revenue management

We've heard it before: cash is king, especially in a recession. But how can small businesses find (and keep) the extra cash that exists in their companies?

Good price management can stop revenue losses
Many small businesses operate on a very tight cash flow and profit margin making pricing management an essential tool in helping them to maximise operations and performance. Through effective price management, small business owners stay in touch with the amount that customers are willing to pay for the products and services offered and thereby reduce the risk of revenue loss through under or overpricing.

Keep in touch with the needs of your customer in an ever-changing market
Since pricing is heavily connected to consumer demand, small businesses need to be aware of the current consumer and industry trends. This information is invaluable to running a small business where success is often determined by the ability to establish a niche market and quickly cater to changes in consumer demand. It is essential that small business owners carry out on-going market research and feed it back down through their organisation so every team member understands their part to play in determining the future success of the business.

Instil customer loyalty to customers
Customer expectation has risen dramatically over the years, due to an abundantly free market offering wider choices and competitive pricing making customer retention that much harder to achieve. Coupled with the economic recession it is imperative that small businesses put strategies in place to ensure that they will survive. There are a number of ways they can do this. Customer satisfaction surveys, face to face feedback, opinion polls, mystery shoppers, loyalty schemes (recommend a friend, discounts, loyalty cards etc) and market research on competitors will provide invaluable insight in ways to improve products and services. It will help retain customers, encourage word-of-mouth and improve revenue income.

Exceptional customer service from staff
On-going training of staff in customer service is an integral part of any small business's long-term success. An excellent way of getting staff on board is to get them to mystery shop a competitor and to feedback the good and the bad to the rest of the team, then get the team to come up with a strategy whereby you exceed you competitors

Understand the true value of your products and services
It is vital that you understand how strong your product lines or services really are. The value of your products goes way beyond the raw materials and labour that was used to create them. Concentrate on the lines that make you money and ditch the ones that don’t.

It is important to remember that convenience, added value, customer service, quality products/services, free or immediate shipping, location and brand name, all add to the value and will affect how much a customer is willing to pay for your products or services.

Reduce wastage
Improve revenue loss through reducing your operating costs. You can do this by reducing staff overhead by improving processes and avoiding duplication, and looking at ways to improve productivity. Look at the option of outsourcing work to virtual administrators to alleviate pressure on existing staff or stop constant call interruptions with virtual call answering so staff can concentrate on growing the business rather than fire fighting.

Look at existing suppliers – see if you can negotiate with your existing supplier first and foremost on a more competitive price. If this doesn’t work then look at alternative suppliers; do some research first, check out the company’s reputation, delivery times and expectations and get the lowdown from their existing customers (get feedback before you make your decision).

Look at ways to tap into undiscovered revenue
Customer analysis and buying behaviour is a great way to identify what drives your customers to buy from you.  It also highlights what they are motivated by and their current needs and requirements.
 
In the service industry, repeat bookings need to be instilled into staff by setting targets i.e. 80 per cent customer re-booking, backed up with role play and staff incentives. Cross selling is vital, too, but the soft sell is by far the best strategy – identifying a customer need and then providing help and advice, then a subtle recommendation of an additional product or service you offer to satisfy that need. Providing samples for customers to try before they buy is a good way to cross sell but it must be followed up at the next meeting to be effective and delivered in a helpful, soft sell way so the customer will not feel too pressurised.

Case studies are a great way of cross selling a product or service to existing or potential customers in a specialised industry; it provides credibility and a way that a customer can identify a problem they may share with a solution you provide.

If your business supports annual servicing or maintenance to your customers, it is important to stay on top of this.   Find undiscovered revenue. A plumber could use SMS reminders to customers to keep on top of annual boiler maintenance. It's a cheap and easy way to ensure they have steady flow of income throughout the year.  The same goes with any industry that supports maintenance. Always be one step ahead and have your customers re-booked otherwise you could lose them the next year – nothing is guaranteed these days.

1. Use “h1&Prime tags with meaningful keywords at least at the start of every page. Avoid things like “Welcome to my site”.

2. Use “strong” tags to emphasize key words and phrases.

3. Use meaningful and unique “title” tags on all of your pages. Avoid using keywords that are not relevan to your page.

4. Use a CSS style sheet to include the font and design information of your site. This both cuts down the size of your pages, and also makes it easier to update.

