Business

June 15, 2015 0

Pinterest Best Practices for Hotels

Recently, Pinterest launched an analytics dashboard for businesses, which gives brands the ability to more closely monitor their presence on the platform. If you haven’t started using Pinterest, it is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, hobbies and interests. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘repin’ images to their own pinboards, or ‘like’ photos. Hotels and restaurants can have their own boards where they can ‘pin’ images, track which users have repinned their images, and identify followers.

Best Practice Tips for Hotels

If you are just starting out with Pinterest, we recommend the following best practices tips for hotels and restaurants:

1. Start off strong with a visually striking profile.

Choose your brand logo as your profile photo on the website (160×165 pixels in size) to maintain brand consistency across all social media platforms. If you haven’t done so already, take a few minutes and make sure that you are using the same high-quality image on all of the different social media sites your hotel is on. This will increase your brand recognition and will clue your followers in that the profile is the official one.

2. Organize boards that make sense for you.

The biggest power of Pinterest is that it gives your brand the ability to tell a highly visual story that drives real website traffic. Pinterest users have the ability to choose which pinboard that they want to follow, so not every one of your boards has to appeal to the broadest of audiences. That said, each of your boards should consist of at least 10 photos so that it’s substantial enough for a user to follow. Also, when naming your board, make sure that your title reflects the content accurately and is 20 characters or less.

3. Get creative with your pinning.

Similar to photos you share on Facebook or Instagram, the photos you share on Pinterest should reflect the fun and personal side of your brand and ought to tell a story that you couldn’t otherwise tell on your traditional website or OTA presence. Accordingly, some best practice pinboards that we’ve come across in the hospitality industry focus on seasonal events, specific hotel offerings and amenities, vacation themes and quirky destination tips from the hotel or restaurant. Here are a few examples:

4. Spread the wealth and stay active.

In addition to pinning your own images, your hotel or restaurant should also repin photos from others to add to your boards. This will allow you to tell a richer brand or destination story. Also, you will want to keep your pin descriptions as concise as your board descriptions. Pinterest suggests that, for the travel industry, you simply identify the location in the image and the kinds of things you can do there. Keep it to no more than a few sentences in length.

5. Activity is rewarded.

Pinterest is similar to many other social platforms in that its home feed feature is how users discover and share new content. Accordingly, if you hotel is serious about managing a Pinterest account, you should commit to pinning new imagery at least a few times a week if not once a day. By doing so, you will give your brand a better chance to be discovered and engaged with. Once you have an active presence established, make it easy for people to pin your content by adding Pinterest’s follow and pin it buttons to your website and add a Pinterest link in your emails.

Measure Your Pinterest Activity

Pinterest’s new dashboard now gives business owners the ability to see all of their Pinterest traffic activity in an intuitive, cleanly laid out display. Your Pinterest data will show your pins/week, repins/week and followers. In close, it’s never been more apparent that Pinterest has become a major social media platform that can effectively augment your overall social media strategy.

June 12, 2015 0

Account-Based Marketing & the Future of B2B Demand Gen

Account-based marketing (ABM) is shaping up to be the biggest revenue driver for B2B sales right now. While ABM as a business strategy has been around for quite some time, emerging technologies and new ways of looking at customer data have enabled it to become the go-to B2B strategy right now.

ABM is a red-hot topic in business, but many sales and marketing departments are still surprisingly unclear about why and how ABM works. So we’ve assembled a team of expert panelists to look closely at ABM and discuss its implications for the near and distant future.

In this 45-minute video panel discussion, we’re joined by three leading experts on account-based marketing: Engagio’s Jon Miller, Maria Pergolino from Apttus, and Craig Rosenberg, aka the Funnelholic, from TOPO. So don’t miss this video; it’s essential viewing for B2B marketers and sales teams.

