The most POWERFUL MARKETING of all time & how it's SCALABLE. Boutique hotels marketing & POSITIONING

Yes, word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful marketing there is. And it's SCALABLE and CHEAP and EASY.

As long as you know WHO YOU ARE FOR and how you DELIVER PROMISED. Consistently.

When people spread the word, recommend you to their circles and feel proud saying you are their first choice, you've got yourself positioned within certain group where "people like us, do things like this".

People like us, stay in "INSERT NAME OF YOUR HOTEL".

AND CHOOSE those people. You have power over this movement.

WATCH VIDEO BELOW.

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Video Transcript:

Hello everyone. Welcome to Remarkable Boutique Hotels where we talk about outstanding experiences and everything that leads to them.

We hear about digital marketing basically everywhere around us and youtube, Instagram, google algorithms, but how does the algorithm for word-of-mouth marketing look, is there any step by step technical solution? Let’s discover.

Marketing is something you can’t skip. You are doing it even when you are not doing it. It existed even before it was called marketing. That is of course – word-of-mouth marketing or in other words, people talking to other people about your hotel, spreading hopefully good words but same happens to bad stories. And this type of marketing is still the most influential today.

There’s an expression that bad story travels further then a good one, and that is because we are driven by fear and urge to help someone avoid bad experience and it’s common for humans to run faster when running away from something, like some danger or unpleasant experience, lost time and money, rather then running towards something, that might be rewarding and worth experiencing. The underlining principle is that people would rather not lose what they already have then gain more of something. Security rather than risk, right? And this is quite relevant to this topic because word-of-mouth marketing and turning someone into your brand ambassador involves human phycology.

So already first intake here, is to try harder to decrease occurrence of any extremely bad experiences, even really isolated cases and obvious negligence for guests, because these impressions will travel long way and will put in shadow all the good work. It will harm your businesses silently without you noticing. Why? Well, because let’s say, really nice guests, potentially your ideal guests, just observe and decide, they are not loud, if they see risk of losing their time and money and being disappointed, they simply decide not to come.

And if you put oil on fire like when you answer bad review in way that’s confronting a guest, fighting back, giving explanations or god forbid being sarcastic even if it’s a good joke, this will turn down even people who clearly see the guest who wrote the review is wrong. Anyways, it’s still your responsibility to take ownership of the situation, have compassion and investigate. And this is beyond logic, it’s them protecting themselves, so if you could ask them, they won’t tell you that’s the reason for not coming but one bad review and your bad response will make them choose your competitor. Why risk right? Funny thing, they will probably skip reading reviews for that other hotel so in depth like they did for yours because they don’t want to see the same thing and have to decide again.

So, make sure your guests are at least kind of happy, make sure they feel like they’ve got a fair deal for their money. This is not what’s going to differentiate you and bring you more profits but that will make you trust worthy and safe option, for the beginning. And you achieve this by standardisation, by practicing all of the processes, designing service in details and training your team regularly, doing cause effect analysis, listening to the feedback and so on. Basically, building a good foundation and being present with changes and then recommitting to your business model. This is all how you make sure big mistakes don’t happen.

Now, there is another thing, and that is kind of outside part of this inner structural business work, and that is building your social image. Don’t simply delegate that work to anyone, because they may increase your sales, but, how, by communicating something you can’t deliver? And that doesn’t even mean you are not good enough, it’s just them marketing something that might be a trend but not really your hotel style. But for you, it’s just a quick way to make some money with long term damage. That way, you will not attract your ideal guests instead you’ll begin fulfilling unreasonable requests from guests who came because of that marketing. All that will reflect on your inner processes making them look bad and not suitable and you’ll definitely end up with not so good reviews. It’s like a chain reaction with lots of frustration on both your side and guests. And most importantly, it will give you wrong insights because you’re be dealing with wrong part of market. So, make sure you, and anyone working for you, communicate outside what you are inside.

Okay, so now when you are far away from those bad stories, let’s go towards spreading good words, like really good words. When you have your true ideal guest visiting you and deciding to come back, you really want them to be your best marketing because they’ll bring more of the same kind of guests.

So, the thing that is the most important is to focus on creating great experiences which you’re probably thinking you’re already doing, like, all of the time. But, we are not talking about your effort. This is about guests feeling, seeing and living the value of that effort throughout their whole stay but also before they come and after they leave.

So, we are not talking about fair experience anymore, like value for money. Now, it’s all about outstanding experiences, overdelivering and surprising your guests. That is when they will feel like they’ve got more then they paid for and expected. That’s the point where economic relationship ends and deeper, more meaningful one starts and you become their special place for something.

When people experience such heighten feelings, they take great pleasure in telling about it to their family and friends. And that is when they become your ambassadors. They are influencers, we are all influencers for our trusted circles. And when it happens online, it all of a sudden becomes very much – scalable.

What that means is that you can start building a relationship even before someone becomes your first time guest. In this context, loyalty doesn’t start when a guest books for a second time. It starts online when they hear about someone else’s experience. They feel the desire to stay with you too, to have the same amazing experience someone else is sharing.

The practical influence is that the next time they are planning a vacation, some getaway or whatever, they will first look for your property instead of searching for hotels in general. So, you’re already in their head, they connect great experience with you and that means they are already loyal. And if you’re wondering how it’s different from hiring a professional influencer, the profile of potential guests is what is different. Your ideal guests will be easy to handle and even stun, versus followers who want to be in trend, gain some social status and don’t really care for your hotel, they won’t notice your efforts.

So an outstanding experience of one real ideal guest overflows to another guest. They will be more likely to choose you and already happy with their choice because in a way, it’s already validated by someone they truly trust, they see no risk, so they’ll probably even skip reading reviews.

Now, the thing is these people will definitely have high expectations of you. But this doesn’t have to be bad. This also means they are coming with positive attitude. And as long as you communicate realistic expectations through marketing, branding including all copy and visuals, you are creating realistic environment so they will know what to expect in general and anything above that will lead to outstanding service. Funny thing which is really nice is they will tend to see something as a big gesture even when it’s not, and that’s because they’re expecting it and they also want to be the ones experiencing that great service someone told them about so they can say they experienced it too. It’s again about phycology, there’s that saying, people like us do things like this. So, I’m saying, it might even be really easy to stun them.

But in order to do this right, have your foundation stable and working well. Meaning, you still need to make sure everyone in your team is well trained and regularly refreshes knowledge and really understand standards but also hotel values and concept. Beside this, you need to make sure all systems are up to date and serve their purpose. And this is something we mentioned at the beginning on how to avoid bad experiences and as you can see it’s prerequisite for outstanding experiences as well. You can’t skip steps.

Listen, people are still people, you can have amazing articles written about you, the most expensive ads or be leader in some official statistics, but real people stories are what engages other people the most and this enables you to grow organically, with long term effects such as having ideal guests who are happy and easy to handle, this then enables you smooth execution, less stress, time to enhance inner systems and create better offer and creative ways to be even better and more irresistible, all increasing your overall value, good reputation and profits eventually. Marvelous, right? Common, it’s the biggest leverage you can have for your boutique hotel. Utilize it then, make people tell stories about you, now, like right now. Until next occasion, have a beautiful experiences my friends.

Thank you for listening. Here at Remarkable Boutique Hotels, we want your hotel to be worth every penny and every second of your guests. Schedule a discovery call to find more about our remarkable methodology which is unique in the whole hospitality industry. I would love to hear your hotel story. See you there.