a. Reflect critically on the value and relevance of e-marketing relative to strategic marketing plans.
b.Evaluate technological, legal and ethical aspects of the eBusiness marketing environment.
c.Critically assess how the internet influences consumer behaviour and make recommendations on how hotels can use this information to market.
d.Analyze online distribution and supply dynamics, and identify opportunities or threats for hotel organizations.
e.Generate and justify e-marketing solutions, concepts, and ideas through case analysis.
A report is required that you analyse the relationship between eMarketing initiatives at a hotel and factors that are related to broader business and marketing strategies / models.
Give a brief overview of the hotel you have chosen and the industry that it operates in.
The body of the report should address the following questions.
i) Evaluate eMarketing initiatives that would compliment your choice of critical success indicators?
iii. Analyze the impact of your selections for eMarketing activities on each critical success factor.
iii. Criticism: What could make an ineffective or flawed eMarketing campaign undermine your key success factors?
If one of your key success factors was product quality, could a poor eMarketing strategy lead to over-runs in costs and adversely impact customer buying decisions?
Answer:
Warwick Hotels and Resorts is a global hotel company.
WRH owns over 50 hotels across 25 countries in the United States, Europe Asia and Africa.
WRH was established after the 1980 purchase of Warwick New York Hotel which was established in 1925 (Warwick Hotels 2017).
To survive in a competitive environment, the company must be successful in key business areas.
The changing nature of global competition and high customer expectations have led to changes in the critical elements that influence the hotel industry.
Despite the success story of WRH the hotel needs to invest in different marketing strategies to ensure it maintains product quality, managerial competence, and guest satisfaction.
E-Marketing efforts persuade potential and existing customers to take the desired action, such as buying a product or sharing a link on social networks.
This paper examines the impact of e-marketing on key success factors, such as guest satisfaction and product quality and managerial competencies at Warwick Hotels and Resorts.
E-Marketing Strategies That Complement Critical Success Factors
Flexibility is key to success in the hotel industry. Managers must have the ability to adjust to different customer expectations.
A hotel with rigid policies will not be able to resolve customer issues and therefore lose customer loyalty.
The flexibility of a hotel’s policies allows its manager to make exceptions in order to resolve problems and build a good reputation.
Data driven marketing initiatives are enabling the hotel industry to be more flexible in their managerial functions.
Data driven marketing creates micro segments which allow managers to target customers and fulfill their individual needs.
The hotels can turn first-time customers into long-term high-value customers by using data driven marketing.
Managers are able to build personal relationships with their customers using data driven marketing.
Managers can build authentic relationships with customers through data because the hotel marketers have access to metadata that includes information about the visitors to their hotel (Phillips Wren & Hoskisson 2015).
Hotel managers can nurture their prospects by providing timely web content, emails and packages that cater to their needs.
Data driven marketing allows managers to determine what packages and solutions are most successful, as well measuring the success and failure of their efforts.
Managers are able to identify patterns in customer research, such as how they book hotels or other travel services.
Managers use this information to devise marketing strategies and allocate marketing funds for their hotel’s other channels.
Managers can use forecasts from data driven marketing initiatives against local weather and holidays to price hotels packages and services. They also accurately predict demand and ensure that the hotel is able to operate within any given situation (Yang, Pan & Song (2014)).
Data-driven marketing optimizes the buying cycle because it cuts down on conversion time, guarantees consistent hotel business, and ensures low customer turnover.
Satisfaction of the Guest
Customer satisfaction extends beyond customer service. Employee involvement is key.
If a hotel is focused on customer service, it increases the chances that its staff will offer exceptional customer service.
Because customers don’t care about proper manners, they are more interested in memorable experiences than being impressed by etiquette.
Because they are the company’s lifeblood, the customer is always right in the hotel industry.
The hotel can create and keep new customers, as well as refer future clients, by providing excellent customer service.
A hotel’s customer service team must be friendly and helpful. They are the ones that customers want to feel comfortable and relaxed.
Excellent service quality and delivery make clients feel that the business cares more about them than it does making sales.
Twitter and Facebook are no longer used for peer to peer communication. They now allow businesses to connect with their clients.
Social media marketing improves the reach, speed, and effectiveness of the hotel’s message. It also helps businesses identify new markets as well as their preferences.
The hotel can measure the success and impact of promotional campaigns through social media. This improves customer service.
Social media allows customers to share their thoughts and opinions about their experiences.
Hotels engage with their customers to improve their product offerings and ensure they are satisfied for the long and short term.