And there’s more! We covered a lot of territory in the video, but I highly recommend these resources from our panelists:

Jon’s full examination is a great primer: Seven Thought-Provoking Ways That Account Based Marketing Turns Demand Generation Upside Down. Also be sure to check out his slide deck Fishing With Spears: All About Account-Based Marketing.
Craig gets tactical with Account Based Marketing: 11 Tactics to Drive your ABM Process and spells out The Difference Between Account Based Marketing (ABM) and Outbound Sales. Check out Craig on the TOPO blog and also his terrific blog The Funnelholic.
Maria’s written a ton of great articles on ABM and B2B sales and marketing. Check out her author pages on Marketing Profs, CustomerThink, and Quora.

June 1, 2015 0

Determine Your Customer Lifetime Value

Marketing is all about maximizing a customer’s financial contribution to your brand. The more a customer spends on your products or services, the better it is for your bottom line. But there’s more that goes into a customer’s value than a big purchase here and there. We’ve taken the formula for determining your customer’s lifetime value from our certificate in Data-Driven Marketing to give you a sneak peek into the Ivy League strategies we can offer to enhance your marketing campaign.

Customer Lifetime Value Equation

You can use a simple equation to determine exactly how valuable a customer is to your overall success as a company. By figuring out the customer lifetime value (CLV) for your top customers, you’ll be able to see just how much each contributes to your revenue goals.

The customer lifetime value calculation consists of three distinct parts, which are multiplied to give you a quantifiable figure that shows a customer’s overall worth. Use this formula to see how your top customers shape up or to analyze a specific segment to see how certain customers can become more valuable.

Average Spend

The first part of the equation is simple. How much does a given customer spend, on average, when he or she patronizes your business? This number can be easily calculated through any sort of internal database you may have. You can also help to drill down to the individual customer by using customer loyalty cards or personalized website logins for online purchases.

Repeat Sales

Knowing how much a customer spends is only valuable if placed in the right context. A customer who spends $1,000 for a one-time purchase is less valuable than someone who spends $100 each month over the course of a year. While you obviously want a customer to spend as much as possible, the frequency with which a customer shops is just as important. Furthermore, frequent visits show a measure of loyalty that can’t be quantified by looking solely at a customer’s average expenditure.

Retention Time

Let’s face it, there’s no such thing as a lifelong customer. You’d be foolish to expect a customer to stick around forever. But you can figure out how long the average customer supports your business and apply that to the general population. Again, the longer the retention time, the better off you are, but some businesses aren’t based around lengthy periods of retention. For example, a store that specializes in baby merchandise won’t be able to retain customers for as long as a store that targets adults.

When you multiply all three of these elements, you end up with a figure that can be used to represent a customer’s lifetime value to your business. This amounts to the present value of future cash flows, so you may end up getting more out of customers than you expect. In any case, customer lifetime value is a great tool to use as you attempt to identify and target your most important customers.

Alternate Calculations

The calculation described above is just one way to calculate CLV. Other formulas incorporate additional factors, such as acquisition costs, direct mailing costs, and your company’s margin rate.

If you’re interested in learning more about CLV and other marketing concepts, consider the Data-Driven Marketing certificate program offered by eCornell. You’ll learn about the elements that comprise customer lifetime value, as well as how it can best be used as part of a comprehensive marketing campaign.

April 28, 2015 0

Google’s 9 Principles of Innovation for Every Organization

In just 16+ short years (how time flies when it comes to innovation online), Google has gone from a company with one product to one with more projects than you can name, daily touching the lives of billions around the world, pushing the boundaries of innovation at every turn. Google’s Chief Social Evangelist, Gopi Kallayil, outlines the 9 principles of innovation at Google and how they can be applied to your organization.

1. Innovation should come from everywhere

Do you have an innovation department? Maybe a Chief Innovation Officer? Probably not. And they don’t exist at Google either. It is the job of everyone to innovate, from top to bottom. Innovation can come from anywhere in the company and many times, allowing each employee the opportunity to contribute to big innovative ideas, you will get some surprising results.

