So what?

People don't buy features. They buy benefits.

It’s one of the first things anybody studying or breaking into advertising learns. At least it should be.

Good advertising is built around benefits, not features.

Truth is, people don’t come to your hotel for the beach or the restaurant or the 300-thread-count sheets. They come for the joy of the beach, the culinary thrill of a good restaurant or the comfort of those sheets.

Maybe even the escape from reality you offer or all that extra legroom in your oversized suites.

In fact, ad agency creatives often use the “so what?” test when evaluating headlines or ad ideas. Answer the question and lead with that.

So take a look at what you’re saying on your website or in your ads.

Are you selling benefits?

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Squirt guns and budgets

An inadequate ad budget is like bringing a squirt gun to a street fight.

Maybe it's because people don't think advertising is worth spending anything on or it's because they think advertising is such a powerful tool that they don't need to spend much on it to get a benefit.

Maybe they think that simply throwing up a Facebook page or hopping on the Twitter Autobahn is enough. Or they are thrilled that social media seems to be free. 

Who knows?

But we do know that when someone is investing several million dollars in a new property or improvements to an existing one, it is the height of folly not to make an adequate investment in telling people about it. It seems a bit shortsighted not to include a healthy marketing communications budget as a key part of the up-front planning.

Because, make no mistake about it, the whole arena of getting attention for your business is a big, nasty, wild-west street fight. With some smart, aggressive characters in it. 

Whether you do it on the web (in paid or social media), in a newspaper or a magazine or on a billboard, radio or television, if you want people to know about whateverthehellitisyou'redoing, you're going to have to tell them.

It doesn't matter how nice your hotel is, how great your restaurant will be or how much meeting space you have. It won't count for much if nobody knows about it.

"If you build it they will come" only works in the movies.

And only in one movie at that. 

Five chefs make a meal together

Five chefs make a meal together.

Each one is on his or her own, with his or her own ideas about what makes a good meal. And his or her own particular strengths, specialties and abilities. Naturally, each of them wants to be the Big Dog in the Kitchen.

This is kind of like hotel marketing today. There's an ad agency for the ads, a graphic designer or firm for the collateral, a digital firm (or maybe just a "web guy") for the website and PPC. There’s someone doing the public relations – maybe a firm and maybe just somebody internally who isn't too busy. And e-mails and social media in there somewhere.

That's a lot of people. And it's easy to see how each of them could sincerely believe that their particular channel is the best for the client. (Just look how often you read some digital agency executive proclaim that print is dead or television is dead or social media is the only thing that matters anymore.)

It's a lot to manage. Especially for a DOSM who already has a full plate.

Doubling up may seem to simplify things, but it usually doesn’t work so well. A web firm can’t do collateral or advertising as well as a design studio or an ad agency. Nor can a PR firm do a website as well as a digital firm. And an ad agency usually can’t do PR nearly as well as a PR professional. Design studios are rarely built to handle social media. And on and on.

Point is, almost nobody does everything best, but everybody does something best. But how do you to make sure those everybodys are all rowing in the same direction while they do what they do best?

Have a clear Brand position and an equally clear strategy for delivering it, that’s how. A Brand your whole team understands and a strategy they all know how to deliver.

Almost nothing can make your marketing as effective and cost-efficient as a clearly defined Brand. With a clear Brand – and a clear strategy for delivering it – all of the players on your marketing team can more easily work together. And what one does will enhance and reinforce what the others are doing. Not fight with it.

Investing in Brand development or Brand clarification is what's known in the biz as a "Good Investment." Read more about Brand here. 

Remember, a moose is a horse designed by a committee. Or a bunch of chefs. Or a thousand monkeys with typewriters. Or something like that.

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Good hospitality print advertising

Just because you haven't them doesn't mean there aren't some really good print hospitality ads out there.

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"I'm putting it all in AdWords."