5. Break long pages into around 300 words.

6. Regularly check for and fix broken links. There are plenty of free tools available that can help do this.

7. Aim to add at least one page of new content each day.

8. Grow the size of your site by adding search engine friendly comment sections and forums. Let other people help build the content of your site.

9. Use search engine friendly URLs where possible. Some people suggest cutting down or removing subdirectories all together. For example www.mysite.com/key-word-key-word/

10. Use meaningful and descriptive “alt” and “title” tags on all pictures on your site. There are a surprising large number of people who turn off graphics on websites. Also search engines use these for indexing pictures.

11. Use meaningful descriptions on all of your outgoing links. For example rather than writing click here for more information“, write: click here for more information on refinancing your loan.

12. Be liberal with your use of outgoing links. Some people, think that outgoing links “drain” your PR and have a negative affect on your site, but I believe good search engines will value your site higher for providing useful information for your readers.

13. Try to use a clean and simple design with easily to read colors and fonts. Only use flash if you are using it to display some kind of graphical information or a presentation. Fewer people are impressed by flash sites these days.

14. Make sure your site has an RSS feed. Search engines are using RSS feeds more and more to index sites.

15. Request and encourage user feedback to your site.

16. Publish testimonials to your site. Ask people for permission to use their comments, and use psydonyms if necessary. Avoid making up your own testimonials. Adding any negative feedback will help build your site’s credibility.

17. Create a new feature, product, info section, mini-site about your website and send out a press release to the media. There are some sites which have a free service and others have paid service.

18. Offer a free article, e-book or product on your site. There is nothing better than offering something which they can get for “free” to entice people to your website. If you offer a product like an e-book, be sure to your site’s address in the header or footer to your site. Also mention your site with links to specific pages, so people then have another reason to go back to your site.

19. Create a place for people to sign up for an receive a newsletter.

20. Offer a live chat area on your site people can ask questions in real-time.

21. Register your domain for at least 5 years in advance. Not only does this ensure that you won’t forget to renew your domain name every year, there is evidence that search engines use this data to distinguish quality websites.

22. Register a proper domain, rather than relying on free hosting, using a sub-domain of the free host.

23. Create a Yahoo and Google account and customize your homepage to include the RSS of your own site’s feed. Some people have had success with this to get their site indexed by Google and Yahoo.

24. Create accounts at services like delicious and create links to your sites. Also use it to see what kind of people are linking to your site and what pages they are linking to.

25. Study your site’s logs, especially the referrers to see both who is linking to your site and what they are linking to. The possibilities of checking this could help if you have an affiliate program and you may also be able to offer the company advertising on your site.

26. Create an FAQ page and add to it everytime you answer an FAQ type question by email.

27. Occassionally update old content on the site.

28. Avoid “buying traffic”, or participating in “traffic exchanges” from those companies that frequently advertise on the Internet.

29. Never send unsolicitied mail.

30. Consider using Google Adwords or similar program to promote a new product or section of your site.

31. Establish partnerships with related websites.

32. Never do anything to harm your competitors, rather attempt to seek ways to work together in mutually benificial partnership.

33. Make business cards with your site’s URL.

34. Have an ‘About Me’ page which decribes you and/or your company.

35. Consider adding a ‘disclaimer’ to your site.

36. Make it clear that people can buy advertising on your site.

37. Make a logo and use it on your site and business cards.

38. Make postcards with your site information on it and leave them in restaurants.

39. Make stickers with your site address and hand them out to your friends and family.

40. Write articles and allow other websites to use your articles for free, as long as they include a link back to your site.

41. Submit your site to the larger and smaller search engines.

42. Leave thoughtful and interesting comments on related blogs.

43. Include your site address in the signature of your email.

44. When registering a domain consider creating a non-keyword domain. Think of successful companies like Google, Godaddy and Yahoo.

45. Seek partnerships with people who have knowledge, experience, writing ability, but do not have have web development experience.

46. Strongly consider implementing a well known CMS for ease of use site maintenance and adding updates.

47. Try doing a stunt or gimmick that people might blog about or link to.

48. Jump onto the latest marketing bandwagon.

49. No matter crazy your idea is register a domain for it, create at least one page of content and monitor how it performs.

