1. Launches fail. The era of the sales launch weekend was not only short lived but it is effectively over. The over-used strategy was to create hype and a false sense of urgency around buying up front. And while the strategy may have driven initial sales when cheap money was available, that is certainly not the case today. Luring buyers with hyped up launches and attempting to create a false sense of urgency in this market can have the opposite effect. Not only will it fail to lure buyers but it has the potential to create a brand image of conveying misleading information. In other words, the entire market knows that real estate development is at a very low point, using misleading statements about the market that are easily verifiable on Google will only damage the marketing efforts. The developer and brand will not be trusted and sales risk rises in a negative correlation to brand trust.


2. Investor speculators are out of the market – focus on the user. The marketing strategy of a development should be based on the eventual residents. Who are they? What do they want in a development? What elements of their particular lifestyle can you satisfy to the degree that they will buy? The marketing then focuses on those lifestyle elements as the core-messaging strategy. Defining a marketing strategy based on investment potential or speculative buyers, as in the case of vacation or second home property, is a very low return, highly risky strategy. Instead valid marketing strategies focus on the lifestyle interests of buyers. If you find the sweet spot between your brand and their personal passions and needs, the demand curve shifts upward.


3. Digital rules. Every one of your potential buyers will research the development online. They will search competitor properties, evaluate your lifestyle amenities and validate or disprove any claims you make. Consequently digital marketing must be the core around which all of your marketing is based. Chris Anderson, Author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is selling less of more said, “Your brand is what Google says your brand is, not what you say your brand is.” While this generalization highlights the extraordinary influence that search and other digital media have on a brand, I believe that the relevance to real estate developers is to understand the dialogue and the nature of information, then build a strategy to optimize the multitude of touch points across digital networks.


4. Customization and niche marketing. Ask any development marketer about tactics and undoubtedly you’ll hear direct mail. Of course it will be qualified that the response rates are typically 1 – 3%. BS. Response rates on direct mail (printed) are probably closer to 0 than 3% and the response rates on digital (email) are why spammer’s exist, i.e. the response rate is a fraction of a percent. Both tactics can work, if you are prepared to undertake a massive and sustained effort. For example a .01% response rate yields 10 leads from 100,000 people. An alternative strategy is based on highly customized or niche direct marketing tactics that leverage the enormous potential of database technology with variable data publishing (both print and digital). The example I typically use is imagining a typical direct mail campaign of 5000 pieces. Each person gets the same piece except for the mailing label; now imagine 5000 different pieces going to 5000 different people. Each recipient’s piece was made specifically for them based on their preferences, likes and needs embedded in the database. This hybrid can easily yield double-digit response rates. Reliance on “spray and pray” marketing tactics are not only ill-advised in today’s market but can add significant risk to developer absorption assumptions. Variable data with it’s highly customized and niche targeting can reduce risk in absorption and decrease costs over the long run as ROI increases.


These are just four of the laundry list of common mistakes that are at the core of failed marketing strategies. I’ve highlighted just a few of the emerging trends that are powering successful marketing strategies in many diverse sectors. If you are a developer, marketer or funding source the entire list of common mistakes and emerging trends should be at the top of your marketing meeting agenda.


FORMO not only prepares some of the most innovative marketing strategies in the industry today but we also consult to groups looking for expert eyes to ad value to their own strategy.

Ok, there are more than 7 but I couldn’t help but share these, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the level of understanding of digital strategy is generally weak or the industry has become so mired in tradition that bad practices are being mistaken for best.  Here’s my list:


1. Website’s are for e commerce. Wrong, websites are for clients (guests). If a booking engine is the only thing on your site that engages them, then the answer is yes. If, however, your clients want and need more out of your digital platform that dates, rates and space, then this is a seriously flawed assumption. The fundamental question is one of strategy not e commerce tactics. And that question begins very simply, What are your clients looking for online? Do you know or are you assuming?


2. Style over content. I didn’t originate it but truly, CONTENT IS KING, repeat CONTENT IS KING. Every top performing site in every single industry has content directly relevant to their client base. If your web experts are showing  you visual designs before addressing strategy, substance or content…start over. Or if you think you’ll have a better website if you have more FLASH or another visual design…start over. The point is that a strategy about your content is fundamental to increasing the performance of your site.


