Dealing with social media limitations

You don't get a thousand words on social media.

A dilemma.

It’s a fact that any business that can manage to continue to do some marketing and advertising at the depth of a recession (which, in many ways, is what this is) will come out of it faster and better than those who don’t. 

But the hard truth is that it’s tough to come up with money for advertising and marketing when your occupancy is down. Especially if you’re an independent hotel or resort without a brand Mother Ship somewhere. 

As a result, many of you are defaulting to social media. Free and sponsored posts, mostly. 

No mistake about it, social media can be a useful tool. And an affordable one. But everything has a price. And the price of social media is to cede a lot of creative control to the media channel. And, with all due respect, those folks are usually skilled tech people, but not creative people. And creativity is what will distinguish your message from others. Frankly, creativity is never going to be their main concern and it’s not their problem. It’s yours. 

Unfortunately, social media tells you how big your ad can be, how big your photo can be, whether or not you can run type across it, how long your headline is, how long your copy is and it ensures that you’re working with a template just like everybody else’s. Again, their focus is not on making your ad or post stand out so much as making sure it fits in. 

Having spent quite a bit of time in recent weeks reviewing social media campaigns in the hospitality arena, we’re here to tell you, the boxes set up by social media companies beget a lot of lookalike stuff. And lookalike stuff won’t get the job done as far as making you stand out from your competitors. Which is what you need in times like these. 

But there’s a workaround. Three of them, actually. Your photography, your headlines and your idea. 

Let’s start with photography. Your photo is going to be the same size as everybody else running on Facebook or Instagram (and, with only three or so options, any sort of digital display ad, actually). So invest a bit in NON-lookalike photography. You don’t have to spend more – or, these days, even a lot – to get better photography. You just have to hire a photographer who sees things differently and turn ‘em loose. Your creative firm is just dying to get someone like that for you. Or they should be. And any photographer worth his or her salt will relish the opportunity to do something different. 

A client once challenged us to define what we mean by “different, better” photography. Easy. Look at what everybody does and don’t do that. What you want is photography that simply will . . . not . . . blend . . . in. 

Your headline. Sure, there’s a character count limit, but a copywriter can make it fit. A good copywriter can come up with something far better than most of what’s out there. And actually ensure that your words and pictures work together. 

And your idea? Well, let’s just say “buy two nights and get a third free” isn’t an idea. Booking long-term at a resort so working from home isn’t anything like working from home is. Don’t just think out of the box. You need to go way past that. Your goal is to do what the Other Guys didn’t think of. 

A few years ago, a guy named Ernie Schenck wrote a great book called ”The Houdini Solution.” The premise is that the tighter your limitations, the more creative you can be. He wrote it before digital and social media took over so much of the ad world, but he must have seen the future coming. 

Photography. Headlines. Ideas. Those are the keys to making low-cost social media work harder for you.

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Some topical advice for hotels and resorts

Two bits of advice for hotels and resorts.

We’re all looking forward to an eventual break in this crisis. But there are a couple of useful things you can do right now.

1) Don’t wait to plan, and 2) be aggressively creative.

To the first point: Too often we find ourselves with a marketing problem to deal with and not enough time to do it. Or not enough time to really do it right. You have plenty of time now, time to put together a plan you can launch quickly. Time to keep at it until you develop something innovative.

Something aggressively creative. Which brings us to our second point.

Now is not the time to be passive or to keep on with the same kinds of offers and specials everybody else is probably doing. It’s not the time now and it’s not going to be the time for quite a while.

So resist the usual. Maybe scare yourself a little. Don’t just think “out of the box,” think way out of the box. Maybe even bring somebody on board to help who does that sort of thing for a living.

The market is smaller. A lot of people are going to be fighting for that same remaining slice of pie. Those who can demand attention are going to be the ones getting the most to eat.

And bright colors will always attract more attention than dull ones.

The more you can do now, the better positioned you're going to be to succeed when this health crisis-induced recession eases. That’s a fact. You can look it up.

Seems like everything about the hospitality market sucks these days, but it’s not going to suck forever. How well you plan and how aggressively you respond is going to have a whole lot to do with whether and how quickly you bounce back.

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New ideas and how you react to them

How do you react to a new idea?

Yikes! We're in some uncharted territory right now, aren't we? 

So it's going to be very useful for all of us to be open to new ideas. Especially those of us in the hospitality business. And even more especially for independent hotels and resorts competing with big brands and their big loyalty clubs.
Innovation and creativity have always been important, but now they're critical. 