50. Register all of the .net .org and .biz for your domain if you can affort to.

51. Unless you can see totally no value in domain do not let any expire.

52. Make some products with your logo on it using a service such as cafepress.

53. Read magazines/publications related to your site. Send an email to the author of the article telling them something potentially usesful and also mention your website.

54. Interview key people in your industry, authors, webmasters. Include the interview as a podcast and also transcribe it.

55. Write to related government authorities asking them for information and or pictures which you can use on your site.

56. Make sure any books/movies/prroducts include an affiliate link to something like Amazon.

57. Look at what affiliates your competitors are using and give them a try if you think they could be successful.

58. Drop any non-peforming affiliates. Try to build a core group affiliates that both convert well and pay in a timely manner.

59. If you have a site that is locally based consider distributing flyers.

60. Attempt to try and and create a single general, high traffic site which you can then feed to smaller niche sites.

61. If you ever wrote essays at high-school or university consider pulling them out of the closet and putting them on to a new site.

62. Make sure you know exactly where your visitors are coming from and which pages they are most interested in.

63. Set your screen saver or desktop with the phrase, “Content is king”.

64. Some days are good and some days are slow. Try not to get discouraged if it is taking time. Adding, good, quality content over time is the key.

65. Search engines like new content. Adding too much new content too quick could possibly be a problem. Think of the storey of the tortoise and the hare, “slow and stead wins the race”.

66. Don’t be afraid of taking a break. Actually getting away from your PC can sometimes be the best way to reflect on what you are doing and to come up with new ideas and strategies.

67. Re-read everything you write before you hit the “publish” button, better yet ask a friend to read over your writing. Spell checkers can only go so far.

68. Spell check your work, but the odd commonly mispelt word can bring in extra traffic.

69. Use meta tags in all of your pages, with relevant keywords and page description. Search engines may not giving them as much weight as they use to, but there is always the possiblity that a new search engine may use them again some time in the future.

70. Use keywords throughout your text, at the same time trying not to “overuse” them to create increhonsible text.

71. For competitive keywords, target two or three word combinations.

72. Use Overture’s key word tools to find approximately how many times a month a word is searched on More searches means more potential traffic, but it can also mean that the keyword is more comptetive.

73. Consider targetting higher paying keywords, but don’t dwell on using this strategy too much.

74. Develop sites that you have an interest in. You do not necessarily have to be an expert field, you can even take the approach of a learning beginneer.

75. Be careful who you tell about what you are doing. I really want to say, tell the whole world about how you are making money on the internet, but if you are working for a company you need to be careful, as many companies these days are strict about allowing their employees to earn outside income. You could also be breaching your company’s NDA. Well meaning friends and family might also click on your ads, to try and help you out, which could also see you banned from the Google Adsense program.

76. With regards to the above in mind, you may know people in your industry who could be well placed to help spread the word about your site.

77. Make sure you include a “tell a friend” script in your site.

78. Enhance your site by adding sripts or features, such as a classifieds section to help drive traffic to your site.

79. Possibly include news feeds to your site to give it a dynamic feel.

80. Encourage friends, family and spouses to “get on the web”. Don’t push them but help them out if they are interestd. Consider buying a friend a domain for their birthday.

81. If you include products on your site, write a review of the product or service on your site in your own words. Publishers or manufactures may send you are a free sample to review. Include both the positive and negative features of the product. Your readers will reward you with their honesty. Avoid recommending something you didn’t like or haven’t tried yourself.

82. Diversify your sites if possible. If you have a site about skiing, consider also having a summer sports site like surfing, to balance the drop in traffic and drop in revenue during the off season. Keep in mind also the difference in seasons in the north and southern hemisphere.

83. Think about your geographic location of your target audience. Smaller geo-graphic target, results in lower traffic, but it can give you the opportunity to dominate your niche in that particular location.

84. On the other hand, if your current site is a local one, consider how you could expand it to make it globablly focused.

85. Consider adding additional languages to your site. Avoid computer generated langauge pages. Either pay someone or ask a friend to help with the translations.