Hotel reputation management can be done through social media.
If a couple discovers a weekend getaway at an upscale hotel via social media, they are more likely to complain on the same platform.
The hotel will respond quickly to customers’ complaints, creating a personal, high-speed relationship with its customers.
Because customers that leave positive comments on social networks are part of the hotel’s marketing team, they help ease the business’s marketing burden. This allows the hotel to spend more time on product development.
Product Quality
The hotel industry is learning how it can stay relevant in today’s technological age and offer high-quality product packages to customers.
In order to remain competitive in this dynamic industry, hotels must find ways to improve their product quality through content marketing and display advertisements.
Content marketing is a great tool to attract customers and distinguish the hotel from others that offer similar products.
Many consumers prefer to learn more about the hotel via content, and then search for the products the hotel has to offer.
Content marketing helps to reduce the company’s dependency on third party networks. This saves time, money, and resources for the hotel (Holliman & Rowley (2014)).
Video and creative blogs can be used to entice customers to visit the hotel website and get information relevant to their needs, such as location and prices.
Display advertising involves placing advertisements on other websites than the hotel’s site.
The hotel uses cookies to create the ad based on their demographics, behavior, and interests.
This allows the hotel’s targeted audience to be reached.
The hotel’s rich imagery and media captures the attention of the public and builds awareness of its products.
Display advertising builds brand awareness, which encourages the audience to become interested in purchasing the hotel’s products.
Display ads can also be seen by many people, which means that they have a wide reach.
Display advertising is different from search marketing. It allows hotels to target certain demographics with remarketing or topic and interest targeting (Liu & Mattila 2017).
Hoteliers who want to increase their occupancy and gain visibility in a specific demographic need social influencer marketing.
Because influencers can reach audiences that hotels might not have been able reach, it is important for hotels to establish relationships with them.
Influencers post their opinions about the hotel’s products to social media platforms. These influencers encourage their followers and friends to share their experiences at the hotel.
Influencers influence the audience’s purchasing decisions by sharing valuable, authentic, and reliable content.
Social influencer marketing is more effective than traditional advertising because 92 per cent of consumers trust online reviews and recommendations from bloggers to make their buying decisions.
Social influencers help to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to the website via their blogs and social media.
Brand loyalty is increased by social influencer marketing. Customers who base their buying decisions on the opinions of social influencers have high retention rates (Viglia Minazzi & Buhalis (2016)).
Good reviews on blogs, social media and other platforms help hotels to overcome negative customer feedback and increase their occupancy.
E-Marketing Initiatives
There are many factors that influence the selection of an emarketing initiative.
If a company is looking to improve its managerial capabilities, it will select data-driven marketing strategies that are based on its ability and capacity to identify and manage resources of data and its ability to create data analytic models for forecasting results. It also needs the right team of managers to be able to make the best decisions for its business.
Hotel managers must develop a clear strategy about how to use data and analytics to enhance their competitive advantage. They also need to be able to obtain the right technology to run data driven programs.
Managers must choose the best data by finding creative sources and obtaining IT support. They should also create the data sourcing models that optimize business outcomes.
Managers should focus on sourcing data and building data analytic systems that are flexible enough to support their managerial functions, rather than making massive organizational changes (Fan, Lau, & Zhao (2015)).
The key to measuring guest satisfaction is social media marketing.
When a hotel decides which social media platforms to use in their marketing efforts, it is essential to determine the functionality required by the hotel.
Second, the hotel does market research to find the best social media options.
In choosing social media tools for its marketing strategy, the hotel should select social media forms that are likely be around for a long time and discuss potential risks with management and financial team.
A test run of the social media is conducted by the business to establish its worth.
This is an essential step in selecting the right social media platform.
The business must determine the needs of its users and involve potential customers in the evaluation and testing process.
Social media should be chosen so that visitors can get prompt responses to their queries and requests.
It is hard to market content because it directly correlates with the quality of the business’ products.
Businesses often have difficulty deciding where to place their content and how to structure them.
When a business can identify its target audience, create content that is relevant and post it on websites where they are most likely to be found, creating content makes content easier.
It is crucial that an international hotel, such as Warwick has the ability to decide whether it hires a team or outsources the service to marketing agencies, depending on its marketing budget.
Also, it is important that the business focuses on creating content for its target market.
Content creators should consider the company’s online presence (Holliman & Rowley (2014)).
A majority of hotels prefer to have a professional but friendly online presence on all its platforms.
