seasonal market like Palm Springs, which seem to barely survive with flash sales?

Answer: First, we would recommend stopping flash sales. With all the latest targeting options, such asDynamic Rate Marketing (DRM), you can target people that are known to be traveling to your destination. Palm Springs is also big drive-in market and the Top Travel Ad Networks we mentioned not only have a lot of fly-in data but also a lot of drive-in data, such as information from car rental agencies. You can serve banners to people known to be driving in to that market, displaying rates for the dates they are known to be traveling. You should also be sure to utilize Retargeting. If you get someone to your website, you need to be able to reach them again after they have left. They will likely be going to 21.6 touchpoints (Google) throughout their travel planning journey, including the OTAs, so you want to be working at getting them back.

Question: Should we create a phone number for target segmentation?

Answer: Call tracking is extremely important, especially with so many people coming to your website through your mobile channel. Seven out of 10 bookings that start on the mobile device will end up happening on the phone. So it’s important get the full picture on how much revenue you drive by tracking phone calls.

Question: Displaying Real time rates and availability on your website and in campaigns: Are they only for tonight? What if our lead times are consistently much longer?

Answer: We showed real time rates on the mobile website because so many mobile bookings are last minute. However, the technology is available for you to choose any dates you have a need for. For desktop, we show real time rates for the upcoming weekends. You can have a rate for whenever you choose in your messaging.

Question: Do you recommend hotels do TripConnect or TripAdvisor Instant Booking? What are you doing on your end to get the best ROI?

Answer: At HeBS Digital we have meta search marketing platform called the DRMGateway. We can manage the budget on a regular basis and display the real time rates in real time. The problem with some of the platforms such as TripAdvisor TripConnect is that they don’t have that active management in place to optimize your bids and maximize return on investment.

TripAdvisor’s Instant Booking can be an OTA in a sense in that you are paying a really high commission. We would recommend that you first put all your marketing dollars towards a meta search campaign that is going directly to your website booking engine. To get the best ROI we are constantly looking at the competitiveness of the marketplace, what we are paying for clicks, if you have a low ADR and are in a really competitive marketplace that might be a case where you are not in the top 3. Every property and destination is a bit unique in terms of what needs to be done to get the best ROI.

Question: What if our budget is pretty set for the year. What types of things can we do within a limited framework?

Answer: In the short term, maximize the efforts that you HAVE budgeted for. For example, make sure that your SEO provider is implementing a robust local content generation plan and that you own results on the search engines from paid and organic. If you have an online media budget, see if you can fit in dynamic content banners into the mix. Or see if you can fit your planned initiatives into a multi-channel campaign, focused on a particular business need. For the long term, start thinking about 2016 already – it always comes fast. If it’s time to invest in a new property website and backend technology, start the conversation now about how you can fit it into the 2016 budget (or sooner if possible).

Question: What is the best way to source local content?

Answer: Nobody knows the destination better than the property, so make sure you work very closely with your digital marketing partner to ensure you have the best and most appropriate destination content featured on your website. A blog is extremely important and, along with your digital marketing partner, you should be consistently blogging about things to do in the area. Another item to add is an interactive map that highlights things to do nearby. If you do work with a vendor to outsource local content, make sure that the content is ON your website so you can reap the benefits of SEO.

Question: Do I need to invest in a new CMS to be able to personalize content on my website?

Answer: There are vendors that offer this service on some levels. They do not specialize in hospitality, and you rarely will have control over the entire process or comprehensive strategy that is really aligned with your website content. If the feature is built into your CMS then you don’t have to log in somewhere else, you can easily integrate personalization with all your marketing specials and promotions, and you can even integrate dynamic content personalization into your booking engine widget, PMS and CRS.

Question: My property has thought about creating a loyalty program but it doesn’t seem worth it. There are expensive set up and maintenance fees.

Answer: It doesn’t have to be a full blown loyalty program. You can have a sign up form on a landing page, collect the sign ups through a database offered by your CMS, log in functionality and even add a layer of Dynamic Content Personalization. Something like that does not have to be expensive – under $200/month.

