Hospitality Marketing The Podcast Show 246 April 24th 2020

Hospitality Marketing The Podcast Show 246 April 24th 2020

Hospitality Marketing The Podcast Show 246

 

 

Hello everyone and welcome to Hospitality Marketing the podcast, I am your host Loren Gray and this is episode #246 where each week we spend around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news, and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. We also do a quick recap of our weekly Live Video show “This Week in Hospitality Marketing” which also airs every Friday at 11:30 am Eastern US Time.. SO let’s get started;
0:01 — Our tool for review this week is; https://socialbee.io/
00:06— Our Technique this week is; “Keeping relevant, while people have time to engage with what you have to say”
00:10 — News and Show Review
CoHosts
Tristen Heaword —
Ben Hanley —
Edward StOnge —
Kat Mohammad —
Stephanie Smith —
Griffin Sandberg —
Show Notes
00:01 — Introductions and open discussion with Tris and Ben
00:55 — So long, minibar: How the coronavirus will change hotel stays
01:12 — vouchers, bonds and gift certificates
02:00 — World-Class Hotel Room Views to Inspire You From Home
02:25 — Show ends

Hospitality Marketing the Podcast 246 Transcript (English U.S.)

Should hotels consider resuming Google Ads and other search campaigns?
Remember — you can find us on Google Play / Apple iTunes / iHeart Radio / Soundcloud / Stitcher / Spotify / Pandora / Tunein / Pocket cast /  Breaker / ACast and the list goes on, 36 and counting to be exact. We’re even on Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, Just ask to play “ The Hospitality Marketing Podcast”  No matter which one you may use, if you like the show please rate us and leave a comment. That will help others find our content. Also if this is your first time hearing us, you can subscribe to our show on any of those 36 platforms as well. For an archive of all previous podcasts, you can go to hospitalitydigitalmarketing.com/podcasts and don’t forget our live video talk show that you can join and participate in every Friday at 11:30 Eastern US time, called “this week in hospitality marketing The live show”.  simply go to https://hdmagency.wpengine.com/live/  Thank You for the privilege of your time. Talk to you next week!

 

 

Announcer — Welcome to this week in Hospitality Marketing. The podcast show number 246 with your host, Loren Gray. Hello, everyone, and welcome to hospitality marketing The podcast. I am your host, Loren Gray, and this is episode number 246. So each week we spent around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. We also do a quick recap of our weekly live video show this week in Hospitality Marketing, which also airs every Friday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern U. S time. So with that, let’s get started And now today’s new resource still.

 

So our tool for review this week is a platform that we have incorporated with some other discussions. As to social monitoring, social contribution, social awareness, we’ve often discussed that coming up with content for what you’re proposing as sometimes of writer’s block now, it’s not that you don’t know your market or your destination or your product, but a lot of times Andi, it’s always best to consider. This is not always just talk about yourself on, and it’s not always room and rate and it’s not always sunny and 72 eso You need a platform that you can use that distributes to multiple platforms because you should be represented where all of your markets are and people use a variety of platforms.

 

They just may not use Facebook or just may not use Twitter or just instagram or ah linked in or for that matter, Um, and because of that, you need to be able to distribute on all the platforms that you have dialogue on does the tool this week is social. Be dot io This is social S o c I A l b ee dot i Oh, Now what makes this tool unique is its kind of a one stop shop and what I want to bring it into the discussion for this time it handles ah, variety of platform.

 

First off, it does Facebook, twitter, instagram and linked in Pinterest Google my business all very powerful things that you need to make sure you have an active contribution to and will describe a little bitty to those in just two seconds to the value proposition. But some of things that it does very, very well is it allows you to aggregate what’s called Evergreen Posting, which is finding and distributing relevant content associated with Topic Lee. What you would want to be identified with. So if you’re a hotel or restaurant located in a destination, your evergreen content would be in association with activities and events in about your area.

 

Ah, unique features categorically things like off the beaten path or family adventures or romantic getaways or culinary events or cultural things. All those are concepts of content that you would then search for sources, whether they be blog’s RSS feeds. When have you and he was speaking a little bit of technical gibberish. It’s OK. The platform will help you discover what those things are. It’ll help you find those things and see whether they’re worthy of the content to be shared by you on behalf of your hotel or restaurant at the time.

