Start with strategy.
Everything else is tactics. And tactics without a strategy supporting them can be a lot like trying to get your car unstuck from a snowbank. Spinning your wheels with lots of noise and motion, but not so much in the results department.
Advertising, public relations, promotions, PPC, website content – if it’s not all driving off the same strategy, you’re throwing a lot of money out the window. And right about now, with occupancies what they are, nobody in the hospitality business has that kind of cash to throw anywhere.
Here’s a quick illustration of what we mean. A little while back, we were working with a resort in Jamaica, and if you know anything about the Caribbean, you know that summer is charitably known as the “offseason.” As in, who the hell wants to go to the Caribbean in the middle of the summer? And that was a problem for our client in Jamaica.
We’d be happy to give you more details about it, and you can see some of the creative at at nasuti.com, but the essence of the thing is that we repositioned July and August as “Jamaica-Rama,” a special time of the year with special events and offerings almost every night. This strategy was delivered through all of their marketing channels. And all of it built around the resort’s “Sensory Magic” Brand position.
As a result, The number of new website sessions went up by 16%, the bounce rate went down by 15% and the number of active users doubled – and nobody was shopping rate. Not only that, but the client enjoyed their best August ever for both rate and occupancy.
The creative and the media plan were good, but the strategy underneath it all made the difference. Strategy, not tactics, drove the success.
Point is, tactics without a strategy are just things – busy work. And a strategy based on your brand position (which is probably different than what is was pre-Covid) – can be a pretty powerful and cost-effective tool.
So before you sign up for more tactics or jump on the latest hospitality bandwagon idea, put some thought into a strategy that will make everything work that much harder.
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