Can Social Networks Really Generate Leads?
June 23, 2010 at 11:59 pm | Posted in Hotel Sales Training Issues, In the News, Social Media, Uncategorized | 1 CommentTags: hotel revenue management, hotel sales, hotel training, social media, social networks
In an article in eMarketing.com (June 15, 2010) a recent study indicated that social networks generated weak lead generation in visits to the company’s website. The visitors to the web site generated by social media were visiting one page, had a short attention span and seldom got to the ‘contact us’ page.
One of the most interesting things to come out of this research are the pages that social media referral visitors looked at.
Notice how high the percentages for visitation to the blog page. The same was shown with Twitter and it is unfortunate that the research did not more extensively include LinkedIn, which is the B2B site of preference.
Several months ago the same online publication published a study indicated that companies were obtaining customers in the B2B space but they came primarily from LinkedIn. The pages most likely to generate these leads that were converted to customers was the blog.
Why? At it’s best, the blog is informational and not just product promotion as most of the web site is (See Seth Godin’s book ‘All Marketers are Liars.) Most web sites are filled with adjectives that customers don’t really believe any more but a well done blog gives visitors information about issues and/or the company without hyperbole.
What can we deduce from this. First of all, a vistor may return to a site many times before they become a lead through the contact us page — there are no stats because the customer only appears as a social media lead the first time they visit — after that they are ‘repeat’ visitors. Secondly and probably more importantly, the blog is one of the most useful tools in the marketers aresenal and it is often missued or neglected — it’s value not perceived to be as strong as other lead generation sources.
Let’s hope that these two graphs give the company blog it’s due and prominence in communicating with ptotential customers.
PS If you were waiting to receive leads flowing out of social media, think again. For the most part leads still need to be developed and social media is an invaluable prospecting and relationship building tool.
Are Hotel Rooms in Danger of Becoming a Commodity?
June 15, 2010 at 3:05 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: hotel blog, hotel industry, hotel revenue management, hotel sales
Does anyone remember when the legacy airlines, Delta, United, Continental, etc, began engaging in price wars? These were driven by mulitple bancruptcies, follwed by a recession and dictated by their own yield management systems. They then began dumping distressed seat inventories on the OTAs, both opaque and transparent.
Today there are virutally no points of differntiation bewteen them except routes and schedules and the cookies on Delta that no one is willing to pay extra for. In other words, airline seats on these carriers have basicly become a commodity, undifferentiated by fares or amenities whre they follow each to the bottom.
Interestingly enough, it is the discount airlines that now are clearly differentiated. Southwest with its no checked baggage fees and cattle call seating priroities, Frontier with its three tiered fare structure and don’t forget those cute tail animals as well as several others.
On the other end of the spectrum the luxury airlines, mostly overseas airlines like Singapore Air, Quantas, etc are differntiated by the level of service and amenities offered, albeit at a price.
Sound familiar? Could this be the reason that the luxury, independent and economy sectors are leading the hotel industry out of the recession? (STR, June 10, 2010)
Is it becuase these sements are differentiated by rates and amenities for the luxury and economy sectors, and by price pretty much for all three.
It is the mid market hotels, with or without Food and Beverage, that are still struggling. Most of these have pretty much the same amenities, Frequent Guest programs (most travelers belong to many) and are only differentiated by rates that become a diluted differentiator when so much inventory is ‘dumped’ on the OTAs.
It is the ‘race to the bottom’ that has exposed this threat but it isn’t too late!
Learn the lesson of the airlines and don’t follow the market in a race to the bottom. Now is the time to maximize the opportunities in the increasing demand that we are seeing!
Social Media Angst
May 12, 2010 at 6:44 pm | Posted in Hotel Sales Training Issues, In the News, Information, Social Media, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: hotel, hotel blog, hotel industry, hotel sales, hotel sales issues, hotel training, hotel trends, recovery for hotels, social media, social networks
I have been traveling pretty solid for the past eight weeks. Many of those seminar programs have been for AHLA and included a program on social networks.
The participation has been amazing. Some hotels are using their Fan Pages and LinkedIn Profiles well to have conversations with their customers, some are in between but many are still unsure or having a degree of angst over building out their pages and profiles to include complete information that will give potential customers the information they need that results in lead generation.
The purpose of social media activity is to engage with current customers and generate new ones! A recent article and survey from eMarketing.com revealed B2B and B2C leads generated from social media.
45% of businesses surveyed generated B2B leads from LinkedIn and 68% generated B2C leads!
Why are these pages so important for lead generation? These pages are dynamic in that they can be updated more frequently than the web site, include a great deal more information, actively engage with customers and potential customers and thus generate leads.
