Trustonomics: the Currency of Success in the Hospitality Tech Industry | By Jennifer Nagy

When a potential customer sees your company as credible and trustworthy, it can drastically shorten the sales cycle because they already know and trust your company/solution; as such, they are considered a “warm lead” and so your sales team can skip the initial “getting to know you” stage of the purchase cycle and move right into the important next steps.

Customers who already trust your brand will require less convincing, more readily accept your offers and feel more secure in their purchasing decisions. In this way, trust helps bridge the gap between intent and action, transforming lookers into confident buyers.

So, what can your company do to increase the trust that your potential customers have in your company?

Transparent & Clear Communication

First and foremost, being honest and transparent in all aspects of your business – and especially in your sales and marketing outreach – is very important. You should never make statements or assertions about your solution or your service that cannot be easily confirmed by facts and quantifiable case studies from previous clients.

For example, some RMS companies have claimed that their rates updates happen in “real-time” but, in reality, their solutions were only updating pricing a handful of times a day; while I’m sure they have a way to rationalize this potentially misleading messaging, hotels who don’t understand the intricacies of algorithms and data science, and who take the line at face value, can be left feeling lied to when they find out the “truth.”

The same goes for lies of omission, which can be just as negatively impactful as outright lies. Like in all types of relationships, it takes years to build trust and only one mistake to break the trust completely so it’s important to be as honest and transparent as possible.

A final note: while global, the hospitality industry is a very small and interconnected one. As such, if your company develops a reputation for being untruthful (even accidentally), your reputation could follow your team and your company around the world and have a very negative impact on your success, both in the short and the long term.

Thought Leadership Development

Thought leadership campaigns position a member (or multiple members) of a company’s leadership team as an expert in their field, which is accomplished by consistently sharing meaningful, educational content with potential hotel clients.

A great deal has been said about thought leadership marketing over the past 5 to 10 years but its importance is becoming more significant than ever for a few key reasons:

1. There is still a widespread lack of understanding amongst many hoteliers about the benefits of operational technology and the ROI that it can offer.
2. Gone are the days when there were only a few vendors selling each type of operational technology. Today, many companies offer different versions of the same operational technologies – each with varying degrees of sophistication and innovation – so this makes it hard for even the most tech-savvy hotelier to decide which solution is best for their property.
3. To make things even more confusing, the newest trend in operational technology is consolidation. Every year, more and more large companies are buying vendors’ individual solutions, combining them with similar ones to leverage the best features of each, and then repackaging and releasing the new solutions, available either as a one-off purchase or as part of a full suite of integrated operating solutions. For hoteliers who don’t have a high degree of tech know-how or who don’t keep an eye on the ins and outs of industry mergers and acquisitions, this gives them even more options and further complicates their ability to decide which solution is best for their property.

That’s why thought leadership is so important: these campaigns educate hoteliers about why operational technology is imperative for their property’s long-term profitability and the key benefits of the different types of solutions. An important note: the most effective thought leadership campaigns are not sales pieces. As the end goal is for hoteliers to consume your content, learn and, as a result, trust your recommendations, effective thought leadership content must be vendor-neutral, unbiased and provide a comprehensive view of the technology marketplace to be most trustworthy to readers.

Today, most hotel technology companies are executing some thought leadership campaigns but many are missing two of the most effective tactics (based on my 16+ years of experience working with travel tech companies):

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing tactic that involves creating insightful, engaging and interesting content (like expert articles about your area of expertise within the hospitality industry) and submitting them for publication to hotel trade media outlets.

Although content marketing is not a direct sales tactic, let’s look at an example of how content marketing will help you to boost sales. When writing your article about the operational problem that your product or service solves, you should position your solution’s unique selling points (USPs) as must-haves for effectively addressing the problem.

For example, if your company’s RMS uses a specific data set to improve your pricing accuracy (compared to other RMS), your thought leadership content should feature this message prominently (along with the complimentary message that high-quality data is integral in obtaining the most ROI from your RMS).

If a potential client repeatedly reads that the quality of the data analyzed by the RMS (and the specific data set that you offer) yields better pricing and increased profitability, this message will eventually lodge itself in the reader’s brain. When shopping for a new RMS, they will think back to the messages that they read about what makes RMS more effective and then they will either look up your company directly (as they already actively follow your highly educational content) or will do a Google search to find your website.

