E-Marketing Essay Enhances Warwick Hotels' Success Factors.

a.Critically reflect upon the value of e-marketing in relation to strategic marketing plans.

b.Evaluate the technological, legal, ethical, global and social networking aspects of the e-business marketing environment.

c.Critically review how the internet impacts consumer behaviour, and make judgements on how a hotel can use this information for marketing purposes.

d.Analyse online distribution and supply dynamics and identify opportunities and threats for hotel organisations.

e.Generate and justify e-marketing ideas, concepts and solutions, through case analysis.

You are to complete a report that will analyse the relationship between a hotel’s eMarketing initiatives and factors that relate to broader marketing and business strategies / models. In your report, provide a brief overview of your chosen hotel and the industry in general that it operates within. The following questions should be addressed in the body of the report:

i)Evaluate e-Marketing initiatives that would complement your choice of critical success factors?

ii)Analyse how your selection of eMarketing initiatives vary from one critical success factor to the next?

iii)Critique how might the wrong or ineffective eMarketing initiative(s) undermine your selection of critical success factors? For example, if one of your critical success factors was product quality would selecting an unsuitable eMarketing initiative lead to cost over-runs and impact customer purchasing requirements?

E-marketing initiatives that complement critical success factors

Warwick Hotels and Resorts (WRH) operates in a global hospitality industry. WRH has over 50 hotels in 25 countries in United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa. WRH was founded in 1980 after the purchase of Warwick New York Hotel that was established in 1926 (Warwick Hotels, 2017). Critical success factors are business areas in which the company must excel in order to survive in a competitive marketplace. Recently, there have been changes in the critical factors that affect the hotel industry because of the increasing high customer expectations and global competition. Despite the success of WRH, the hotel should invest in various marketing strategies to ensure that it maintains product quality and managerial competencies, and ensure guest satisfaction. E- Marketing initiatives persuade existing and potential customers take a desired action such as buying a product, sharing a link on social media platforms, or subscribing to a company’s website (Shen, 2015.) This paper seeks to examine how e-marketing initiatives would improve critical success factors such as guest satisfaction, product quality, and managerial competencies in Warwick Hotels and Resorts.

Flexibility is an important factor in the success of hotel industry because managers ought to have authority to make decisions that accommodate the varying expectations of different customers. When a hotel has inflexible policies, a manager is not able to make decisions that fully solve a customer’s problems and consequently the hotel loses customer loyalty. A hotel with flexible policies allows the manager to make exceptions when necessary to fix situations and earn the hotel a good reputation.

The hotel industry is becoming more flexible in managerial functions through utilization of data driven marketing initiatives. Data driven marketing creates micro segments that enable managers to target customers and meet their unique needs. In doing so, the hotels convert the first time customers into high-value, long-term customers at a high rate. Data driven marketing allows the managers to have very personalized relationships with the customers. Data allows managers to engage in authentic relationships with the customers because metadata surrounding the hotel visitors helps the hotel marketers to create very fine segments (Phillips-Wren & Hoskisson, 2015). When a hotel creates flexible policies that include the needs of the various segments, the hotel is able to nurture its prospects through timely web content and emails that boost customer conversion ratios by creating hotel packages that meet these needs.

Data driven marketing also guides managers to establish what solutions and packages are successful as well as helps them to measure the extent of success or failure. A manager is able to discover customer patterns in how they research for services such as booking hotels and travel services. The manager leverages this information to create marketing strategies for the different micro-segments as well as allocate an optimal marketing spend for the hotel’s other marketing channels. Managers leverage forecast from a data driven marketing initiatives against local events, weather, and holidays to price hotel packages and services and accurately predict demand and ensure that the hotel operates within any given scenario (Yang, Pan & Song, 2014). Therefore, data driven marketing optimizes the buying process because it reduces time taken for conversion of potential customers, ensure low customer turnover and high value deals for the hotel, and guarantee consistency of the hotel business.

Managerial Competencies

Customer satisfaction goes beyond customer service and includes employee involvement. A hotel that concentrates in customer service increases the chance that its workers offer excellent customer services. In the hotel industry, customers are no longer impressed by proper etiquette because most customers are only seeking good but memorable experiences.  In the hotel industry, the customer is always right because they are the lifeblood of the business. Excellent service delivery ensures that the hotel creates and retains new customers as well as develops referrals for future clients.  Good customer service is particularly important in the hotel industry because customers look forward to the employees helping them to have a comfortable and relaxed stay as possible (Jani & Han, 2014). Great service quality and delivery makes clients feel that the business cares about their needs more than making sales and its benefits exceed advertising efforts.

