Archives for June 2020

It might feel as if staying in a hotel or eating at a restaurant will never be the same again. At least for the immediate future, both activities for consumers will come with certain risk factors. Whether or not consumers will be willing to confront these risks, and to what extent, remains slightly unknown.

This does not mean all hope is lost; people will continue to find ways to enjoy their favorite restaurants and stay in their favorite hotels – it is simply human nature to do so. However, the ways in which people choose their patronage will be vastly different in the age of COVID-19.

With this new shift comes an entirely new way for hospitality groups to look at their marketing strategies and evaluate how their marketers are communicating brand information to the public. It has been said that 2020 will be a landmark year for marketing communications, especially when it comes to brands being able to successfully communicate an immediate, effective message to their target audiences. And, for hospitality groups, nothing is more urgent or immediate to be communicated through marketing than their patrons’ safety.

In times such as these, if you are a marketing manager or C-suite leader in the hospitality industry, you must ask yourself an important question: Are our brands effectively portrayed as “safe” establishments through our marketing? If not, how do we communicate our messages of safety and preparedness to our target audiences?

1.    Marketing for Hospitality: The Back of House becomes Front of House

Your Back of House staff will become one of your most important assets in this next era of hospitality.

When it comes to any consumer-facing media, especially owned digital media, such as your brands’ blogs and social media channels, consider shifting your messaging to highlight Back of House operations to keep potential patrons aware of the steps you are taking for their safety.

Your restaurant brands may import some of the highest quality ingredients, and the rooms at your hotel brands may feature bedding with very high thread counts; however, these aspects of hospitality simply aren’t top-of-mind for patrons at the moment. That is not to say they are not important, but we predict patrons of hotels in the near future will care less about the brand of sheets they are sleeping on, and more about who cleaned the room, and how they did so.

Take this time to show your potential patrons your goals and safety objectives align with theirs through creative owned media, such as social media and blogging, and earned media through key publications. In your press releases, or preferred method of delivering brand-messaging to the media, highlight the capabilities of your staff, and keep the language concise, technical and straight to the point. Let no message be too difficult to understand, and be as transparent as possible in explaining your objectives.

For owned media, write a blog profiling the now-immensely important role of your sanitation staff and the ways in which their best practices translate to guests’ safety and comfort. This, too, should be on the shorter, concise end as far as blogs go. You want to avoid are large, “wordy” messages filled with jargon and pre-existing slogans and promotional messaging that may seem tone-deaf.

The most important asset hospitality groups have at this particular point in time are attentive, well-trained sanitation teams; this is the new message that should be delivered to consumers through social media marketing for hotels and restaurants. Though promotional discounts any of your brands are offering, or new updates to your facilities are important, your messaging should directly target the possible anxieties of potential patrons and guests, and how your Back of House teams are working overtime to extinguish these anxieties.

This does not mean you should halt all communications with promotional messaging; these messages should absolutely continue, but not take precedent to timely, more relevant messaging.

2.    Transparent, Uniformed Messaging from the Top   

Leaders in the hospitality and related industries, who own or operate multiple brands, should not only invest in a strong communications plan aimed at making the efforts of Back of House staff known, but make sure these communications are uniform across all their brands, and repeated at the top.

To ensure your smaller brands are communicating with the same transparency as your larger brands, enlist the services of a fully integrated public relations agency to develop a top-to-bottom communications strategy to effectively distribute your messaging.

For hospitality groups, re-opening establishments across the United States, and especially in Europe, is going to vary depending on location. For example, the re-opening of a larger New York City brand is going to be vastly different than the re-opening and continued operations of a smaller brand in a place like Colorado. So, you may ask, how do we keep a single, uniform message of safety, when many of our brands are in different areas and adhering to different protocols?

The answer can be simple, and involves the most immediate form of communication for a brand or business: social media.

Leverage the influence of your C-suite leaders on your group’s social media channels, by using their Live functions when there are immediate announcements related to COVID-19. However, and as we’ve said before, keep the messaging concise, technical and straight to the point. After all, immediate, safety related messaging cannot always wait for the news cycle, and must be relayed immediately by executive leadership in some cases.

3.    Align your Digital Messaging with Consumers’ Priorities

So-called “behind the scenes” operations must be highlighted in outgoing digital marketing communications for hospitality groups. Hotel and restaurant patrons can be a risk-averse bunch, even before the ongoing pandemic. Prior to a staying at a hotel or dining at a restaurant, some sort of preliminary research is conducted, often using search results from Google or a similar search engine.

