Advertising is like toothpaste.

How often have you seen someone befuddled on the toothpaste aisle of the drugstore?

You've been there. We've all been there. Way too many choices, like so many things that are over-complicated. The array of marketing tools and providers available to a hotel or resort is no less confusing.

And these days with tight budgets, you can’t just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. You've got to go with what's going to get you the biggest bang for your buck. Fortunately, Bob Hoffman of The Ad Contrarian is here to offer clear, straightforward advice:

"Look for the agencies that make the best ads. All the rest is trivial."

It's hard to argue with that. No matter how great your property is, if nobody notices what you say about yourself, they're not going to get very excited about clicking over to your website or booking a room. And they probably won't care much about your discounted rate offer, either.

With the myriad of tools out there – nearly every one of them fronted by a really good salesperson – the main purpose of advertising gets lost in the metrics-and-analytics-and-keywords-and-so-on shuffle.

And that main purpose is to demand attention to your message, no matter what channel you're using.

We could easily go on and on about the value of creative advertising, but we'll leave you with another quote from Bob Hoffman:

"It doesn't matter how well you sing if no one hears you."

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Advertising is not a light switch

Don't stop.

(Sure, the ad above is for a spa and you may not be a spa, but it does have some relevance to our topic today. Besides, it’s an ad we did and we’ve always liked it.)

Of all the things that can adversely affect your success, short-sightedness could do the most damage.

Several years ago, we had a hotel client who used to cancel all of his advertising whenever his occupancy was up. “We’re doing pretty well right now.” Then, invariably, he’d call back in a couple of weeks in a panic. “Occupancy is down! We’ve got to do something!”

Unless you’re promoting a limited-time offer, advertising isn’t an immediate cause-and-effect thing for any business. Nor is it an on-and-off thing, like a light switch. You advertise — online, via email or however you do — to build and maintain desire and awareness for your business and what you have to offer.

It’s easy to tell yourself “We’re good right now. People know about us.” But do they? Almost certainly not as much as you think.

And after going dark for a while, catching back up to where you were can be a real bear. An expensive with some sort of presence. 

So . . . 

Ohmygodbabydon’tstop.

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Thinking, ideas and on eyond digital

Thinking, ideas and on beyond digital

 

The world of independent hotels and resorts is a bit hurly-burly these days. 

There are properties lining up under the umbrella of one of the soft brands created by the big chains, and management companies are getting bigger through mergers or acquisitions. 

If you’re an independent and your competition fits in either of those categories, all of a sudden that competition has resources — and in some cases a Brand name — you don’t have. And probably access to some in-house marketing help they didn’t have before. 

But you can still gain a competitive advantage. Thinking — strategy, ideas and innovation — can give you an edge and, so far, nobody has cornered the market on thinking. There are creative firms out there that can help. Innovative, creative, affordable firms with experienced people for whom a hotel with a competitive challenge will not be their first rodeo. 

The one thing you don’t want to do is fall back on a big digital company to do it all for you. Remember, they're primarily tech companies, not creative marketing companies. You’re unique, so you don’t want an off-the-shelf marketing and advertising plan. 

A digital company will do a great job with a hotel website, email program, SEO, re-targeting and so on, but non-digital creative strategies are not typically their stock in trade. You’re going to need to go beyond digital. Or at least you’ll need a creative strategy to drive the digital tactics. 

Maybe the smartest thing you can do to stand out is something like sponsor a festival. Or create a series of themed rooms and unexpected promotions. Ace Hotels had a promotion in Arizona a while back that included a tattoo with your weekend stay. We solved a resort’s off-season problem once by re-positioning that off-season as a special time of year, not a down time. You can read about that and the need for strategy here, but the point is, that’s not the sort of thinking you usually get from a digital firm. But it's the kind of thinking that can give you a competitive edge.

And about those “agencies that can help?” We’re one of them.

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The hardest part of building a website.

 Anybody can build a website.

“Do you do websites?” 

Often, that’s one of the first questions we get when we’re reaching out to a prospect. The answer is “Well, sure, but actually, a website is the second thing you ought to be thinking about."

The first thing (the hard part) is to make sure you have a clear Brand Message to deliver

That’s because a website —  like every other tool in your marketing toolbox — should be based on your Brand. It should be designed to deliver what makes your business unique.

Fact is, anybody who knows WordPress or can log onto Wix, GoDaddy or SquareSpace can build a basic website. And web design professionals, of course, can build a better one. But however great or pedestrian it may be, the point of a website isn’t simply to have one. 

The point of a website is to deliver what sets you apart from your competition.

A basic website can list products, services or menus. With pictures, even. A creative website can do more. A creative website design built on a clear Brand message will do the most.

So, yeah . . . we can do websites. But let’s take a step back and focus on your Brand message first.

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A legal unfair advantage

Admit it.

Some of your favorite commercials don’t do much to get you to actually do business with the advertiser. Their main objective is to be funny. They usually are, too. Of course, that shouldn’t be the main objective.

How often do you remember a commercial but couldn’t come up with the name of the advertiser if someone held your family hostage? Or you can name an advertiser, but it’s not the right one? Creativity for its own sake isn’t advertising. It’s art. And while we all love us some art, art won’t pay the bills.

What’s missing is a strategy behind the creativity. Sure, you can get by without a creative strategy — if you repeat yourself over and over and over. But over and over and over costs money. A lot of it. A creative ad, website, commercial or web video that drives home your selling proposition can do the same job — probably better — for much less.

An ad built around a joke isn't enough, unless the joke is based on your selling proposition.

And to those who say, “But advertising is all about awareness and those funny ads draw attention,” we’d say this: Awareness from creative advertising built around a reason to do business with you is the better than awareness for just the joke.

Three examples:

Perhaps you remember the great “Got Milk” campaign from a few years ago. Their strategy was what they called “milk deprivation.” The “Mayhem” campaign for Allstate is based on a strategy of the unexpected things that you might have to pay for yourself if you bought cut-rate insurance. How about those great “None of our business” spots for DuckDuckGo? Strategy: the information about yourself you give up to most browsers.

Milk, insurance and internet privacy and you’re not. Got it. But the point holds. All three of them employ a creative strategy to advance a Brand message.

Don’t misunderstand. We’re all in on creativity. As Bill Bernbach said, “creativity is the last legal unfair advantage we can take to run over the competition.” And we’ve won a whole lot of creative awards for our work. But we’re proud to say that we’ve never stooped to gratuitous creativity.

Gratuitous creativity isn’t that hard to do. It’s only if you want your work to be based on a client’s selling proposition that it gets hard.

But worth the effort.

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