At last week’s Hospitality Marketing Summit Conferencein Denver, Colorado, I presented several sessions on Google Analytics for Innkeepers. The first of those sessions, entitled Follow the Money, gave an overview of how Google Analytics can help innkeepers evaluate their paid marketing to see if they are getting good value for the investment, that is, to see if they get an adequate return on investment. The slideshow is below. Beneath it is a description based on my HMS Conference session.

“Please don’t look at my website,” said no B&B owner, ever. But if you take a stroll through the garden of delights found by searching on B&B’s, you wouldn’t think that was the case. Some look like they were built by the neighbor’s child back in the 1990’s, while others have been updated, but have only made it to the 2005 era. But looking around you will find that there appears to be a correlation between the most successful properties and the professionalism and quality of their websites.

It’s the classic conundrum, isn’t it? We know we need to market to raise awareness of our brand, or to simply be found by those searching for lodging in your area. But resources are very limited, so you need to get the maximum return on limited marketing resources. Time and Money Then there is social media. You have a Facebook page and you post frequently and interact with guests (if anyone ever responds!

Most innkeepers seem to have an awareness of a need to present a consistent marketing message. They want their website to appear uniform from page-to-page. They want their blog to look like their website – even if it is hosted separately. They want the style of their newsletters or their booking engine to match the style of their website. Going a bit farther, maybe they even want their Facebook page, Google+ page, or other social media pages to resemble their website theme.

Is there any new information on the decline in traffic from directory BBOnline? We’ve been interested to see if traffic from BBOnline has improved over time, since the huge decline observed beginning in November, 2011, and lasting about a year. If you haven’t see the earlier discussion of the lost traffic (up to 90% drops, in some cases), just click on the “Directories” tab at the top of the page.

Last week’s post, examining whether or not BBOnline’s staff had been able to rectify the huge drop in referrals and bookings after their site redesign a year ago, observed that more information was desirable, reflecting the results of other properties. In the comments, Sarahprovided some information, indicating a similar drop of 61.4% in traffic, noting that others had increased, while some had dropped slightly, but BBOnline’s drop was the most significant – by a lot!

Transitioning from our recent posts on measuring social impact with Google Analytics and Using Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnels, we presented a webinar for the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) discussing ways to measure the results of using social media, and tools to help make the best use of your time. The presentation is below, with general commentary (not a transcript) below. What is our objective? Without defining a goal for social media, we can’t really tell if it is of any value.

Recently we posted about a very significant decline in the amount of referral traffic we had observed coming from BBOnline.com. Several innkeepers posted in the comments, some noticing similar drops. Some, like ours, have been enormous, while others have been “only” 40-50% (during a time when referrals from most other directories have increased!). We have not heard from anyone who has observed anything other than a significant drop in referrals.

Following our recent posts on Google Analytics, How to Evaluate Your Paid Listings in Five Minutes or Less, and How to Take Charge of Your Online Marketing Statistics, we presented two sessions on Google Analytics at the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) annual conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, in January, 2012. The slide deck below is from the first session, Google Analytics – Beyond the Basics. Our other presentation, Measuring the Success of Your Online Marketing, was posted yesterday.

As a follow-up to our recent posts on Evaluating Your Paid Listings and Taking Charge of Your Online Marketing, we presented two sessions on Google Analytics at the recent Innkeeping Conference for the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) at its annual conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. At the conference, time made it necessary to hurry through some of the slides, near the end of the presentations, in particular. As a result, we are posting the slide decks here, so you can revisit them and copy down any necessary information, links, etc.

Segment Everything Google Analytics ninja Avinash Kaushikpoints out the value of Advanced Segments, saying, “Segment everything.” This is great advice, and it is the approach we will use to clarify the results we see from our directories or paid listings. Here are the steps to follow: Log in to your Google Analytics account, and click the Advanced Segments button near the top left. To the bottom right of the new section which appears is a button reading “New Custom Segment” – click it.

This week’s post is a guest post from David Mitchell. David is the founder of webmarketing4hoteliers.com– a website dedicated to B&B owners and Inn Keepers serious about ‘getting more beds filled’ and ‘making more money’ through effective marketing on the internet. For those seeking ‘how to’ information on QR codes, you may want to look at our article on getting started with QR codes. B&B marketing can be quite a challenge as the competition is always tight no matter what star rating a B&B has or in what country it’s located.

Closing the circle in this series on the process guests use to book lodging properties is what WIHP Hotel Marketingcalls the Second Moment of Truth – the arrival of the guest at your property. We have already discussed the four-step booking decision process, how the guest becomes aware of your property (the Discovery or Stimulus step), how guests make the decision to visit your website (the Zero Moment of Truth), and the process of deciding to book with your property (the First Moment of Truth).