It’s no secret that what is found about your hotel or restaurant brands through online searches can be highly valuable. Hospitality groups, in the past, strived to rank highly on search engines like Google for keywords and phrases such as, “best hotel near me,” or “best restaurant in New York City.” Future patrons, now with realigned priorities when on the hunt for the right hotel or restaurant, will be dropping the word “best” in some cases, for “cleanest.”

So, if your restaurants offer expansive outdoor seating, which, by many standards, is considered a safer method of dining in this era, really focus your efforts on ranking well with SEO. In conducting target market analysis for restaurants, make sure to target potential patrons searching for the best outdoor dining options in your markets’ surrounding areas.

To relate this back to our point on owned media, write a blog about the steps you are taking internally (i.e., what your Back of House is doing), and use a strategic, targeted SEO strategy to draw people to your blog who are looking for their safest options. When doing this, make sure you are vetting and incorporating SEO terms into your owned media that rank well amongst other related search terms.

4.    Have a Well-Developed, Responsive Crisis Communications Plan

We’d be remiss in not mentioning the importance of having a fully developed crisis communications plan in your back pocket. Fluid situations such as these call for preparedness, and, if you are a hospitality group that attracts guests and diners to your brands from across the country, you must be ready with a communications strategy in the event of a patron or guest falling ill.

This message, too, should begin with a uniformed message from the top, followed by (again!) a short, to-the-point message regarding your brands’ commitment to patron safety, as reaffirmed by the efforts of your Back of House staff.

Crisis strategies often encompass all aspects of public relations in some way or another, and should be shared across all your social media accounts related to the brand(s) affected by the situation.

If you haven’t yet developed a crisis communications plan, or your crisis plan needs updated, here are a few pointers for making sure your crisis strategy remains on-point:

–       Communicate to your audiences using an omnichannel approach: Create a strategy that consists of scheduled, outgoing communications that are seamless in nature. This means that all external marketing communications, such as unpaid, organic social media posts, paid media, blogs, e-newsletters, etc., are uniform and omnipresent, rather than unique, parallel messages that may compete against each other.

–       Make sure the executive and C-suite leaders are well informed on the issue at hand: In keeping with the omnichannel marketing communications approach to handling a COVID-19 related crisis, it is vitally important that your deployed crisis communications plan is aligned from top to bottom.

–       Timing is everything: If a health-related crisis does arise in one or more of your hotels or restaurants, carefully monitor the news to ensure your messaging is being communicated in the right places and at the right moments.

Though the coming times ahead will be challenging, we are looking forward to a hospitality renaissance coming soon after the smoke clears, so to speak. These important communications strategies, though time consuming, are true value propositions. With uniform, transparent and timely communications / marketing plans in place, you can go on doing what leaders in the hospitality industry do best: ensure guests and patrons experience your brands in the best light possible.

At times, the most viable means to reach target audiences is a combination of paid promotion or advertising, strategic publicity and digital marketing, punctuated with engaging copywriting and graphic design. Though, most marketing managers and C-suite leaders agree promoting products, professional services or brands to mass groups of consumers – or to trade professional targets – through paid advertising and content marketing, can seem overwhelming.

We have heard more times than we can count that some marketing communication managers have a love-hate relationship with the advertising and media buying parts of their day-to-day scopes of responsibility. This is hopefully not due to disregard or disdain for the process. Rather, it is likely because of advertising’s various layers of forecasting and numerous rounds of creative and approvals, along with the sometimes-unpredictable pitfalls.

If you are like most marketers, you try to plan your advertising campaigns as succinctly as possible. When executed comprehensively, the process takes time and is many-sided. Only those who have managed media buying and planning inherently know that it is no small feat.

For some, advertising strategies involve tiers of planning that can run a wide gamut, which most often begins with strategic planning, messaging objectives and vetting opportunities. Whether in organized tandem or a get-it-done hustle, this leads to cost negotiations, budgeting overviews, and careful media buying with timely scheduling. Creative, copy and coordination come next, followed by tracking, reporting and the all-important results analytics.

For companies with both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing communications needs, the charge to create results-earning advertising campaigns, nearly always with a lesser-than-desired budget, can feel like crossing a chasm. However, advertising planning and media buying can be completely enjoyable and worth the effort when approached with a competitive and industrious mindset.

Understanding media planning and buying.

 Media planning and buying involves the art and science of researching, negotiating and scheduling advertising placements. The cause or trigger is known as paid media; the effect is, or always should be, brand awareness that translates to brand equity. Masterful and adept media planning satisfies goals to influence clearly identified audiences, targets, leads, and prospects. Ultimately, advertising-induced visibility for available products or offered professional services acts as a cornerstone of the marketing mix to achieve sales conversions.

