Category Archives: Hotels
Optimising your website is key!
As I surf around the Internet these days I see a load of sites out there that are built for the masses who all love social networks and signing up for special offers! Follow me here to twitter with me, Click me on Facebook and join me as a friend, Like me a lot and join my social scene etc…
While I don’t discount the value of these social streams for some larger businesses, I have yet to see any real business gains for clients that have a smaller catchment of visitors or small or low membership clients. Some of which are ruining their websites with these.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Usability & search drive 70% more revenue to hotel
How Redcow Marketing helped Museum Hotel improve their conversion rate by 100% and achieve a 70% increase in online sales.
The Museum Hotel’s Challenges:
The owner of Wellington NZ’s Museum Hotel – Chris Parkin – wanted…
- More bookings through his hotel’s website, more brand awareness, and more sales.
- To increase his website’s presence and make the most of its visitors.
- To reduce the fees he pays to third party travel sites for bookings, and to encourage guests to book from his website, instead.
Dave suggested they…
- Make better use of the hotel’s booking engine.
- Address usability and testing page enhancements to improve sales.
- Add sales elements on the website to improve the sales funnel, and add new content to the homepage and other vital areas that would enhance engagement.
- Work directly with the hotel’s booking engine provider to improve features.
- Work directly with the reservation staff and manager of the hotel to increase bookings.
- Address the site’s SEO content.
- Redesign the online advertising pay-per-click campaign.
First, they accessed the website’s analytical data to determine how much traffic was coming to the site, what levels of contact were made, what and how many bookings were generated, where people went when they visited, how long they were there, and where they left. All of this information helped to paint a picture of the site’s performance.
Dave reviewed the site for usability issues, friction, and confusion points, then looked for gaps in the website where they could enhance value, and studied the site’s flow of information.
Their major challenge was to make the website more interactive and focused – to get people moving into the booking engine as quickly as possible from the website itself; once there, the likelihood that a booking would be made was very high.
Dave proposed a new layout for the home page, then tried and tested different versions to find which one most effectively raised guests’ engagement levels with the site and booking engine.
The next step was to address the pages that were visited the most – providing feedback to the hotel on what those pages were lacking. They also added new tracking systems to monitor visitors and conversions levels, allowing them to track which parts of the pages people were more interested in, what keyword phrases were bringing in sales and customers, and other valuable information.
Finally, they added clearer navigation to aid the user experience, including new contact forms, maps and directions.
They rolled out these changes over the course of a few months, analyzing and tweaking along the way to enhance the overall package.
Results:
In 2009 their revenue increased by 56% from 2008
In 2010 their revenue increased by 11% from 2009
This is a massive revenue increase of 73% over two years
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Improve Your Website And Sell More
Did you know that you can increase your website’s ability to sell significantly by looking at implementing small changes to pages within it.
See how we helped Museum Hotel increase their bookings 20% month on month and improve their level of conversions by 100% on their website by improving the functionality, usability and engagement levels. We tell you how in our PDF attached.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
PPC vs SEO
There is a debate in the industry around the benefits of using pay-per-click (PPC) adverting instead of search engine optimisation (SEO) as your main source of website traffic. While I feel that there are many benefits of search engine optimisation to me as a business owner PPC can be rewarding in so many ways over SEO.
Here are some interesting points to be aware of;
- PPC traffic converts at 2.03% versus 1.26% for natural traffic
- PPC visitors spend about 10% more money on your site than naturally found visitors
- PPC visitors stay on your site 29% longer than naturally found website visitors
Here are my thoughts on why these stats are as they are
With PPC you control what phrases you want to appear in Google for, with natural search (SEO) you dont have the same control over these search queries. In some strange instances your site might be found for search phrases that are not related to your business at all but the search engines have tagged your website as having content relevant to this.
For example, you can state in PPC that you want to show for a phrase that directly relates to your product, for example “dog collars” and then when someone types in “looking for dog collars” your site comes up at the top of Google ready for that person to click, visit and then buy.
The reason I believe PPC visitors stay longer on your site is that they know what you have is what they have searched for and now want to know more about your website before making a commitment to buy from you. They are just checking you out more before they spend their cash with you…
The reason people spend more from you is an interesting one, is it because the PPC visitor is a more serious purchaser and hence has more to spend than the naturally found website visitor.
