When traveling, how do you book a hotel room? Probably the way most of us do—through online travel agencies (OTAs). This consumer trend is costing independent hotel owners a significant margin of their profit. The solution to reclaim this margin is for guests to book directly from a hotel’s own website, but this won’t happen until hotels invest in better digital marketing—something most hotel owners don’t even know they need to do.
Most independent hotels can be found on OTAs like Travelocity, Expedia and Tripadvisor. The tragic thing for the innkeeper is that they are losing bucket-loads of cash every time a guest books a room from an OTA, because hoteliers actually pay OTAs, in the form of channel and qualifying rates, to list their rooms. Alternatively, it is 10-15 times cheaper* for hoteliers to secure reservations directly from their own hotel website, but despite this, the popularity of OTAs has actually risen--45% since 2008*. Guests use the same internet to find hotel websites as they do to find OTAs. One would think that most hoteliers would place their time and energy into their own site instead of dealing with a middle-man, but they don’t. Why?
Because hoteliers are hoteliers, not web designers. Google your favorite local inn or bed & breakfast and see if you can find their website (if they have one). After sifting through two pages of OTAs and traditional travel agencies, you may find it. Click on it—I’m willing to bet that it looks like some hastily constructed GeoCities website from the 90’s. It probably has an animated gif of a horse awkwardly running, uses thirteen different artistic fonts that can't be read, and might even have…*gulp*…midi-music.
Innovation in marketing is perhaps more important than product innovation. Yet in the business plans I see, the marketing content and budget are smaller than ever.
Aside from spending, you need to create an experience in this digital age that sets you apart from the banner ads, email blasts, and old-school websites out there today. According to a recent book by Rick Mathieson, these have morphed into a digital universe of augmented reality, advergames, and virtual worlds, that are highly personalizable and uniquely shareable.
Mathieson's book, The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World, characterizes the challenge of demanding attention from a new generation of consumers who want what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. Here are the new marketing rules I support:
- Insight comes before inspiration. Innovative marketing starts with customer insights culled from painstaking research into who your customers are, and how they use digital media. Then it's time to innovate through the channels or platforms that are relevant.
- Don't repurpose, re-imagine. Digital quite simply is not for repurposing content that exists in other channels. It's about re-imagining content to create blockbuster experiences that cannot be attained through any other medium.
- Don't just join the conversation, spark it. Create new online communities of interest, rather than joining existing ones. Ask why it should be, and why customers should care. Then give them a reason to keep coming back. Keep it real, social, and events-based.
- There's no business without show business. Remember Hollywood secrets. Your brand is a story; tell it. Accentuate the personalizable, ownable, and sharable. Viral is an outcome, not a strategy. Make people laugh and they will buy.
- Want control? Give it away. Several companies, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Doritos, have let customers build commercials and design contests, with big rewards for the customer and for the company. That's giving up control, with some risk, to get control.
- It's good to play games with your customers. Games are immersive, but shouldn't be just a diversion. They need to drive home the value proposition. Don't forget to include a call to action, like leading people to the next step of the buying process.
- Products are the new services. Start-ups need to realize that products are the jumping-off point for building relationships with customers. Digital channels enable you to turn products into on-demand services that help customers reach their goals, and add value.
- Mobile is where it's at. In addition to thinking of mobile as a new advertising distribution platform, remember it's far more powerful as a response, or "activation mechanism," to commercial messages we experience in other media, like print, broadcast, and more.
- Always keep surprises in-store. Social retailing is the new approach, where real-world shopping allows customers to connect with friends outside the store, and try on virtual versions of fashions friends might recommend. Make your in-store services add value.
- Use smart ads wisely. The new generation of "smart advertising" enables the creation of an Internet banner ad to fit each viewer's age, gender, location, personal interests, past purchase behavior, and much more. The trick is to do this without being invasive.
Remember: Everything you do, or don't do, in the digital world is visible to your customers, and everything they say about you is visible on demand, all over the world. That means marketing can no longer be an afterthought, or something you can postpone until later when you have more resources. Without effective and innovative marketing, you don't have a business.
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b>
LOS ANGELES — As investors punished News Corp.'s stock again on Monday, questions arose anew about the leadership of its chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. The phone hacking scandal in Britain now threatens to engulf top ...
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b><b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>
The company's stock price has dropped since the revelations of a wider phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
<b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachinebobby ferguson find
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b>
LOS ANGELES — As investors punished News Corp.'s stock again on Monday, questions arose anew about the leadership of its chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. The phone hacking scandal in Britain now threatens to engulf top ...