Converting leads to sales is, at times, disproportionately thought to be the marketer’s role. Yet, while sales and marketing personnel should be dually tag-teamed for real-time sales growth; undoubtedly, a marketer who oversees media buying and planning has the capacity to conjure customer or client expansion, perhaps, like no one else in an organization.

Assuming you have a solid understanding of the types of advertising options that are possible and necessary for your business – and your messaging strategies and creative concepts are well underway – a key, initial planning factor is budget.

Achieving successful ad campaigns begins and ends with the budget your business or brand can assess and allocate. While cost-effective advertising is extremely possible to conceptualize and implement, a good grasp of what to expect with your marketplace’s ad options is essential. A realistic advertising budget is paramount to carve out a sound messaging and promotional victory.

Again, with the assumption your strategic plan for advertising is in place, move toward a systematic approach of evaluation to find and consider cost-effective media buying. To assemble a collection of cost-effective media buys that also offer potent reach and influence among your targets, you will want to research qualified media outlets and digital platforms.

This does not mean buying an ad in a print magazine or newspaper because you saw that one of your competitors advertises in it. Nor, should you jump on the first or second advertising opportunity that lands in your inbox, even if the offer says you will be missing out if you wait.

Efficacious, profitable advertising is an outcome of a nuts-and-bolts valuation, surrounding qualified and quantified audience reach at the most reasonable cost to do so. There are any number of strategies to accomplish this seemingly far-flung objective.

 Starting with a defined advertising budget begets cost-saving measures as you proceed. It is recommended to reach an upfront decision how aggressive your ad plan should be as a piece of your overall marketing communications campaigns.

 How to create an advertising budget.

The number one question we are asked about media buying and advertising budgets is, “How much should I spend on advertising for my business?” If nothing else, it is a loaded question. The answer lies in the business’s desire and need to market its products or services, and exactly what are the coming year’s revenue and profit goals.

A conservative ad budget includes a media buying budget of between 1-3 percent of your prior year’s, or forecasted year’s, revenue. By no means is this an ambitious budget, and it may verge on ambiguous. Though, at this budget level, you may keep your head at or just above water’s level in terms of customer retention.

Your company advertising budgets will be fundamental at this level, but you can unify them with synchronized public relations, consistent content marketing and basic Search Engine Optimization to have a perceptible brand voice amid the competition.

Take it up a couple of savvy-marketer notches and consider an ad budget based upon 4-5 percent of last year’s earned revenue, or next year’s anticipated revenue. If you are a seasoned media planner and buyer or your agency specializes in advertising, your percentage allocation should create advertising campaigns that will result in a fair level of customer retention and picking up new customers or clients.

At this tier, we have witnessed MarComm managers get a little too comfortable. Some perilously assume the 4-6 percent ad budget standard has them covered. To avoid this pitfall, ensure your advertising campaigns are one of several messaging formats. Support your paid media with press releases, blogs, social media, digital marketing, product demos, collateral, speaking and virtual events, networking, and the list goes on.

When working to build market share and brand voice, dig deeper into more vigorous forecasting. Budgeting for paid media at 7-10 percent has the likely power to launch your business to the next rung, possibly two or three, of your market’s or sector’s competitive ladder. This budget should focus upon prudently conceptualized and meticulously managed campaigns.

To safeguard your ad budget’s precious allocation and its subsequent triumph, media buying in this scenario must be complemented with visionary publicity and media relations programs, leading-edge digital marketing and advanced public relations. One without the other can leave too many metaphorical stones unturned in your tactical plan of action for the year.

Before crunching the numbers, there is more to consider when allocating a media buying budget. New thinking in marketing communications during the last few years proposes an even more proactive maneuver. The theory being put to work among select companies is the idea that media buying budgets should be based upon an equation of forecasted revenue and estimated profit, not anticipated revenue alone.

With a profit goal set forth for the following fiscal year, a dynamic option is to set an advertising budget by calculating a percentage of the predicted revenue and profit. This comprises many marketers’ formulas, which vary or fluctuate among industries, sectors and decision-makers.

One method we have found to be effective for determining a year’s media buying budget is 6-10 percent of the new fiscal year’s predicted revenue, plus 1-3 percent of the forecasted profit. It is worth noting that no one recipe works for every business and brand.

Understanding Cost-per-Thousand and Pay-per-Click.

Drilling deeper, no consideration of advertising budget details would be complete without at least a look at the Cost-per-Thousand model, and how to calculate your impressions at a cost per thousand ratio.