My final words, PPC gives you more control on who see’s your business online and where your business shows and doesn’t show. It typically gives your business an instant boost of traffic due to the fact that you can show in google today, tomorrow and the next day as long as you are willing to pay for the traffic you get. PCC also gives you the ability to test product prices, collect feedback and gather really quick information due to the ability to send alot of traffic to your site via PPC advertising. It’s all good food for thought…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
More website sales tips
Credibility
Credibility is key so make sure you site conveys messages of confidence; ensure that you have testimonials from customers on your site so that you can give the people visiting your website confidence in your company’s ability to perform to their expectations.
If you don’t have any testimonials, please don’t make them up! That would be just kidding yourself and lying to your customers. Go ahead and ask your current customers for testimonials, if your products and services are really that great, your customers will be more than happy to send you some nice testimonials.
One approach I have used in the past is to send my customers an email asking them for a testimonial and giving them some lead questions like: how did you find our service? would you recommend our services to others? what benefits have you gained so far from working with us? how long have you used us? etc.
These lead questions make the testimonial easier for the customer to just fill in the gaps and send it back to you.
Everyone is busy out there, working harder than ever before in business so making this as painless as possible will give you the biggest chance of getting a response.
Once you have this information, assemble the testimonials into categories if relevant and then place them on your website. Get them on the home page so that new visitors see this information straight away!
The perfect testimonials have photos of the customer, the customer’s website if relevant, as well as a contact number. If you do place this information about the customer on your website, please ensure you seek their permission first.
What’s in it for me?
When a visitor first arrives at your website they are looking for indicators that you have what they are looking for. To ensure they can see these indicators it is really important that you make it very clear what you are selling or offering.
A lot of websites have “Welcome to” and while this is very polite, it does nothing to ensure that the client sees what you have to offer instantly. What I recommend website owners to do is to remove the “Welcome to” and replace that with a main heading.
Say for example you are offering “Walking Tours in Auckland” I would advise my customer to ensure that was the main heading and it was clear and visible to all that entered your site.
At the end of the day you have to “Scratch the itch” of visitors that come to your site, by having your main offering in big bold headings it ensures they see “What’s in it for them” straight off the bat.
Your photo is worth having a look at
Having your photo on the website works well to really personalise the website experience. It helps reinforce to visitors that there is a real person behind this website and it also indicates that you are happy to stand behind your offerings.
I also believe it helps the sale process because at the end of the day people buy from other people, not from websites!
If you can bring your photo and personal approach into the site it will bring in more sales.
People like to see who they are buying the product from.
Your location does matter
Make sure people know where you are located, if you are selling products and services, people want to know that you do actually exist, you are contactable by phone, email or even by fax. At the end of the day, people want to be able to see that you are a real company with a real person behind it. These factors go a long way to reassuring visitors your products and services are in fact real!
Bring people to your site but only when it’s ready to sell for you.
You should be marketing your website to customers as much as possible. Get in touch with a marketing company that knows how to market your brand and site effectively.
Look for a creative marketing company (like us!) that will help you not just in your marketing of your site in Google but can also help you with your website.
There are many ways to market your site but Google AdWords in my opinion is the best method to instantly have customers banging at your door; but as I said above, make sure your website is ready and armed with tools to aid your sales numbers.
There is little point in having a marketing plan with Google AdWords if your website has major selling flaws. Get your marketing company to guide you through making your website sell more. If you have a marketing company now and they don’t offer you assistance with this, then go out and find a new one!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
How to set up Google Website Optimiser
How to set up Google Website Optimiser (Part 1.)
We have been using Google Website Optimiser to help our customers gain more. If you have always wanted to know more about how to set up a simple test using Google Optimiser then here are a few tips on how to do so.
Step 1: Click on the Website Optimiser from within your AdWords account.
Website Optimiser
Once you have selected this you will be asked to select an A/B experiment or a Multivariate one. If you want to split test one page over another you can select the A/B experiment, if you want to test changes to elements of the same page design and get 1000 visits a week you can select the latter option.
Choose the page you would like to test with (examples of potential test pages could be your home page or a product detail page).
Create alternate versions of your test page. Create and publish different versions of your test page at unique URLs so that Website Optimiser can randomly display different versions to your users.
Identify your conversion page. This is an existing page on your website that users reach after they’ve completed a successful conversion. For example, this might be the page that is displayed after a user completes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter or fills in a contact form. Once you identify the conversion page, you are then asked to enter in a name for your original site and then to enter in the website page names that you are going to test against it with.