86. Approach businesses to see if they might be interested in “sponsoring” a page or section of your site.

87. Consider making websites for free for local business, using possibly a subdomain from your own site.

88. Travel. For me personally, I get so many ideas while travelling. Travelling

The first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is:

Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?

Essentially, Matt says Google treats links the same whether they are from Facebook or Twitter, as they would if they were from any other site. It's just an extension of the pagerank formula, where its not the amount of links, but how reputable those links are (the company uses a similar strategy for ranking Tweets themselves in real-time search).

While Facebook and Twitter links may be treated like any other links, they do still come with things to keep in mind. For one, with Facebook, you have to keep in mind that a lot of profiles are not public. When a profile is not public, Google can't crawl it, and it can't assign pagerank on the outgoing links if it can't fetch the page to see what the outgoing links are. If the page is public, it might be able to flow pagerank, Matt says. With Twitter, most links are nofollowed anyway.

"At least in our web search (our organic rankings), we treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook or, you know, pick your favorite platform or website, just like we'd treat links from Wordpress or .edus or.govs or anything like that," says Cutts. "It's not like a link from an .edu automatically carries more weight or a link from a .gov automatically carries more weight. But, the specific platforms might have issues, whether it's not being crawled or it might be nofollow. It would keep those particular links from flowing pagerank."

There you have it. Matt's response probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to most of you, but it's always nice to hear information like this straight from Google.

You may be surprised to learn that Lebanon is a source of world class wines - of course grapes have been grown and made into wine here for centuries, but it was mainly for local consumption. It was probably the influence of the French, who had a protectorate over Lebanon between two World Wars, that really took Lebanese wine-making into different league.

The Lebanese vineyards and wineries are concentrated in the Bekaa valley there the grapes are grown, and one of the most commercial wineries in this area is the Chateau Ksara. After our stay in Baalbek, we drove south through the Bekaa valley and stopped there for a spot of wine tasting. The Ksara winery is just off a busy road intersection close to and it was not quite setting of rolling vineyards that I’d had in mind, so close to all the traffic. But as you entered the drive, the elegant reception area and winery came into view, ideal for a quick stop off the highway and I suspect on the itinerary of many a coach tour.

The whole operation was very slick with a 45 minute free tour. A pleasant lady on reception took us with a few others who arrived at the same time, and we sat and watched a video about the vineyard and winemaking here. Then she took us down into the cellars that were discovered in Roman times, where we could see some of the oldest bottles of the property being stored as well as the wine maturing in oak barrels. After that we went to a bar area and sat down to taste a few of the Ksara wines, which was very pleasant, but as it was a free tour, they were mainly everyday table wines and not of special quality. Lastly we were ushered into the shop where there was a wide selection of the different bottles to buy from the property. I bought a couple of half bottles, not being able to transport too much back to the UK.

It was a very slick operation and enjoyable tour, but if you want to spend a lazy lunchtime surrounded by the vineyards in the countryside, there are probably other vineyards you could try, such as Kefraya or Massaya, that are a bit more off the beaten track. Or for a more personal style tour for wine enthusiasts make an appointment at Chateau Musar, in the hills close to Jeita near Beirut - you can read us about meeting the winemakers there.

Have you drunk any Lebanese wines? They’re often in the same style as a French claret and are usually a lot cheaper than a Bordeaux of similar quality. Seek them out in your local specialist wine shop and tell me what you think.

First of all this is kind of a contradiction. The reason that 2010 will be the year of the independent hotel is partially to thank to the resurgence of the OTA and Travel Merchant model. The current economic challenges in the market have allowed 3rd party travel agency websites to regain a larger % of online travel distribution.

The OTA distribution channels have made the franchise chain complacent. They easily produce the same number of bookings and revenues or more that the franchise chains. Looking at the paid advertising section of search engines like Google and Yahoo, the strong presence of OTA’s reflects this.

Shopping around on any of the travel agency websites, we have started to notice that more and more hotels listed on the first are independent properties, or belong to local or smaller hotel groups. Something tells us that the global chains and larger hotel groups have been pushing quite persistently over the last few years to bring commission levels down over the last few years that the OTA’s prefer to list properties with which they yield a larger margin.