Your reaction to thinking and ideas that may make you uncomfortable is going to be a key to success. From investing in marketing when occupancy and revenues are down, to innovative compensation approaches for your partners, to looking at different marketing communications channels, to employing creativity that is a bit more aggressive and edgy than you're used to, be open to it.
Which means your first reaction to an idea that you or anybody else has should not be "well we can't do that because . . . "

The most important thing to consider - and consider first - is whether or not doing something can potentially benefit you. If the answer is "No," then drop it and forget about it. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.
Ah, but if there's a potential benefit for the short, medium or long term, you work out how to do it. It's a simple process, really: 

1. Here's an idea. Can it be good for us?
Yes. Do it.
No. Forget it.

2. So the answer is "Yes." Are there any issues with carrying it out?
Nope. We're good. Let's get to it.
Yes. So let's figure it out.

3. Did we figure it out?
Yes. Cool. Let's do it.
No. OK, we'll keep thinking.

4. Did we figure out a solution this time?
Yes. Great.
No. Oh well, there are more ideas where that came from.

This is not to say that every idea has value. Or that every idea will be easy to carry out. It's just that you ought to think first about whether or not an idea can provide some benefit before you dismiss it out of hand. 

If it will, then figure out how to do it. 

When your first thought is why something won't work, you're starting from a negative place. And nothing good ever comes from a negative place.  

We've quoted George Lois before, but here it is again. "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
If something is worth doing, it's worth figuring out how to do it.

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"This is what we got . . "

 

“This is what we got.

If you want it, come in and get it.”

That’s how action-hero Jack Reacher described the window of a retail store in The Enemy. Nothing else about that book is relevant here, but the way he described that window reminded us of some websites we’ve seen. Not focused on tempting the user.

Your website is probably on a very short list of marketing tools you still have turned on. So it better be doing more than just showing up. What it better be doing is creating desire for your property.

Pre-Covid, you might have been able to just to sit back with a “Here’s what we got” website and get your fair share of bookings, more or less. Plus there was repeat business. You got some web traffic from PPC, some from advertising or PR and some just stumbled in out of the cold. A website with some beauty shots, room descriptions and special offers was generally serviceable.

Those days are over.

You’re probably advertising a lot less, so when you do get a visitor, you need to work it. Sell the joys and benefits of your property. Don’t just present information and let visitors draw their own conclusions. Even repeat customers need to be sold on coming back now.

The irony is, with revenues down, coming up with the money to re-vamp your website can be a challenge.

So there are two things here. There’s no getting around the fact that finding a way to invest in keeping your brand message alive and in front of people is worthwhile. Not necessarily because it’s going to fill the place up tomorrow, but because if you make that investment now, then you’re going to do a lot better a lot more quickly when things loosen up. That’s a fact. Maybe take a little bit from other budgets here and there. Definitely look into barters, trades and extended payments, but don’t just go totally dark.

Here’s something else. As beneficial as it might be to re-do your whole website, if you even just re-purpose your home page, you’ll be ahead of the game. The cost/benefit equation there can be pretty favorable.

Your home page is like those store windows. Or the guy who works the sidewalk outside a hoochie-coochie show. It’s there to hook your audience and give them a reason to come in and look around. And ultimately, spend money.

Don’t fill it up with mountains of copy nobody is going to read, SEO fantasies be damned. Make it easy for visitors to get the point and remember it. Be creative. Even if you have to get some help to augment the technical skills your web provider brings to the party.

And, while everything you’re doing to address the Covid-19 crisis is important, let’s be honest – that’s sort of expected these days. Everybody is doing it. So it shouldn’t be the lead or the focus of your home page – certainly not at the expense of selling your property.

So open up your website and look at your home page. Does it create desire?

Or does it just say “This is what we got. It you want it, come in and get it”?

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Here's what gets you through this thing

Here's what gets you through this thing.

It's interesting how many are saying now that they have no money to spend on marketing and advertising.

It's like, business is bad, so we're not going to spend anything on making it better until it gets better all by itself. And that makes no sense.

What we're in is, more or less, a recession, certainly as far the hospitality industry is concerned. And it's a stone fact that businesses that continue to advertise and market themselves during a recession come out of it in far better shape than those who don't. You can look it up.

So maybe you trim a little bit of everything else to come up with some sort of marketing budget. What will it cost to do that? Better question - what will it cost you if you don't?

If there was one thing you could do to help you get through this crisis faster and come out stronger, wouldn't it make sense to find the money somewhere to do it?

Well then . . .

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Get out of that snowbank

 

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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