Here are ten marketing tips to make the year ahead a success.
Here are ten marketing tips to make the year ahead a success.
2017 will be an interesting year for hospitality brands. We have Donald Trump in the White House, the Brexit drama continues to unfold, Putin plays Vladimir the Great, the EU is dealing with its own upheavals and generally there’s a new sentiment of protectionism that will impact the global economy.
However, its times like these that are also the most exciting for innovation and creativity within the realms of branding, design and communication.
Here are our Top 10 tips for those at the frontline of their brand stories.
- Get more involved in your brand’s digital engagement initiatives and don’t just leave it to your agency or media planners. You need to evaluate your target audience profiling, pre-target new guests and drive more high-yielding revenue through your brand dotcom.
- Rethink your channel marketing strategy as hyper-fragmentation will negatively impact your ability to manage agile and dynamic pricing tactics. There are too many offers and packages that paralyse choice. Keep it simple.
- Monitor rate parity to ensure revenue optimization efforts are not being wasted. Remember, your highest yielding channels will always be direct on your brand dotcom and maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the contracting terms to ensure you’re not held hostage by OTAs.
- Think about Recency, Frequency and Spend while defining your retention strategy and delve deep into your CRM platform to reward the loyalists. Data mining and analytics are invaluable to create customized rewards and incentives driving incremental revenue.
- Focus on India & Africa as the latent demand for travel is exponentially higher in these markets. Your traditional feeder markets will need maintenance too but the real rewards lie in city-specific initiatives in these countries.
- Build on your partnerships as this will drive brand affinity and broaden relevance. Act beyond the current paradigm and build relationships with new segments and be creative in your approach to align with other brands.
- Get more social and define your engagement strategy with digital influencers and social media activists. What they say about you is always going to be more impactful than what you say about yourself.
- Stay true to your brand philosophy and don’t try to cater to every segment of the market. You can be different things to different people but not everything to everybody. Targeted marketing has never been more powerful.
- Don’t compromise on standards to save your marketing dollars. Great design is always good for business, it will eventually cost you more to recover. Remember, great design doesn’t have to the cost the earth either.
- Maintain consistency and momentum as 2017 will continue to challenge the way we operate, and those who think of original and innovative new ideas to generate revenue and protect ADRs will be the clear winners.