3. Don’t use a Copy Machine. Don’t copy other hotel’s websites and don’t hire web development companies that give you the same site they gave somebody else, unless of course your hotel owner, asset manager or board has asked you to finish in second place. If you are considering web developers or agencies, look at their portfolio, if their portfolio sites all have similar IA (Information Architecture) run away.


4. Go Big. Mad Men is a fictitious television show. In the digital sphere, innovation and great marketing can come from a one person shop, a small firm or a mega agency. Big does not guarantee success. Recently I worked with a client that used the “biggest name in Hospitality Websites”. Sounds good but too bad that firm didn’t know squat about strategy. This is not about buying power, the ability to run focus groups or massive staff. It’s about finding a partner that can understand your clients and what they need in an online experience and creating a strategy that is unique to you…and measurably effective in adding value to your hotel.


5. Non-expert experts. The IT Department is not synonymous with web development or digital strategy. True professionals that they are, they are no more qualified for web strategy than the rooms executive is in designing a Food &Beverage POS system. All geeks are not alike. Beware of advertising agencies masquerading as web development companies, those are not the same. Marketing Services has increasingly become a niche industry, don’t be afraid to mix and match. The bottom line is to drive the value to your hotel.


6. Misunderstanding web metrics or worse, ignoring them. Do you read and actively analyze your metrics to understand what your clients are doing, consuming and most importantly, ignoring on your digital platforms? Do you know the percentage of your visitors that watch your virtual tour? all of it? And if they bounce or exit from that page? Is your web development company digging deep into these metrics or are they touting the growth in visits? Have you asked about your PageRank and how this strategy will raise it?


7. SEM solves everything. Yes indeed, if you sell SEM (Search Marketing). But if you are a hotel marketing chief then you need to be as concerned about quality as quantity. Do you know if more visit traffic has a strong positive correlation to increased engagement, bookings or loyalty? Think of SEM (Marketing) as a tactic but SEO (Optimization) as a strategic outcome. There is a very big and important difference to the value you add to your hotel’s revenue strategy.


I hope this is helpful chiefs, my list is not all encompassing and I’m absolutely certain that my peers in the digital sphere can add another copy block, but the point is that a Digital Marketing Strategy is perhaps the single most important factor for any hotel. If you are the equity fund owner, the General Manager, The Marketing Director or even a bellman, it is the factor that will ultimately add the most value to your hotel. If you don’t believe me, then ask your General Manager how much business they got through Expedia back in the day.


If you’d like a complimentary Executive Analysis of your current site or digital strategy (assuming you have one) feel free to contact me at FORMO.  
Robert@formosite.com

Excellent blog post on the ineffectiveness of trying to influence customers in the new media. This article is highly consistent with the strategies promulgated to our clients. Old strategies in new media do not work. As Albert Einstein said,

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.”

Perhaps one of the most discussed topics in Hospitality Marketing is the ability of advertising to affect awareness levels of a brand. There are many sorts of conventional measures including surveys and event-based correlation analysis of web metrics that can approximate the impact of advertising expenditures on the market and therefore their influence upon awareness growth. While these methods involve fairly straightforward statistical science, their application in Hospitality Marketing has been notably absent. I suppose that stems from the fact that this industry tends to be bound by their traditional measures and the lack of understanding of applied marketing science.


The time-honored marketing AIDA model, Awareness>Interest>Desire>Action, remains a valid generalization of how marketing should theoretically work. The question begs, how much expenditure is necessary to affect the first part of the model, namely Awareness?


If you look at the launch of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, as a simplified case study of brand awareness the results are startling. According to a well-written article published today on The Business Insider.com Microsoft spent somewhere between $80 - $100 million to launch Bing. As a result of the expenditure, awareness of Bing grew to approximately 59.1% among the sample set. With some simple mathematics that works out to about $1.6 million per point of increased awareness. If you dig a little deeper that works out to about $4.0 million per point of usage (people who actually used Bing, in other words Action).


I think the conclusion is fairly obvious when applied to Hospitality. Awareness is an expensive and misunderstood proposition. Considering the fact that a product like Bing has a much greater potential for awareness among the market (we all use search engines), then the cost per point can be viewed as a relevant benchmark. In other words, if it is $1.6 million per percentage point for a product that has potentially broad awareness, what can we infer for a hospitality product that has narrow appeal? The answer is obvious, brand awareness marketing strategies must be carefully considered.