Use of Twitter and Facebook has evolved from peer to peer communication to platforms that allow businesses to engage with their clients. Social media marketing boosts the reach and speed of the hotel’s message and helps the business to identify new markets and their preferences. Social media marketing improves customer relationship management because the hotel is able to measure the success of promotional campaigns quantitatively. Through social media, customers give feedback on their likes and dislikes of their experiences. Hotels readily engage with their customers and update their product offerings to ensure that the customers are satisfied in both the short and long term. Social media also helps hotels to conduct reputation management. For instance, a customer who learnt of a weekend getaway for couples in an upscale hotel through social media is likely to make complaints through the same platform. The hotel will promptly address its clients’ problems thus creating a personal and high-speed relationship between the hotel and its customers. Customers that post good comments on social media are part of the hotel’s in-built marketing team because they ease the marketing burden of the business thus giving the hotel ample time and resources to concentrate on improving its product portfolio.

The hotel industry is learning how to stay relevant in the technological age while at the same time ensuring high product packages to its customers. Hotels grow and remain competitive in the dynamic industry by finding ways such as content marketing and display advertising initiatives that improve the quality of their products. Content marketing is a great way to generate interest in the hotel and differentiate the hotel from its rivals that offer similar products. Most of the consumers prefer to learn about the hotel through content and then seek the products that the hotel offers. Content marketing reduces the company’s dependence on third party networks, which saves time and resources for the hotel (Holliman & Rowley, 2014). Creative blogs and videos entice potential customers to visit the hotel’s website to obtain information that is relevant to them such as prices and location of the hotel.

Display advertising initiatives entail placing ads on other websites other that the hotel’s website. The hotel places a banner, image, or video on a website and uses cookies to structure the ad with regard to their behavior, interests, and demographics. This allows the hotel to reach its targeted audience. Use of rich imagery and media of the hotel captures the audience’s attention and build awareness of the products. Building brand awareness through display advertising creates an initial interest in the audience to purchase the hotel’s products. In addition, display ads have a high reach because many people see the ads. Unlike search marketing, display advertising allows the hotels to target demographics through remarketing and topic and interest targeting (Liu & Mattila, 2017).

Guest Satisfaction

Social influencer marketing is important for hotels that want to increase their occupancy or gain visibility within a certain demographic. Hotels establish relationships with influencers because they are able to reach an audience that the hotel might not be able to reach initially. Influencers share their opinions regarding the hotel’s products on social media platforms, which encourage their followers to share their experiences in the hotel. Influencer change the audience’s buying process through user generated content that is valuable, authentic and with a reliable point of view. Social influencer marketing is effective because 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from bloggers and online reviews from customers over advertisements that come from brands. Social influencers create brand awareness by introducing the hotel to their audience and generate online traffic to the website by adding a link on their social media or blogs. Social influencer marketing increases brand loyalty because customers who make a buying decision based on opinions of social influencers have a high retention rate (Viglia, Minazzi, & Buhalis, 2016). In addition, good reviews on blogs and social media help the hotel to reverse negative customer feedback and consequently increase occupancy of the hotel.

Selection of an e-marketing initiative varies from one critical success factor to another. For instance a company that seeks to improve managerial competencies selects data driven marketing strategies based on its ability to identify and manage sources of data, its capacity to build data analytic models for forecasting outcomes, and the right team of managers to capable of making the best decisions for the business.  Therefore a hotel must have a clear strategy on how to use analytics and data to increase its competitive advantage in the industry as well as obtain the right technology to deploy data driven programs. Managers should choose the right data by sourcing the data creatively and obtaining the required IT support, and build the data sourcing models that optimize predicted business outcomes. Instead of undertaking massive organizational changes, managers should concentrate on targeted efforts to source data and build data analytic models that maintain flexibility of managerial functions (Fan, Lau & Zhao, 2015).

Social media marketing is key to measuring the level of guest satisfaction. When a hotel is making the decision on which social media tools to use in its marketing efforts, it is important to identify the functionality that the hotel requires. Secondly, the hotel conducts a research to identify the social media solutions available in the market. in selection of social media tools to use in its marketing strategy, the hotel should choose social media forms that are likely to be around for a while and evaluate possible risks with management and financial teams. The business conducts a test trial of the social media with the aim of establishing the its worth. This is an important step in selection of a social media platform because the cost of making a wrong decision is much higher than avoiding a bad decision. Most importantly, the business must establish the needs of the users by involving potential customers in evaluation and testing process (Kumar, Bhaskaran, Mirchandani & Shah, 2013). The choice of social media must be that which allows the hotel to respond promptly to the visitor’s requests and enquiries.

Product Quality

In content marketing is difficult because the content directly relates to the quality of products offered by the business. Most businesses have difficulties in making decisions on where to post its content and how to structure it. Content is made easier when the business identifies the audience and creates content of interest and posts it in sites where the target audience is likely to reach the information. For an international hotel such as Warwick, it is important to make the decision on whether to hire a team of content creators or outsource the service from marketing agencies depending on the marketing budget. It is also important for the business to concentrate on creating content for the target market. Content creators must take into account the company’s online presence (Holliman & Rowley, 2014). Most hotels prefer to have a friendly yet professional online presence across all its online platforms.

