Planning Your Marketing Activity
Although the marketing action plan is the most important document in the hotel, there is no point in measuring its usefulness by weight. A one-page document might be more insightful than one that contributes to the destruction of the rain forest! Whatever you plan, make it workable and realistic.
What Is Left To Do?
You will not be surprised to learn, if you have read the rest of this book, there is very little left for you to do to prepare your marketing plan. This whole book is, in essence, the preparation for a marketing plan, and you have actually now done most of what is needed.
It is now a case of putting all the information into order, making some decisions based on your competitive analysis, and deciding on some priority action areas. Unfortunately I can’t help since you are the one that knows and understands your situation. If I
made any prescription I could be accused of malpractice for making a diagnosis before evaluating the symptoms!
Why is it that very few individual hotels actually produce a marketing plan? It is common practice in chain properties and they find them tremendously beneficial, so why is the practice not followed generally? This does not only apply to hotels; very few small to medium businesses take time to think about where they are and where they want to be.
Later on I will include a list of those items that you can include in your plan, but whatever you do, keep it simple and short.
How To Do It
One of the hardest tasks to accomplish is to turn your goals into reality. This is particularly difficult if these goals stay in your head and do not become part of the business process. The idea of a marketing plan is to commit these goals to paper and put some figures behind them so that everyone in your team can share in evaluating whether or not these goals are being reached. Sales activity plans and financial budgets need regular attention, so that you can make modifications based on changes to the market or fluctuations in your performance.
To make sales and marketing plans of any sort work you need to ensure that:
- You set aside uninterrupted time with your team to develop your plan.
- Someone with fresh eyes takes a look at your business. Maybe you can hire a consultant for half a day, or ask a good client to sit with you while you hammer out the strategy. New ideas and directions are what you need.
- Those responsible for achieving the goals must be involved in making the plans. Involve reception and food service staff as well as the kitchen and housekeeping.
- All goals must be assessed to see if they are SMART:Specific – exactly what needs to be achieved in figures and what channels to be usedMeasurable – will you be able to assess whether or not the goal was achieved?Achievable – unrealistic goals usually defeat their purposeRelevant – is the goal relevant to your product and the target market?Time bound – all goals need to have a time set by which they have to be achieved
- If the goals you agree need skills that are not yet well developed in your hotel, then plan and budget the relevant training.
- Regular monthly meetings are scheduled with everyone involved in implementing the plan to review it and check that all the actions have been carried out. Update the plan with anything that you have learned, and carry this forward so that you always have a 12-month rolling plan. This prevents the annual pain!
- Keep checking the competition at regular intervals.
Marketing Plan Format
As I said earlier, if you have read through the whole book so far you will already have considered most issues that are raised in any marketing plan. Your action plan is about how to turn your revenue goals into reality. It will include separate consideration of your:
- rooms
- meeting space
- bars
- restaurants
- leisure facilities.
It is vital to come up with new ideas, even if what you did last year worked. It is your responsibility to come up with innovative ideas, both for your services and for your marketing activities. If anything didn’t work, then change it. In essence, developing a marketing plan is a five-stage process that answers these questions:
- Where are we now?
- Where do we want to be?
- What do we want to change?
- How are we going to get there?
- What are the local opportunities?
You can make the development of a marketing plan as detailed as you wish. What I have outlined here is a relatively straightforward format that will put you far ahead of your competition and provide the platform for team consensus.