Where to enter your pages for the Optimiser to test with
Once you have done this you then enter in the website page that advises the Optimiser that a completed goal has taken place (known as a conversion).
Part 2 will follow shortly…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Use Google Optimiser to get more sales and customers
Knowing how to use Google Optimiser will guide you to more sales and customers.
I was looking into my Google stats for a client’s website last week and discovered a huge spike in people leaving their website on the products and services page. After further review I discovered that my client had decided to completely revamp their product and service content based on what others were telling them should be on that page. While making changes to your website can help you gain more sales it can also make you lose sales too.
With Google Optimiser you can set up various versions of a web page to see what impact a change has on the performance of your website. It’s a powerful free product that can allow you to test every tweak to your website to ensure you don’t get in the way of sales!
When using Google Optimiser consider these points:
- Don’t make any changes to your website content until you have tested one version over the next (old content versus new content).
- Look at split testing the changes to see what impact this has on your customers and sales generated before making the changed content the final version to go live with.
- Make sure you only make changes after you have reviewed your analytical data. Make changes based on what it is telling you works best.
- Don’t let bullies or the ones with the largest voice in your company make all the decisions on website content without first of all advising the reasons why.
Use Optimiser to help you refine and improve your sales and leads. Your business will grow from doing so!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Marketing for luxury hotels
What luxury hotels may want to consider in 2011…
Mobile Marketing!
Consider this… mobile phones these days come in many shapes and forms, computer systems and designs, with a huge explosion in smart phones (basically mini computers that fit in your pocket). One of the smartest ways to help your business right now is to use this avenue as your path to these users of smart phones.
While smart phones are coming down in price, these tiny, powerful computer-like phones are still mostly for the geeks and or the wealthy. With this in mind you can use this medium to reach out to the rich and advertise your services in this medium.
Look to build a mini website page application for smart phone platforms like Android and the iPhone. Ask your booking engine supplier if they are able to give you a link to their mobile application.
This way these targeted visitors can source information on your hotel and make a safe and secure booking direct from their smart phone.
Make sure you keep using technology to keep ahead of the rest!
Best of luck… until next time!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Hotel website best practices
Good ideas for creating a pleasant website experience for your customers.
As time goes on and people get accustomed to interaction through social networking sites our expectations of what websites should offer visitors are changing. I like to think of this as a free spirited approach to offering information about your hotel and its unique offerings.
When I design a website I start off by thinking about what my main objectives are and focus on accomplishing these. For some hotels, there are multiple objectives but try to narrow them down to a select few. Keep your objective at the forefront of your mind when you design or modify your home page.
Here is an approach that I like to use – list your objectives, your primary ones down to your secondary goals. For example, your primary goal could be to generate more bookings. A secondary could be to get more people signed up to special offers, or your Facebook account or just to your newsletter. Whatever they are list them on a piece of paper, and then print out your home page and circle what objectives you have met. Do the comparison and then have a shot at placing a new image on a piece of paper of what should be on your home page.
Some owners treat their home page as a sales tool, while others look to get people moving along through the journey to making a online booking. Think of ways to engage them, think about your objectives again and look to position your unique sales proposition and then make sure you have these on your home page. Make visiting your hotel a unique and easy experience from the very beginning (ie from your website).
The newest trends are videos or seamless photos of your hotel to create a virtual tour. This creates an interaction with customers as they can look through your entire hotel without needing to be there in person. Whatever you do, think about the visitors experience and make sure you attempt to connect and engage with them!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Target niche marketing for hotels
How hotels can target new clients for more business using the Internet.
Here are some tips I use to help hotels gain more customers, leads and sales using niche based sales & marketing:
- Analyse data from your website and look to see what keywords customers are using that find you in searches.
- Take these keywords and arrange them into small groups that are similar in nature.
- Take these keyword groups and think up a domain name that has these keywords in them.
- Purchase this domain name (or a variation of it if this domain name is unavailable). Buy the co.nz or the .co where possible.
- Set up website hosting for this domain name and then place on it content that is rich in keywords on this subject matter.
- Include testimonials from clients where possible to aid credibility, your key features and their benefits, and some photos and videos where possible to enhance the visual appearance and to help connect with the end user.
- Make sure your website page has great search engine practices included in it. Seek out an expert that can help or guide you.
- Look to advertise this subject in Google AdWords as another means to bring in targeted traffic, again bring in the experts to help you with this. Make sure you have set your goals up correctly.
