Ms. Dietrich

Social Media & PR

Developing a Comprehensive PR Strategy for Your Hotel

By Gini Dietrich, Founder & CEO, Arment Dietrich Inc.

First, what is public relations? Who can honestly explain public relations? Try it right now before reading further. Answer the question - what is public relations?

The text book definition is: The identifying and nurturing of relationships with publics that are essential to the success of an organization.

The PR industry definition is: The sum total of the opinions your audiences have of you, your product, or your organization. (And do you know what that opinion is?)

How did you do? Is it now clear as mud?

Public relations is not tangible. You can't hold it in your hand and look at the pretty pictures and the witty copy. Public relations is not advertising. Advertising is paid media and readers expect ads to be positive about the company. Public relations is working with reporters to tell your story for you. You can't always control the message or the outcome of the story, but if you have sound strategy and strong, consistent key messages your story will tell itself.

So what does public relations do? It:

If you're a new hotel operator and you want the community to know about your business, public relations can be used to introduce your identity, get you noticed, and develop your brand.

If you're building or acquiring new locations, public relations can be used to get you noticed, enhance your role in the community, enhance your credibility, and build your brand.

Public relations doesn't exist solely to build a brand. It also exists to:

Have a strategy!

Anyone who tells you that public relations cannot be directly linked to business goals - an increase in sales, interest from investors, heads in beds, happy shareholders or partners, etc. - is full of it. A public relations plan that begins with strong strategy can help you accomplish any type of business growth.

Public relations strategy is like having a playbook for your business; it makes certain all of the tactics work together to achieve your goals.

Determining what should be in your public relations strategy

As a business owner, you know how important it is to take time to find the tree from the forest in the constant grind of keeping things afloat. I once read an article about Bill Gates going to his cabin for a week, by himself, to reflect on the business and think of creative ways to stay ahead of competition. In that same article it said that he does a lot of reading, reflecting, and drinking of Orange Crush. I don't have a cabin, nor can I leave for a week to do business strategy. But I love Orange Crush so I open some and think about business growth every Friday afternoon.

My point is, find a treat you love that is consistent, available, and something to look forward to, block time on your calendar when no one can reach you, and think about your business objectives.

Do you have them written down? Good. How are you going to achieve them?

Here are some ideas:

Writing your public relations strategy

When I have a new employee start who doesn't have strategic experience, I explain the difference between objectives and strategies. Objectives are measurable and provide a benchmark for success at the end of each quarter and at the end of the year. Strategies are how you're going to get there (the playbook!). And then I give them a list.

Strategy words:

Without fail, if someone new to strategy uses these words when writing a client's communications plan, they inevitably get it right. Try it!

A little practice

Let's say your objective is to increase heads in beds by 25 percent during the week. How are you going to achieve that goal? How can public relations work in tandem with marketing and promotions?

Start with your strategy words. For instance: Develop a "free night's stay" postcard targeted toward five surrounding zip codes. The night's stay could be a random drawing or could be given to someone who books a certain number of consecutive nights.

Another idea: Target local hospitality reporters by sending them information about your hotel and some sort of gimmick, which could also be a free night's stay.

Make sense? Now write at least one strategy for each of your objectives. You can have more than one strategy per objective if it's going to take more than one thing to achieve it.

If you followed my recommendations, you now have a pretty comprehensive plan that includes your business objectives and public relations strategies to help achieve each of them. In my next column, I'll provide some tactical ideas that will help you achieve your objectives by using your strategies. Stay tuned!

Gini Dietrich is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arment Dietrich, Inc., a firm that uses non-traditional marketing. The author of Spin Sucks, Gini has delivered numerous keynotes, panel discussions, coaching sessions, and workshops across North America on the subject of digital marketing tools. One of the top rated communication professionals on the social networks, Gini was recently named the number one PR person, according to Klout and TechCrunch, on the channels, and number one on Twitter, according to TweetLevel. Ms. Dietrich can be contacted at 312-787-7249 or gini.dietrich@armentdietrich.com Extended Bio...

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