Top 10 Items to Budget For in 2009

Traditional Online Channels

1. Website Conversion Updates Updating conversion features such as photo gallery, banners for specials, eMaps, community mash-ups, content refresh and website refresh

2. Organic Promotion Highest return on investment. Results in higher organic rankings in search engines. Entails promotion in different search engines, local IYPs, and listings in relevant directories

3. Pay-Per-Click Good return on investment if managed well. Results in rankings in the sponsored section of the search results page

4. Email Marketing The best and lowest cost tool to market to existing clients who have stayed at your property or have otherwise expressed an interest in your property by signing up for email offers, etc. This is best if the email database is at least 200 consumers.

Social Media Optimization

5. Trip Advisor Review Feeds or User Generated Content Module Provide direct feeds from Trip Advisor on to your website. This results in higher search engine rankings and higher conversion. Alternatively, you can set up a user generated content module on your website for guests to leave comments. Hotels with the best operators naturally tend to win.on.

6. Blogs Develop a destination blog or set up the neighborhood page on your website as a blog page. This allows you to engage consumers on subjects as varied as destination information, local dining, fun things to do, etc.

7. Online Video Different from traditional videos, these videos help drive search engine rankings in video and other related search engines. The videos are tagged with keywords and things that consumers are searching for.

8. Photo Sharing Share photos of the hotel and things to do in your market with potential guests on photo sharing channels.

9. Social Networking Sites Create profiles on myspace, facebook, etc. for your hotel and network with relevant groups.

10. Online PR and Social Bookmarking enerate keyword-rich press releases and launch on various online news channels. Bookmark the websites and articles using social bookmarking websites. This helps drive more traffic and enhances your website’s performance

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Contributed by: Anil Aggarwal, Milestone Internet Marketing