Google example: Dr. Roni Zeiger, chief health strategist for Google, convinced higher ups it’s Google’s moral responsibility to include Suicide Prevention Hotline information above the algorithmic search results for suicide.

2. Focus on the User

Product design decisions should always be made around solving customers’ problems, not by how much money it will make. Design a beautiful and useful user experience, and the revenue will follow, even if it is much later.

Google example: Instant Search provides search results as you type, leaving no time for the user to see the ads, but the UX is so great, people come back to Google over and over.

3. Think 10X

If you come into work every day and improve your process a little each day, you only achieve incremental progress. If you want innovative change, you need to think about how to change things by 10X. Think bigger than what you think is possible and don’t let available resources stop you.

Google example: Google Books was started in 2004 when Google didn’t have the power, funding, or technology to take on such a huge project, but that didn’t stop them!

*Fun fact: Marissa Mayer was the first page flipper for the project in prototype until robotic arms were built to flip the pages in time with the camera exposures.

4. Bet on Unique Insights

Every organization has unique insights because they see the world through a certain lens that no one else has. Don’t get stuck innovating your own products when you could have the next big idea to change the world.

Google example: The self driving car: Why did Google come up with this instead of a car company? Because their engineers saw a solution to the problem of over 1,000,000 fatal car accidents every year. The problem was human error. Take out the human and solve the problem.

5. Launch and Iterate

Some companies only ship when products are flawless and perfect. The problem is that no product is ever perfect. Once it hits the users, there are always nooks and crannies that appear full of issues and needed improvements. Take a leap of faith and release your next product as a reasonably functioning prototype and let your users provide all the feedback in less time. Iterate, then relaunch, then iterate and relaunch again. The most important button on any product is the feedback button. Use it!

Google example: Google releases a new version of Chrome every six weeks. Constant iteration has led it to become the #1 browser in many countries around the world.

6. 20% Time

Give your employees 20% of their time to focus on the items they are most passionate about. You may be worried they will waste their time on frivolous side tracks, but when the ideas are shared around, people spend their 20% devoting their time and resources to the best ones, creating a self-governing and self-regulating environment. This truly allows everyone in the organization the time to act on their innovative spirit.

Google example: Street View on a bike was a great idea developed by Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer. He spent his 20% time working to make the equipment smaller and more portable so that people could view the world’s most interesting places that aren’t accessible by Street View cars. Check out the underwater cam on the Galapagos Islands!

7. Default to open

Everyone wants to hire the best and brightest top 1%, but who can hire 7 million people? By opening up your your development to the world, you are tapping into a huge community of all the top 1% minds in the world. Tap into the collective wisdom of the people that use your product as well. They use it, so let them come up with your marketing ideas and strategies, like these adorable kids.

Google example: Map Maker is letting rural communities around the world create their own Google Maps. Over the course of 3 years, the small village of Kottayam in India built a very comprehensive map of the town where a map never existed before.

8. Fail Well

There should be no stigma attached to failure. If you don’t fail often, you’re not trying hard enough. You’re not pushing the boundaries of innovation. Failure is a badge of honor. Be honest about it and fail with pride.

Google example: Do a google search for failed google products and you will find a digital graveyard complete with skulls and crossbones. A few of my favorites: Buzz, Google Wave, and Google Dictionary.

9. Have a Mission that Matters

The most important principle for innovation in your organization is having a mission that people can believe in. Having a sense of mission and purpose gets people in the door every day with the need to be innovative.

Google example: Ask any Googler why they work there. It’s not the great benefits or common areas stocked with snacks and ping pong tables, it’s the mission. They seriously believe the work they do has a huge impact on millions and millions of people. In tens of thousands of rural poor schools around the world, access to computers and the internet with products and services from Google level the playing field for information. Everyone has the same access to information whether they are in a small village or the Stanford University library.

