New Marketing Demands and Methods

 Clearly, with the current economic situation, evolving communication and the segmentation of your buyers, it is critical to profile your buyers and their changing budgets and expectations.  Effective marketing today is a three step process:

1.    Develop a profile of who your primary customer/guest is by age, sex, buying trends and more.

2.    Invest in the primary method to reach your targeted customer/guest market segment

3.    Adapt your services and appeal to fit your target markets needs, expectations and cost.

This is the initial step and it will evolve as your business grows and your local market changes.  Key marketing tools are a strong online presence, easy communication with prospects and past customers.

Good luck!

Build Your Business Online By Building Customer Relations

Best of Times Worst of Times

Wherever you are or whatever you need, we will get through this pandemic together.  We can use our mobile phones and website access to monitor what services are available to help us manage.

We need to determine what each of us can do to help others and most important we need to follow the guidelines provided by our professional medical people.

• Social distancing
• Cover when coughing or sneezing
• Wash our hands after touching anything that is shared with others
• (gas station pumps, grocery goods, cash, credit cards and so much more)

Let's get through this and back to our daily productive lives together.

God bless you all

It has been awhile since my last blog post, I apologize for this!  I will be bringing concise posts that are intended to help all aspects of the travel industry make the right decisions regarding effective technology solutions for the guests.  These solutions are in two areas; cost savings and increased income from better customer experiences.

Stop in once each week for the newest solutions derived from owner and customer experiences, a summary of multiple news releases and analytical surveys.  Your time valuable so my posts will be brief and beneficial.   

Travel & Hospitality Technology

It is an amazing journey watching the transitions and evolution of travel and hospitality since the Internet began.  I began with teaching travel agents to use their GDS for air, hotel and car reservations.

Today, I am advising and managing companies that give hoteliers solutions that provide direct personalized text guest engagement and digitally controlled guest rooms to save energy costs and so much more, along with monitoring individual guest trends and preferences so the hotels and airlines can provide a more personalized service and targeted promotions.

I know the evolving tech solutions will continue with some succeeding and some failing, but that is what makes travel and hospitality businesses so exciting.

Will AI replace direct customer and guest engagement?  I don't think so, but it will help build relations when used correctly. 

Where have I been?

SERIOUSLY, no posts since 2016? WOW

It is amazing how time slips away when you are busy.  I apologize for wasting anyone's time who was nice enough to visit my BLOG.

Guaranteed, I will be posting relevant information and updates in the coming months.  I am currently on multiple advisory boards for some really great start-up travel services and  I continue to provide hands-on marketing solutions for a variety of travel related services around the world.

Please keep me on your list of resources and I assure you it will payoff.

Happy Holidays to All

Lets make 2017 a fantastic year for all!  Pray for world peace.  Love your family and friends.  Make America great again.

Shame on Me

Frequent relevant blog posts are important for any business and I have been negligent.  For all my friends and business associates, I apologize.

Travel Marketing Dynamics has gone through a major re-organization over recent months and our resources, development and focus has evolved more toward mobile marketing.  This does not dilute our total online marketing service, it is simply an integration of the newest mobile marketing techniques with the more traditional.

Our new text marketing platform is easy and convenient for our users, plus we are the only text message service offering options for one-way push marketing or two-way to engage with guests/customers.  Plus, we will take on a collaborative approach with our users and manage the marketing process for them with monthly reports on our progress.

I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and I hope we have an opportunity to discuss your business and how TMD can help in 2017.

Sincere Regards!!

4R Marketing

As we are all aware marketing methods and practices are evolving rapidly.  We have moved from mass marketing and progressively away from much of the past print marketing methods.

Today, marketing is about analysis, targeting, engaging and personalization when setting our marketing goals and objectives.  The combination of these practices for Internet and mobile marketing are the 4R approach to effective marketing.  These four Rs are as follows:

Research
Apply ongoing research relevant to your competition's marketing methods and your customer's expectations and trends.

Response
Prompt your customers shoppers to respond to you in an informal manner through spontaneous mobile and online social platforms.  Respond quickly and in an informal manner to customer reviews, questions and comments.

Relations
Build relationships with your customers to get them to download and retain your mobile apps, provide their email addresses for ongoing push messaging and email promotions.  Ask them to connect with your business through public social networks.

