Podcast: How Hotels can Avoid Silent Nights this Holiday Season
Prepping for the potential market slow down of the holiday season should have been in planning for months. If not, let's learn from it and plan ahead for next year. When developing a marketing plan for the holidays, there are many factors, including your hotel’s...
What is a Good Channel Mix for a Hotel?
A hotel’s channel and its respective contribution from the various distribution channels is a sign of the health and diversity of your revenue. Yes, it varies by hotel location, brand, mix of sales and a variety of other factors. But, let’s discuss what distribution...
Independent Hotels Can Learn from Big Brand Marketing
You have to know your competition to beat your competition. There has been a debate for years, if not decades, about which is "better" - branded vs independent hotels. While we are not going down that road today, it is important for independent hotels to know the kind...
10 Items to Include in your Hotel Marketing Budget
Now is the time to ask for funds for your 2020 hotel marketing budget. Here are some must-have digital marketing items to include and how to think through that process. Note for branded hotels: be sure you understand what the brand does for you, and what you need to...
Hotel Digital Marketing Podcast
https://youtu.be/kXZScLROpwc Stephanie Sparks Smith of Cogwheel Marketing was delighted to join the crew of Hospitality Digital Marketing on September 7, 2019. My savvy (and funny) co-hosts included: -Loren Gray of Hospitality Digital Marketing -Robert Cole of...
HSMAI Roc 2019 Conference Recap
Recap of HSMAI Roc 2019 from a hotel digital marketer. Highlights were presentations on data science and on pricing your different room types.
How to Optimize for Marriott SEO
When optimizing for search engine optimization on a Marriott brand site, it is important to know the systems and limitations of EPIC, eFast and Brandworks.
MozCon 2019 Recap by Topic
Highlights focused around PR, Visual Search, Google My Business, Blogging, Voice Search, Google Ads, Featured Snippets, People Also Ask and cool tools.
Hilton Advance: Marketing Strategy and Fee Changes
Hilton launched a new digital marketing program, called Advance, on July 1st, 2019. Hotels can expect a $2000 increase in fees each year and less control over content and images. See examples of One Hero Web.
Stephanie Smith Becomes Partner at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants
In an effort to widen reach and offerings to her clients, Stephanie Sparks Smith becomes a partner at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants.
IHG Now Offers Landing Pages and SEO
IHG websites now offer the ability to create custom call to actions with unique landing pages for marketing and targeted search engine optimization.
Russell of Hotels Video Interview
Stephanie Sparks Smith of Cogwheel Marketing was interviewed by Russell L Edmond of Russell of Hotels on LA Talk Radio on May 28, 2019. Also available via Podcast from Russell of Hotels. Topics of discussion: Hotel digital marketing for branded versus independent...
Pricing Hotel Packages as a Revenue Manager
Welcome to Part II of our hotel package strategy blog where we analyze package from a revenue management perspective. In Part I, we looked at hotel packages from a digital marketing perspective and answered the questions of Who, What, When, Why and Where. Now, we...
How Football and Digital Marketing are Alike
What do Superbowl champions and hospitality digital marketing organizations have in common? They both need: Winning playbook to beat the competition Great coaches to provide direction before during and after engagements Quarterback to execute a winning plan in real...
PicMonkey Review From a Photoshop Illiterate
My Unsolicited (Rave) PicMonkey Review I found out about PicMonkey at the Seattle Digital Summit. You visit so many exhibit booths it is hard to keep track. This one stuck. They offered me 3 free months. So sure, let’s give it a go. First, let me say I am PhotoShop...
Hotel Packages: Who, What, When, Why, Where
When developing a hotel package strategy, it is important to remember that building these offerings will not sell out a hotel. They may not even get bookings if not properly marketed. In a nutshell, hotel packages should showcase your proximity to demand generators,...
Tricks and Cool Stats from the Digital Summit
Last month, one of the Digital Summit’s was hosted in Seattle. Content strategy, along with AI and machine learning, were the hot topics on everyone’s radar. Cogwheel Marketing shares the top insights and cool statistics from the conference. 1 - Most people have...
10 Hotel Digital Marketing KPIs
You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert to look at high level reports and find trends for your hotel. Briefly review monthly reports and start asking better questions of your vendors, partners and team. If you don’t have someone on your team with the skill...
Infographic: Hotel Digital Marketing Flywheel
The "Old" Sales Funnel In every sales and marketing class, since the beginning of time, they show you a diagram of a sales funnel. It was shaped something like a cone or upside down pyramid, like this: Over time, the model was twisted for digital marketing. The main...
Favorites from HSMAI Digital Conference 2019
Cogwheel Marketing attended the HSMAI Digital Conference in New York this January. Here are 10 interesting facts and useful (or useless) tidbits to take home with you. There were 150 billion searches last month with an average length 4 words in which 20% never been...
How to Run a Facebook Ad
8 Simple Steps on How to Run a Facebook Ad Facebook has seriously awesome targeting parameters to get your business in front of potential customers that align with a business’ target market and need periods. The same cannot be said for Google Adwords or any other...
Optimize your OTAs (Without Paying More)
Audit your hotel’s Expedia and Booking.com listings to get higher rankings, reduce confusion and tell a consistent story. Here’s how to do OTA optimization!
Hotel Marketing: Brand vs Local
Where does the Brand Level Marketing Stop and Hotel Level Marketing Begin? You own or manage a franchised hotel under a specific flag. The brand may or may not have given you some marketing guidelines, or was wrapped up in onboarding training. Maybe your hotel just...
Digital Marketing Checklist for New Hotel Opening
A new hotel opening or changing of flags has so many moving parts. As an owner or manager overseeing this transition, you are likely wearing multiple hats. Here is a hotel pre-opening marketing plan and checklist from a digital standpoint to ensure you are building...
How to Choose the Right Hotel Photographers
Hotel photography rules and standards have changed quickly. Previously, any photographer could shoot your hotel. Resolution requirements, brand standards for photography, and images rejected by websites did not exist. Read these 7 tips to ensure your company has...
Hotel Review Response Platform: Medallia vs Revinate
If you represent a hotel management company overseeing multiple brands, here is some food for thought on having Revinate on top of Medallia as a review response management platform. (If you are someone only handling review responses for a single hotel, this article...
Why IHG Hotels Should Allow Vanity Sites
IHG recently decided to make it a policy that vanity (or independent) sites were not allowed for certain brands, with a 3 month compliance. Brands don’t approve of vanity sites because they are hard to control, may cause guest confusion, lack of loyalty integration...
Slide.ly Promo for Cheap, Quality Videos
For mini social media campaigns for hotels that don’t have large video budget, check out Slide.ly. This super cost effective platform called "Promo" lets you choose from millions of short, premium videos. Footage, (royalty free) music and editor are included. They...
Free Way to Connect with People from Paid Ads on Facebook
Everyone probably already knows this little trick, but I thought I would throw it out there. When you run Facebook campaigns, you can target reach, traffic, conversions, video views and the list goes on. This trick works best if you went after engagements. One of the...