April 24, 2015 0

Lead Your Remote Workforce To Success

After Yahoo and BestBuy dissolved their remote work programs in 2013, many business leaders and HR professionals started looking at their own flexible work programs with a keener eye and a greater degree of skepticism and scrutiny.

But remote work as a business practice is not inherently problematic; it’s that most organizations don’t know how to make it work to their advantage. When structured properly, a remote workforce can be as effective as any on-site organization.

In this one-hour webinar, David Lewis, President and CEO of OperationsInc, shows you how to organize a remote-work culture that gets results and develop a leadership strategy that drives success.

In this session, David looks at:

How to establish rules and guidelines, and decide when remote work is appropriate and feasible.
Best practices in measuring performance and tracking a remote team’s activities and accomplishments.
Common pitfalls and issues, and how to anticipate and avoid them.

March 20, 2015 0

How to Write Market Positioning Statements

Your organization is gearing up to launch a new product or service, or enter a new market. You’re on the marketing team. You’re familiar with the details of these new endeavors; you know your customers. Where do you start? (The following guide is an excerpt from my Marketing Strategy certificate.)

Start with the positioning statement.

A positioning statement is a concise description of your target market as well as a compelling picture of how you want that market to perceive your brand. Though it may read like something from your promotional materials, your positioning statement is an internal tool. Every product and marketing decision you make regarding your brand has to align with and support your positioning statement. A good positioning statement is a guidepost for your marketing efforts. It helps you maintain focus on your brand and its value proposition while you work on market strategy and tactics.

Guidelines for Good Positioning Statements

What makes a good positioning statement? Here are six keys to keep in mind:

It is simple, memorable, and tailored to the target market.
It provides an unmistakable and easily understood picture of your brand that differentiates it from your competitors.
It is credible, and your brand can deliver on its promise.
Your brand can be the sole occupier of this particular position in the market. You can “own” it.
It helps you evaluate whether or not marketing decisions are consistent with and supportive of your brand.
It leaves room for growth.

Template for Writing a Positioning Statement

Here’s a basic template for writing a positioning statement:

For [insert Target Market], the [insert Brand] is the [insert Point of Differentiation] among all [insert Frame of Reference] because [insert Reason to Believe].

The point of differentiation (POD) describes how your brand or product benefits customers in ways that set you apart from your competitors.
The frame of reference (FOR) is the segment or category in which your company competes.
The reason to believe is just what it says. This is a statement providing compelling evidence and reasons why customers in your target market can have confidence in your differentiation claims.

The wording of your positioning statement doesn’t have to match this template exactly, but to be effective, it must contain the five main components in brackets above. Occasionally, a positioning statement will contain a point of parity, when it is central to a product’s positioning.

Above all, your point of differentiation, frame of reference, and reason to believe must be meaningful, important, and convincing to your customers, not just to your company.

Examples of Great Positioning Statements

The following positioning statement was used by Amazon.com in 2001, when it sold books almost exclusively:

For World Wide Web users who enjoy books, Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides instant access to over 1.1 million books. Unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon.com provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices, and comprehensive selection.

Our fictitious company, Underfoot Industries, has decided to pursue two target markets: schools and light commercial customers. These are distinct market segments whose customers rate their needs differently, so the company must develop two positioning statements:

For schools, the Underfoot Industries EverAwesome line is the strongest, most durable carpet among all commercial-grade carpets for organizations on a budget, because it is made using our patented SteelTwist technology. The EverAwesome line features Underfoot Industries’ patented technology for producing high-strength, low-wear carpets. Underfoot named its production technology “SteelTwist” to appeal to customers, such as schools, who place a very high value on carpet strength.

For today’s appearance-conscious business, the Underfoot Industries EverAwesome line is the carpet that stays new-looking longest among all commercial-grade carpets. Our patented technology produces durable, low-wear carpet whose lifetime cost is 40-80% lower than other brands. The brand name “EverAwesome” tells customers: “This carpet looks great, AND it will last a long time.”