Reputation
Your business reputation is critical!  How customers respond and provide public reviews about your business can make or break you.  It is important to monitor for customer reviews and respond quickly where possible or if there is doubt about the source of the review take immediate action.  Reach out to the reviewer or source via email or phone where possible.

Keep your Rs in perspective to grow the most important R for your business ... Revenue!

Marketing Logic

Is there enough hype for everyone about the new trends in marketing? 

Is content king or is it just another way of explaining how to create and manage written content, nothing new here!  Do you think anybody ever called Ernest Hemingway a ‘content creator’?  If they did, I bet he would punch ‘em in the nose.” – Greg Satell

Are there too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough Chefs?  Granted there are new and diverse marketing methods available for travel and hospitality businesses.  Businesses still need their website, but it is only as good as its content, including picture, video and images.  They also need to manage search optimization by building links, managing tags and frequent content updates. 

As the functionality on mobile devices and the rapid growth the number of users, how you integrate mobile into your marketing is critical.  As you maintain the more traditional online marketing initiative, your adoption of mobile marketing is critical.  Mobile offers amazing marketing capabilities such as Location Based Apps, Proximity Marketing, Location Triggers (wifi, beacon and GPS) enable customer analytics and mobile is mostly about the ability to engage a prospect or customer in a non-intrusive manner.

So where do you put your marketing dollars in the coming year?  The percentages will vary somewhat for different segments of the travel and hospitality businesses, but clearly it is becoming easier to understand your customers, match their needs and expectations and build a valuable relationship.

The basic budget allocations are (1) Invest in website, search and social for the Pre-Booking (2) mobile for In-Hotel Guest relations (3) Email and social for Post Departure.  We do offer a FREE marketing analysis to help determine where you can improve your results

Mobile Marketing for Travel

I can only assume you have heard all the chatter about mobile marketing for travel companies; airlines, airports, hotels, car rental and destinations.  Plus, the chatter about how slow the travel industry has been to implement mobile services for travelers.  Yes, travel companies have been slow, but that is not a bad thing.  Regarding how a traveler can benefit from mobile apps and messages is up to the individual traveler.

Mobile marketing is a combination of multiple technologies and how it applies to travelers has to be a personalized connection between the suppliers and the travelers.  It may be iBeacons for a specific location like an airport or a destination like Bourbon Street or it is about messaging individuals in specific hotel rooms or reaching an individual via a code in their digital airline ticket.  Effective mobile marketing has to fit the business and the needs or expectations of their customers.

There is a serious benefit to travelers but the service provider, whether it is a car rental, airline or a hotel has to provide the right service at the right time via the most convenient platform and device.

TMDynamics is currently working with diverse non-competitive service providers that provide the best customer solutions for the right businesses at the right time.  Give us a call!

Hotel Marketing with Local Products & Services

Today's hotel guests expect more than a clean bed and a free breakfast.  Offering a taste of the local culture and flavors will help build a productive and profitable relationship with your guest and the local business.

Here is an example of how to elevate your guest experiences.  Just reach out to local businesses to grow your business.....   LINK

Online Digital Marketing Strengths & Weaknesses

I think we all get it by now that online marketing is important to your business.  The majority of consumers are accessed through a combination of online and mobile marketing methods and the results are better customer relation, new prospects and more sales.

The strengths offered by online and mobile marketing are the ability to target by market and individual demographics, create push and pull consumer and customer engagement and most important to measure your level of success so you can dedicate more time and cost to the channels that work best for your business.

The weaknesses in online and mobile marketing will vary based on the size of your business and your market niche, but the most prevalent weakness is knowing your market and how to target and engage the best prospects.  The next challenge for effective online and mobile marketing is the time resource demands.  Success is a result of how you interconnect your online presence, search, social and advertising. Unfortunately, each of these initiatives demands a totally different skill set and a deep knowledge of your business and brand perception.

To build a successful and cost-effective strategy and implementation plan requires a staff with diverse skills or a combination of a limited staff with outsource measurable aspects of your initiatives.  There are some effective tools available to help your internal staff to maximize their productivity, but due to the demand for quick and response, relevant posts and personal engagement the process cannot be automated.

