General Q & A

Mary C. | 1 December 2004 |

General Q&A
Trent Blizzard, Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Question from: Jim Belote, Beall Mansion
Is there an inexpensive program that would allow us to sell Gift Certificates online?

Answer: The best deals on gift-certificates are coming from booking engines like www.availabilityonline.com and www.rezovation.com, as well as many others. We don’t know of any other services that offer inexpensive certificate programs per se. Hosting companies typically charge extra each month for secure servers and shopping cart services, but these allow for certificates to be "integrated" into your website.

Question from: Donna Gushue, The Jefferson Inn of Ellicottville
In the November issue of Arrington’s B&B Journal, you wrote an article, about measuring the ROI of online marketing efforts. I calculated mine using your method. Your example has you paying 66 cents per visitor and an average visitor generating $6.66 in bookings. I spend much less than that per visitor, but my ROI was approximately 1,000% like yours. The question I was left with is, "so what?" Is this good or bad? If your next article in the December issue answers my question, then I can wait; if not please answer in your newsletter.

Answer: I think you will be disappointed by my December and January follow up articles in Arrington’s. I am not sure if $.66 is a good price or not per visitor and $6.66 in revenue for you. A 10 to 1 return seems very good to me, however. This doesn’t mean you couldn’t improve or that others aren’t doing better or worse. I would use this data as a benchmark and seek to improve it. Check out our new stats package at www.blizzardtracker.com - it will work with your booking engine to tell you actually where bookings come from and give you a sense for where to focus your online budget to improve you numbers. You may also consider improving the conversion rates by making sure that your website is the best it can be and that it really "grabs" people.

Question from: Les Belch, Canyon Villa of Sedona
I noted in your newsletter that you are encouraging B&Bs to sign up for as many internet lodging directories as possible. I have just completed a one year study of over 100 of these directories on a cost/benefit basis and the statistical results for my inn are not pretty. 95% of them deliver next to NOTHING in click-throughs, and even less for actual bookings. Also, we are very skeptical of search engine PPCs. There is a lot of hype out there about PPC and, in my opinion, PPC is getting out of control. It seems to me that the paid positioning on search engines and the myriad of lodging directories is generating a small fortune from our industry by constantly pitting us against each other. Many of us are tiring of the constant upward bidding, the new and improved "gold, platinum, or Inn of the month" listings, etc. The prices keep going up and the results are statistically going down. So, I am curious why do you think we should all be pouring even more money into these vehicles? Isn’t it about time that someone came up with some fresh marketing ideas other than pay-per-click and piling on more and more lodging directory subscriptions? I’d LOVE to have back all the money I spent in the past two years on these programs. I am not convinced at all that they paid for themselves. To make matters worse, some of these directories have gone under, and/or disappeared, and taken my money with them.

Answer: A very pointed assessment! We agree that many B&B directories are pointless… but, there are at least 20 that we regularly see produce results. We have found that the PPC results can be pretty good, but they are not universally profitable. It is important to figure out what is working and get what you pay for. This also means that you stop pouring money into things that don’t work. Here are some of the "fresh marketing ideas" we have publicly espoused because they are "new" and they work:
Get more intelligent tracking software — and know for sure what works! (tour www.blizzardtracker.com)
Work the "opinion" sites — www.tripadvisor.com and http://www.igougo.com
Work niche sites (we do a special niche each month in our newsletter) where the best opportunities probably lie (local destination guides are great, too)
Provide lots of good specials - guests love specials
Increase and improve the content of your website, as free search engines love content
Improve the conversion rates of your website (better design, photography and content)