 

No, in their given times of what we’re having to face relevancy is the key issue to this. The negative is is that selling what we’re doing, even if you’re open for business can be perceived in different ways by people. People can welcome the idea that they can come to your restaurant to buy food and to do take out, but certainly not to maybe necessarily sit indoors quite yet until we figure out the logistics of those things. If your hotel, some people may take offense to the fact that you’re trying to sell hotel rooms when people are trying to flatten the curve is, we have now learned to adopt that term, and it may take offense to you trying to do that.

 

So keeping the hotel relevant to your market in a non pervasive Here’s a room rate kind of way. You need create organic social dialogue, and to do that you need a platform and a source also being very mindful of the realities of the time. A lot of our our team members have been furloughed. People that would normally be associated with handling these things may no longer be in their positions. Those that R right now having to be responsible for them may find themselves overburdened with one their lack of familiarity of all the different platforms and what to say and how to say it in their restrictions and capabilities and image sizes and number of character counts and hashtag, usages and all the little things that go along with a successful dialogue on those platforms, but also to what they would even say on them, which goes back to this platform.

 

Social beat out I. O Toole. Help shoot with those things. And as Google has come to become more and more of a dominant feature in our lives handling your Google, my business content from a localized level has turned into a more more important thing in this platform. Uniquely has that access where you can offer things on Google. My business that mourned offer mobile before, unless you went directly into Google. My business. You can actually use this platform to put things onto that platform for yourself so people locally could be aware of some of the specials offers hourly updates instable your hours of operation are because all things to change linked in for court business B two B communications and so forth and eventually rehiring, if that’s necessary.

 

Instagram for social content for social dialogue. Facebook for social engagement. All these air aspects of what social be as a tool can be used for, and now we’ll talk a little bit about why I brought this tool into our conversation today in our technique of the week. Now for this week’s hospitality technique, so are attempting of the week is keeping relevant while people have time to engage with you with what they but what you have to say live a long term. Let me say that again. Keeping relevant while people have time to engage with what you have to say, I mentioned the negativity, our current circumstances, the furloughing of people.

 

Those people will not be as a resource to be helping with social dialogue that normally they do have things to talk about. Their a lot more fun and interesting about arrivals and events and things and venues that you can go to the right now they’re all long pause. That’s the negative side of the conversation. The positive side is that we, as a people right now as a humanity right now have been told to have a great pause in our lives. People are spending a massive amount of time online asthma fact, my friend and fellow co host and on the live show, Mr Every Sinologist doing an excellent presentation to the HSM EI Central Florida chapter Thursday next week, which is the last day of April in which he discusses the social growth, the use of the platforms in a very high percentage.

 

Just one comparison over one another is last March is Facebook usage. Compared to this March, Facebook’s usage is up 207% in usage, and they’re getting millions and millions of more participants on the platform as well. So socialists turned into a community source. We’ve all seen the rise of Come Zoom and its use of cocktail hours and happy hours and lunch breaks and so forth where seven people just get together to be ableto interact because we’re cloistered in our stay at home and and flatten the curve and keep social distancing a part of our daily lives.

 

So we have time on our hands. People are reading what I called longhand where before we had seven seconds. If I didn’t give into that, anything I was saying was worth listening, too. Lost in seven seconds. Well, now, now we have time to read the whole paragraph, read the whole article, watch the whole video, listened to the whole podcast because we’re keeping engaged in different ways based on the limitation of our engagement. So we have people that have on the positive side, mawr time to listen to what we have.

 

Another positive is that people have this great anticipation off what they’re going to do when they finally get to go out again into the world. Now, we don’t know what that looks like yet we don’t know what stages of progression that is yet. We don’t know the the bouncing back of the potential risks of that yet none of those things that for certain yet into knowing how clear of a picture that becomes. But we know we all have this penned up interest. Even before all of this started, we knew 80% of the people enjoyed mawr the plant travel planning of their trip than the actual trip itself.

 

So we get to be very aspirational. Now we get to talk about wonderful things. Now we get to recount wonderful things now with when you loosely when you last stayed with us, what you lasted when you are with us, what’s the first thing you do when you get to stay with us? What something you’re interested in doing in RMR market? If you come visit us. Then you also get to share images. Videos. We had an article that we discussed in our live show today as our boop, which is our positive article of the day, of how some very iconic hotels are doing live videos of their most pristine view.

 

So you get to remind yourself why it would be so cool to be there and see that view again. Yes, it’s the most premier room where the most premier location. But to know that it’s there to go see it again, is a very aspirational thing and have a positive thing. And you can help that in your social engagement by talking and computer kating and asking questions, redefining people’s interest in you, redefining people’s interest in your destination market all through social engagement. And you have to do that all the platforms.