The most important elements for your overall success are (1) build your internal communications between management and staff pertaining to your online reputation and brand perception  (2) Never commit to an agreement for external services for more than six months (3) All external services must provide a monthly measure of their results (4) Be willing to change with the market trends and demands.

Hope you find this helpful!  

Online Conversions

The objective of most online marketing is clearly conversions. A conversion may be an online reservation or purchase or someone providing their email address or agreeing to follow or join.

Going forward as online marketing continues to evolve with changes in mobile, video or social, the value of timely and accurate analytics will affect the method you apply as well as your results.  I suggest you be careful not to misinterpret benchmarks with the analytics you apply to set your expectations.

As you will see in this video, you should focus your time and resources on knowing your customer and providing the best possible online experience for the customer.

Take a look and share your comments ..  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzsogFobyqk#t=14

Social Marketing for Businesses

Social media marketing for your business is all about knowing who you are trying to reach with your business posts and responses!  Although you want to reach more than one person, your message is directed at one persona or a single profile that matches multiple prospects.

There is a growing number of social monitoring tools for measuring your progress and even more  "experts" to train or advise you on how to implement and manage your social marketing.  But, unlike traditional marketing with an email blast or a highlighted print listing or a survey, effective social marketing demands daily monitoring, a personalized immediate response to reviews, frequent social and blog posts that relate to your target audience's interests and ongoing analysis integration of multiple social channels.

Effective social marketing for your business is also more than posting responses and promotions, its about pictures and video that relate to your message.  If it is a special deal explain the value compared to alternatives, respect the reader with references to how the deal benefits them and throw out general requests or questions to generate a response and the opportunity to have an ongoing relationship.

As we see social marketing evolving within the mobile market, it is also important to maintain a presence on the growing number of apps that find your business via GPS or other geo methods and tools.  Also, the reverse is possible whereas you can identify your customer's and potential customer's interests through the use of iBeacons.

To effectively create your brand awareness and build your customer base you need to connect certain aspects of traditional marketing with your online and mobile daily engagement.  The most important question for you is whether this can be accomplished internally or is it best to establish your objectives and set key progress indicators then find the right outsourced service(s) who will deliver results at a cost related to those results.            

Solutionz

I have committed TMDynamics to working with Solutionz on their latest new project! 

Chicke Fitzgerald, CEO and Founder of Solutionz, and I have known each other for years and have worked together on a variety of consulting projects ranging from lasvegas.com to Innovata LLC.

Chicke is one of the most innovative and creative individuals I've ever known in the travel industry and she is well ahead of the curve in regard to online marketing strategies.  I look forward to this new venture and a the project we are developing together along with Roxy Mize, a key member of the Solutionz team.

Visit www.solutionz.com for some details about the company and drop me an email if you think we can help you stay ahead of the rapid and constant changes in the essential strategies and implementation of effective Internet and mobile development.

My focus in working with Chicke is to assure the success of the new TripPlanz service.  TripPlanz  was created by Chicke and the Solutionz team.  This innovative approach to travel search takes the online and mobile shopper to a new level in online search.  Today's Internet travel shoppers are forced to shop by where and how they want to travel.  TripPlanz offers the ability to search and book travel based on why you travel.  Plus, the search capabilities easily accommodate those who travel by other than air.

TripPlanz is a B2B service that fits with all segments of the Health, Life or Event markets.  You can search for a specific hospital, golf course or concert or sports event and find the hotels indexed by how close they are to where you want to be and where you are traveling.  If you need a rental car or airline reservation these are also available.

www.TripPlanz.com is your "go to place" for planning travel to where you need to be!  Let me know if you want to discuss this exciting new venture?

Connect your Content and your Search Marketing to Drive Sales

Your website content is what affects your search rankings and you online sales ratio.  The better your search marketing the more website visitors and the more visitors the more sales conversions.  Sounds simple, but its not in the very competitive world of Internet hospitality marketing.

Your search engine ranking position (SERP) is a result of many factors including frequent content updates and changes, relevant and high traffic incoming links, source code and the way your content, text, pics and video are presented.   So your content marketing and your content strategy have to be interconnected and this includes your mobile website content and search presence. 