But also on meta-search sites like Trivago and even Bing Travel independent hotels are starting to floart to the top more and more. On some sites and destinations they even significantly outweigh the number of ‘big brand’ chain properties. Just check TripAdvisor for the top 20 hotels in London, Paris and San Francisco. The independents are starting to rule the charts….

And even when doing a search in Google for Hotel London, Hotels Amsterdam, hotels in New York, etc gives comparable results. Independent hotels seem to dominate the online real estate.

So why does it seem that independent hotels have gained the upper hand? It is quite simple actually. Even though chains and large hotel groups offer many advantages (reduced purchasing cost because of scale etc), they also lack the focus to market a particular property or destination. Too many layers of management and difference of interest and priority between internal departments and management steers the chain in another direction. Their online positioning usually is mainly focused on the brand or flag.

Many corporate rules and guidelines within chains and hotel groups prohibit or withhold individual properties to develop their own direct marketing strategy. After all the chain takes care of the marketing side of the business, right? The lack of decentralization and empowerment of the on property hotel management is a huge handicap for them.

The above is all about commissions and marketing investments and efforts. But in this new age of Web 2.0 (or Travel 2.0) there is another factor we have to take into consideration when it comes to marketing.

OUR GUESTS

Yes our guests are making huge efforts to market our hotels to their friends and other travelers. They use websites like TripAdvisor, TravelPost, and IGoYouGo to spread our story. And this word is so important, ‘story’. For your guests to write about their experience at your hotel and post images and video online on hotel review websites, travel communities and social network you have to be remarkable. As Seth Godin simply puts it, remarkable means:

‘worth making a remark about’

The hotels who have the highest scores on review websites and get mentioned often on VirtualTourist.com and TravBuddy.com are the ones that are different. But different in what way?

• Authentic friendliness of the staff
  
• Amazing location
  
• Exceptional personal attention
  
• Impressive original food
  
• Exclusive service
  
• Simplicity, no frills
  
• Unique design
  
• Warmth and true hospitality

It doesn’t matter, as long as you give your guests a unique experience that they would want to share with their friends and the rest of the world. You need to offer them something special.

So when we are talking about independent hotels or small and local hotel groups, we are not talking about just any product. It needs to be good quality and value for money you offer (please note quality does not equal luxury).

But why do independent hotels get more traction online that similar quality product offered by the big chains? First of all consumers like to be treated as individuals and for their specific needs recognized. This is easier of course for a ‘boutique’ hotel than a design hotel belonging to a chain counting over 1000 properties. It’s simply another world.

This is by the way confirmed by the latest move of Marriot. They have just launched a brand called ‘…..’ which is to exist of flagship properties.

Secondly independent hotels or small groups tend to be more flexible and creative when it comes to marketing. This is born from a need being the ‘underdog’. And with some of the technology and solutions that have been rolled out by search engines like Google and Yahoo, review websites like TripAdvisor, travel communities like IGoYouGo, and Social Networks like FaceBook and micro blogging sites like Twitter there are more tools at hand for guerilla marketing and creative strategies.

This is why the independent hotel will excel in 2010. They will not be hold back by corporate rules and management approval layers. The independent hotelier can and will do whatever is necessary to fill his hotel.

Having read success stories online over the last year from fellow bloggers and from our own experience in designing hotel websites and implement hotel internet marketing strategies this is exactly what is happening. Independent hotels have been quite successful in driving direct sales to their own website and reservations center.

What interesting developments have we seen this year or what tips do we have for hotels? Here is our 2010 punch list;

1. Opensource CMS: For more flexibility in managing the content of your website you should use an opensource content management tool. It will allow you to launch new pages and change structure without depending on your web designer. (Joomla / WordPress / Drupl)
   
   
2. SEO: pick your keywords carefully, in your meta-titles and description focus on search behavior and not on product and brand. Sell what your potential guests are looking for!
   
   
3. Landing Pages: Pick themes, launch a page for every special offer and market segment or search. Think niche marketing and search engine saturation! Cater to each potential market segment on an individual basis. The long tail of travel seo works!
   
   
4. Languages: An easy way to expand your reach. What at the main tourist feeder markets for your destinations? Are you missing any languages?
   