 

So in combination of using the tool social, be that we were talking about and becoming active in that organic dialogue and it helping you find content and helping you find scheduling opportunities of time that’s best suited to post of those things. The images that people liked of those things, helping you find those images, how do you find the hashtags that are useful for the dialogue that you have. Those things that social beacon do for you helps you with the technique aspect of keeping relevant. And while people still have the time to talk with you and engage with you and you get to share wonderful aspirational ideas with them and for them to keep you in front of mind as to something that they’re looking forward to participating in sharing with and hopefully not too distant future.

 

And so for that, that is our technique off the week. Now, this week’s hospitality news that you should know. Okay, so news and show review We had a really fun show today. Actually, lasted all of 2. 5 hours. We had the kicks herself in the is a I gotta go. We gotta go over there and get away with a cat over there at all, HOA because we’re going to a test run on the Lincoln Live. That didn’t work as well as we would hope. Um, our news, uh, our show today we had some new guests hosts with us that we’re really at first we didn’t have him in his guest host we just didn’t know.

 

They said they’re gonna try to show up And they did. And those Tristen Hayward and Ben Handley, both from Pegasus. They joined the show live today and we had some fund. I look, they’re out of England, two different area regions of Lee, England, to be exact. And our resident Englishman Stuart didn’t get to join us today. But we did have Mr Edwards say knowledge would flip to Miss Cat Mohammed without Ho is director of Education Miss Stephanie Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Cog Wheel Marketing, and Griffin Sandberg, who is with, AH, screen Pilot.

 

So we had, ah, pretty fun dialogue. I mean having the dead, the extra new names and faces to the conversation. After introductions were made and so forth, we really had a fun banter about the perception of what what’s going on right now. We spend a great amount of time getting that the perspectives from Chris and Ben as to what they saw course. They have a unique position coming from across the pond, so to speak, as to how the country’s air treating it differently, how the compensations and stimulus packages associate with governments.

 

Efforts are being shown differently and what they’re trying to do differently. So there was a unique contrast comparison that we’re able to draw from all that. We did a few articles that Mr Robert Cole, who also uniquely rarely misses a show, but he has been very tied up with his data collection and his collaboration with Focus, Right in J D Power’s and so forth. I’m creating of some modelling and forecasting, but he still gave us an excellent, uh, list that he curates every week for us. If you want to send up for that newsletter that he puts together, which is a very, very excellent newsletter, you can go to Bentley B I. T. L Y forward slash rock Cheetah All lower case no space and sign up and you’ll be able to get the same listings that we usually late on a Thursday night because he wasted the last minute to get the latest information for our Friday show.

 

And it didn’t disappoint. One of the articles we did get to chew on a little bit was an article started out. It says so long. Minibar. How the crow device will change hotel stays And that really broadened the conversation into all the logistic variations that hotels they’re going to have to consider changing in their methodology from anything from door hanger breakfast is two buffet lines not being around anymore to how housekeeping is handled into the rooms and two as theatrical mentions. Minibar. One suggestion, which we all kind of giggled at but may have more truth than not, is the fact that the minibar may be replaced from having what it hasn’t it currently.

 

Now two more of cleaning products wipes, gloves, mask What have you Because you probably sell, because if you really look at it, a mini bar is just a small little retail outlet in your own hotel room that you have to go downstairs for. So people might find it of more interest to buy those items than the word the atoms that used to be in them. So we had little fun discussion about that. We did go off onto some great conversations about vouchers, bonds and gift certificates. The reason why, through the word bond in there, is that there’s a platform coming out of Boston that they refer to that is offering a unique perspective of buying bonds with hotels or the best way to describe it.

 

His bonds in the sense that you say by $100 with a hotel. If you hold onto that purchase for 90 days, that $100 is now worth $150. Should you want to cash it in to buy or rent, just going to to check in a room or what have you? It’s Scimitar discussions of gift certificates in the sense that give us defense. You could buy gift certificates and then also have an increased value at the time of acquisition. Will this one actually increases value over a time delay? So same methodology, same thought, different methodology And then, of course, vouchers of single purchase, single price, single value things that says I’m buying two nights day or I’m buying two dinners or what have you are good for half off or whatever those vouchers.

 

So we talked about all the pros and cons of the variations of the more creative way of getting current come cash now for future value. Later, um, as I mentioned, we did talk about the boop, which was a world class hotel, views to inspire you from home That again, all these links that we’re referring to out of our conversation are in our show. Notes for the podcast. We’ll show you about how to get that later on in the conversation and like sending about low shy of 2. 5 hours, we eventually concluded our conversation.