This is the fourth article in a series examining how B&B guests proceed through the decision process for booking a stay. Based largely on research from WIHP Hotel Marketing, the first article describes the four-step process for booking, the second describes how a guest discovers your property, and the third examines how to provide information to get the guest to your website. This article discusses how to get the conversion – to capture the booking – once the guest has come to your site.

Our first post in this seriesprovided an overview of how guests find and book a lodging property, based on research from WIHP, a hotel marketing agency. The four step process assumes the future guest has selected a destination area and then proceeds through the steps of (1) discovery of a particular property, (2) seeking information about the property to see if it is a good prospect (the zero moment of truth), (3) the guest on your website (the first moment of truth), and (4) the guest at your property (the second moment of truth).

In our previous post we introduced the four step process (identified by WIHPa hotel marketing firm) of a guest finding, and staying at, a lodging property, then feeding the beginning of the cycle again by telling others. In this, and the next few posts, we will break down the components and see how you can more effectively help future guests find you. As a refresher, the four steps are Discovery or stimulus (where the guest learns of a hotel and gets interested) Zero moment of truth (the guest begins to research the hotel) First moment of truth (guest finds the hotel website and begins to determine if this is what they want), and Second moment of truth (guest arrives at the property and is either happy or disappointed – which will sometimes result in that reaction being shared) We’re going to focus on the first topic in this article: How does a prospective guest discover your lodging property?

A few of you may have noticed that we seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus over the past several weeks. In fact, our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast had a very busy summer, and there wasn’t much time for About the Inn writing. Now that our busy summer and fall foliage seasons are behind us, it appears things will be back on a more even keel, and we hope to be able to publish more regularly.

The basics of creating and using QR codes One reason most articles don’t really explain how to make your own QR codes, and how to use them, is that it is a very easy process. There, no need to feel intimidated! Try it yourself if you have a smartphone or other mobile device with a camera. Just activate your Bar Code Reader app, and point your device at the QR code in this article, and see what happens (you may have to download a Barcode Reader app, if you don’t already have one).

Groupon, Living Social, Woot, SmartBargains, Name Your Own Price, Cheap Fares, Last Minute Deals, Bargain Travel, and the list goes on and on. Whether we like it or not, we’re all influenced by things around us, and the loudest voices in marketing at the moment are those screaming “Get [whatever you want] at a discount.” Value vs. Price? We came across an article a few days ago that really brought this home.

In recent weeks others in the travel and tourism industry have been highly critical of review site TripAdvisor for various shortcomings in its administration of its online lodging reviews (and other reviews, as well). The concerns expressed are world-wide, not simply the complaints of a few, in a small part of the world. This post is an attempt to gather and synthesize the concerns, to try to identify the core problem, and to suggest improvement.

Not so many years ago, as the use of the internet technologies was maturing, there was a lot of talk about the leveling of the playing field, allowing the smaller businesses to compete with the larger. You don’t hear so much about that, these days. As businesses of all sizes have turned to internet marketing and social media to build relationships with customers and potential customers, the scales have reverted to the same imbalance as in traditional marketing.

Amid all the frenzy of keeping up with Twitter and Facebook and now Foursquare and YouTube and Blogging and sorting out which directories to list on, and responding to the never-ending flow of emails from directories telling you to hurry and post your latest specials for this month, your latest photos, your latest hot deals, your best recipes and oh, yes, did you remember that you actually have a business to run?

Today Google announced its new “Google Places” program– which is a new name, and several new aspects, for its Local Business Center. While many things will remain the same, there are some important new additions being rolled out gradually. These could have quite an impact on businesses – especially smaller lodging properties. A few weeks ago Google signaled the beginning of this change, by calling the Local Business Center listing a Place Page.

Have you ever considered creating audio podcasts (voice readings of your blog) for your blog? I have, but the time it would take to record and post them kept me from preparing them myself, and I wasn’t willing to incur the cost of a commercial podcasting service. Then I saw a post by one of my favorite SEO experts, Ann Smarty, on using the free service from Odiogofor podcasting. The voice is quite natural sounding, for the most part.

As innkeepers we receive solicitations from online directories almost daily. In addition, there are many well-known directories that we feel we should (perhaps we must) be on. It seems that everyone wants your money, yet there are no guarantees of any return, just a lot of salesmanship about how important it is that you be on this directory. Which should you be on? Which can you ignore? Is it a question of cost, alone?