- Set up Analytics so that you can track your return on investment. Best to set up conversions as well (so that you can track how many leads you are generating).
I hope this helps you!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Hotel target marketing
How hotels can target the perfect client.
One way to attract more clients and increase sales opportunities is to target visitors with specific needs. For example if you offer conferences, meeting rooms, wedding packages, and/or gift vouchers think about designing some pages that are solely focused on detailing these features and benefits.
Consider designing brand new sites that focus on a particular offering and then look to target a segment of visitors that meet a criteria. Here are a couple of ways to broaden your appeal to a particular market:
- Create landing pages geared around one single product. Keep it simple, clear and make it easy for people to take action by contacting you for further information or for a booking.
- Create a page on your site that talks about nothing else but your offers. Provide some evidence of your brand, reputation, experiences and knowledge to add credibility.
Using a single product landing page can do your brand and sales a wealth of good. If these landing pages are designed to their fullest potential you can really boost up your rankings in all search engines as well.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
A plan for hotel social networking
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook – how to make the most of these if you are a hotel.
There is so much to be learned from the past year in regards to the whole social networking area. While some hotels have really engaged these areas, others have not taken this area of business to the levels possible either though lack of understanding what these tools can offer a hotel, or due to lack of management interest in this area.
I guess some hotels are relying on the old methods to bring in business, ie supply chains, email marketing, website marketing and other third party sources.
To me reliance on these services is costly and highly competitive. I now see these new mediums as a way to really grow your brand and increase your communication channels. What was once communicated on a monthly basis or through the mail can now be sent to thousands of people instantly, which is an amazing advantage if others in the market haven’t taken these social areas seriously as yet.
Even better, consider giving the advantage to these groups of followers by offering them the newest specials, the best rooms, the upgrades, the real deals… make this area your focus. Forget your website and email marketing for a month or two and concentrate on telling your staff that all communication of promotions and special offers must now only be on Facebook, Twitter or your blog and then watch this space erupt.
Not only will you begin to gain a huge social connection following but your marketing costs of using PPC and email marketing can be reduced as well. It might take a while to make this area respond for you, but take steps today and start building your following for tomorrow.
Good luck.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
More hotel bookings
Why not live chat?
Did you know that if you include a instant chat or a connection to a real people on your website that your levels of sales may increase by up to 30%.
The research has been done and hotels are now starting to embrace the need to connect with customers while they are surfing online.
With social networking on the increase people are becoming more interested in interacting with the hotelier before making that final decision to spend their hard earned money. People have questions and it can be the difference between making a sale or not.
If I was a hotelier I would take a reservation staff member and connect them to a ‘live person’ function on the website just to test the waters… hey, what’s the worst that can happen? At least you will know if this works for you or not. My tool of choice would be Boldchat or Live Person.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
SEO tips for hotels
Here are a few tips to help ensure your listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing are in tip top shape.
Title tag
(Normally shows in the left hand corner of your browser (version dependent))
Make sure your title tag includes a few phrases that you would like to be found for. For example, if you are a hotel in Wellington include these phrases: hotels wellington, wellington hotel, accommodation in wellington, hotels in wellington – and end your title tag with your hotel name and website domain name. This can be a very competitive area to target in search engines so if you have a pool, a fine dining restaurant or something else that may separate you from others, make sure you include this in your title tag along with the search phrases. For example, ‘hotels wellington pool’, this will enable you to stand out to people who are looking for what you’ve got.
Meta-tag data
(This is normally shown on line two in Google results for website results)
Your meta data for each website page should include a call to action along with a short snappy description of what your page has on it. For example, on your pool page your meta data might say something like this: ‘The {name of hotel} offers a fabulous indoor pool that is heated for your pleasure. Click here for more information.’
Content on your page
Your body content should have at least 200 characters on it and should include the phrases or search terms that you would like to be found for. Start off with the content of your pool page, then list the key phrases you would like to be found for that relate to your pool. Build a paragraph or two by inserting the key words into the content at relevant places. Ensure it reads well and makes sense.
Your headline
Ensure the main headline on your page is surrounded by a html format known as H1. An H1 heading format informs search engines that this phrase is important and should be shown in search engines.
Your page names
Make sure your page names are based on what your content has on it. If you have a hotel in Wellington and offer gift vouchers on a page, make sure your website page is called Wellington-Hotel-Gift-Vouchers. This will increase the probability of getting found in search engines.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Booking engine for hotels
Five tips for making your booking engine work better for you.
