GCommerce Blog
This is a quick reminder to readers who love marketing that the new Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) report has arrived. As stated on its website, SoDA “serves as a voice for digital marketing professionals worldwide with a mission to advance the industry through best practices, education and advocacy.” SoDA is essentially a collection of some of the top digital agencies in the world. Every year, each agency contributes some of its best thinkers and strategists to compile a report about the state of the industry and trends to focus on moving forward. Every year, the SoDA report spurs innovation in my organization. Studying insights ...read more
Bold marketing occurs at the intersection of passion and strategy. Content marketing is no different. The best content strategies involve something personal, something passionate and a commitment to a larger idea. After all, hotels don’t just need to offer a bed where weary travelers can lay their heads. There can be a greater narrative to appeal to consumers. This is the story of one of those hotels. Enter Greg and Meredith Tally, the owners of the Best Western Denver Southwest. Last year, they began a multimillion-dollar renovation to their resort-style property. Leading up to the renovation, they became inspired by the rich dinosaur h ...read more
Everywhere you look now it seems like everyone has keyed in on content marketing as a priority for digital marketers in 2013. Marketing blogs have praised companies like Red Bull and Farmers for their extreme content marketing campaigns and have placed content marketing on the digital marketer’s priority list for 2013. But what exactly is content marketing and how does it fit into your businesses’ strategic marketing plan for 2013? Not every company can drop a man from 128,000 feet. What is content marketing? Content marketing is in its essence connecting and understanding your target audience and giving them the content they are lo ...read more
I am not a huge fan of many hotel website designs. Too often they feel like templates, following the same basic layout and design principals as countless other hotel websites. While there are notable exceptions, we as an industry seem a little stuck in a rut. Advancements in website design have taken a back seat to the development of mobile websites, mobile applications and tablet designs. ALL are very important trends and ones that deserve our attention, I might add. But as an industry, let us not forget the importance of powerful design to extoll the benefits of staying at our properties. There is a new trend in website design that may g ...read more
And the Winners Are… My company recently had the honor to judge the Hotels Magazine Social Media Awards, with winners announced in the September edition of the magazine. Watching the brands’ use of social media as closely as we do, I had a feeling the submissions would be stellar. I was not disappointed. This is a wake up call to hoteliers who have yet to fully embrace social media: you are being beaten, badly, by other hotels in your market. Wondering why that market share is slipping? Lackluster work on social media channels may be a prime culprit. So what would constitute the proper use of social media? You have a Facebook pag ...read more