Cost-per-thousand (CPM) is calculated by starting with the total cost of advertising. This number could be the baseline for each of your individual media buys or the total advertising expenditure for a campaign, season or year. The “M,” by the way, does not mean 1 million, despite common thought. It represents the Roman numeral for 1,000.

Thus, CPM means cost per thousand. The price paid for a CPM-based media buy is calculated by multiplying the CPM rate by the number of CPM units. If you are considering an ad buy with, say, 1,300,000 impressions, and the cost is $18,000, the CPM is $13.85.

This is not to be confused with digital marketing’s common cost for performance or action, which equates to a total budget expenditure based upon how well your ads perform in terms of action taken by viewers. Actions such as click-throughs or Pay-per-Click (PPC) drive traffic to websites, where the advertiser pays a search engine or content publisher for each time the ad is clicked and the prospect lands on the advertiser’s website.

Both CPM and PPC help advertisers determine the cost and profitability of their ad campaigns. With CPM, you will pay for every 1,000 impressions (or, as we like to call them, “eyeballs” or views), and your PPC cost is your fee per click or per impression.

Mindful, strategic and creative planning of your entire annual advertising program as well as the quality and quantity of each campaign’s placements, will have a direct result on the effectiveness of your CPM and CPC.

Go it Alone or Go with an Agency.

From where, when and how to advertise to the right blend of multiparty outreach campaigns, all advertising teams should focus upon cost-efficiency, creativity and a streamlined process. Evaluate your internal team’s ability and available time for building and supervising your media buying strategies, budgeting and creative. Consider how their collective experience and strengths are weighted compared to potential inexperience or simply a lack of time.

When and where it makes sense, interview agencies to assess the ways in which their advertising and media buying expertise can balance your in-house capabilities. One of the reasons to work with a firm or agency is the cost-savings. Talented advertising agencies can acquire discounted or value-added bonus ad buys for some or most ad campaigns. A truly prepared agency should be able to increase your Pay-per-Click advertising results on average by 50 or more percent.

The advertising campaigns our Eberly & Collard Public Relations media buying and planning team manages for clients are available at widely discounted rates, given our overall ad-buying power and media relationships. Unlike many firms and agencies, we commonly pass along our entire agency discount to clients, in addition to appendage ad-buy savings and value-added bonus advertising print space, digital or airtime we secure for them.

Simplifying otherwise intrinsic advertising plans for clients to minimize their time and maximize their budgets is our advertising team’s forte. We design digital, print, outdoor, indoor, and collateral-based advertisements that inform and influence targets as well as negotiate, coordinate and schedule advertising placements to free our clients of the hassle. We have earned annual advertising awards for our ad concepts, graphic art and layout designs for their innovation, design, written copy, and creativity.

Whether you go it alone or consider the support of an agency for your new fiscal year ahead, we hope this information will lend a hand. Be inspired to generate fresh ad campaigns integrated with your public relations and converged media, ultimately engaging and converting leads to new sales.

In a crowded marketplace, it is estimated that we interact with over 3,000 brands in any given day. Understanding the process of how a well-established B2B (business to business) thought leadership marketing strategy is developed and exactly how to convey your brand’s value proposition clearly and effectively is paramount to ensuring your brand voice is heard. When done properly, this can be a powerful tool that is not just another piece of marketing jargon, but instead a way to solidify and position your company as a leader in its field.

A study conducted by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) determined that 83% of B2B buyers believe that ‘thought leadership’ had increased their trust in organizations, with 88% saying they use thought leadership to build a shortlist of potential vendors. The study also stated that approximately 50% of C-suite executives and decision-makers believed thought leadership content had a direct impact on awarding business. 61% of C-suite executives say they are willing to pay a premium to work with an organization that has articulated a clear vision.

The most interesting takeaway from the study suggests that 45% of B2B marketers said they take advantage of thought leadership marketing. This finding presents a unique opportunity and an excellent way to breakthrough barriers in your specific sector, become an industry disruptor and increase your sales and new business.

Thought Leadership Marketing Defined:

So, what exactly is thought leadership? By definition, thought leadership is a method of marketing which positions you as an expert and authority in your industry and conveys that your company or brand has deep understanding of the subject matter at hand. To be a thought leader in your industry is to share the philosophies and business knowledge that your company uses. It can be a unique take or perspective that will create a significant impact on a business model or even the sector’s marketplace at large. Thought leadership builds brand affinity which, in turn, enacts trust. This is an excellent entry point and foundation when employing demand generation as a strategy. Creating awareness and trust, which is one of the core components of demand generation, is often accomplished with thought leadership.

