Derek Fisch |  http://twitter.com/derekfisch

Travel and hospitality marketers face unprecedented challenges as the industry struggles to adapt to the radical changes of recent years. The internet, fears of terrorism and an uncertain economy are just a few of the factors that have forced us to examine and re-examine our marketing strategies. At the heart of all of it, though, is what is being sold: the experience itself.

A hotel or resort is so much more than a place to sleep or maybe grab a meal. Companies that are to succeed will realize and embrace the concept that what is being sold is the totality of what the consumer sees, hears, touches, tastes and most importantly, feels. Some things have not changed since humans first appeared. We still sleep when we are tired, we still eat when we are hungry. It’s the way that we do these things that has changed. Consumers now have an incredible array of options at their fingertips.

 Anyone with any internet savvy can compare prices and features of countless destinations. The industry has been pushed hard toward transparent pricing and commoditization. Yet buyers don’t always go for the cheapest or most convenient option, even with all the information at their disposal. Except for a handful of price-only buyers, consumers continue to seek out a more complete experience, one which meets their criteria and delivers what they perceive to be their best value. Even small hotels that derive nearly all their revenue from lodging can’t fall into the trap of only promoting just a clean, comfortable bed. Nearly any hotel can say the same thing. If you can’t find a way to differentiate yourself, and promote what makes you unique or at least uncommon, you’re not in control of your destiny.

Don’t be a Commodity
With the rise of the internet and the shift toward a more educated consumer, it’s more important than ever to promote the uniqueness of what you offer. You have something that only you can offer. Make sure the consumer understands that.

What makes you you?
Some businesses have an easier time conveying this than others. For an adventure oriented resort, it’s fairly easy to show the excitement of helicopter tours to exotic locations. For a business hotel, it’s harder to relate the convenience of quick check-in and automated check-out. Whatever it is, make it explicitly clear to the customer. Not only will you get the feature of easy check-in and check-out, for instance, you get the benefit of convenience. You get the experience of a wonderful, hassle-free stay, which allows you to spend your time doing what you came to do. Help consumers put themselves mentally into this picture. It may be that your competition does the same thing, but the marketer who communicates this clearly to the consumer, the one who sells the experience, is the one that will garner the most business.

We’re Not as Logical as We Like to Think We Are
Human beings are not very logical creatures. Most of us like to think we make informed, logical purchasing decisions, but it’s simply not true. As an example, consider toothpaste. Which brand do you use? Why? Did you spend time combing through consumer comparison magazines, evaluating every brand side by side, feature by feature? Did you consult a wide sampling of dentists or chemists? Or do you use the brand you grew up with, or maybe the one your spouse buys? Maybe you use the one whose commercial connected with you the best. Chances are it wasn’t a fully informed, strictly logical decision. Now expand that line of thinking to your bathroom. Look at all the products you have there. Were they all decided upon as the result of a fully informed, strictly logical decision? How about the countless products in the other rooms in your house? Can you fully articulate why you bought each one of them?

The fact is that people usually buy on emotion and justify with logic. It only makes sense to present yourself to the consumer that way. Engage their emotions, get them involved, or they won’t take action. If you don’t believe that, think about your car insurance. Are you getting the best rate you can? Unless you’ve gone comparison shopping very recently, you can’t know for sure. Logically, it makes sense to compare rates often. By doing so, you save money. Very logical. You can go online and do it very quickly these days, so lack of time is not an excuse. Or you can make one phone call and have a broker do the comparing for you. Logically, it makes perfect sense. If we were actually motivated by logic, we’d do it often. But most of us don’t do it at all, let alone often.

Logic is not enough of a motivating factor in the vast majority of cases, even when significantly potential money is involved (for example, saving just $20 per month x 12 months a year x 20 years = $4,800. And that’s just on car insurance.) It’s emotions that cause us to take action. The best marketing is that which connects with us emotionally, and then makes it easy for us to justify our actions logically.

Communicating Your Message
Does everything you produce sell your experience? Do your brochures, catalogs, website, advertisements and promotional material make it clear what you offer, and why you’re the clear choice? People won’t spend time trying to figure out what you’re saying. If you don’t make it crystal clear, they’ll move on, because your competition is only a page or mouse click away. Use descriptive language to tell consumers exactly what it is you offer.

Avoid hyperbole and superlatives (how about a new word for the worst offenders: “hyperbolatives”). So many things are touted as “incredible” or “breakthrough” that the impact of those words has been lost. Buyers are increasingly sophisticated and skeptical, and quickly discount the believability of advertisers. Don’t simply tell someone that what you have is awesome, tell them why.

