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Marketing Is A Chance To Innovate, Test & Win
with Sam Trotter, The Indigo Road Hospitality Group
Josiah Mackenzie
October 05, 2023
Together with
Today we’re learning about:
The opportunity with marketing to innovate today
Developing new menus
Adults-only sections
Insights on AI today
….and more
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Marketing Is A Chance To Innovate, Test & Win
with Sam Trotter, The Indigo Road Hospitality Group
Sam Trotter
Today we’re learning from Sam Trotter, head of digital marketing at The Indigo Road Hospitality Group, about the role of marketing in innovation.
Embrace a mindset of constant learning
There’s no such thing as an expert marketer.
Our culture, technology, and media environment are constantly evolving, so we must be willing to adapt and learn new strategies.
We just learned about TikTok in the last couple of years. All of a sudden it’s something that you have to think about and learn about. You need to download it on your phone and experience it no matter how much of a curmudgeon you want to be and not participate. You have to actually do it - but I like being a constant student of the business and what you can do.
Experimentation leads to brand evolution
Sam shared how his team at Indigo Road Hospitality Group embraces experimentation to improve their business. They constantly come up with new ideas and concepts, collaborating with PR agencies and operations teams to bring them to life.
We are doing a Julia Childs-themed dinner at one of our mountain resorts. It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun.
By trying out unique offerings, like themed dinners or special packages, they not only enhance their brand but also gather valuable data on customer preferences and profitability.
Balancing awareness and guest satisfaction
One of the challenges in hospitality marketing is finding the right balance between raising awareness and delivering a memorable guest experience. While attention-grabbing tactics may generate media coverage, it's crucial to find out if guests actually enjoy what you're offering. And the only way to do that is through testing.
We're doing a hot air balloon package where we're tethering the hot air balloon to our patio. It’s peak fall foliage and so you go up in this balloon and you're in the mountains and you can see the beautiful fall foliage all around you. Do we know if it's going to be a winner? We don't. But it is a really cool experience that we think our guests would really be excited about.
When Sam and his team try something like this, they look at a wide range of indicators to understand the impact.
We have data on how the emails performed and we have data on how the event actually performed. We hear from the operations teams how it went. We talk about it after the fact, was it profitable? We know if we received press from it. There are a lot of indicators for us.
In summary, marketing is much more than just advertising or campaigns in the world of hospitality. It's about learning, experimenting, and evolving your brand or concept to deliver memorable experiences for your guests - and profits for your business.
Listen to our full conversation now, which covers:
[Flashback] Lauren Phelps on experimentation in opening the Ameswell Hotel (0:19)
Constant learning (1:31)
Marketing benefiting your whole business (2:08)
Why hospitality marketing is so fun (4:23)
Who to get involved when planning events and experiences (5:07)
Balancing media coverage and guest happiness (6:39)
Experimenting to build your brand and delight guests (9:12)
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