If this guide to market positioning statements has helped you guide your marketing strategy, I highly recommend you learn more about the Marketing Strategy certificate I teach through eCornell. It covers communicating the value of your brand in more detail as well as marketing research and analysis, distribution strategy, decision-making, and new media marketing.

Update: Thanks to the immense popularity of this post and all the great feedback we have received, we created a free Market Positioning Statement generator. Simply plug in a few pieces of information, hit submit and get your statement in 30 seconds! It’s time to take your business to the next level- check it out here.

March 16, 2015 0

Mastering the Hotel Marketing Ecosystem at the Property Level

Today’s hotel visitors have never been more connected. With multiple devices and countless online resources to consult during each phase of the guest lifecycle – from the point they make their booking decisions to well after they check-out – travelers’ hotel expectations have shifted.

Long gone are the days when the hotel marketing tactics were all deployed pre-stay and offline. Today, easier access to guest preference data, past purchase behavior and social media profiles has made the hotel marketing discipline a multi-phase and multi-channel practice that requires involvement from many different key stakeholders at the brand and hotel-property level.

In this webinar, Greg Bodenlos, social media and digital marketing hospitality consultant, walks us through this complex hotel marketing ecosystem. In the process, Greg reveals strategies and tactics for mastering the innumerable amount of hotel marketing priorities. The following are just a few of the questions that will be addressed:

What are the most important marketing focus areas at the property level?
How has the definition of hotel marketing evolved in the hospitality industry?
Where should hotel marketing live in the overall hotel operation ecosystem?
Who are the various key stakeholders to involve in hotel marketing initiatives?
What new hotel marketing challenges are on the horizon?

Greg Bodenlos is a passionate hospitality marketing consultant and HSMAI leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. With a passion for digital trends, social media and innovation – and over five years of hotel and technology work experience – Greg possesses a unique perspective on the hospitality digital marketing landscape. Playing digitally-focused marketing roles at the destination resort, luxury independent property, and now city center hotel has allowed Greg to play an active role in shaping hotel marketing best practices at the property-level as well as help bring hoteliers closer to creating more meaningful, personalized travel experiences for their guests. It was in his marketing role at Revinate – a SaaS start-up in Silicon Valley that designs and develops technology to improve the guest experience – where Greg was able to help hoteliers and academics better understand the power of leveraging consumer intelligence to drive better service and maximize revenue streams across the entire guest lifecycle.

Greg is a proud graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has been featured as a hotel marketing expert on National Public Radio. Greg has been featured as a contributor in Crowdcentric Media’s Social Media Week New York blog, eCornell’s Blog and HotelMarketing.com, as well as played a co-authored role in an award-winning piece for Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research with Chris Anderson entitled Best Practices in Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

Greg can be reached by phone at +1 781 686 2177, email at gregbodenlos@gmail.com, on Twitter @gregbodenlos or LinkedIn.

February 23, 2015 0

What to Expect from the 11th Edition of the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry

The purpose of the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry, or USALI, is to establish a uniform set of accounting guidelines for the lodging industry. A new edition is released every 10 years to keep pace with an evolving business environment and to address ambiguities found in previous editions.

In conjunction with the rollout of the 11th edition of the USALI, eCornell presents this video panel discussion, moderated by Cornell Prof. Jan de Roos, which highlights changes and provides guidelines for best accounting practices.

About the panelists:

Jan A. deRoos is HVS Professor of Hotel Finance and Real Estate at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, where he has taught since 1988. He is also faculty author of eCornell’s online certificate program for the hospitality industry, Hotel Real Estate Investments and Asset Management.

He has devoted his career to teaching and research related to hospitality real estate, with a focus on the valuation, financing, development, and control of lodging, timeshare, and restaurant assets. He co-developed a free tool, the Hotel Valuation Software, with Stephen Rushmore of HVS International and has developed a respected on-line executive education curriculum for hotel real estate professionals. His book on hotel management agreements, co-authored with James Eyster, is the seminal academic publication on the topic. Prior to joining Cornell, deRoos worked extensively in the hotel industry as a construction and engineering manager.

