Action

This is one of the most crucial aspects of your advertisement. If all the other phases go well and there is no action, then you have failed. You must say exactly what you want readers to do. ‘Call now,’ or ‘Visit our website now’ are the final triggers that enable prospects to take action on an offer that they have been stimulated by.

It can sometimes help to introduce an element of scarcity. ‘First come, first served,’ or ‘Free to the first 50 callers,’ can be very powerful incentives. It is particularly useful in special offers that are available for a limited period: ‘Special lunch price only available until 30 April.’

If you offer a phone number, make sure that it is answered efficiently. For an impulse buy, the phone is the preferred option. If you expect a large number of calls you should consider making an agreement with an answering service.

Advertorial

We are all assaulted with thousands of media messages each day. There is huge competition for a share of consumers’ attention.

It seems that there is a greater degree of scepticism about advertising. However there is some benefit in producing your advertisement as an ‘advertorial’. This is still an advertisement, but the layout is in the style of the magazine. The benefit is that it looks more credible, because of the editorial emphasis. It is also more of a soft sell. The only drawback is that it is more difficult to incorporate a good ‘call to action’, but you can ask the publication for reprints and use them in your mailings and sales calls.

Measuring Effectiveness

No independent accommodation business has money to waste on ineffective advertising. You want to know that your objectives have been achieved. At the very least you need to know:

• the number of responses;
• how many responses were converted to a sale;
• how much that was worth.

 

Balance these results against the cost of the advertisement and you can make your mind up about the profitability of the campaign.

If you have the facilities, it is good to have separate incoming phone lines for different promotions. If you are directing visitors to your website, then set up specific landing pages for each promotion.

Often this accountability goes wrong at reception when they forget to ask enquirers the right question. The whole team needs to be part of the promotion plan so that they understand that advertising is an investment in everyone’s success.

What To Pay

The costs of advertising space can make your eyes water. But if you are clever you can negotiate some better deals. Firstly, it is important that the advertising sales executive you talk to understands that you are only having the conversation based on the understanding that you need a better rate: this usually gets the relationship off on the correct foot and may elicit a good offer.

Secondly only book your advertisement near to the deadline. This can backfire if you have a time-limited offer but can work to your advantage. Whatever you do, don’t place an advert just because you get a last-minute offer.

In newspapers and magazines your eyes are automatically drawn to the right hand page. Always ask for a guarantee of this position before you sign any contract.

If you are talking to radio stations it can be worth discussing the idea of bartering. Stations can often use your facilities for prizes or for accommodation for their executives.

Internet Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is probably the biggest revolution that has affected the hotel industry in the last 30 years. A big claim maybe, but understandable. The biggest advertising problem for independent hotels has always been the total cost of media space relative to the benefit. It costs a small ten-room hotel the same to advertise as it does a franchise with 500 hotels.

Now, with pay-per-click, you can just pay for the positive responses to your message, stop advertising when you have sold your inventory, and set a limit on your total advertising costs. Nirvana!

Pay-per-click was first introduced by Overture but the first search engine to make PPC really easy to use was Google with their Adwords. Now the other main search engines MSN (MSN AdCenter) and Yahoo! (Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions) have developed their own systems. All of them are a little different but through the systems you can get help with choosing keywords to advertise with.

Although the advent of PPC has been a boon for small advertisers there is a small problem of click fraud. Your competitors (or anyone else for that matter) can easily sit at their computer and just click away on your ad. You have to pay for the clicks, your budget gets used up and your advert disappears until the next month. The search engines will always be on the look out for this type of activity and you need to communicate with them if you feel that this is happening to you.

Another drawback of pay-per-click is that people have to be specifically looking for your service. A new development is the possibility to actually just advertise on sites where you think your prospects might be searching, but for something else. This is called CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, and you pay every time your ad is seen on these other websites.

This AdSense facility is available on Google and although the costs are low, your ad could be seen by thousands of people (depending on the popularity of the site), so you have to keep an eye on your account and set your daily budget low, otherwise the media owner will rapidly evacuate your bank account. Whatever you do, don’t advertise this way unless you are convinced that your own site is really set up to sell whenever you get the click throughs.

Key Points

• Independent hotels should probably avoid image advertising, although this can work in the launch phase.
• Advertising works best if you have a long-term plan and stick to it.

• If publications contact you with ‘great deals’ the answer should be ‘no’.
• If you can’t measure the results of an advertisement then cancel it. That is after you have checked carefully what result the ad was constructed to deliver.
• Internet advertising can deliver good traffic to your internet site but it will only work if your site is optimised to sell.