Marketing Innovation for Hotel in 2010!

By Carol Verret

While demand probably isn’t coming roaring back in 2010 it is returning. It’s time to shake off the ‘battle fatigue’ of 2009 and hit the ‘reset’ button for 2010 to take advantage of the positive opportunities that present themselves going forward. ‘In a recent AP-GFK poll, 72% of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. That’s a dramatic difference from their same poll answer where almost 75% of them thought 2009 was a bad year for the country.’ (Margie Fisher, Small Business Trends, 01/02/10) At the same time, many businesses thought leaders believe that innovation will be key to plugging into this sense of optimism and converting it to business success.

Innovation isn’t about sweeping change. It can be series of small initiatives that enhance the sales effort. A few positive innovations can add up to a big difference in how you locate and develop new business – how you attract and engage them.

Develop a Strategy for Marketing Innovation:

Don’t’ get too hung up on the plan and develop analysis paralysis. A bad plan well executed trumps a good plan that never gets off the ground. What kind of prospects are you looking for? Who are your current ‘great’ customers and develop a strategy to find more like them. How many large accounts or ‘whales’ are you working – what is the mix of smaller accounts or ‘tunas’ that you can locate and get to close faster than the ‘whales’? How do you attract them in innovative ways – what’s the ‘bait’? you can use business marketing  emails as of the strategy in your business

Try New Ideas – don’t be Afraid to Fail!

Generate many ideas on small innovations that you can enable now to get the attention of your prospects and clients. They don’t have to carry a high price tag and if you generate enough ideas, some will succeed and others not so much. For example, how about developing videos and using them on the social network profiles to engage customers?  Embed a video in business marketing email of the hotel team assuring the prospect that if they book their business at your property, the entire team will service their business well. Include the GM, front desk team, the chef – let your imagination be your only limitation. A Flip video cam is all you need to enable a video strategy. A company that manufactures and markets office furniture decided to have a little fun and developed a video of their sales team playing musical chairs using their office chairs – a little fun never hurts and their customers loved it!

Enable a Mobile Strategy:

Many web sites and business marketing email eblasts are not mobile friendly. It doesn’t take much to ensure that you are sending TEXT versions of your HTML eblasts that are more easily read on mobile phones. Experiment – see if your open rates increase with mobile friendly content. If your content sends the reader to a landing page ensure that it is mobile friendly with short concise offers that are easily accessible.

Attracting Business – Not Pushing Product:

Your online presence and property profile on social networks are like an online store – some will pass by and not look over, others will look over and smile, others will walk up to the ‘window. ‘When they walk into your store, they may be just ‘looking’, when they begin to interact with you and share what they are looking for, you have an opportunity to take them offline and begin the dialogue. You have effectively ‘attracted’ a potential client – they check out you and the hotel before they ever engage you one on one.

We have entered the ‘culture of engagement’ – prospects look to engage with hotels and sales people that set themselves apart from the other 100+ hotels that approach them every day. The innovation challenge – what five small innovations can your team think of to engage new business prospects?

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Tags: Innovation in marketing, marketing and innovation, Marketing innovation, Marketing innovations

This entry was posted on February 7, 2010 at February 7, 2010 and is filed under Marketing of Hotel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.