Start with a strategic plan that sets your goals and priorities, add profiles of your target audience and their demographics and their psychographic characteristics.  Determine your budget and allocations for marketing and website management time and costs.  Keep in mind "Less is More", so keep it clear and brief so it is easy to apply.

When you have finalized your strategy, its time to implement your content and marketing action plan.  Start with a scheduling calendar to set solid times to update content, consider all connectivity and relevance of each keyword; location, brand, current news, specials and more.  Balance your expenses with your results.  If your results are not going up you may need to text your budget allocations.

Always consider the overall cost of an effective in-house marketing initiative or the cost to outsource.  If you outsource your marketing always negotiate a service term based on results!

Targeting and Measured Results is the 2014 Online Marketing Matra

How we interconnect our website + mobile + targeting + frequent analysis and reporting is how to succeed in 2014.

(1) Your website must be a visual user experience with less reading and more doing
(2) More than 40% of Google searches come from a mobile device
(3) How you reach mobile consumers is a combination of social networking and advertising
(4) Google+. PPC, Facebook, Twitter and most major marketing channels provide targeting
(5) A weekly or at a minimum a monthly analysis is a good strategy but how you apply these results is critical

Whether your market is B2B or B2C a clear targeted strategy is critical.  Here is an interesting interview that addresses the various sources and the elements that are necessary.  A combination of targeted search and social marketing can benefit all segments of our economy and your business whether you are a small B&B, a small brand or independent hotel, restaurants or anew B2B service or product. Here is an interesting video that discusses some of the variables that require consideration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t9ul50t7T2o

Google Panda and Penquin

If you have your own hotel website, managing your search engine optimization (SEO) is critical.  To be successful you need to stay current on Google, Bing and Yahoo algorithm changes.  These constant updates affect how you are ranked on the major search engines.  Obviously, your position on the search engine affects your business.

You can secure search presence and rankings in a variety of ways, it may be your website, website internal pages, blog and social pages.  Successful SEO is a result of the amount of time you commit and the quality of that time.  For example, time analyzing your results and updating your site content.

Where is Google going with its algorithm updates?  Clearly their focus is on mobile usage, in 2013 40% of Google traffic is coming from mobile phones.  In some countries mobile has passed desktop usage.  Google is still struggling gain more market share in social.  The question is do Facebook likes and +1 influence your search rankings?  The answer is not yet, but it is progressing rapidly as an influence based on volume.

The main factor related to Google Penguin, in my opinion, changes how accurate your Google Analytics are, unless you are analyzing pay per click.  Under the pretense of security, Google is limiting some of the analytic details.



BLOG is a clear asset to your SEO

Link Building is important to your SEO  

The key to total online sales is your ability to connect the dots >  SEO + PPC + Mobile + Social.  Then, be sure to analyze all possible measures to justify your results and to improve your results.
SEO is still an important and critical part of online marketing no matter what the so called experts tell you.  What is happening is that Google search is constantly refined to control black hot practices and other unprofessional and negative methods being applied to SEO. 

Content Marketing

More about what you say online and how you should say it!  Content marketing is taking marketing to a new level.  Consumers are spending less time watching TV commercials, reading sign boards or magazine articles.

Marketing today is about relationships and engaging consumers online about things that interest them or appeal to them.  Reviews, even though 20% are fraudulent, can attract interest and help close a buyer's decision.

 



Thank you to our friends at MarketingCharts.com, here is a perspective on the lack of understanding behind today's B2B marketing.  These are companies that offer products and services to other companies, hopefully to help them deliver better services and products or to help attract buyers.  Clearly, there is a problem about how the companies in this survey apply, measure and perceive content marketing.

Content marketing has been described many ways, but a simple explanation of this valuable marketing technique is as follows ....

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The key to this definitions in this description are, "relevant and valuable content".  The days of just pushing the quality or value of what you are selling are gone!  Today with mobile content, online content, audio content and email and more, marketing its about knowing your objective and how to focus your text, pics and videos on that while you target the right prospects. 

As you push your content into the various digital marketing channels, you will know quickly if you are reaching your prospects and is your content resonating with them.  Measure results as you add or change content and shift your dialogue and what are the demographics and psychographics of those who respond.  Build your customer profiles and create content that fits your online market.