Blog

Refurbishing your hotel – don’t keep it to yourself

I have talked to a number of hotel owners in recent weeks and not surprisingly at this time of year some are already giving their establishments a makeover in preparation for next season.

So far I have been told about redecorating of bedrooms and dining rooms, new kitchen installations, renewing of laundry equipment, replacement of beds and complete renovation of eight bedrooms with addition of ensuite bathrooms. All of these makeovers are important to keep the quality levels up and to give the visitors to the hotels a better experience.

I asked the question of one of these renovations which was costing in excess of £50,000 ‘what is the plan to tell the guests about the changes and timeframe to get a return’?

I was surprised that the owner said he hadn’t planned to spend any money on marketing this as he had spent his limit on the refurbishment.

It is very important when you are spending such sums to keep a budget aside to ‘shout about it from the rooftops’ and spread the word over the Internet. Does the hotel owner think it’s good to sit and look at an empty reservation book and have nice clean rooms than spend part of the budget on marketing. I mentioned I thought it best he keep one room unchanged and spend that money on the marketing to fill the rooms and then he can finish the last room later.

Within a very short period we could set up an email marketing campaign to all the previous guests to tell them about the refurbishment and give them offers to be first to stay in the new rooms. This is one simple area we could extend it by 20 other activities all equally important.

The Internet is not going away and all hotel establishments should set an annual budget to push the boundaries and get the audience they need to sell to. We have been working with many hotels over the years to help them achieve as high an occupancy level as possible with set targets and growth plans year on year.

Invest in the marketing of your hotel, no point in sitting in a nicely decorated hotel with no visitors.

Call and talk to Grahame 01475 746213

e-Commerce – a no brainer for retailers

Recently we tried some telesales to retailers to see if there was a market out there that we could approach rather than just wait until they knock our door.

The campaign was quite successful with a few callbacks for me to discuss the possibilities of setting up e-Commerce shops for them. As it was close to Christmas the usual reply happened  ’we like what you are saying however can we leave it until after the New Year’.

The one thing I was disappointed in was every person I talked to were having a pretty desperate time in the retail sector. Through these discussions I was told of low footfall on their street, everybody now heads to the large shopping centres like Silverburn or Braehead or they buy on the Internet.

Every single retailer I talked to mentioned all of the above points. That’s what I find incomprehensible  at times. What is it that these retailers see right in front of their faces and yet take little action to fight against this. What makes them see a problem, recognise its impact and yet ignore it and wait for the inevitable when someone turns up to nail the doors shut.

It doesn’t have to be like that. I read a couple of years ago that when a small retailer starts up by the time they have paid for a shop lease, decorated, signage, added in stands and counters, get telephones, a till and payment system, lighting and some promotion they can spend on average between £70,000 to £120,000.

This is a serious investment and they haven’t even bought the stock or put staff in place. As soon as the retailer opens the door the bills start flowing – wages, rates new stock the list goes on. And what happens when they get 20 clients through the door who all spend £100 they package up their sales, take their credit card and thank them for their custom. They don’t even have these customers details.

I mentioned to each of them that an e-Commerce site could be set up for between £1500 and £6000 depending on the scale they would need however, this site when built, will last for 10 years no problem and are very simple to keep up to date. So the infrastructure is cheap compared to a bricks and mortar unit.

There are so many advantages for a traditional bricks and mortar retailer to have an e-Commerce shop as an add on to their business. Firstly an e-Commerce shop is open for business 24 hours a day and can have a wider audience via the web. The retailer wouldn’t  need staff on duty like a traditional shop, just a part time person for two to three hours per week to manage orders. They also don’t have to buy all their stock in advance all they have to do is have photos online as long as they can source the item when needed.

