So far we have analyzed several hotel marketing tips and ideas that are especially relevant in the Sri Lankan context. In this post we are proposing a few tips to develop your own Sri Lankan hotel loyalty programme that would definitely help your hotel build a more loyal guest base.

How many of you are aware that your guests could be the best promoters of your hotel. It is a bitter truth that customer loyalty in the travel industry is vanishing. According to Deloitte research just 14% of air travel customers are loyal to the airlines that they usually travel with and only 8% of the hospitality customers stay loyal to the hotel brands. You might have noticed that the repeat purchase rate increases when you run promotions and deals. However those in the hospitality sector are still finding it difficult to build a strong loyalty among guests.

In the context of Sri Lanka, though there is no strong data evidence on the loyalty statistics, still most of the hotels do not think of the benefits of value driven, emotionally connected loyalty programmes. Most of these hotel marketing programmes in Sri Lanka just focus on some sort of random promotions which are strongly supported by real loyalty programmes. So how can a hotel increase loyalty by creating an emotional connection with the guests rather just trying to roll out promotions and deals?

Let’s start from the beginning itself. Read the entire article here

Are you aware of the 80:20 rule in marketing?

20% of the business comes through 80% of new customers and 80% of the business comes through 20% of existing customers.

Most of the hotels in Sri Lanka spend their time and money in acquiring new guests while giving less importance to the existing guests. There is a perfect way to answer a frequently asked question “how to increase my hotel bookings at a low cost”. The answer is through a well strategized retention strategy. Getting leads from your existing customers is always easier than convincing unknown new guests. Their repetitive visits may not cost you much as a new guest’s visit costs.

In simple terms the ultimate objective of any hotel is to sustain a great occupancy rate to remain profitable in the business. It is evident that most of the hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka try to get guests through online bookings, heavy adverting, online travel agents, networking and personal contacts. All these are costly and sometimes the return on investment (ROI) would be lower compared to the return.

Now we shall move into discovering a retention tool which will be helpful to get more leads from your existing guests and allow you to keep in touch with them.

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As per Olery research 81% of travelers check online hotel reviews before making a travel decision. What is your contribution online to grab their attention?

A common factor that is noticeable among Sri Lankan hotels, especially among the small and medium scale hotels is that a little or no attention is given to their online presence and reviews about their hotels in the internet. It is always important for hotels to control their online presence and they should pay attention to what guests are saying about their brands. However, most of the Sri Lankan hotels forget the importance of online reviews. For instance there are mixes of negative and positive comments about heaps of Sri Lankan hotels that are not officially attended to by the respective hotels. One factor for them to neglect these reviews, especially the negative ones is that they think they are getting enough bookings through their travel agents and are quite satisfied with their current occupancy rate with the least amount of effort that they put into marketing the hotels. Though the bookings are received through the travel agencies, the decision makers are the travelers and tourists who have started to depend on online reviews about hotels and places.

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Things that you expected today cannot be predicted tomorrow. Marketing arena is one of the biggest victims of rapidly changing phenomena. It evolves every day.

Big corporations and Multinationals possess big Marketing budgets. However Small and Medium Enterprises cannot afford for a big marketing budget. Sometimes they have to hammer these big corporations and Multinationals with this mini knife. However sometimes mini knives can create big damage to giants. That is why I say the Marketing arena is evolving and it is completely dynamic.

I always see Guerrilla Marketing as a SMEs’ strategy which do not rely on the brute force of an out-sized marketing budget instead it depend on vivid imagination.  Rather than talking about what is Guerrilla Marketing, I thought of sharing my views towards the difference between Guerrilla Marketing and Traditional Marketing. In my next post I will be covering in-depth Guerrilla marketing tactics.

1-      In Traditional Marketing, if you want to market your product and service you just invest money. However Guerrilla Marketing operates other way around. If you want to market your product and service, you do not have to invest money, if you are willing to invest time, energy, imagination and information are more than enough to capture the market.