Never use long words when shorter ones will work. Shorter words are easier to read, flow better and are much more likely to be fully understood. Remember, the buyer has access to incredible amounts of information, including that from your competitors. There’s so much information, in fact, that the buyer often has a hard time differentiating one business from another, or deciding if anyone actually offers better value.

If you want to cut through the clutter, speak directly to your prospect. Tell him or her exactly how you can make life measurably better, more enjoyable and easier. Don’t be shy about relating the details. Make sure to start with the broad concepts, but anchor them with specifics. Whatever experience you’re selling, the people who are interested in it are interested in the details. In a brochure or on a website, you have more room for small points than in a newspaper ad or thirty second television commercial, so be aware of the medium and what it is appropriate for. It’s the details that often really set one destination apart from another. With so many indistinguishable products and services on the market, sometimes a few small things can make a big difference.

The marketer who can help the whitewater rafter feel the cold water splashing her face, help the skier picture the series of 14,000 foot peaks visible from the top of the chairlift or help the businessperson see himself on the 19th hole, trading stories of sand traps and spectacular chip shots, can inspire people to action. If consumers can’t picture themselves enjoying the benefits of what you offer, they’ll never do business with you.

If you simply offer lodging, can you partner with nearby adventure or cultural destinations? It’s more than just having a brochure rack in your lobby. Can you include it as an option for customers? People understand that very few places can offer everything they could possibly want, so involving another non-competing business won’t conflict. When you take this step, you move beyond simply being a supplier of a commodity and become instead an integral part of a complete experience. Consumers demand more every day in terms of convenience, content and reliability. Anyone who can become a trusted partner to deliver in these areas will be rewarded.

In the end, the consumer is more interested in the outcome than the process. Going across the country or even around the world is not nearly as big a task as it used to be (airport screening aside.) These days all one has to do is call an agent or go online to find nearly any destination, followed by price packages competing to be the lowest. It’s not just a matter of where people want to go anymore. Sightseeing isn’t the end goal. It’s just as much how they want to get there and what they want to do when they arrive. We can see pictures and video of nearly anywhere in the world. These days people want to go beyond merely seeing- they want to engage all their senses. They’re looking for more customizable experiences as well.

Consumers have much more power when it comes to designing a package that is just right for their needs. Marketers who are able to offer customizable experiences have a measurable and communicable advantage.

Re-Selling the Experience
Repeat customers are the lifeblood of so many hospitality businesses. Are you effectively working this goldmine? Even if you sell a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it’s important to keep in touch with past customers. No individual exists in a vacuum. We get older, we get married, we have kids, we talk to friends. Our life circumstances are constantly changing. The person we targeted in years past may now want to bring children, or they may recommend us to someone else. You have their information (hopefully), so it’s easy to stay in contact. Give them every reason to believe that there is something new and exciting going on with you and that they need to come back. If they had a positive experience the first time, they’ll certainly want to, it’s just a matter of staying in touch until their circumstances permit. Social media, postcards, websites, newsletters, and increasingly, e-newsletters make targeted past customers relations easier than ever before.

What Experience are You Selling?
More importantly, what experience are your customers seeking? To put it another way, why do people choose you? In almost all cases, the consumer has other options. Do you have a system for getting customer feedback? Do you talk with customers during or after their stay? This can be some of the best market research you can do, if you take the time to get honest responses. While a customer is with you, they’re fully engaged. They’re reacting to their environment, and you get firsthand reactions. After they’ve left, the information they relate is what has stuck with them. Positive and negative, these responses help you determine if your marketing is consistent with what you deliver, and with what consumers expect.

If people aren’t getting the experience they expect, they won’t be repeat customers and they won’t generate positive word-of-mouth. People can find a bed and a meal just about anywhere. They can golf or go rafting, hiking or have a reunion in countless places. It’s the totality of everything their senses encounter while doing it that determines their overall experience, which in the end is all they come away with.

Put them in the picture mentally, engage their emotions and help them understand not just the features you offer, but what their entire experience will be. Marketers who can do that will never lack for customers.

About the Author
Derek Fisch is founder and President of Velocity Media, the leading marketing and advertising agency for small business:  http://www.velocitymediainc.com .
Follow Derek on Twitter at http://twitter.com/derekfisch or connect on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/derek.fisch .

NOTE: You’re welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a link to your reprint to derek@velocitymediainc.com.

By Derek Fisch. Follow on twitter at http://twitter.com/derekfisch

Incorporate this into your marketing and watch your sales soar

The world’s most important marketing concept. Wow, pretty grandiose title. But this is one area where understatement just won’t do. If more companies understood this one concept, their marketing would actually stand a chance of doing its job.