Below, we have outlined three main cornerstone strategies that, when followed properly, are proven to accelerate your industry positioning, and will also propel your company as a thought leader in your industry or sector.

Build Thought Leadership Through Media Relations –

In order to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, you need to reach your target audience. This is where the media can help amplify your message as well as your brand. From traditional channels like business newspapers, B2B industry trade magazines, business radio shows to growing mediums like podcasts, there are many avenues for you to reach and, thus, influence others.

It is important to note that media relations outreach is a separate strategy in and of itself. Working with a public relations firm that specializes in your industry niche is vital to success. Otherwise, you will have to work on the time-consuming process to pitch yourself to media outlets and journalists to build trust and make the case for why you should be featured in an article or interview.

The influx of different channels helps tremendously in these efforts. Focus on niche publications that targets your industry. With patience and consistency, partnering with the media will help you get in front of your audience and establish your place as a thought leader. Once you are featured, you will start to earn credibility and can use your new media placements to show that you are considered an expert in your field. Then, it is more likely other journalists or publications will become interested in connecting as well.

We recommend studying each and every individual media outlet to determine exactly what topic and format is best suited for them. The largest mistake we see people make is the use software to mass (or blanket) pitch the same information to every media outlet out there. This is not the proper way to influence the media outlets to profile or feature your business or interview you.

You’re only a thought leader if you truly showcase expertise in your field and offer valuable insights and opinions. Sound media relations is a catalyst to accomplish this.

Establish Brand Authority on Your Owned Media Channels –

As we discussed above, gaining credibility is one of the foundations of thought leadership. While media engagements require cooperation with a journalist or publication, your brand’s owned media channels allow for self-publication of your thought leadership articles or whitepapers instantaneously. Social media channels, blogs, podcasts, and webinars are a few of the main examples of owned media channels. Defined as brand channels you or the company owns, you and your marketing staff members have the freedom and ability to publish as you see fit.

Thought leadership marketing allows you to get in front of your audience on your own terms. However, this doesn’t mean you’ll want to post and share content on a whim. Creating a content strategy with a posting schedule is an important step toward gaining trust with your audience, while establishing yourself as a B2B thought leader.

First, you have to determine your audience and the sectors that reside within the audience. These are the prospective customers you are trying to reach. Who are your customers and what questions are they asking? Once you establish this, you can begin the process of crafting content that is targeted to this group. This step will also reveal which channels you should use to deliver your message. For example, if your B2B target audience includes professional service companies, you’ll want to focus on blogs and LinkedIn much more than Facebook or Instagram. White papers with broader subject matter may also resonate with them, more so than shorter content that consumer product companies tend to seek.

Regardless of how and where you are publishing your content, it is essential to establish your frequency. You want to publish often enough that people remember and identify you as an influencer; but, you do not want to flood your followers’ timelines and blog subscription email inboxes with content lacking research and relevance, just to hit a number. Each post should add value and include a call-to-action.

Activate New Audiences with Public Relations Engagements –

One search for “thought leaders” on YouTube will present hundreds of videos that feature speeches from various influencers across a wide variety of industries. Speaking engagements work because they allow you to share a message with a specific audience free from other distractions. Seminars and conferences focused on your industry are the most ideal settings for delivering this message, because they are filled with attendees eagerly awaiting your message. Even though the current situation with the global pandemic has caused in-person events to be cancelled or postponed, virtual speaking engagements and events are thriving and are here to stay. With the proper planning and strategy, it is even possible to create your own “industry though leadership” related event or webinar. This is a valuable means by which to reach your intended audience.

Utilizing social media for both pre- and post-event messaging surrounding your chosen topic is another excellent way to reinforce the message you are trying to convey. Another excellent way to share your thoughts is by hosting your own podcast. We wrote a previous blog post about using a podcast as a vehicle for publicity. It contains several valuable steps on how to go about this process. The equipment needed is extremely low cost to put together a podcast.

Any medium that allows you to speak passionately about your authoritative topic or industry will go a long way proving your status as a thought leader. Maintaining the aforesaid steps in a strategy that is consistent is key to saturation for your thought leadership marketing plan.

If you are not leading, you are following. B2B buyers and decision makers want to work with leading brands. It is crucial to build a reputation through strong, compelling, accessible, and impactful thought leadership marketing content. Once you’ve built a strong foundation of trust and confidence with your audience, the rest of your marketing strategy is a matter of ongoing creative and maintenance.

Please contact us to learn more about how our firm works with brands to create successful thought leadership marketing plans.