Product quality is also dependent on the choice of the influencer marketer. Influencer marketing is the fastest growing online customer acquisition methods, which makes it important for hotels to select the right YouTube and Instagram digital celebrities. Before selecting an influencer for a marketing campaign, the business should take into account his or her compensation and returns from influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is important for international, upscale hotels such as Warwick because influencer help them to build identity through their solid multi-channel marketing. A luxury hotel brand should choose an influencer that is a good match with the business because they are excited by the idea of partnership with the hotel and the content they use to promote the brand is authentic. When selecting the influencer, the hotel looks for most suitable prospects and their popularity through the hash tag approach. For example, an individual with a large following on Instagram and uses #luxuryhotel is an excellent match for a five star hotel. Despite having  a large following, the influencer should have high engagement levels with his following because most businesses would rather have a small active audience than a large inactive audience because the former drives awareness and action while the latter drives only product awareness (Zhang, Moe & Schweidel, 2017). After the hotel selects an influencer, it must then come to an agreement on whether to compensate him or her through either complementary stays and visits or monetary arrangements.

Data plays an important role in managerial competencies because it  is a valuable marketing resource. However, a company with a managerial team that lacks the ability to utilize analytic tools runs the risk of misinterpreting data and making wrong business decisions. On the other hand, managers who have mastered the use of data driven insights  to develop results or possible outcome often lead to lack of creativity.  Lack of understanding of what motivates the customers and focus on a good bottom line through these data results might ultimately diminish the brand’s identity. Obsession with data results in metric tunnel vision, which ignores consumer engagement. In a personal and intimate industry such as the hotel industry, it is easier for the business to see revenue growth when it fosters creativity than when it makes decision from numbers generated (Krush, Sohi & Saini, 2015). Therefore, it is important for managers to incorporate data analytic tools ensure optimization with creative marketing solutions that tap into the customers culture and emotions and have serious returns in the hotel industry.  A data driven marketing strategy should not lead the decision making process, but instead make it easier for managers to make creative decision based on forecasts.

When a brand chooses a social media influencer based solely on the number of followers, they end up wasting their time and resources because the size of the following does not necessarily translate to engagement. In the hotel, industry quality exceeds quantity. Therefore, a large inactive following translates to a wide reach but low engagement. It is better for niche businesses such as luxury hotels to select an influencer with a small and buzzing following that translates to high engagement levels. Secondly, influencers are becoming more driven and less passionate about the brands they represent. Such an influencer delivers less authentic content and messages and is not committed to the brand. As a result, his or her following pays very little interest in the brand (Naumann, McWilliams & Lincoln, 2015). Therefore, it is important for businesses to have influencers that share the brand’s vision. The wrong choice of an influencer marketer undermines the quality of a business and its product offerings.

Display advertising is an ineffective marketing initiative when used to sell products to high volumes. As much as display ads create a perceived value in the products that a business offers, they often have a low click through rate than search ads. A low click through rate translates to a lower number of subscriptions to the business website. People who view the ad and are not looking for that product are less likely to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, display advertising should only be used create long sale processes (Kireyev, Pauwels & Gupta, 2016). More so, display advertising might be ineffective when people viewing the ad have blocking tools that reduced the attention that they pay to the ad.

Poor content marketing translates to wrong impressions about the brand. For example, bad grammar, hard to read content, lack of attention to detail gives the impression that the brand is untrustworthy, complicated, and unprofessional. Secondly, poor content lacks poorly on search engines because it does not offer any unique value to online readers (Lee, Hosanagar & Nair, 2014). Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to think quality over quantity and create content that is easy to read and answers the readers’ questions.

A company that gives mass responses to the customers has an ineffective social media marketing strategy because customers prefer personalized responses to their enquiries over generalized responses. More so, in a peer-to-peer network, customers expect prompt responses to their issues. Delaying responses creates anger and negative feedback that tarnishes the image of the company. Some companies respond to social media outburst on national newspapers and television thus reducing the effectiveness of the social media channel. It is important to contain situations and solve problems through the social media platform which the customers raised concerns (Zhu & Chen, 2015). Delayed, rude, or ambiguous responses make customers them feel ignored, which results in high customer turnover and more business to rival firms.

Conclusion

A business should select and implement marketing initiatives that meet the targeted critical success factors that it needs to survive in a competitive industry. When a business selects an ineffective strategy, it is more likely to achieve the opposite of expected results such as poor product quality, guests’ dissatisfaction, and poor managerial decisions. Nonetheless, e-marketing initiatives ensure that a business gets its services across a wide prospect base since the internet is accessible to millions of users. in addition, e-marketing initiatives have a continuity  effect, that is marketing remains functional in promoting a company’s services and products months or years after a marketing campaign is over.

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