   
5. Google Local Business Center: A great way to improve your listing and traffic. Powerful marketing tool which is only just starting to show its potential. The implementation of Google Maps Favorite Places gives you an idea where we are heading. click here for more info
   
   
6. Google Webmaster Tools: Register your site map. Ideally you should have an XML sitemap that pushes your menu structure out to the search robot. If you are lucky Google will pick-up your menu structure and show site links below your URL when people look for your hotel specifically.
   
   
7. 
   
   Click to Call, Chat, Call Back: Be hospitable and available on your hotel website. Assist potential guests to increase the number of bookings. Remember phone conversion is higher than online as it is more personal. So let them call you! You can use a simple service like Skype or look at solution offered by companies like eStara
   
   
   
8. Tourist Guide: Become a travel agent instead of a hotelier. Don’t push your product but sell the destination. Use maps, Google loves this!
   
   
9. Events: What is going on in town while your guests are staying with you. Include it on your home page. Make an event section and show it in confirmation emails. No need to do it all by yourself, pull event calendars in through RSS feeds from your local tourist board website or sites like Eventful.com
   
   
10. Video: Integrate videos into your website. Shoot your hotel room with your own camera and put the videos on YouTube and list them afterwards on your site. It helps you in 2 ways. We all know pictures say more than a 1000 words. Well videos kind of have a multiplied effect of this. Secondly it is a great SEO move. Make sure you pick your keywords smart in YouTube! Oh yes don’t forget to add the videos to you Google Local Business Center listing.
    
    
11. Review Monitoring: Make sure you know what people write about you. You can set-up a control panel for free using RSS feeds from review websites, Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes and Netvibes.
    
    
12. Review Response: Thank everyone that write something about your hotel, positive or negative. They are your guests. Engage and show them you care and value their feedback. Keep in mind potential guests will notice that you are involved.
    
    
13. Review Stimulation: Email guests after check-out, ask them to write about their experience on review websites like TripAdvisor or TravelPost and you hotels FaceBook profile. This way they help you to spread the word.
    
    
14. Review Recycling: Filter out the positive stuff. You can use Delicious and create a feed you can send to FriendFeed, FaceBook and Twitter. Just like the movie companies on their posters, ‘New York Times says: Best Movie of the Year’. Good thing is, you did not write it! This works, we tried it!
    
    
15. Blog: Integrate the hotel blog into your hotel website and become a tourism journalist. Write about interesting and original things. Cover events in your city or destination. Please don’t write about your hotel’ it’s usually boring. Except of course if you have something really original will spark interest. But it has to be really really special!
    
    
16. Online PR: Those interesting articles you write for your blog can now be placed on tourism news websites with links to your hotel website. There are also many blog syndication pages. It is one of the most effective SEO strategies. Moreover if you started to get recognized of a provider of great content you will be branding your hotel in the strongest possible way.
    
    
17. RSS: Use Feedburner to distribute your blog by email and RSS Syndication.
    
    
18. Listing Websites: List your hotel on as many free listing websites that allow you to put in a link to your hotel website. Please do not participate in link exchange. Start with WikiTravel, Yelp, VirtualTourist.
    
    
19. Web 2.0 BroadCasting Station: Link all of your profiles from social networks, photo and video sharing websites and book marking website to save time. This way you don’t have to post the same thing over and over again. FriendFeed is the mother of all 2.0 websites. It allows you to link up all the others… You should be on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, …
    
    
20. Mobile: Start with a simple mobile website so you can be found if people look for your hotel. Have picture and click to call button. Simplicity should do the trick for now.
    
    
21. eCRM: Personalized confirmation emails, pr-arrival and after check-out emails work. But again they need to be personalized. Include weather forecast, events during the guest’s stay, restaurant suggestions etc. Step 1 though is making sure your reservations office and front desk is capturing email addresses! Make sure you build a proper DB and develop a plan for implementing a hotel CRM strategy.
    

And now the most important point we would like to make. Budget appropriately for online or internet marketing. Your hotel website should generate at least 40% of your sales. So why not allocate the same percentage of your total marketing budget to it. Reduce the spending on traditional sales and branding items like brochures, letterhead, etc. Hospitality starts online and so should your marketing.

You can increase direct sales easily by investing strategically and by using the latest innovations in your hotel website design and internet marketing.

2010 will be the year of Direct Sales and Independent Hotels!