Before we get to this big idea, though, let me define what the job of marketing actually is. Ultimately, it should be designed to convince people to do business with you. That’s it. Every thing else related to marketing should all be done with that end result in mind, because that’s where it should all lead. Product, pricing, placement, promotion, and people need to all point in this direction. Every campaign aimed at increasing mindshare, raising product recognition level, penetrating new markets, or any other specific short-term goal is designed to convince people to do business with the marketer. Or at least it should be. So how do you do that?

I’m not going to talk specific tactics in this article, but rather about the common unifying concept, which if understood, will direct a marketing campaign to success. The idea is actually so simple that you might be disappointed. But it’s so powerful that it will determine the outcome of your marketing. Here it is: everything you do in marketing should clearly and explicitly tell the consumer how you will make his or her life quickly and dramatically better. If you can communicate that concept in a way that the consumer believes, and more effectively than your competition, you’ll never lack for business.

The problem that the overwhelming majority of businesses I work with have is that they are approaching their marketing from the wrong end. They’re focused on their company and their product rather than their customers. The ask questions like “How can we show people how great our product is?” rather than “How can we show people how much we can improve their lives?”

I often get initial disagreement from company owners and managers when I first propose this. To most of them it’s a completely new concept. They have, since the beginning of their business life, been trying to figure out how to outshout the competition. The problem is, they’ve been shouting the wrong thing. For those who disagree on this point, let me make this statement: the consumer doesn’t care a bit about your product or service. They really don’t. They care about what your product or service does for them. Or in other words, how it makes their life better. The product or service is just a means to an end.

Most marketers have gotten comfortable with the idea of selling benefits rather than features. But let me take that one step further by introducing a concept I call the Ultimate Life Benefit (ULB). The ULB goes beyond selling benefits. It shows the consumer how his or her life will be quickly and appreciably improved. And most products have many ULB’s. To get to this way of thinking, list the benefits of your product or service and then ask yourself “And then what happens?” For example: Feature: SPF 90 Benefit: Protection from sunburn ULB: Your kids don’t suffer pain or skin damage. They are happy and healthy. See what I’m getting at here? If you just go as far as selling the benefit, you haven’t communicated to the consumer how his or her life will clearly be better. The benefit is “Protection from sunburn.” Go ahead and tell the consumer that they’ll be protected from sunburn. Repeat it as many times as you like. Shout it loudly. You’ll get some results, but not great results. Shift your message to showing the results of the benefit, and the mental connection is made quickly and completely in the mind of the viewer. Show them exactly how your product delivers the benefit and produces the ULB and you’ve got them.

The trick here is to show exactly how your product or service leads to the ULB. Don’t just say or imply that it does, but rather demonstrate it explicitly. Don’t assume that the consumer will make the mental connection. I don’t know about you, but most people are too busy to figure out what advertisers are trying to say. Next time you’re watching television, pay attention to what advertisers are showing you. Most national advertisers are showing ULB’s. One of the most frequent and most obvious is commercials that show how using their product will make you more attractive to the opposite sex. Use this razor and get the girl. Use this mouthwash and get the girl. Drive this car and get the girl. Wear these clothes and get the girl. You get the point.

The successful ads are the ones that make the connection clear. Car commercials are another good example. They don’t just say that the car is fast. They show you how you can enjoy unlimited freedom with that kind of horsepower. Jewelry advertisers don’t just talk about the total carat weight of their diamond jewelry. They show you the reactions of your friends when they see your new necklace. A lot of advertisements miss completely, though. The advertiser is trying hard to get us to associate their product with something. But they fail to communicate it in a way that causes the viewer to make the mental connection. The commercial makes no point and is quickly forgotten.

Even the most mundane product can benefit by incorporating a persuasive ULB. Whatever you sell, there are benefits to it. Take copier paper for instance. Your paper may cost less, or cause less jamming, or maybe it’s brighter and sturdier. Whatever it is, it has a benefit. So then what happens? If it jams less, then you can concentrate on the important things, instead of continually fixing the copier. You get more work done, you make more money or get a promotion or whatever you choose to show. The benefit is that it jams less. But the ultimate benefit goes beyond that.

Every product has at least one ULB, most have quite a few. Find them and communicate them to the consumer, and they’ll have no reason to resist. They’ll see that it’s in their best interest to do business with you. And once that happens, just make sure you’re stocked up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Derek Fisch is founder and President of Velocity Media, a full service marketing and advertising firm | www.velocitymediainc.com .

Follow Derek on Twitter at http://twitter.com/derekfisch

NOTE: You’re welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a link to your reprint to design@velocitymediainc.com.

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