 

Should we have a lot of fun? So the news out of that I wanted to touch on briefly is should hotels consider resuming Google ads and other search campaigns? This is a focus wire article that was brought up Interesting article. The reason why bring it up is one I don’t necessarily agree that they should have been paused. Um, yes, we’re talking about the fact that you know, we’re following people on payroll and so forth. How do you justify maintaining any sort of marketing pace when you’re cutting yourself so operationally?

 

And for those that actually had to legitimate the clothes actually not doing business? It goes back to some old conversations we had in previous podcast where even in the middle of peak season, when I had no room, hotel, two rooms to sell, I was sold out. My marketing maintained itself because I was the belle of the ball. And so while I could still gather an audience in attendance, I wanted them to know that even though I didn’t have rooms currently for them now, I wanted to garner information about them or their interest in me, so that when I wasn’t the belle of the ball and it was off season, I had an audience to talk to.

 

Well, that methodology still exist in the current situation we’re in, plus and also the fact that by maintaining at least your brand campaigns, one prices have gone dramatically down. So what used to spend a holiday $100 for you could spend $10 for and then not exaggerate when I say that, Ah, that’s one thing. The second thing is you’re you’re going to go a lot farther for what you would be spending see you to try other variations ago, higher up into the funnel terms that you would never have afforded before our afford a bull.

 

Now we’ve had that discussion earlier. Podcast Well, but there’s also some other intrinsic things, and that is front of mind. That’s voice in market and also because of doing what you’re doing for branding. You don’t have to get re index if you don’t pause your Google accounts. Now Google’s coming up with a multi $1,000,000 hundreds $1,000,000 off free advertising. They’re gonna be offerings in the center for people to keep their bidding market up so that they don’t have to artificially go to low kind of a means of artificial keeping prices up is that would have commented on the show, but it also allows you the opportunity to spend the dollar and actually to pay a dollar and actually spend. Three.

 

You’ll be using a lot of Google’s money to keep yourself going on. Facebook did the same thing, not with the same size number that Google offered, but the same context of offering a lot of free advertising. By spending a little, you get to spend a lot, and so both of those air aspects that you should maintain to keep your brand awareness front of mind, keep yourself index by Google because every time you stop a campaign every started Google re indexes the authority of that campaign, so you pay very high or much higher than you need to early on that.

 

This restarted the campaign that if you had just left it on even at life support levels, um, just to keep active through that entire process, so should hotels consider resuming Google eyes and other search campaigns, I say, quite frankly, should never have stopped. And this is an opportunity rather really gain a great share of voice, as anybody knows from stock market analogies that for those people that say when the market crashed, they sold, they bought it its highest. They sold at the lowest. If they were to re buy back at the zero threshold, meaning wherever they wouldn’t lost their last $0 that they bought that back over the same one a time of somebody that did not do that.

 

They made half assed much money. And it has shown, historically, for all companies that either stopped or did that strategy or just maintain their marketing strategy. Those that maintain their marketing strategy through downturns exponentially gained more revenue through that entire process and beyond because of the persistency of voice and persistency of presence than of the either earlier two examples of stopping it or buying a zero option up. So keep that in mind when you’re looking at your marketing that it is best to keep it active, even if it’s at the lowest levels just to maintain it than it is to completely shut it off.

 

So there you have it. Remember, you can find us on Google Play Apple iTunes I Heart Radio Soundcloud stitchers, Spotify, Pandora Tune in the list goes on and on, actually, 36 different platforms, to be exact. We’re even on Amazon. Alexa, Google assistant and Siri just asked to play the hospitality marketing podcast and no matter which one you may use. If you like the show, please write us and leave a comment that allows others to find our content as well. And if you have, this is the first time here.

 

Yes, you can subscribe to our show on any of those platforms. And for an archive of all of our previous podcasts, you can go to hospitality digital marketing dot com, forward slash podcasts. There you’ll find both the player on each of the pages, as well as all the show notes and information that we refer to directly on each of those shows. Don’t forget our live video talk show also that you can join and participated every Friday at 11 30 Eastern U. S. Time called This Week in Hospitality Marketing, The live show Simply go to hospitality.

 

Digital marketing dot com forward slash live and again, Thank you for the privilege of your time and we look forward to talking to you next week. You have been listening to this week in Hospitality Marketing The Podcast show 246. Brought to you by hospitality, digital marketing and support of the HSM II, the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association. International rights reserved copyright 2020.

Founder / CEO of Hospitality Digital Marketing

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