Over the years I have come across many hotel sites that make it harder then necessary to allow visitors to make a booking on their website.
Here are a few tips to help you make sure visitors can make a booking with ease:
- Place the booking engine directly on your home page.
- Ask your booking engine supplier to provide you with a booking engine that looks and feels like your own website, and that can integrate straight into your current design.
- Make sure the booking engine or a link to it is on every page on your website.
- On your ‘contact us’ page – also include another link to your booking engine.
- On your ‘rooms’ page – have a link under each room type so that visitors can go directly to your booking engine.
These simple recommendations can go a long way to ensuring your visitor can make a booking with you without them having to look… look… look…
Good Luck.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
SEO for hotels
How to grow your hotel sales!
While the industry as a whole is a very competitive market there are some that stand out as innovative, creative, adaptable and brand focused. It may seem easy for some hotels that are smaller in size, but there are options for larger hotels to have these traits as well so that they can discover a long-tail of opportunities in the market place.
Over the past ten years I have worked with a number of hotels that were generating more room sales, selling more luxury based packages and exceeding the growth models that others were experiencing.
What I found was that all of these outstanding hotels were embracing the Internet and looking for opportunities and niches for themselves in this market space. One thing that particularly stood out for me was that these hotels were managed by people who wanted more sales from their own website, instead of leaving sales to a third party (all of which charged a very high commission model for each booking generated).
The ones that were growing were really utilising the Internet to drive customers to their own site, while others were just happy to take what they could get from their third party suppliers. Most of these hotels were not interested in rocking the boat with their supply chain – to them it was just easier to use this method of third party booking engines. My thought is that leaving it to a third party to bring in bookings is just crazy, but what can you say or do to change their minds? Obtaining more bookings from their own website to most owners or managers is in the ‘too hard basket’.
So, as I said above, the hotels growing in leaps and bounds had common traits and goals – they wanted more bookings from their own website, and at low or no commission rate.
Here is what I discovered most the successful hotels had in common between 2000 – 2009:
- They invested money into ensuring their website could be found in all major search engines.
- They used the Internet as a advertising platform to bring in more business.
- They had websites that made the process of booking online easy.
- They used an award winning booking system that was designed to blend directly into their website.
- They had invested in email marketing to send updates and special offers to all customers that had been to the hotel before.
Last year we saw a introduction of social media options like Twitter & Facebook and now many of the same hotels that succeeded back in the early 2000’s have rolled up their sleeves again with the intent to get value from these new models of interaction.
For me, social media interaction has an intangible return on investment. After all, it’s all about branding and keeping in touch with others through a medium that people use on a day-to-day basis. The value is blurred at best but the model is available and should be utilised to its fullest if you want to expand your brand awareness.
So lets look at the model from the early 2000′s again, now ask your self as a Hotelier, ‘what do I need to do to keep my business in growth mode though the economic times that we are in?’.
Here is my hit list for growing your hotel for 2011 (taking elements of the 2000 list as well):
- Invest money into ensuring your website can be found in all major search engines (use a specialised resource to ensure you keep in step with the latest tips).
- Use the Internet as a advertising platform to bring in more business – advertise not only in Google, but think Yahoo and Bing as well.
- Get your website into a new 2011 look and feel, look to engage users at the highest level. Make the site easy to navigate and keep the main focus and objectives in the website at all times (keep the booking engine in the design) so that people can book with ease.
- Use an award winning booking system that is designed to blend directly into your website.
- Make sure you utilise a company that specialises in web based booking systems as their major offering.
- Invested in email marketing to send updates and special offers to all customers
- Use the social media to brand and create more awareness of your product offers, use facebook as a medium to advertise offers to all followers.
- Use mini-websites to get in front of direct traffic and advertise these in all of your marketing materials, email signatures and printed business documents.
- Track all activity and report on your investments so that you can visually see if the return on investment is at a high level.
- Make sure your focus is on getting more visitors to your website(s) – the more bookings you get from your own site the more you will save – up to thousands on commissions that are charged by suppliers each and every year.
- Get in touch with a search marketing company that can help you reinvent yourself and your branded hotel with a sound strategy for more growth.
The way forward is simple: embrace the technologies available on the Internet; source experts that can offer you skills that your hotel does not have in-house; and focus on gaining more sales from your own front window.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