"I'm putting it all in AdWords"

For some time now, PPC has been the go-to marketing channel for smaller companies like independent hotels and resorts. PPC in general (and AdWords in particular) can do a lot of things. But not everything.

In fact, some GMs and marketing directors are complaining that they seem to be spending more but getting less. And that’s probably true.

Not only are costs going up, but also, because the AdWords arena is more crowded and chaotic than ever, it takes more to stand out. Common wisdom among many digital marketing firms is that you’ll need $10k a month to get any value out of it.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that the name of the property is still the most effective driver of AdWords responses. So ask yourself – how would anybody come to know the name of your hotel in the first place, and how can you get your name out there more?

Here’s another thought: AdWords is a great transactional tool – especially when you’re selling rate. Not so much for creative delivery of your Brand position. That’s not what AdWords can do. But a clear Brand position – one that creates desire for your property – is something you can use to drive both rate and occupancy.

This is not to say that PPC doesn’t have a role to play in marketing. Clearly, it does. But perhaps rather than put more money into AdWords look at what other channels can make your AdWords work harder. Sure, there’s a spending minimum you need to maintain, but if something isn’t working as well as it should, simply increasing your budget on it is a bit like that continuing-to-do-the-same-thing-over-and-over-and-hoping-for-a-different-result thing. The answer is to do something different.

Don’t abandon AdWords, but if you want to succeed, you should have a good understanding of the other channels open to you.

Or work with someone who does.

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Influencers Pay Double - by Bob Hoffman

(This came in a newsletter from the brilliant Bob Hoffman.)

Influencers Pay Double

by Bob Hoffman
"I have a new hero. His name is Joe Nicchi. Joe is an aspiring actor. He and his wife run two ice cream trucks in LA. In their first year of operation they were named "best food truck in the city" by LA Weekly.

"Joe is sick of douchebag "influencers" trying to hustle him. So this week he instituted a new policy -- influencers pay double.

“They love to use the word exposure,” says Nicchi. “They’ll promise me all of this social media exposure in exchange for...giving them all free ice cream.”

"His response? "Are you out of your mind? This is $4.”

"Recently Nicchi was approached by an "influencer" to cater a 300 person party for free. “I said ‘Enough is enough,’" and he put up the sign on his truck -- "Influencers Pay Double."

'I have a suggestion for big brand CEO's. Are you tired of pissing away money on stupid social bullshit? Fire the idiots and hire an ice cream man to run your marketing department."

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We have no idea where this hotel room is

We have no idea where this hotel room is.

Couldn't tell you if our life depended on it. 

But you've seen this picture a zillion times. Or one exactly like it, right?  

Drop in on a few hotel and resort web sites and see if you don't agree. In many cases, you'll see well-lit and propped photos with high production values. Gorgeous photography. But no people. Like everybody got wiped out in some sort of plague or ran off into the nearest forest for some reason.

We know all the reasons you might not want to use people in your photography. The need to have racial and gender diversity, the cost of models, the prospect of changing fashions and all the rest. But in our mind, none of them outweigh the compromise you're making to your marketing effort by leaving people out altogether. 

Hospitality is a people business. 

So the next time you go to the trouble and expense of a property shoot, get some humanity and context into it. It's going to make your hotel marketing more visually effective. And you don't even really have to hire models. You'd be surprised how many family, friends or even guests would love to be in a photo shoot. Real people look more like real people than models do anyway.

And while you're at it, think about shooting a the view from a room or that room at night, or the lobby looking out in the early morning –  that sort of thing. Think about what your guests will actually see.

Our friend Ira Wexler, a photographer who specializes in hotels, says "Just ‘taking pictures’ is no longer enough. It’s all about creating a compelling emotional user experience that guests can see themselves in – crafted with ‘fresh eyes’ and vision to show the ‘magic’ of the space. We’re not just ‘shooting the property,’ we are creating impressions, and earning trust."

He's right. Otherwise, you could just buy a stock shot.

Like we did for this post.

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