Resort marketing involves much more than just running ads, but for the purpose of this article, that’s the part we’re going to focus on. Placing ads in various media outlets can be described as advertising and marketing, but savvy resort owners are using direct response marketing techniques on every ad they post.
When I ask small business owners why they’re running their ads, I usually get a handful of different answers. “Keep our name in front of our customers.” “To let people know about events and special offers.” “To mark our property.” I love it when an owner simply says, “To attract more paying customers to my facility.” While there may be a few steps along the way to achieve that goal, that last answer should be the only answer given when asked that question.
When I ask them how they know if their ads are working, I often hear a bit of stuttering and babbling, but many are honest and just tell me they really aren’t sure. Some are quite confident, telling me that they always make sure that the receptionist, operator, hostess, or someone else making first contact with the guest asks the potential guest how they found their particular facility. While this tactic is better than what some hotel owners use to track where their guests are coming from (like those who don’t even try to track), it’s not nearly as reliable.
People may often have seen or heard about your establishment through multiple sources, but they will tell you the first thing that comes to mind or what they think you would like to hear. The second failure with this message has to do with the operator/reservation agent error. With all due respect to the many hard working high school students who do great jobs in the hospitality industry, if you trust a 16 year old reservations agent to keep track of your marketing efforts, I guarantee that the data you collect will not be 100% accurate. (Or a 20 year old seasoned reservations agent for that matter). The resort owners I’m talking about here are practicing resort advertising.
Resort marketing, when using direct response methods, makes it possible to track each and every advertisement that is run. The ads themselves are also different in that they are not placed to “brand” your facility, but rather to get potential customers to take a specific action. That action could be joining an email list, taking advantage of a specific offer, or a host of other possibilities. While there isn’t enough time in this article to discuss all of the tracking methods, every smart ad has one or more of those mechanisms in place. And with the many online advertising platforms available today, tracking is much easier.
If you are simply “spreading the word” with your resort’s advertising methods, I encourage you to start implementing a true resort marketing plan. Remember that you are not Coca-Cola or Budweiser. While you can do some branding along with your marketing efforts, that should never be your primary goal when placing ads. You can start very simply by changing one of the ads you’ve been running for the last year to a direct response ad and rigorously tracking the results. Until you figure out what works and what doesn’t, you’ll never get the most value out of your resort marketing efforts.