“Getting the word out” is unlikely to be a viable or rational primary strategy considering the cost constraints of this industry.


As an alternative, the use of precise targeting of awareness building efforts coupled with highly cost effective digital platforms can provide a clear and efficient competitive advantage.

Last Saturday, I spent the day in Memphis, TN ( yes, the famed home of Elvis ) at a small but potentially very important convention. Over the last few months, I had forged a relationship with an association of individuals who own Pilatus Airplanes. For the uninformed, a Pilatus is a Swiss-made, state of the art, single-engine aircraft. This owner association consists, obviously, of people who own these planes, many of whom also love to pilot their own planes, i.e. they have a passion for flight.

Nice to know right, but what’s the point? Strategic alliance.

Although Memphis offered some amazing BBQ ribs ( A&C was amazing! ), I was there to forge a strategic alliance between the Pilatus Owners and Pilot’s Association (POPA) and our client, Turks & Caicos Sporting Club. The purpose was not to eat ribs or sit at a convention, but instead to bring the two brands together in a logical and natural alliance–and it worked.

I use this story to illustrate a marketing strategy that few firms really understand–the strategic alliance.

In its most basic sense, an alliance can be formed with a simple sponsorship, where logos or other identities are linked. At the other end is the true partnership where the two brands borrow equity from each other and speak to the market jointly or on each other’s behalf. This “halo” or endorsement effect can accelerate interest and acceptance of a brand among the “borrowed” audience. A good idea in today’s economic climate, right? Right!

Of course it’s not quite that easy. The match or alliance must make sense in the mind of the market. The organizations must be compatible in their perceived cultures and the alliance of their products or service must be logical.

In this case, the alliance between an organization of passionate aviators who fly around in sophisticated airplanes and a private island development having the longest private runway in the Caribbean. Get it?

Now, let’s talk about the role that the marketing company plays in the whole thing. Quite honestly, it’s not as easy as calling up POPA and saying, “Hello, we want to speak to your members…” The formation of the alliance requires a process that begins with the identification and research into compatible brands. From there, the dialogue begins, to look for the appropriate chemistry, level of commitment and actions that can be implemented. Once that’s accomplished, the network effect occurs, and the brands begin to benefit from the direct association.

The benefits can be measured in several ways, from brand awareness to lead generation. The effect can be swift but it is also long lasting.

So, while Facebook is awesome to share pictures of your kids and Twitter is great if you want to know when I’m going to lunch, the strategic alliance and its wildly out of control child, the sponsorship, are really one of the least understood yet potentially most effective marketing strategies during these trying economic conditions.

Family, Hospitality, Classic… a few of the themes around the office lately. We’ve been working on the brand for an upcoming, local restaurant and we presented a few of our favorites to the owners today.

A throw back to the good ‘ole days of design school. I orchestrated a 2 hour charette for our production gurus along with F O R M O’s new Intern Intern (Angela) on Monday. Within that compressed time frame they were to concept new ideas for the DPS luxury  bags. The bags are a billboard for the brand and are utilized predominately in PR events to holster DPS property specific media such as books and brochures along with take-aways and gifts.

Afterwards, they posted their ideas onto the conference room wall and presented them to the entire team. I was very impressed and quite happy with the results. They questioned sizes, materials and colors and arrived at a range of ideas from complex and colorful to simple and elegant.  It warms my heart to know that a good charette still works wonderfully-Nice work!

As we develop digital strategies for our clients, we find ourselves more and more thinking about the relationships between a series of interconnected online experiences versus the traditional hub and spoke idea of one central corporate dot com. A brand exists online today in an almost limitless and uncontrollable number of places. From twitter “twits” to specialized social networks to mobile to your grandmother’s blog, brand’s must enable and foster the portability of their content while still trying to maintain some common threads.

The above diagram represents our current view on how we develop our client’s prescenes online. A “cobweb” of interconnected experiences that play a part in an overall brand expereince. Each piece has its own roll to play and enables a brand to engage a user at the appropriate crossroads in their life. The most exciting part of this concept is the flexibility that it gives the creative. By engaging people in numerous different environments we are able to contextually focus our messages and visuals resulting in a more authentic and engaging communication.