The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine. Every time I interact with him, I somehow get reminded of how team India of the late ninetees and early 2000’s used to call the captain of the Indian Cricket team Saurav Ganguly as; “Dada”.
Dada in bengali mean Big Brother. What I am going to write below needs to be pretty compresensive, considering it is coming an elder brother.
Let me try to explain digital marketing from the lens of evidence collection. Basically noticing and trying to recreate scenes.
A user opens any digital device for 2 reasons. Want and need.
Want – hedonic
Need – responsibilities
I deliberately used just a single word.
At its core, any activity, can be divided in 2 segments. Things we like doing and things we do because its our responsibility. Not necessarily seeking pleasure doing the ‘need’ activities, but hey, you got to do, what you got to do.
To recap, any user starts utilising any digital device for primarily 2 things. Hedonic activities, the ones we want to do, or, responsibilities which we ought to carry out. This is the first decision point the user is having to go through. Do I want to do a hedonic activity? Something I love to do, or a responsibility?
- If the user is a travel buff, he may wish to log onto his Instagram to see some travel inspiration.
- If the user is needing to book the flight and hotel for a family trip it can be a need that has to be fulfilled in the most efficient time possible.
The supply is from all the users who are in the hedonic activity zone (seeking travel inspiration Instagram reels), the demand is from the users needing to take an action now.
At this point in time, you as a business need to decide. Do you go demand generating for the supply side or capture demand that is already present? That’s a decision you would need to take.
If you look at your booking window (I am talking about hotels, restaurants, events spaces, entertainment zones etc.) you should be able to gauge pretty well which route should you choose? Which audience do you target?
- The users who are in plenty of supply looking for travel inspiration content about your location, or
- Capturing the demand searching about hotels in your location.
If you happen to go route 1, read this article on brand marketing.
If you end up choosing route 2, read on.
Lets recap the user story. A traveler (lets consider family man) wanting to book tickets and flights ASAP. He has a short timeframe during lunch break. 15 mins max.
He types in “where do I stay for a 5 day vacation in california in a property which is luxurious, with multiple outlet options. I will be travelling with my wife and kids. My wife loves to shop. We are a california resident, so we’ve seen quite a lot. Suggest some unique places to stay”
Google AI mode provides an answer. The guests follows up with 2 more questions.
Finally he decides a luxury resort in the Carlsbard area. Done, in 15 mins.
It is in those 15 mins, you, as a property need to show yourself (obviously with the help of AI LLMs and various Big Tech Algorithms) why you are the best choice for their accommodations.
You need to sell yourself to the AI’s so that it can help sell YOU.
Let me share my simple 3 step strategy you can utilise to get increased visibility for your property
- Manage operations exceptionally well. A guest who is well serviced with care and love, will always want to say good things about you. Either in person to someone else. Or in some digital format (whatsapp messages, facebook mesenger conversations, reviews etc). Ensuring your operations are top-notch for a guest to feel I really want to come back here again. Start with this tactic. Have this as your operational North Star please.
- A world post AI isn’t a place where you can hide yourself with the help of some spammy tactic. Product is everything. It has to deliver on the promise.
- Choose any one digital media platform of your choice (Tik ToK, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit).
- When choosing your preferred platform remember the content type that works best in that platform. You would need to create content for the platform. Have this consideration very early on, before you go to next step.
- If I have to take my example, I know I’m very comfortable in front of the camera, that is why my primary platform is YouTube. For you it can be Instagram or something else.
- At this point of time, when you are choosing your platform, do not worry about the audience. Just choose the platform you feel most comfortable in to represent your business.
- Your personality on the platform should be as close to how you are in the real world.
- Start creating content for that platform, such that you are providing content to the user group who was segmented as route one. Who come on the platform for a hedonic activity. To find travel inspiration. Do not worry about how you are going to capture the demand for the user group who needed to take action within 15 mins. Just produce great quality content for the platform of your choice.
There’s a reason why this tactic should work wonders if implemented correctly. I will share my hypothesis based on few observations. I will also update as I move forward with the business I am trying to grow. My personal brand.
The demand for the people who may need a hotel to be booked within 15 mins is small. Those are users who are at the purchase decison making stage. What do they need?
Start acting as a potential guest yourself, travelling to your location.
What are the probable questions they have? Answer them on your chosen platform and on your website. One is an owned channel (website) the other is a 3rd party channel (social media). When you provide signals of being an authoritative source, for questions a guest is asking for information about forward looking days, the LLMs can’t help but surface you/you hotel in the form of either a brand mention or a citation source.
As long as you are providing crisp information that can be consumed very easily by a probable guest before they make a purchase decision, the LLMs are happy to show your name.
But hey, there’s a caveat, there’s always a BUT. These are LLMs. Large language models, built to generate no matter what the input. There are cases where it may hallucinate. That is a 100% probability of that happening. When it will happen? No one knows.
For the past 3 weeks, I am being more mindful of how I use the internet. Be it through the desktop, mobile or ipad. I have been interacting much much much much more with LLMs that traditionally going to any website. If and only when I need a conversion, is when I had to visit site.
In my opinion, measurement of all business activities become easier in a post AI Digital World. All teams have one goal. Revenue. Are we going up or down? Make hypothesis, test variation and measure. That’s how we know we are showing more in AI visibility. If revenue grows.
Because in the wild wide world of the dark internet era we have entered, if you are not producing content, others who are producing content will always have more preferrence. At least for algorithms. Humans may not want to see any more content, but algorithms want them. The fresher it is the better it is. Content helps them get more smart.
As people in the hospitality industry who are thinking what can we do to show ourselves more in front of other humans on the other side of the AI digital sphere, always remember.!
At the other side of the digital wall is a human. Who feel hungry just as you would get after a morning shopping free with the wife. If he had choose a small restaurant break waiting at the checkout counter, he would pick up his phone and ask.
Question is – “would you be the one to answer?”