2-      Traditional Marketing geared towards big business, but the soul and spirit of Guerrilla Marketing is small business, especially companies with big dreams and tiny budgets.

3-      Traditional Marketing counts the Fanpage likes, website visits etc. to measure the performance of a campaign, but Guerrilla Marketing mantra is to measure anything with profit. It pays attention to the bottom-line.

4-      I have seen many big companies in Sri Lanka diversify their efforts and get into hot water because it led them away from their core competency. Guerrilla marketing suggest, if you want to grow, grow it, but maintain the focus.

5-      Generally Traditional Marketing puts the efforts to make sales then forget about the entire thing.  Just a full stop is kept. But if you are a Guerrilla Marketer, you always keep the attention to the customers and focus more on after sales service. This is how you create positive word of mouth and referrals.

6-      Traditional Marketing advises you to scan the competitors those who are similar to you. However Guerrilla Marketing is all about corporation.

7-      Traditional Marketing is always a “ME”marketing. Visit any website and observe, it will say About Us, About Our Product, Contact Us, About Our Management etc. But Guerrilla Marketing is all about “YOU” marketing.  Because customers never care about companies, they care about themselves, if you can talk to them about them, you will have their full attention.

8-      Traditional Marketers count money at the end of the day, but Guerrilla Marketers count new relationships to the business at the end of the day.

9-      Traditional Marketing has messages that are always aimed groups. It is simply the larger the group better the reach approach. But Guerrilla Marketing aims its message at individuals, towards the profitable niche.

10-   Traditional Marketing is unintentional, big companies spend millions in TV, Radio and Paper ad. But they always forget sometimes about the way calls and queries are answered, how the follow-ups are done, attire worn by the employees etc.  Guerrilla Marketing is always intentional. It pays close attention to all details of customers and the all contact points.

Though there are many to talk, these are some of the main pin points I have identified and wanted to share with you.

Epitom Consulting, a Marketing consultancy firm which is fast becoming an epitome of professionalism in the Sri Lankan consultancy knowledge world by serving its clients with the best. Ragulan explains that his business is dedicated to offering unparalleled Marketing consultancy and knowledge related services through an exceptional professional approach which ensures that the clients are successful, competitive and become leaders within their markets.

“On December 31st 2012, Sri Lanka welcomed her one millionth tourist while comfortably surpassing the targeted tourists arrival to the country of 950,000 for the year of 2012. However, unfortunately most of the hotels are not up to the standard from the tourists’ point of view and also not marketed adequately to attract more tourists into the country”, points out Ragulan.

As a result Epitom has decided to render its fullest support to hoteliers to uplift the marketability of their hotels. This particular service is named as Epitom’s Compact Hotel Solution which will be offered at an affordable budget that helps the small medium hotels to obtain the maximum benefit from the package.

“With the aim of offering the perfect job, the first step is a basic audit about the hotel that will be prepared free of charge. Epitom will do research about the hotel including its website, social media profiles and through TripAdvisor which is a global travel website that contains numerous travel related information, reviews, guides and options that play a vital role in travel related decisions making” stated Ragulan, explaining the strategy adopted by his firm.

“While going through the Trip Advisor reviews which are posted by guests who have visited Sri Lanka, we found many positive as well as negative reviews about the Sri Lankan hotels where most of them are not managed properly by the management” Ragulan mentioned.

“It is becoming very important to manage all the online as well as offline channels to attract more guests by which the hotels can be taken to the next level. Consequently, after all our research we decided to join hands with the hotels and provide customized services such as the Internet Marketing, Online vs. Offline marketing consulting (Branding, Customer Relationship Management, Loyalty Marketing), and web development. For more information mail us hotels@epitom.org / call 071 303 2422.

Compared to the last decade, even 5 years back, the dominance of internet nowadays is immense. It is always important to make sure that your online presence is felt adequately. Especially when you are either in a service or a product sector where people search online for your brand and more details about you, it is important to have an online presence.