However the biggest benefit to the retailer is that every order placed online gives them full client details which allows them to market their latest products to them again and again when they have new products. After year one they may have 2000 email addresses unlike the walk ins at the bricks and mortar unit. This is gold dust and each time you send out a new email you get the chance of selling a number of items. After 5 years a retailer may have a database of 10000 to 15000 emails which is very powerful in helping them raise more sales.

If you think of what they may have from the last 5 years trade from traditional clients then I’m sure it is very little hence why they probably still have to advertise in local papers which is very much an expensive option.

Once a retailer has an ecommerce shop they can implement a number of the tips and tricks to guide their existing customers by offering them discounts or extras to receive their emails etc.

To summarise ecommerce should not be seen as an unnecessary expense it should be seen as one of the best ways to help save struggling retail businesses or it can be used as an additional boost to successful businesses.

Call if you have a retail unit and have not yet embraced the world of e-Commerce.

What are Toltech’s Unique Selling Points

Everytime I go to a new prospect I am usually in a couple of positions at the meeting. Firstly I am in a Sales role and giving information to the prospect  that he or she requests. Secondly I am assessing the prospect and their company to see if we can or want to work with them. That may sound a little strange however we have found over the past 14 years there is not always a good fit with every prospect and it’s never worth taking on a client if there is not a good bonding and rapport from the outset.

The surprise this week was in the middle of the sales process I was asked the crucial question – ‘So what are Toltech’s unique selling points.’   I have to say I was caught off guard and even after reading many business books which knock this into you and also we have had many years where my business partner and I have undergone some serious business development I was still a bit unprepared when asked.

I started to explain our USP’s and realised I was waffling a bit then I said actually we are very different from our competitors.  I explained – We question everything in our industry, the hype about social media, the nonsense talked at times about search engines, the push to use new technologies based on very small sample sizes by people who change their minds a month later. We don’t believe in trying to force our clients into uncomfortable areas such as twitter where they will never really adopt it and our first question to everything we do is always – Where is the money?  If we can’t see a money trail we won’t waste a client’s time.

Having done some extensive competitor comparison studies we realised how organised you have to be when delivering our type of services. How to not overstate and raise false expectations to clients.  As USP’s go the above seem like a lot of items however we see constantly others in our industry wittering on about being No1 in Google, telling clients to tweet or do Facebook or add YouTube and Flickr accounts. All of the above can work or not work depending on the approach and commitment to the tasks. The important part is to define if the client has the time and skills to do this.

Overall we try to put the client in an area where they are comfortable in what they have to do. We keep them informed and assess the overall progress every month. We stay away from hype, technologies that waste time , don’t return money and we make sure a client has a strategy and strict criteria to measure this with.

In summing up the USP question if I was to state one clear item we get asked all the time is  Can you get us to No1 in Google – our USP answer is this – ‘Do you want more business or do you want to be No1 in Google?’ – the two are not necessarily the same thing.

Can we really increase your client numbers

The question I am asked most often from potential clients is ‘Can you really increase our client numbers’?
The simple answer to this is Yes. If we can define who your target market are we can and will pursue that audience for you. We will also help you sort your databases and identify how your clients come to you in terms of twitter, Facebook, email etc. and help you sort and segment your data to get the best results from it.

Very often we come across businesses who have a website with annual visitors of 60,000 who bring a 2 to 4% conversion into bookings. The client will say to us we need to get another 60,000 visitors to achieve the bookings we really need.  They usually don’t believe us when we say if we can make the site/content more persuasive we can probably achieve the results they want without doubling the traffic.

It is also imperative to know that having a strategy to drive the right traffic to your site is not a short term fix where once you achieve the correct traffic levels would mean you could relax. The internet and threats from it change so rapidly on a daily basis that you need to have a company similar to us help you long term and keep you with a clear annual strategy.   We see restaurants and hotels investing £50k or £150k or more refurbishing their premises and when we ask them how they are going to market their new shiny venue they say we have £2k for a new website. So we have to get them onside and explain about planning and budgeting for a long term partnership.