Question: How should I choose adaptive or full responsive design?

Answer: Choose full responsive for websites under 25 pages. For websites with deep content and rich imagery, choose adaptive as the content may be compromised on mobile and tablet.

Question: Having recently purchased a Bed and Breakfast, how can I tell if our website is optimized for today’s environment / requirements?

Answer: One thing you can ask yourself is, “how old is the website?” Technology moves so fast these days. If the website is over 2 years old, it is pretty much a guarantee that you are due for an upgrade. Do you have a smart content management system that will allow you to do the items that we covered in today’s webinar (Dynamic Content Personalization, Reservation Recovery, etc.)? When was the website optimized for the search engines? Do you have promotions that are highly visible on your website? When you are reading industry articles, keep it specific to the hospitality industry. When you are reading about SEO, or design, there are specific rules for our industry.

Question: What is a mini website?

Answer: When we discussed having a mini website, we were talking about having an application that people can go to when you are marketing multichannel campaigns. The application is dedicated to getting people to book the specific promotion that you are offering. The great thing about the application we showed for the Cyber Monday campaign is that we are able to get people to really focus on the promotion at hand, but also have functionalities like a countdown clock, email opt-in, and social sharing.

Panda Updates reinforce need for relevant content

As a partner to hundreds of hospitality related businesses over the years it has always been part of our business to advise clients on what we think works best for them. It's quite reassuring when we look back on our posts over the years that a consistent approach to "SEO" has given our clients little need to fear Google changes.

We have consistently maintained that developing good content is not only of benefit to searches but also for the bottom line of our business. It may not always be the easiest pitch to sell but telling our clients - in the words of one of our favourite Aussie rock bands - that "There's Now Way but the Hard Way (So Get Used To It)" but it is honest and provides them with a better understanding that much of the advice they were being given by SEO experts was simply smoke and mirrors and damaging.

Google's SEO message has in our mind always been pretty clear and Tina Courtney Brown in a Site Pro News Article reinforced it quite succinctly in this paragraph

How to Avoid the Wrath of Panda

Looking to avoid significant dings in your rankings? Here are the key points that Panda targets; make sure you are not guilty of any of the following, and you can steer clear of any penalties.

• Never copy, steal, or scrape content from another site and claim it as your own.
• Resist the urge to predominantly keyword-stuff your site’s content. Keyword stuffing is no longer a boon for a site’s rankings, thanks to Panda’s prowl, so cease and desist this archaic and damaging practice.
• Ensure all your content is readable to humans, not search engine bots.
• Create the highest quality, original content possible.
• Every time you publish a new piece of content, ask yourself the following: “Would I publish this in a major news outlet and feel proud to put my name as the author?” If your answer is ever a no, don’t publish it to your site.
• Publish content on a regular basis; sites with nothing but outdated and irrelevant posts are potential penalty targets.
• Make sure all backlinks are high-quality; never accept links from questionable sources. If you have offending sites as link partners, your site is also implicated.
• Double check that your site is technically sound, built with SEO in mind. Sites with security risks and obvious viruses are also affected.

All of our own online marketing strategies are built on all of these guiding principles and our a la carte Relationship Builder programme is giving not only clear guidance but is helping independent businesses develop better practice by reducing friction and converting more low cost DIRECT business.

Find out more about how you can develop your online presence.

Email Ian or visit the Open Rooms site

Make Your Social Media Graphics Work

Okay by the time we've shared this graphic Facebook will once again have changed their layout and their image locations and sizes but in spite of that it is worth publishing!

Always great to find something particularly useful - it's a bit like watching the Gadget Show and seeing something just so cool that you have to pay £2 to enter their competition to win £30, 000 worth of kit you would never use.

This graphic below however was useful enough for us and we've got a vague idea what we are doing! Hopefully you'll find it of some interest when pulling together your own social media strategy. Remember you need to keep your social media working for you, it has to be dynamic and that includes using the header graphics to promote when appropriate.

Have a read at the site too - click on the logo to the right. Some really good stuff on there and a host of practical tips and opinions on how to make use of the media available to you.

Great graphic.