Using suitable keywords to optimize your website might take some time. However there are some other ways through which you can make sure that people who search for you do not move to your competitors because they couldn’t find anything during their search about you.  To do these things you don’t need to depend on your agency and there is no need to get frightened by their exorbitant quotations. You can do it by yourself.

1-    Create social media profiles and update them regularly. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr are some of the sites you can use. Link the accounts together online. Example: If you publish a video on YouTube, and if you connect your social media profiles together it automatically updates on Facebook and Twitter as well.

2-    Always maintain the right balance when building content for the social media profiles. Also a consistent pattern should be maintained and your visitors, fans, guests etc should be able to link the content in any possible way. It may be by consistent usage of the brand logo, a theme music, theme colour, brand message, the core value of your brand etc.

3-    YouTube is the best interactive social media platform in terms of video presence. Use Aimoto free online video creation tools to update your video channel.

4-    Create a blog in wordpress for your brand. Generally wordpress blogs are search engine friendly. Start a blog with the name of your brand. Example: If your brand is “xx” create“xx.wordpress.com”. Update it regularly with relevant blog posts to your brand with keywords that people normally use to search for either your brand or such related brands. Within a week you will see your blog coming up in the search engine results for your brand related keywords.

5-    Use Google map and add your location. This is very useful especially for targeted keywords. The map will derive your business details and shows your map / details in the first result page.

6-    Find famous local directories and submit your business information with a detailed description. This helps to get your page listed in the search results within a few weeks, for your company name and other particular keyword searches.

7-    Use review sites and request your customers to write reviews about your brand / service / company etc. For instance if your business is a hotel you can create your pages in Tripadvisor, Holidaycheck, Lonely Planet, virtualtouristetc and add your hotel in all OTA agencies. Your page will be up for brand keywords very swiftly. In addition positive reviews would definitely win you leads.

8-    Try to get some free publicity through PR campaigns. Identify your local news partners and talk to them regarding this. Each week try to grab a free space in papers for your business publicity. If you can speak well you can get a space from the papers. The printed version will go online as well, which shows your post up for branded and related keywords.

9-    Use tags when posting / updating you social media profiles. Use proper keywords as tags when updating your social media profile. These tags will be shown in wordpress, Google listing.

10.Create your venue in Foursquare, ask all your employees to check-in when they come to the office. Keep active by uploading photos and videos to the forsquare page. In a few days your foursquare page will be up in the search results.

11.Submit your facebook page to socialbaker and relevant sites. It automatically updates the status with new fans coming in. Make sure you build some fans to your fan page.

12.Create your business profile linkedin and update it with relevant information. Request your employees to update their linkedin profiles with their current designation and job role.

13.Rather than creating a php / html site create a wordpress platform site for your company. These sites are search engine friendly and the number of pages crawled will be high and your pages will come on top for branded keywords.

If you implement the above tips you will see a gradual increase in the online presence of your company and brand. In order to do these, you don’t need to go to web masters or specialized agencies.

It is important for any company to have a proper direction when walking along the road to success. If a company wants to succeed, a clearly set path and direction are important.  A business plan will operate as an overall path of a business. Here we are going to talk about the road map of a marketing manager – the Marketing Plan. Simply a marketing plan is a guide map for the marketing manager to drive the marketing goals and objectives.  There are some people who are against marketing plans because they believe that the mind is enough as a guide. To be frank, if you do not determine a correct path and a mechanism to measure and implement marketing activities, in the long run you will not have a clear picture about what you have done so far.

It is not too difficult to draft a simple marketing plan. Even if you are a beginner in a business, a Small business owner or a Marketing Manager in a large company, you must first think of what you want to achieve in a year of operation through marketing activities.  So how do you start your marketing plan?

