Social Media Campaign for the Marriott Hotel on Christmas Period - Case Study Example

SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN FOR THE MARRIOTT HOTEL TO PROMOTE THE CHRISTMAS PERIOD. Instructor Institution Submission Date Businesses engage in varieties of practices that ensure their products are designed and meet their end users. Marketing is one of those important practices that are carried out in daily business operations. Once products and services have been designed, it is the duty of the marketing department to create awareness of the product to potential clients who happen to be the consumers of the products. A business that has a vibrant marketing department is in a better position to attract clients than the business which does not have vibrant and aggressive marketing strategies. Businesses are always in competition for available clients. It is therefore the knowledge of this important that prompts marketing managers to look for all possible channels and strategies by which they can reach potentials clients far and wide (Kotler, Kartajaya and Setiawan, 2010, p. 32 ). Currently, the invention of the internet and the world-wide web has been an important milestone in daily business activities (Copeland and Malik, 2005, pg, 2). People are able to buy and sell products from different parts of the world without having to move physically to the markets, shops or warehouses. This is possible through e-commerce, a new business strategy that uses the internet as the common market place for potential sellers and buyers. Social media has remaining to be a vibrant and fast growing market which most business are trying to exploit (Thorat, Kishor, and Meghe, 2013, p, 18). Online marketing is fast and effective since it is cost effective in terms of time and finances. There are many people who have resorted to the internet platform as their choice for business transaction whether it is buying or selling (Oxford, 2013, p, 1). Businesses have also not been left out in this growing trend. Through the I.T department, most businesses have resorted to social media marketing so as to take advantage of this market and increase the presence in the minds of their potential clients. Social media marketing refers to a combination of applications that gives users the ability to create, work together and share information (Thorat, Kishor, and Meghe, 2013. p, 16). For these applications to work, they have to be internet based (Niger and Keller, 2012, p. 1; Kuhikar, 2013, p. 15-21). When used effectively, social media marketing has the potential to make an organization have its clients at the core of their social marketing activities (Thorat, Kishor, and Meghe, 2005, p. 2). Marriot hotel has been yearning to have an online social marketing platform that will help it tap into the many clients that are within reach on the online platform. It is for this reason that the company has decided to come up with this campaign plan this will help it tap into this rich client base. The Christmas season presents a peak point for most business as they gets a chance to double or even triple their sales. Many people travel across the world doing shopping or touring different places for leisure. Business that develops products that appeal to this season makes a big kill. Marriot hotel looks ready to increase its returns various events that t has organized and the 2013 Christmas season that is forth coming. This marketing plan is seen as the platform upon which they will mount a successful campaign towards having a vibrant social media marketing that will thrive over the season and in future marketing activities of the hotel. With a great number of clients expected to be making bookings into hotels and restaurant, Marriot Hotels does not want to be left out in this lucrative season. The company plans to have a platform upon which they can meet with clients, show them their profile and make booking arrangements online. Through the online platform, the hotel projects a reduction in its overhead costs which would have been used in other kinds of conventional marketing, which are common with the normal way of doing business. The company has equipped its IT department with the much needed infrastructure which will be useful in creating an effective platform upon which social media marketing will be achieved (Evans and McKee, 2010, p. 4). There are very many social networking sites which the company has planned to use. Having a Facebook account will simply mean that clients can easily log into the companies profile, check on its profile and special features available. This will help them in making purchase decisions and other preferences towards choosing the hotel as their destination. Main aim behind social media marketing The hotel is motivated to have this campaign with the main aim of promoting various events that appeal to the 2013 Christmas season. It is expected that the experience that clients will have in this hotel will influence their future decisions towards choosing where to be at the time of important seasons which may not really be Christmas. For the 2013, season, the hotel has designed the Christmas “hip operation” will be the centre of attraction to the clients expected in the hotel. This campaign will run from July till December which will be the peak of the campaigns. Having a successful media will also be useful in exposing coverage to lots of events which will be taking over during December. This way the company will be in a better position to increase its profits while at the same time retain its clients who will come to have their first experience in the hotel. The company will also want to have an experience better from previous experiences for those customers that have been frequent clients in the past. However, the long term objective for this campaign is to have a great following on facebook (Zuckerberg, 2004), twitter and other social networking sites. Having clients who are following on the things that the hotel is planning will be useful in planning for advertisements. A social media following is also important for engaging clients for feedback. The most essentialstep for a business is to have an effective feedback system from clients, from which they can determine the effectiveness of their products on them. This system is important since it can help you in refining the kinds of products and services that customers want. Customers’ reviews are very important in designing goods and services. This is because, reviews are able to provide a clue in the clients’ changing preferences in the way they would want certain products and services designed. The hotel industry offers both products and services with biasness on services. This social media campaign plan will therefore have three essential aims in its overall approach which are; Create awareness of the available products nd services; Generate interest in potential clients about the kinds of products that are available at present and in the future; By engaging its clients live on the social media platform, the campaign will be in a position to communicate future expectation and services that clients will be looking forward to have. By doing so, the company will generate interest in clients. The advantages of a vibrant marketing tool is creating and fulfilling curiosity in clients. Prior advertisement about a forth coming event in a company has the ability to create curiosity and interest in clients. This campaign plan will be designed a way that client will have the chance to make advance payments and bookings for events. Research has shown that there are many people who consult the internet in order to make their decision about events, business opportunities and tourism and other important aspects pertaining social life. This implies that continuous online presence is imperative for any business looking towards exploiting online marketing. Having a way that you can answer customer’s queries can grant a business the much needed competitive advantage of their business counterparts who are still sticking to traditional methods of advertising and marketing their products and services (Hendricks, 2014, para 2-3). Marriot hotel has therefore worked out a way that will have its marketing personnel offering a 24 hour online presence all year round. This campaign will be the starting point for