That’s how content marketing converts awareness and trust into sales.

LinkedIn

While we all know, and likely use, LinkedIn, it’s one of the most underutilized marketing tools for building a strong thought leadership presence. LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for building trust, as it enables B2B brands (and their spokespeople) to establish themselves as credible "influencers” in the hotel technology industry.

Two important caveats…

1. Without HUGE budgets to devote to creating and marketing new, insightful and in-depth content on a regular basis, using a company page is much less effective than selecting a company spokesperson to act as the face of the company, and developing/implementing a thought leadership strategy on their behalf (using their profile).
2. Simply sharing educational content and/or sharing your solution’s sales messaging a few times per week isn’t going to make real headway in establishing your company, or your spokesperson, as a thought leader in the hospitality industry. Here’s why… Psychology has shown again and again that people buy from people, not from companies. By following, learning from and getting to know your spokesperson (both as an employee/leader at your company and as a real person), potential customers are able to put a face to the company, which they are more likely to remember than your company’s name, tag line or your logo. It’s the face-to-face, personal connection that will help your company build credibility, shorten the sales cycle and close more sales, more often so your LinkedIn strategy should be all about building relationships.

(Using LinkedIn to build an effective thought leadership platform requires a very complex and nuanced strategy so follow this space for a new article sharing the best practices, tips and how-tos, coming soon!)

Social Proof

In the context of marketing, social proof provides evidence of the popularity or usability of a brand among consumers to influence the purchase decisions of prospective… customers. Just as hotel reviews play a big role in a potential guest’s booking decision, your company’s social proof will reduce the perceived risk of investing in your solution and enhance your company’s overall credibility in the minds of potential customers. It does this by showing potential hotel customers that your solution has already delivered tangible real-world value to other properties, which makes them more likely to believe that your solution will do the same for them.

In the hospitality technology industry, some of the most effective types of social proof include:

• Reviews and ratings on technology review sites (like Hotel Tech Report, ExploreTECH and a new, female-owned site, Affixify) are very important, as hotels trust the reviews and often use the sites as a way to search for the solutions currently available on the market.
• Current customer testimonials, shared on your website/blog, LinkedIn, in your product demos, email marketing and any other marketing channels where your potential customers might be researching your product. Just as on LinkedIn, the power of a real person sharing their opinion/experience – either through a video testimonial and/or an attributed quote – is most compelling for potential customers. For example, by watching a current client share the problems they were experiencing and their measurable results (after implementing your solution), potential customers will more easily imagine their property experiencing the same results (and, as a result, will be more likely to take action), than if you had just shared a statistic (i.e., 95% of our clients have seen an increase of 5% in monthly revenue since implementing our RMS.
• If your solution wins any awards or receives industry recognition of any kind, you should showcase this on all your marketing channels.
• Case studies that demonstrate how your solution has addressed specific pain points for other properties will resonate with potential hotel clients facing similar challenges.
• An ROI Calculator (on your website) is a great way to demonstrate the specific, measurable ROI that potential customers could expect using your technology.
• Industry influencer and expert opinions are also valuable social proof because potential customers trust their opinion and will see it as a third-party endorsement of your solution.
• By developing strategic partnerships with better-known, highly credible companies in the industry (through marketing partnerships, solution integrations, etc.), your company will appear even more credible in the minds of potential customers.

One final note: the importance of trust goes beyond just the purchase of your solution; it is equally important for your technology company to sustain customers’ initial trust as it will keep them feeling more satisfied with the solution’s reliability and performance and boost your retention rate. Of course, satisfied clients will lead to more referral business, which is another way that trust and credibility with current clients can continue to generate revenue over time.

As you can see, building trust and credibility with potential (and current) hotel customers is one of the most important and impactful ways that your hotel technology company can stand out from your competition, maximize conversion rates and boost your revenue over the long-term. If your marketing team hasn’t already implemented a strategy to do so, consider this your sign to get started today!

Reprinted from the Hotel Business Review with permission from http://www.hotelexecutive.com/.