Let us first think about an executive summary, just to give the management an idea of what you are planning to achieve in the upcoming year. It is preferable if you write the summary once you are done with the plan. Always start off by analyzing the situation. Generally you can do a complete PESTLE analysis to see how these factors could influence you.  Depending on the industry there are significant impacts by these factors.  Identify how political factors might influence your marketing, depending on the country. For example, how the recent budget changes influenced businesses etc. If it is a start up business marketing plan, it is better to write a comprehensive analysis of political and other external factors.  These analyses are very important because it will support you in identifying the opportunities and threats relating to your business. For example, the recent budget announcement in Sri Lanka, car racers have received a boost as the tax has been waived off.  Likewise do a complete study on economic, social, legal, technical and ethical factors.  Consumer behavioral aspects towards online transactions are increasing. Great importance should be given to that in terms of responding to the dynamic social changes. Once you have done with a comprehensive PESTLE analysis then you should go for a comprehensive SWOT. Generally it is important to identify your own strengths and weaknesses and you should capitalize in opportunities that exist and convert them to strengths. A good SWOT analysis will help you create proper marketing strategies.

After doing a SWOT you should then properly identify your target audience and your competitors? You can map your stakeholders based on their importance and understand to what extent they are contributing to the business. Do a Porters Five Force and analyze the competitiveness of the industry.  Now it is time for you to determine the marketing objectives. Since it is a one year plan you can determine the marketing objectives you are planning to achieve. Make it SMART. Quantify with numbers. Make a check list of the objectives to monitor the progress. Your objective could be in any format. It could be market share objective, new product development objective, market expansion objective, supplier integration objectives, etc.

After objectives, you should see how you are planning to achieve these objectives, where identification of strategies comes into play. Do not forget about STP; segment your customers, so it will simplify your marketing, use proper targeting strategy, whether you are going with differentiated, undifferentiated or concentrated. It all depends on your products and the market. Then clearly determine the position strategy for the business. What type of positioning are you planning to aim for through the marketing activities? Example: Volvo positioned themselves as a car for safety after years of marketing activities. When it comes to BMW, it is performance that comes to our mind.

After determining the STP strategy accordingly you could do a model analysis for the business. It could be Ansoff matrix / GE matrix / portfoli matrix. If your company has different portfolios of products you can go for GE matrix formulation or a basic Ansoff is fine.

After formulation of strategy it is time to think of ways to implement your strategies.  Think about 7ps in business.  Set standards for your products in terms of quality and performance. Determine the price of your products carefully; decide the pricing method you are planning to follow. Make sure you consider all aspects when deciding the price. Also set your distribution strategy, how you are going to reach the customers. Whether it will be through the distributors / intermediaries or whether you are planning to do direct distribution. Make sure you analyze the pros and cons of the distribution strategy you propose. The next very important aspect is the marketing communication part. You should see how your marketing message will reach the customers. Depending on your marketing communication budget set the target / set the determined activities and set the budget accordingly. Make sure you use a simple and effective strategy if you are a small business owner. If it is a big company there are no restrictions at all. Mention with time frame and budget, draw a Gantt chart with task list. It will keep a clear road during implementation. Also mention the evaluation mechanism. According to the distribution plan finish the sales plan as well with the support of your sales manager.

The last step would be controlling the plan while implementing. When your budget is approved with some amendments you might start the plan. Make sure you have the final marketing plan document with you and then make sure all the members in the team are aware about it. Set the control mechanism and monitor the progress of the plan from time to time.

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People might wonder what Ambush Marketing is! Wikipedia defines Ambush Marketing as “a marketing strategy wherein the advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee.”  From a theoretical perspective, Ambush Marketing refers to a company’s attempt to capitalize on the goodwill, reputation, and popularity of a particular event by creating an association with it, without the authorization or consent of the necessary parties.

