Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Selecting a Marketing Partner

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© 2018 Primal Digital, LLC

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Are you currently looking for a new marketing partner for your property? Are you planning a period-ic partner review? Are they meeting or exceeding your current needs? Whatever your situation we’ve prepared this special report for you. This report will help you assess your current partnerships or look for another firm. Here are ten mistakes to avoid when you are selecting a marketing partner:

1. Seeing Marketing & Advertising Services as a Commodity

Not all service providers are created equal or have your best intentions in mind. Yes, two company’s could both be selling the same service of search engine optimization. Do both companies have the same knowledge, tools or skills? Probably not.

Take today's Pepsi verse startup Nike for example. Both companies needed a new logo. Nike ended up paying a couple of hundred dollars while Pepsi spent over a million. They both purchased the same service, a logo design. What was the difference? Their risk tolerance.

To make better buying decisions, start a project by identifying your risk tolerance. Ask yourself, what short verse long-term risk can we afford? Like buying insurance, less risk comes with paying a higher premium today. But it can make all the difference tomorrow.

2. Defaulting to the Lowest Cost Solution

All too often we see GMs and DOSMs beelining for the lowest cost marketing solution. They believe cheaper costs, will reduce expenses and show a higher ROI. Unfortunately, all too often that is not the case.

Consider a hotel that chooses the cheapest option. Without the right tools and knowledge, that provider might miss an upcoming market. What if that market could generate millions in extra reve-nue over the next 10-years? Still the best return on investment?

Rather than looking at price only, I encourage you to look at the investment. Partner selection shouldn't be about minimizing cost but maximizing value.

Take your stock portfolio for example. Do you select your stock picks based strictly on price? If so, stop reading and consult a professional immediately.

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3. Hiring Multiple Marketing Partners

Consider not hiring multiple marketing services providers. When you hire a paid search agency, their primary focus is on paid search. When you hire a search engine optimization company, their primary focus is on SEO. See the issue? They all have static priorities.

Marketing strategies should be dynamic responding and anticipating changes in your market. The constant pull between static views and a proactive approaches creates waste.

Are you also considering the hidden costs of coordinating with multiple providers? How about the risk of numerous brand messages? Or a lack of coherent strategy and targeting? Multiple suppliers lead to lost time and the unnecessary draining of internal resources.

Single solution hospitality marketing agencies do exist. You should consider all your options before opting for the multiple provider approach.

4. Not Evaluating Partner Processes

All companies operate on a scale of centralized to decentralized autonomy. Sales are very decentral-ized process to customize the customer experiences. On the other end, accounting is very structured and linear.

Successful marketing partners should have a mix of centralized and decentralized processes. Testing for example should be highly centralized to ensure correct insights and data.

Can your partner thoroughly explain their testing process? How do they mitigate data misinterpreta-tion? How are they controlling variables and the testing environment? How do they derive and present insights?

If they can't answer these questions, they don't have a well-thought-out approach. This can lead to misinterpreting data which are driving critical business decisions. Always understand their processes, especially when it comes down to making critical business decisions.

5. Believing Marketing Is a Static Line Item

How does your organization buy pencils? How about computers or desks? If you're like most compa-nies, these are all budgeted on a fixed annual basis. A static line item.

If you're also like many companies, this is how they approach their marketing budget. "We have $X for marketing this year!" They might say. Let me ask you if you were guaranteed a $2 return for every $1 invested, that fixed budget would quickly disappear.

Wouldn't it?Marketing and advertising are a fluid. They fluctuate with market shifts and demands. They operate outside your organization directly with your customer. Pencils, computers, and desks don't do that, so why are they all purchased the same?

A good marketing partner understands this and thinks this way. Have a flexible budget tied to value and performance. This will open up the opportunity for more profits for your property.

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6. Gauging Value on a ROI Basis Only

Let me ask you when you are evaluating a marketing investment do you only look at the financial met-rics? Do you consider the knowledge transferred to your employees? How about being able to call the agency's principle directly? Or being able to call in on a Saturday and getting someone to pick up? How do these factor into your decision?

All too often, they probably don't until you are facing a down website on Friday night. With your agen-cy's 24 response time, good luck getting back online until Tuesday! The point is, although ROI is important, there are many other benefits you should consider. More educated employees don't correlate with a line item on your balance sheet. But it will play a critical role to your organization's success.

7. Believing You’re Comparing “Apples to Apples”

What is the return on investment of a basketball? To you and me nothing, but to Stephen Curry, millions of dollars a year. The consequences of one “in-spec” purchase decision vs. another can be enormous.

Take Tropicana, the orange juice brand, for example. A decision to hire the same company that designed Pepsi's logo to create their new brand identity. After launching the new packaging, sales dropped by more than 20%. This ended up losing the company more than $30 million in revenue in two months.

When you're approaching a new marketing investment, define your “must haves” and “wants.” This doesn't mean the agency needs to do SEO. Define what are your reporting and communication requirements. How about response times and performance guarantees? This boils everything down to process and policy comparisons. These are much more tangible and structured to compare against.

8. Not Considering All Stakeholders

Effective marketing strategies consider all possible stakeholders. This can include internal marketing, quality control, revenue, and IT. Understanding how each of these core focuses plays into the bigger picture is vital. A successful partnership will touch each of these areas. Ask how they plan to work with each department.

It is all good, and well they are efficient at writing blog posts. Can they also dig into your analytics and see the content that resonates with your audience? If not, does the efficiency really matter?

Also, does their technology integrate with your existing systems? If not, how will they work around this?

Adaptability and understanding are critical to a successful engagement.

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9. Not Understanding Your Market & What Drive Performance

If you need to buy me a gift card and Starbucks coffee to get me to stay at your hotel, you do not understand your customers. What you're telling the customer is, "I know you don't trust us but you trust Starbucks, so stay with us." This is not marketing and branding, this is bribery and is a fast-lane ticket to brand destruction.

Take your loyal customers. Will a Starbucks coffee at a competitor get them to stay somewhere else? The correct answer is no.

Stop taking the shortcut, and build some legitimate brand value and trust. No, you can't buy trust directly. By working with a partner who understands how markets work and can read guest signals is a great start.

Get in your customer's heads. What makes them tick? What makes them travel?

Understand this, and you will understand what makes them stay at your hotel.

10. Blindly Believing Book Direct Is Always Better

Every day, we hear the same story. Direct bookings are the most profitable guests. So the industry focuses on a book direct strategy. There are so many incorrect statements about this belief system. As a GM or DOSM, your responsibility is to maximize the potential revenue and profit for the property. This strategy works great if your only product is rooms.

Take for example two scenarios. This first is someone who books directly on your site and stays at your hotel. They do not use any amenities or additional services. The second scenario, someone books via an OTA and uses the spa twice during their stay.

They also end up having dinner and drinks every evening. Who wins on profit?

All too often we hear the Book Direct speech because the alternative is hard. It is much more difficult to identify your most profitable guest segments. If you are going to become a powerhouse in your market and drive brand value, this is the only way to do it.

What story is your marketing partner telling you? Are they willing to dive into the weeds to find the truth? Or did they just build a new shiny website app and are tailoring your story around them? You decide.

If you would like to learn more about the services Primal Digital provides and why we are thelogical marketing services partner for hotel properties worldwide schedule your free consultation

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