Asking your teenage cousin or hiring someone right out of college to build out your presence on these two networks (not tomention Twitter) is not very helpful in that they they don’t undersatnd the intricate relationship that the hospitality industry has with these networks and industry best practices.
Example: One client that has and that has an ‘and’ in their name was virtually invisible on FaceBook. Why? The newly minted social media manager had used an ambersand (&) verus the word ‘and’. How many Fans would think to use an ambersand versus the word ‘and’? As well, there were available opportunities on the addtional pages that were not built out at all.
How many of your hotels, epecially independent and smaller hotels, are having angst over your social media presence? Let’s have a conversation post your comments and concerns below!
Unconstrained Demand: Denials, Regrets and Lost Business
April 19, 2010 at 12:13 am | Posted in Hotel Sales Training Issues, Information, Webcasts | Leave a commentNow that demand is increasing and Revenue Managers are able to begin moving rate, it’s time to revisit the area of what unconstrained demand can tell you — info about who didn’t book may be more useful than info about those that did!
One of the reasons most sales people and Revenue Mangers don’t check those reports from the PMS is that they are imperfect. The res team member has to be in the reservation screen an terminate it prior to the completion of the reservation — reservation interuptus! However, training can alleviate some of these by instituting the low tech system of hash marks under the most common denials and regret category.
You should be regreting some reservations as your rate moves higher. If you have no denials, your rate is too low. It’s delicate balance that we all have to relearn as demand increases!
However incomplete are some info is better than none. For example, how many were rate related, how many were availability related and how many were amenity related — an inability to book the desired room type, having an indoor/outdoor pool, etc.
The info can assist in rate setting for rooms & packages, training opportunities for offering different room types and asking if the customer has flexible rates, etc. If you are geting rate denials for a certain arrival/departure pattern and you aren’t filling, should you take a look at limited ‘specials’, reduce the BAR or enable another strategy.
Sales usually learns more from why they didn’t get the business than why they did. It can also assist in training. Ddi the sales person engage the propsect in conversation about their group or did they just quote a rate and fail to value add to take the conversation to another level?
You get the drift — how much business did you actually book versus how much business did you deny or lose and why?
Join us on Thursday for a webinar “Social Media Drives the Meeting
Business” in conjunction with i-Meet. We are bringing in panelists
– a hotel sales professional, a meeting planner and a
representative from PhocusWright to talk about they successfully use
social networks in their sales processes, venue selection and the
future trends in social networks.
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?CarolVerretConsultin/c40634ba38/TEST/a12cc49a47/t=a&d=927889188
Google Maps to Feature Hotel Rates on Search Results
March 24, 2010 at 4:56 pm | Posted in In the News, Information | Leave a commentTags: Google Maps
Google announced on Monday that it will feature hotel rates in the ‘balloons’ on Google maps. This is currently in the Beta stage.
Currently, they will seek rate feeds from advertisers and will be flagged as Sponsored Results. They will not pick up rates from the GDS and other distribution channels but rely on feeds from the hotels themselves. Below is an example of how it will look for a Search for hotels in NYC.
Google has stated that it will not change search results. This new feature will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps, the company says. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors, regardless of whether there is an associated price. (HotelMarketing.com, 3/24/10)
With this feature, when you search for hotels on Google Maps you’ll be able to enter the dates you plan to stay and see real prices on selected listings. You can click on the price to see a list of advertisers who have provided pricing information for that hotel, indicated by the “Sponsored” text, and click through to reserve a room on the advertiser’s site. (HotelMarketing.com, 3/24/10)
My concern is that this feature will only perpetuate competitive rate cutting and discounting, making the industry more rate driven than before. It may have an impact on rate parity and integrity and also become a threat to the aggregators who may feel they are in bed with the 500 pound gorilla named Google!
Let me know what you think!
Guerilla Pricing — Revenue Managers In the ‘War Zone’
March 16, 2010 at 1:21 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 CommentIn an excellent article that appeared in HotelMarketing.com, Brij Cahkra of Preferred Hotels referred to the vicious cycle of rate cutting as Guerilla Pricing.
“In guerrilla pricing, hotels try and do price cuts in short window to pick up additional market share however if done too often this can lead to a dilution of revenues,” said Chachra.
In the battle for increased revenue and market share, Revenue Managers often have no choice but to engage in guerilla pricing within their comp set. But increased market share in a guerilla pricing war at best yields increased market share for maybe a weekend. The increased revenue is consumed by the cost of distribution and/or it is insufficient to generate enough flow through to be worth it.
Gureilla pricing becoems like an addiction from which RMs find it difficult to break free. RMs are under pressure froms senior management to engage in the ‘game’ — to generate revenue and to increase market share.
Everyone loses, noboby wins.
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