You are the marketing director or the hotel supervisor and you have allocated 50,000 $EUR ₤, whatever your currency is, in activities to market your hotel online: how do you spend it? How do you decide where to designate this spending plan?
NB: This is a short article from Direct Your Bookings
And I understand we all love simple responses or easy options, however this is rather a complex and made complex subject. Easy as that, there are no simple options. And so, if that is what youre after, please read no further. Instead, if youre searching for some truthful feedback and truthful exchange, were going to see together some of the important things and some of the principles, logic-based principles that I will constantly suggest anybody to be following in order to avoid squandering your money, your budget plan and in order to make the most out of your pennies.
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So, without further ado, lets dig in.
Its actually logic over technicalities.
Reasoning driven because these videos, both videos, are not going to be any technical.
An Important Premise
Advertising is an amplifier of what currently works organically.
And if someone assure you that, well, I will actually suggest you to stayaway. Budget plan first and technique later on.
# 2 If you have a little spending plan, do not split it too much.
Primarily, I discussed before, there are no easy answers and easy services.
# 1 Know Your Budget.
On an OTA site, youre simply a number.
Advertising is simply another method of exposing yourself when there is no intrinsic value in what you use.
Just after deciding and understanding what you can invest and just how much you can invest, you can develop a correct technique … based on that spending plan.
And thus, rather of spreading out horizontally your spending plan, go verticalinto a couple of different disciplines and no more.
If you run and manage a 5-star home, your hotel will look exactly the exact same as a 2-star property.
Which leads us to point number 2.
Generally, the method is the other method around, in the sense the many hoteliers approach marketing, asking the marketer what the return is going to be if they invest XYZ.
And hence, what does not work organically is not going to be working on a paid level.
And so, if you have a little budget, its rather useless to narrow it down or to divide that budget plan between SEO, SEM, PPC, Metasearch engines, and so on and so forth, since every single marketing activity or discipline requires some sortof consistent initial spending plan.
And as soon as again, this leads us to the next point.
But lets be truthful, the hotel circulation video game is becoming a genuine jungle, a genuine mess, and its becoming more and more complex every single year.
And thats why either you accept to play the game the proper way, understanding that this game is not constantly easy, or you better quit providing all of your distribution and marketing to 3rd party channels, however also accepting that they will be driving your outcomes.
However marketing is no magic, specifically in these times.
Plug-and-play options do not exist, or much better state … They do exist, but they just dont work.
However, if you wish to play the simple game, well, make certain to play the simplest video game among all.
Mentioning which, Ive spoken about the distinction in between marketing and exposure in another video, in which I discussed how exposure is simply a tiny little part of marketing.
Forecasting what the future is going to be is extremely tough.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with dealing with 3rd party channels of course, I guess all of us agree, we all need them.
Meaning: go to Booking, go to Expedia, go to HotelBeds or any other bed banks … and go all in with them, knowing though, that in there you only play the price-war video game.
In the second video of this tiny series that Im going to be releasing soon in a few days, were going to be discussing the various types of marketing, or marketing disciplines.
OTAs are the precise opposite of branding, of individuality, of differentiation, andthus price is not an essential element … its probably the ONLY element that matters.
That stated, lets leap into the ten points I desired to share with you today.
Prior to we discussed Google Hotel Ads, however it can be any Metasearch engine activity, it can be Google Ads, it can be Facebook advertisements, it can be Bing advertisements, whatever.
# 3 Advertising doesnt add value where there is none.
Which again, its fine, there is absolutely nothing versus them. Do you actually think that you can play this video game by simply relying on those plug-and-play solutions like, for example, a pricing comparison tool, or by just being, for example, on Google Hotel Ads with a pay-per-stay design?
This is probably one of my favorite.
Read remainder of the short article at Direct Your Bookings
