Here is a quick summary of the Smart Hotelier’s Action Plan 2015 Webinar presented by HeBS Digital, and some practical action steps to monetize your digital marketing resolutions.

In early January, in this year’s Top 10 Digital Marketing Resolutions, presented by HeBS Digital for the 15th consecutive year, we provided an action plan to follow during 2015. Created to help alleviate the complexity of our industry’s most recent innovations, this action plan was designed to help you concentrate on what’s most important: engaging your key customer segments and increasing direct online conversions and revenues!

We went a step further and last week we presented an interactive webinar “Action Plan 2015: The Smart Hotelier’s Top 10 Digital Marketing Resolutions”, attended by hundreds of hoteliers.

Here is a quick summary of the Smart Hotelier’s Action Plan 2015 Webinar and some practical action steps to monetize your digital marketing resolutions:

1. Budget for digital: be where your customers are.

Hoteliers should be spending a minimum of 4% of their total room revenue on advertising/marketing efforts, of which 75% should be spent on digital marketing. In 2015, over 50% of hotel rooms will be booked online! It only makes sense to put more money where your consumer is.

2. Focus on business needs: don’t be too quick to follow fads.

Make sure to focus on technology and marketing initiatives that achieve one single goal of driving direct online bookings and leads. This includes: website re-design and optimization, SEO and SEM/paid search, email marketing, customer segment marketing, direct-response banner advertising, as well as newer initiatives such as dynamic rate marketing, meta search, dynamic content personalization, multichannel campaigns, interactive applications and highly-focused display targeting and retargeting.

3. Invest in your property website. Optimize your presence on the three screens.

If your property website is two or more years old, does not offer responsive or adaptive design, does not support dynamic content personalization or dynamic rate marketing, or does not have state-of-the-art merchandising and reservation abandonment prevention capabilities, then it is time to make the upgrade.

4. Invest in a Content Management System with revenue-driving technology.

Choose a CMS technology that empowers you to seamlessly manage your website presence on the three screens via a single dashboard, engage users and maximize revenues from the direct online channel. Choose a CMS that enables your website to offer dynamic content personalization to fit the interests and preferences of website visitors and provides one-to-one marketing capabilities to drastically increase conversion rates and revenues. Your CMS should also feature a deep integration with the CRM and CRS to improve guest recognition and merchandising.

5. Personalize website content for the visitor.

Dynamic Content Personalization delivers unique and relevant textual, visual and promotional content to site visitors based on their demographics, location, website pathing behavior, past booking history, guest preferences, reward program affiliation or affiliation to a particular customer segment (transient corporate travel, leisure travel, family travel planner, corporate meeting planner, SMERF group planner, wedding planner, social event planner, etc.).

Dynamic content personalization based on geo-targeting is the logical first step and will benefit the property in the form of higher conversions and incremental revenues from those key feeder markets.

6. Reach guests throughout their travel planning journey with multi-channel marketing campaigns.

According to Google, the average site visits before the purchase is 21.6. Keeping the consumer engaged and reaching them multiple times throughout their journey requires using multiple channels. Begin by determining the business needs of your property. Then make sure to analyze results in the campaign entirety to see how the initiatives worked together.

7. Integrate real-time rates in your marketing campaigns.

Dynamic Rate Marketing (DRM), a next-generation direct-response marketing category, allows real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing to be inserted in various marketing initiatives including meta search, banner advertising via the top travel ad networks, retargeting, Google Adwords and email marketing.

A quick and easy way to start Dynamic Rate Marketing is to launch meta search marketing campaigns on TripAdvisor and Google Hotel Finder. Retargeting via the Google Display Network (GDN) is the logical next step. Taking this a step further and utilizing dynamic rate banners with concrete hotel rates and promotions on the GDN dramatically increases conversions and generates excellent ROIs.

8. Do not underestimate revenues from the search engines.

The reliable good old search engines generate over half of website revenue on hotel websites which is often forgotten when it comes to SEM/paid search and SEO budget planning. Create an ongoing SEO strategy to keep up with the new standards imposed by search engines. Make sure to budget sufficiently for SEM / Paid Search with at least 20-25% of the annual digital marketing budget.

9. Choose your digital marketing partner wisely.

A property’s digital marketing partner should become an extension of the hotel company’s team, work towards common goals and objectives, and provide solutions to business needs. This partner should also continuously bring forth new ideas, the latest best practices, and technology developments.

10. Do not be intimidated by the OTAs!

While it is true that OTAs have deep pockets and spend billions on digital marketing efforts, any property should realize they can outsmart and outspend any OTA on their property alone. Launching a comprehensive CRM program, including a simple Reward Program targeting and rewarding repeat guests, as well as budgeting for a robust direct online channel strategy, can shift the pendulum away from the OTAs. Develop a digital marketing strategy to “own” your destination and your destiny as a whole.