Working with our current clients by the time we get to year two or three the strategy is like a well oiled clock. Everyone knows their positions and the clients are providing information, growing the database, sending communications, adding new content and the new and repeat business is growing.

Learn more at our hospitality seminar on 30th November

Google update could be good for you

On 3rd of November Google changed the way it retrieves information and the change could affect as many as 35% of web searches.
Cutting through all the nonsense the main part that will affect our clients is the freshness of your content.  This means if you do not update your content on a regular basis you will have less chance in being returned in the results as the focus in now on up to the minute relevancy.

This will have some serious implications for all of our clients. Our hotel and restaurant clients will face stiffer competiton as they will have to move information on a more regular basis than before.  In many ways it is what is needed – the up to date conversation with your clients whether that be menus or client offers or news and events in and around your venue.

Oh well a busier year beckons. The only saving grace is if Google is good to its word then all the uninformed venues will never keep up to date and this will give us a greater advantage – meaning more business for our clients.

For further information see the original article on TechCrunch

Hospitality Industry Seminar – How to fill your hotel or restaurant

Just over a week to our Hospitality Industry Seminar at the Mint Hotel.   We have a good selection of hotels and restaurants booked in and we hope it is going to be an enlightening morning for these businesses. Our aim is to focus them on how to fill a hotel or restaurant and then how to keep it up.

We will be highlighting areas that they should be investing in to get the best return from their online presence. With the speed of change that this platform seems to encourage it’s up to the individual business to either keep abreast of these changes or use a business like ours to keep them up to the minute with ideas and strategies.

We will cover a number of Social Networking techniques they can adopt to understanding how your site can be influenced by others sites such as Trip Advisor, Google, LinkedIn…it’s all good stuff.

What happens when a new restaurant or hotel opens in Glasgow? What effect can it have on all the others in the area?  What can you do to make sure this new venue doesn’t take your clients?

How do your competitors affect you? Can you really see where they are placed online compared to you?

All the seminar attendees will be at different stages online between the quality and state of their databases to the adoption of Twitter and Facebook. What I am hoping for is that each visitor to the seminar comes away with something of value that alters the way they think to achieve what they want from their online presence.

There is no reason why you can’t have exactly the business you want with the right strategy. All our strategies are aimed at filling venues until we can do no more.

If you are in the hospitality industry and haven’t booked this seminar there are still a few places left.  Call Julie on 01475 746213

Internet Marketing Strategy Seminar Mint Hotel Glasgow

We had an eventful seminar yesterday to businesses interested in developing their online strategy.  The feedback from our happy sheets and additional emails were very positive. We even had a few video testimonials from our clients thanks to the filming skills of Mike Stark from Runaway Productions.

One of our clients David Paterson decided to do a few out takes by telling everyone that we excelled once again in bull****  He will not be invited back ;0)

For the attendees who were there and who are trying to develop their businesses they started to see the sense in having a preplanned strategy to measure exactly what they should be aiming for and how to achieve the results they want. If you plan properly then you can measure properly and you will know what works and what doesn’t.

We covered Social Media and once again had to clarify whether it is a good use of time for businesses or a waste of time.  We try to focus our clients on what will and what won’t work for them. Not all areas will work for all businesses and not all business owners have the time to tweet or do Facebook so we try to give best advice to each individual business. There are a lot of areas that Social Networking will work well for companies however we are tired of hearing the same story from every social media presentation about bakers in London with a 1000 hot pies in the oven. Try that in Paisley on a wet afternoon. The baker would have 980 pies leftover.

Overall good feedback and preparing now for the hospitality event on the 30th November. Anyone wishing to attend this please contact  julie@toltech.co.uk

Internet Marketing Seminars in Glasgow by Toltech

Due to client feedback and the dreadful amount of hype and misinformation being purveyed as the way business should operate online to gain new business we thought it was time to dispel some of the myths and rumours and keep our clients focused on what they should and shouldn’t be doing.