Influencer marketing is a major factor in product quality.
Influencer marketing is growing fast online, so it’s important for hotels that they choose the right YouTube or Instagram digital celebrities.
A business should consider the compensation and return on influencer marketing before hiring an influencer to help them market their campaign.
For international, upscale hotels like Warwick, influencer marketing is crucial because it helps them build brand identity through their multi-channel marketing.
An influencer should be a match for a luxury hotel brand. They will love the idea of working with the brand and their content will be authentic.
The hotel uses the hash tag approach to find the best prospects and the most popular ones.
An example of this is an influencer who has a large Instagram audience and uses #luxuryhotel. This person would make a great fit for a five-star hotel.
Despite the large number of followers, the influencer must have high engagement levels with them. Businesses would prefer to have a small active following than a large one. This is because awareness and action drive the former while the latter drives product awareness. (Zhang Moe & Schweidel 2017).
After the hotel has selected an influencer to represent it, it will need to reach an agreement about whether to pay him or her via complimentary stays or visits.
Consecutions of selecting ineffective E-Marketing Strategies
Data is a valuable resource for marketing and management.
An organization with a weak managerial team is at risk of making poor business decisions or misinterpreting data.
However, managers who can use data-driven insights to generate results or other possible outcomes are more creative.
A lack of understanding about the motivations of customers, and a focus on the bottom line with these data results could lead to a brand’s identity being eroded.
Obsession with data leads to metric tunnel-vision, which disregards customer engagement.
In a personal industry like the hotel business, it’s easier to see revenue growth if it encourages creativity rather than making decisions based on numbers generated.
Managers should use data analytic tools to ensure optimization and creative marketing solutions that tap in to the culture and emotions of customers and deliver serious returns in the hotel sector.
Managers should not be forced to make decisions based solely on data, but they should be able to use forecasts to help them make better decisions.
A brand that chooses a social influencer based only on how many followers they have will end up wasting its time and resources. Engagement is not always a function of size.
The hotel industry is more about quality than quantity.
An inactive following means a high reach, but low engagement.
Luxury hotels and niche businesses should choose an influencer with a small, buzzing following who is likely to have high engagement.
Second, influencers are becoming less passionate about brands and becoming more driven.
These influencers are less authentic in their messages and content, and they don’t feel committed to the brand.
According to Naumann, McWilliams & Lincoln (2015), this influencer’s following is less interested in the brand.
It is crucial for businesses to have influencers who are aligned with the brand’s vision.
An influencer marketer who is not the right fit for your business can undermine its quality and product offerings.
If you are trying to sell products at high volumes, display advertising is ineffective.
Although display ads are perceived to be more valuable than search ads, they also have a lower click-through rate than search ads.
A lower click through rate means fewer subscriptions to the company website.
People who don’t view an ad for a product they aren’t interested are less likely to purchase it.
Display advertising should be limited to long-term sales (Kireyev. Pauwels. Gupta 2016).
Even more, display advertising may not be effective when viewers have blocked tools that reduce the amount of attention they give to the advertisement.
Poor content marketing results in negative impressions about the brand.
Bad grammar, hard-to-read content, and lack of attention give the impression that the brand has lost trust, is complex, and is unprofessional.
Second, search engines don’t rank poor quality content because it isn’t unique to readers (Lee Hosanagar and Nair 2014).
It is important for businesses to prioritize quality over quantity. They should create easy-to-read content that answers the reader’s questions.
Social media marketing strategies that provide mass responses to customers are ineffective because customers value personalized responses and not generalized responses.
Peer-to-peer networks are more likely to provide prompt answers. Customers also expect prompt replies.
The company’s image is damaged if it delays responding to customers.
Social media outbursts can be redirected to national television or newspapers by companies, which reduces the effectiveness of the channel.
It is important that customers are able to resolve issues and manage their situations through social media platforms (Zhu & Chen (2015)).
Customers feel ignored if they are not given prompt, polite, or clear responses. This results in higher customer turnover and more business for rivals.
The business must choose and implement marketing programs that achieve the key success factors required to thrive in a competitive environment.
If a business chooses an ineffective strategy, it’s more likely that it will achieve the opposite of what was expected, such as poor product quality and dissatisfaction from guests, or poor managerial decisions.
The internet’s access to millions of people makes it possible for businesses to market their services online.
In addition, emarketing initiatives have a continuity impact, which means that marketing functions continue to promote a company’s products and services even months after a campaign is finished.
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