Digital marketing solutions provider Sojern is offering its enterprise-grade technology developed to power marketing campaigns for the world’s biggest travel brands to independent hotels and chain properties as a subscription.
A commission version of the same solution, known as ‘Pay On The Stay’, has been used by many hotels for some time.
Offered as a direct bookings alternative to a hotel’s distribution deals with online travel agencies (OTAs), the digital marketing solution delivers “highly personalised advertising to consumers across multiple devices and digital channels such as Facebook and Instagram, video, display ads, and search,” said the company in a statement.
The targeted ads and content then drive potential customers to the hotel’s website to book directly, it added.
According to Sojern, most hoteliers do not have access to the same resources that the major brands have, while many also lack the time and expertise needed to manage multiple vendors and come up with a comprehensive digital media mix that will allow them to reach customers online. The digital marketing solutions will solve this problem for them.
The company also said its platform is built to reduce hoteliers’ reliance on OTAs “by helping them identify in-market travellers and uses advertising to drive direct bookings and increase web traffic on the hotel’s own website, while fostering direct customer relationships for the hotel.”
Additional programme benefits include complimentary ad creative, A/B creative testing, translation services, and local market and competitive insights.
The solutions are offered to independent hotels and chain properties in two different ways.
‘Pick Your Plan’ (subscription) is priced at a fixed monthly fee. Customers pull from their marketing budgets to leverage Sojern’s branding and performance marketing solutions to drive web traffic, build brand awareness and overcome seasonality.
Kurt Weinsheimer: “Sojern has been looking at traveller behaviour across the mobile and digital web since 2007.” (Image credit: Sojern)
With ‘Pay On The Stay’ (commission) customers work with Sojern as part of their overall distribution strategy to drive direct bookings through digital channels Sojern takes on the risk of running digital media campaigns and hotels only pay for completed stays.
“Today it’s easier and cheaper than ever for a hotel to build a website and accept bookings online, but attracting qualified in-market travellers to your site is an ongoing challenge. What hotelier has the time, budget, or expertise to master marketing across search, Facebook, Instagram, display, video, mobile, native and the next big thing—particularly when they’re competing with multi-billion dollar ad budgets from the OTAs?” said Kurt Weinsheimer, Sojern chief solutions officer.
“Sojern has been looking at traveller behaviour across the mobile and digital web since 2007, and providing solutions to the biggest travel brands on the planet to increase their share of direct bookings and meet their performance KPIs. We realised there was an opportunity to turn this expertise into simple solutions for hoteliers with smaller budgets who didn’t want to take on the risk of a traditional media insertion order model.”
• Featured image credit: rilueda/Getty Images
