At the recent Mid-Atlantic Innkeepers Conference in Virginia this past week I did a session for the aspiring innkeepers, and realized much of what I went over with them in terms of marketing both offline and online I’ve never really either put down on paper (so to speak) or condensed in one place for reference.

Many of the things we went over were basic marketing tools that many B&Bs either don’t take advantage of, or don’t think of, and going out of the starting gate with some additional ammunition to get your offline and online marketing in shape is never a bad thing.

What colors are you planning on using? Are they from color palettes from RGB/Hex or Pantone colors, which the codes can be translated to each other, but a color that may look terrific on Print materials (Pantone) may look hideous on a computer screen. If you go to GoffGrafix (there are other conversion sites out there as well) if you are planning on using Pantone colors, test them out with their RGB color conversions down at the bottom of the linked page.

Slides three and slide four were on Rack cards, and a guest post/interview I did for Bedandbrunchpr pretty much sums up everything I would want to impart about rack cards. You can find it here: Media Moment: Rack Cards. 

Slide five was on thinking out of the box a bit on your branded amenities.  I wrote about this one (had to go find it! Back in 2010) The great debate about “branded” amenities, necessity or waste?.

Slides six, seven and eight were on advertising where your guests will find you. If you are a Select Registry Inn and have a lot of high end cars in your parking lot for example, consider doing print ads (no print is not dead if used correctly) in magazines like Roundel magazine,  which caters to BMW enthusiasts, or if you are a pet friendly inn, connect with your local vet who always has copies of the pet directed branded magazines in their office, ad space in those is very affordable. You have guests that love quilting, check out McCall’s Quilting as another example. What do your guests like to do, and more importantly what do they like to read!

Slide nine was making sure that if you did print ads, make sure they had a call to action on them, and make sure they had a referral code on them so you could track your ROI (Return on Investment) for the ad. Adding a small incentive always helps. “Use this referral code when booking for a small sampling of chocolate dipped strawberries when reserving your room, Phone reservations only.”  So you give them 3 or 4 strawberries when they come (remember it said small sampling :). Or something else (it doesn’t have to be big, a small room discount, free tickets to an area attraction that you may have gotten for free) as an incentive to save the ad itself, plus use the code so you can track your bookings.

I have 2 dozen more slides to go, so I’m going to make this a multi part post, more next week. Same bat time, same bat place.

If you are an innkeeper or aspiring innkeeper and would like a copy of the actual slide deck (for the visuals) please send me an email at [email protected] and I’d be happy to send you a copy.

Filed under: B&B, How tos, Lodging, marketing, Observations Tagged: Amenities, Aspiring Innkeepers, Branding, marketing, Rack Cards