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b><b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>
The company's stock price has dropped since the revelations of a wider phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
<b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
When traveling, how do you book a hotel room? Probably the way most of us do—through online travel agencies (OTAs). This consumer trend is costing independent hotel owners a significant margin of their profit. The solution to reclaim this margin is for guests to book directly from a hotel’s own website, but this won’t happen until hotels invest in better digital marketing—something most hotel owners don’t even know they need to do.
Most independent hotels can be found on OTAs like Travelocity, Expedia and Tripadvisor. The tragic thing for the innkeeper is that they are losing bucket-loads of cash every time a guest books a room from an OTA, because hoteliers actually pay OTAs, in the form of channel and qualifying rates, to list their rooms. Alternatively, it is 10-15 times cheaper* for hoteliers to secure reservations directly from their own hotel website, but despite this, the popularity of OTAs has actually risen--45% since 2008*. Guests use the same internet to find hotel websites as they do to find OTAs. One would think that most hoteliers would place their time and energy into their own site instead of dealing with a middle-man, but they don’t. Why?
Because hoteliers are hoteliers, not web designers. Google your favorite local inn or bed & breakfast and see if you can find their website (if they have one). After sifting through two pages of OTAs and traditional travel agencies, you may find it. Click on it—I’m willing to bet that it looks like some hastily constructed GeoCities website from the 90’s. It probably has an animated gif of a horse awkwardly running, uses thirteen different artistic fonts that can't be read, and might even have…*gulp*…midi-music.
Innovation in marketing is perhaps more important than product innovation. Yet in the business plans I see, the marketing content and budget are smaller than ever.
Aside from spending, you need to create an experience in this digital age that sets you apart from the banner ads, email blasts, and old-school websites out there today. According to a recent book by Rick Mathieson, these have morphed into a digital universe of augmented reality, advergames, and virtual worlds, that are highly personalizable and uniquely shareable.
Mathieson's book, The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World, characterizes the challenge of demanding attention from a new generation of consumers who want what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. Here are the new marketing rules I support:
- Insight comes before inspiration. Innovative marketing starts with customer insights culled from painstaking research into who your customers are, and how they use digital media. Then it's time to innovate through the channels or platforms that are relevant.
- Don't repurpose, re-imagine. Digital quite simply is not for repurposing content that exists in other channels. It's about re-imagining content to create blockbuster experiences that cannot be attained through any other medium.
- Don't just join the conversation, spark it. Create new online communities of interest, rather than joining existing ones. Ask why it should be, and why customers should care. Then give them a reason to keep coming back. Keep it real, social, and events-based.
- There's no business without show business. Remember Hollywood secrets. Your brand is a story; tell it. Accentuate the personalizable, ownable, and sharable. Viral is an outcome, not a strategy. Make people laugh and they will buy.
- Want control? Give it away. Several companies, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Doritos, have let customers build commercials and design contests, with big rewards for the customer and for the company. That's giving up control, with some risk, to get control.
- It's good to play games with your customers. Games are immersive, but shouldn't be just a diversion. They need to drive home the value proposition. Don't forget to include a call to action, like leading people to the next step of the buying process.
- Products are the new services. Start-ups need to realize that products are the jumping-off point for building relationships with customers. Digital channels enable you to turn products into on-demand services that help customers reach their goals, and add value.
- Mobile is where it's at. In addition to thinking of mobile as a new advertising distribution platform, remember it's far more powerful as a response, or "activation mechanism," to commercial messages we experience in other media, like print, broadcast, and more.
- Always keep surprises in-store. Social retailing is the new approach, where real-world shopping allows customers to connect with friends outside the store, and try on virtual versions of fashions friends might recommend. Make your in-store services add value.
- Use smart ads wisely. The new generation of "smart advertising" enables the creation of an Internet banner ad to fit each viewer's age, gender, location, personal interests, past purchase behavior, and much more. The trick is to do this without being invasive.
Remember: Everything you do, or don't do, in the digital world is visible to your customers, and everything they say about you is visible on demand, all over the world. That means marketing can no longer be an afterthought, or something you can postpone until later when you have more resources. Without effective and innovative marketing, you don't have a business.
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b>
LOS ANGELES — As investors punished News Corp.'s stock again on Monday, questions arose anew about the leadership of its chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. The phone hacking scandal in Britain now threatens to engulf top ...
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b><b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>
The company's stock price has dropped since the revelations of a wider phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
<b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachinecomprehensive bobby ferguson
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b>
LOS ANGELES — As investors punished News Corp.'s stock again on Monday, questions arose anew about the leadership of its chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. The phone hacking scandal in Britain now threatens to engulf top ...
Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch's Leadership Of <b>News</b> Corp Comes <b>...</b><b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>
The company's stock price has dropped since the revelations of a wider phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
<b>News</b> Corporation Looks to Bolster Stock With Buyback Plan <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachineinfertility bobby ferguson
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