3 Ways Your Digital Strategy is Failing

　　It’s no well-kept secret that your customers are more digitally dependent than ever before. While this puts the onus on your business to deliver a sound digital strategy, the majority of businesses fall short in this department. Too often, marketers experience a classic case of tunnel vision, as they focus so much on their digital strategy, that they fail to integrate it with their overall business.

　　Below are three ways that you may be failing in a digital environment without even knowing it:

　　1. Social derangement syndrome

　　What’s your goal for your digital strategy? Frequently, the way we focus on our social media efforts shortchanges your overall mission. Many marketers are worried about increasing the number of people who like their page on Facebook or increasing their number of Twitter followers. This is well and good only if you can create a direct correlation between those numbers and your bottom line profitability. As my good friend - and social media extraordinaire - Jay Baer puts it, “The idea is not to be good at social; the idea is to be good at business because of social.”

　　Your digital strategy needs to tap social media as a way to create individual relationships that not only lead to new customers but also loyal, return customers. It’s hard to make a correlation between increasing your number of followers and the increased quality of relationships with your customers. As you’ll see below, a sound digital strategy is more about the individual and less about the mass.

　　2. How am I doing?

　　Are you asking for feedback from your customers? I mean truly asking for them to tell you what they think, what experience they"re having at your hotel and how you can improve. In the aforementioned rat race to produce content for social sites, increase the number of likes that you have and increase your Twitter follower-base, have you taken the time to truly make yourself a sounding board to improve your business? After all, the strength in social isn"t creating content for people to consume - that’s been done for years with the traditional web - but rather cultivating relationships with your customers. To build these relationships, you have to have something in common. Luckily you do: they have opinions and want great experiences. You want to hear opinions and provide great experiences. Making your social presence a two-way street will boost customer retention and ultimately the bottom line far more rapidly than content creation ever could.

　　What"s more, these interactions between you and your customers provide huge SEO gain. Not only are you creating a cycle that retains customers, but you"re adding people to that cycle by doing so. Win-Win.

　　3. Real-time, real results

　　Be honest. How quickly and flexibly do you respond to your customers? If a customer gives you feedback - as described above - how fast can you interface with them? Are the employees at your individual properties empowered to respond to these guests immediately? How do you receive this feedback? Comment cards? Surveys?

　　As a business in the hospitality industry, you are expected to be infinitely connected and accessible to your customers. Why? Because they are. Think about it. If you wanted to get in touch with one of your friends, other than using the phone or speaking in-person, how can you go about it? I can Facebook, Tweet, SMS or email them a message to them in the blink of an eye. In an industry that is expected to cater to the whims of its customers, it"s an absolute must that you be able to respond - in a multitude of ways - to these whims IMMEDIATELY. For you as a business in the hospitality industry, this means never having a customer leave your property with a negative experience.

　　Some hotel proprietors figure that if anyone is visiting their property and has an issue that they"ll let the staff know. Customers, though, are not fans of in-person interaction, preferring to hide behind digital devices. It takes an overwhelmingly positive or negative experience for them to work with your staff in-person. Yet, it"s the situations that are neither overwhelmingly positive nor negative - we call them 2-4 star situations - that can make or break a long-term relationship with a customer. Those little things are the difference between a customer coming back to your hotel or choosing the one across the street as hotels are seen as easily interchangeable in this down economy. Currently, for every customer complaint, 26 other customers haven’t voiced their opinions. Wouldn’t you like to keep those 26 silent customers that are voting with their feet?