Over the coming months we have set a number of subjects to guide business owners, sales teams  and managers to gain a proper perspective on how to conduct their business online.

We have successfully managed to put clients onto Facebook who need to be there and we have also encouraged other businesses not to waste their valuable time on this.

Some of the business advice given out by ‘social media gurus’ is dreadful and misleading. Many of these ‘gurus’ have never run a profitable business, have no real business skills or more seriously have no quality business data to back up their claims. However they do manage to get the ears of many business people through stories of 600 million people on Facebook can’t be wrong and it’s a huge market.

Well we all know there are 60 million people in Britain however that doesn’t make them all targets or potential targets for our businesses so large numbers may be impressive however in all areas of marketing this normally breaks down to very specific and smaller numbers. Many business owners have been told to tweet once a day and they have no idea why, no idea of what to say, no one is reading their tweets and they have paid someone for advice which they can’t really quantify why.

We are not saying social and business networking will not help your business as in many cases it will. It’s the connection between businesses who are B2B and B2C and the pushing of businesses to the wrong networks that concern me when they could achieve more new business quicker with a phone call to a prospective client.

If you don’t want to waste your time and want to know which route your business should take we can help you define what you should be doing based on criteria such as your business, your clients and you as a person and how you feel you can interact online.

If you want a sensible approach to social/business networking why not attend one or more of our seminars. We are running a number over the next 6 months covering a range of subjects however the majority will cover the basics of a proper strategy in place, social/business networking, how seriously do you take online business and why not audit your web strategy.

If you would like to attend any of the seminars please call Fiona on 01475 746 213

Internet Marketing Seminars. Good Response

We’ve had a good response to the series of Seminars Toltech are holding over the coming months which are focused on Where’s the Money which is mainly the area most business people want to visit when discussing web strategies. Our aim is to arm businesses with the relevant information to maximise what they can get from their online activities and not to be an also ran mediocre site that achieves very little.

Time spent working on your web activities can be more productive and powerful in terms of return against many offline campaigns. The weakness most businesses have is a good understanding of how the online world works and some expert advice on how to sort out the why’s and where’s to separate rumour from reality.

We can help you make your site work for you – it is the one area where you and your staff should invest more time to increase your visibility year on year. It does require effort but the returns can far outweigh offline campaigns and any effort you put into online tasks today will work for you for years to come.

Can’t get your head round Social Media!

As an Internet Marketing solutions provider we  are very often asked which is the best for a company to use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Our view is that they are three completely different tools and should be used by businesses in different ways. Some businesses we would tell not to waste their time on Facebook and others we would tell them to embrace it.  

It all depends of course on the type of business you have –  whether you clients are B2B or  B2C. It also depends on your client make-up and what services/products you are delivering.

There are many other tools available and not just the three mentioned above.

For us the focus should always start from:

• Why do you have an online presence?
• What is its purpose?
• What do you want or expect to get from your online activities/strategy?
• What tools do you need to adopt to achieve this?

Once these simple questions are answered then you can decide which tools employed will give you the better results.

Social or Business Networking

For many, Facebook can be a complete waste of time. For others tweeting messages can seem like sending small messages into a vacuum and not knowing what it is doing and for others LinkedIn can be a complete failure.  However the reverse is they can all be successful.  It is down to you, your type of business and the online tools you choose to promote or give better communication with you audience.

We have had many successful business people tell me they have been told to tweet by their staff or IT advisor and they don’t know why, they don’t know what to tweet and it’s a complete waste of time.  If you don’t know why you are tweeting – don’t do it!

Problems can arise from the blurred definitions of Social Networking and Business Networking. Many business feel uncomfortable on Facebook as they see it as a friends and family tool and don’t normally mix business and social whereas others are uncomfortable on LinkedIn as there is little chit-chat and a more serious approach to business

Join us at our Internet Marketing Seminars for further information or to learn more.