So how this Ambush Marketing was born? During the year 1984, when the International Olympic committee decided to call for official sponsors for the event, it is believed that it brought a path way to Ambush Marketing. The first victims for Ambush Marketing were Fuji and Kodak. Actually Fuji bought the official sponsorship authority during the 1984 event, but Kodak brought the larger broadcast advertising space during the event. Though Fuji was the official sponsor for this event, the millions of viewers thought that Kodak was the official sponsors for the 1984 Olympics. In simple when a brand decides to be a sponsor for an event, at the same time if the similar rivals purchase more ad slots and go for large scale promotion around the event place than the sponsor, it is known as Ambush Marketing. It’s all about being vigilant about what’s going around as and capitalizing on them on the right time.

It is interesting to recap some of the global events where even big brands competed with Ambush Marketing strategy. During 1992 Winter Olympic though VISA was an official sponsor, American Express advertised saying “You no need a VISA to visit Spain”. Though there are several old examples for Ambush Marketing I thought of sharing the news ones, and pretty interesting ones.

During 2010 FIFA world cup beer official sponsor was Budweiser, however during a match between Denmark and Holland 36 girls who were wearing orange dresses removed from the stadium, where 3 were held by police for questioning. Though the Holland soccer fans normally wear orange dresses, FIFA organizers suspected the activity as an Ambush Marketing activity by another beer company, Bavarian, a direct competitor for Budweiser, the sponsor. See the video clip below to know more about this incident.

Also during 2012 Olympics, Beat Electronics grabs the attention of people, when it gave its head phones to the players to wear. Rather than the attention gave for the main sponsors, Beat Electronics got the maximum publicity without paying a single dollar for advertising. I came across this interesting cartoon with regarding to this particular incident.

How Ambush Marketing could happen?

1-     During an event when similar competitors advertise in mass scale than the event sponsors.

2-     In the event place when competitors try to grab the attention of people using marketing tactics such as rallies, hoardings, bill boards, drink vans and other promotional modes.

3-     During an event when the event participant endorse a brand which is not the main sponsor of the event. Example during 1996 Olympics when Micheal Jordan posed with Nike shoes and metals though Adidas was the official sponsor of the event.

4-     During an event if the fans / participants start acting in favour of another brand which is actually not an event sponsor. Example Bavarian beer girls.

So the question could be, is it an ethical marketing practice? What I would say is yes unless if the organizing party or the host accepts the ads and promotional activities by a rival after mentioning the exclusive sponsorship / promotional partner. Also if there is no trademark breach it cannot be considered illegal. The only way to prevent Ambush Marketing is to define clear sponsorship details. Exclusive sponsorship would do it, and same rival firm should not be allowed to advertise / do promotions in a major event. But a country like Sri Lanka, the market is small compared to other countries. If one firm is sponsoring an event the similar rivals could be allowed for advertising but in a limited manner is acceptable.

In Sri Lanka there are many brands who can’t sponsor for major events like other big multinational brands, but it’s still worth to think the smartest way of capturing the attention of audience at no cost or low cost. For them Ambush Marketing is a perfect way to out beat the top competition. But before you think about doing Ambush Marketing the firms should know the legal implications in Sri Lanka. Apart from that it should be ready to take over criticism from the marketing world. But still Nike leads the crew of Ambush Marketing, it is because what they did was Ambush Marketing, but they did it in a smart way.

In a nutshell what helps you to overcome any criticisms and legal implication is being smart and doing something very smart.

As I have already mentioned if the ground work to evaluate the financial feasibility of an investment in a business is perfectly done and the analysis ensures that it is a viable investment opportunity then the investor can invest in the given opportunity without any fear of loosing his / her money.

There is an investment opportunity available with all the required ground works done. The financial plus market feasibility of the project has been comprehensively done and it ensures the potential of earning high return by the investment. This particular project belongs to an online consumer service category which is high in demand in the contemporary Sri Lankan society.

If you are an investor who would like to take invest and  where high return is ensured please contact Mr. Kapila Wimalaratne email kapilaww at gmail.com  or call 0015622340843 .