Robert Mandelbaum is the Director of Research Information Services for PKF Hospitality Research (PKF-HR), a CBRE company. He is based in the firm’s Atlanta office, where he is in charge of Research Information Services. Research Information Services produces the annual Trends® in the Hotel Industry statistical report, along with customized financial and operational analyses for client projects. On a quarterly basis, PKF-HR produces five-year forecasts of performance for six national chain-scales, six national location categories, and 55 major U.S cities using its proprietary Hotel Horizons® econometric forecasting model. Mr. Mandelbaum began his hospitality industry career with Holiday Inns, Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee.

He serves on the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s (AH&LA) Financial Management Committee that is responsible for preparing the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI). In addition, he is a member of the Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) association. He is on the executive board of the Cornell Hotel Society, the author of articles for industry trade publications, a guest lecturer at college and university hotel school programs, and a speaker at industry forums.

Greg Remeikis, CPA, is a partner in Cohn Reznick’s Accounting & Auditing practice; co-director of the Mid-Atlantic Hospitality Practice; and a member of the firm’s National Hospitality Industry Leadership Committee. He has been providing professional services in the hospitality industry for 20 years to hotels and quick service restaurant owners. He has been involved in the planning, fieldwork and reporting for external audit services for two publically traded hospitality entities and numerous privately hospitality clients. He has also led two internal control risk assessment, documentation, testing and remediation engagements related to Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance. He serves as the firm’s quality control partner related to the hotel area of the hospitality practice. Greg has provided a variety of consulting services to the industry, most notably – real estate development and construction services to boutique hotels, internal control consulting to both public and privately held companies, audits and due diligence related to hotel acquisition and fraud audits for fidelity bond claims.

February 16, 2015 0

Dynamic Content Personalization: Hoteliers’ Powerful New Tool to Maximizing Website Revenue and Conversions

Traditionally, hotel and resort websites have served the same content to all site visitors regardless of their preferences, demographics, past booking behavior, or even geographic location. Today, technology allows us to personalize content for property website visitors, making for a more intimate brand experience, and a profitable one at that.

HeBS Digital’s Mariana Mechoso Safer and Sara O’Brien discuss how you can use dynamic content personalization to deliver unique and relevant website content to specific customer segments. When dynamic content is delivered effectively, travelers enjoy service that is tailored specifically for them, while hospitality organizations enjoy more website engagement, greater conversion rates and increased revenues. You’ll learn to:

Recognize and reward specific customer segments by displaying personalized and relevant content that speaks to their preferences and expectations.
Differentiate your resort or hotel from the competition and the OTA channel.
Deliver higher levels of consumer satisfaction from the direct hotel website experience.
Significantly increase website conversions and revenues

Mariana Mechoso Safer is Senior Vice President, Marketing at HeBS Digital, overseeing advertising, marketing and public relations. Mariana heads the Las Vegas office, developing and implementing digital marketing strategies for HeBS Digital’s West Coast partners. She frequently conducts industry research and publishes in major travel and hospitality publications, and is also a guest speaker and presenter at hospitality events and conferences.

Mariana can be reached by phone at +1 702 463-1857, email at mariana@hebsdigital.com, on Twitter @mmechoso or LinkedIn.

Sara O’Brien is Senior Marketing Manager at HeBS Digital. She manages the development and execution of all HeBS Digital advertising, marketing and public relations. Starting with a position in consulting and client services, Sara has a solid understanding of hotelier’s business needs and objectives, including how to help them generate the highest ROIs from their most cost effective channel – their own website. Sara’s professional experience includes over nine years of advertising and marketing experience. Sara has a Master’s Degree in Global Marketing from Emerson College in Boston and a Bachelor’s Degree from University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

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