a revolutionary marketing campaign for the hotel in future. Any marketing strategy is designed to achieve four main objective; this objectives are; Attention Interest Desire Action It is believed that by visiting the social sites customers will be in a position to gain interest in the hotel. This will be possible by designing a state of the art website and blog spot. A website that has highly appealing graphics that represent the hotel will have a great bearing in creating interest among potential clients. Clients have a way of associating a decent website to a real physical site. The marketing and I.T departments have designed a colorful website which is a representative of the company. By seeing an attractive site the clients will have an interest in visiting the company to experience the services advertised. Interest in clients is created by the small things the client finds appealing to him. The next thing that follows is to make a step and have the actual experience. In this light, this campaign plan is well designed to achieve the four objectives. A marketing research that was conducted by the company proved that social marketing was the best way the company would use in order to increase its presence on line and attract clients that are fast growing on the internet platform. The marketing department was keen in establishing people’s decision making patterns on how they choose places to spend their Christmas and other important events. Finding from the research proved that in order to remain relevant in a dynamic market the company had to use a strategy that was in tandem with the changing customer preferences. The primary research conducted used questionnaires to find out how customers new about some hotels, tourism destinations that were due during festive seasons. Physical observations were also conducted on different events with respect to the number of clients that visited various function. The clients that were present in some of the events that had been sampled were respondents to the questionnaire that were made available. Interviewing was also important in knowing how customers new about events that were forthcoming in various hotels and other restaurants. Marriott hotels discovered that there are many youths who are tech savvy. Secondary research in newspapers and various journals showed that youths were leading in the number of people that were using the internet. The research also proved that young people using the internet have a bias on the social networking. Few of them are interested in news and other kinds of information. Different company websites revealed that many companies were moving towards online marketing as a way of meeting this large number of young people on social platform. Marriott hotel therefore deiced to follow suit and design a website that was different from those of its rivals. Following these statistics, the company was convinced that online marketing was the best way in which it could tap into clients that were growing on the online platform. Realizing that the online platform was dominated by young people, the company has put forward measures which will attract young people into its site thereby increasing its client base into the forthcoming events. Young people have shown be lovers of entertainment since they have time and resources to do so. Young people between in employment or positions of income find themselves with money and lack better ways of investing; they end up spending it on events and other social amenities that appeal to their interest. It this realization that has made Marriott hotel to design services that appeal to young people besides having a vibrant social marketing that appeals to young people. Marriott hotels have come up with events which appeal to many young people and those of an older generation. For instance, there are parties that have been designed to take place over the Christmas period in various hotels in their various locations. It has also been able to create venues where other people planning to have their various events can rent and use the hotel’s premises. Trading in these services gives the company a better position to attract more clients. Other rival companies offer similar products with few of them offering live events for their clients. This is one thing which Marriott hotels have discovered and plan to capitalize on it. While most hotels are known to offer services like reception and accommodation to people, Marriott hotels hope that by organizing parties for its clients, it will be in a position to enhance customer retention and future repeat behaviors where are expected to come back again and again. Besides parties and events, the hotels will be offering normal dishes and different kinds of reception to its clients. In addition, there are accommodation facilities to those clients that will be in need of staying in the hotels in case they are on different missions. There are accommodation facilities ranging from those of single persons to multiple people. The social media campaign plan has also come up strategies that can encourage its clients to book in advance some of the events that are forthcoming. For instance, there are lucrative discounts for those clients that will be registering in advance and making payments towards the events. There are different discount packages for different events that people will be taking place. Customers can check on various discount packages on the different products and events that will be taking place before the Christmas day and those that will be taking place on the Christmas day. Discounts vary depending on the time clients choose to sign up and pay for them. There is also an important segment of affiliate marketing where clients can get special discounts and considerations into future events by referring the programs to fellow friends. The hotel’s social marketing has been designed in such a way that when clients click into the site (Smith and Treadaway, 2010, p, 9), they are able to have links into other blog spots and sites that directs them on how to sign up and pay for their chosen services (Holtz and Demopoulos, 2006, p. 40). Referral programs for affiliate marketing are also available so that clients can share them on their friends on the individual Facebook and other social networking sites. The IT department has also created such links in search engines so that customers can find their way into the company sites using the search engine route. They have also optimized the sight so that they are able to attract more traffic into the platform. Social media marketing is only possible where particular people advertising online have the much needed traffic. Traffic in this case refers to the number of people who are clicking and visiting a particular site online. In order to increase traffic, a company that is investing in internet marketing has to optimize its site, something that the IT department has worked on. The site for Marriott hotel has been designed in a manner that it can reveal new users into the site besides showing the number of times frequent visitors will be clicking into the site. This way, the hotel will be able to engage new visitors and convince them to try the services being offered. There are blog spots that have been designed specifically to enable clients to give feedback from their experiences with the hotel. By having this feedback, the company will be able to respond to customer views and concerns about the hotel. By creating this social media campaign strategy, Marriott hotels believe that they have opened the door of online opportunities that will help the hotel to revolutionize its marketing systems. This way, the hotel management believes that it will be able to compete effectively with its established competitors. Bibliography Copeland, M.V. and Malik, O. 2005. How to ride fifth wave, Business 2.0, 1(1), p.1-3 Evans, D. and McKee, J. 2010.Social Media Marketing. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing Holtz, S. and Demopoulos, T. 2006.Blogging for Business. Chicago: Kaplan Publishing Kotler, P., Kartajaya, H. and Setiawan, I. 2010, Marketing 3.0. New Delhi: Wiley. Kuhikar, P. 2013, "Social Media as a Future Marketing Tool in India: An Overview", PRIMA, 3(2), p. 15-21. Niger B., L and Keller. H. 2012. 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