Have a product that doesn't fit perfectly into one of the existing categories on HotelTechReport?
👍 Our audience is still interested. For products that don't have a perfect fit category in the HTR App Store/directory, this by no means indicates that your solution is not viable or valuable for HTR's audience of 200k+ hoteliers looking for the best digital products for their hotels.
📣 How to Take a More Proactive Approach. All it means that you need to take a more proactive approach to get your product in front of hoteliers and the best way to do this is via:
📈 PPC Campaigns: Enable the PPC campaign feature in the vendor dashboard to drive traffic, clicks and leads to your website
💌 Full-Service Marketing Campaigns: Run full-service outbound campaigns like: eblasts, site, takeovers, banners, retargeting and more to the largest audience of hotel tech buyers online
1. PPC Campaigns
The easiest, fastest and most scalable way to drive visibility and leads
HTR has targeted ad units on specific pages throughout the site (ex. Home Page, Department Hubs, category pages, etc) where you can promote your brand and products.
How it works. Bid in the real time auction for placement to drive traffic and leads to YOUR OWN website. Watch Tutorial
For companies who offer a product that doesn't fit perfectly into a category on the site, typically the auctions that perform best are:
Home Page + Newsletter Auction: Feature your product on HTR's home page and weekly newsletter
Department Level Auctions: Feature your product in pages related to a specific department or role/function within a hotel (ie. Operations, Guest Experience, Revenue Management, Marketing, etc)
IMPORTANT: In order to run PPC campaigns you will need to have a vendor account on HTR so that you have access to the PPC dashboard.
You can setup a vendor account by listing at least one product in the App Store. Don't worry about selecting the 'perfect' fit category just choose the best fit available. If you think HTR should create a new category we do have a process to petition for one here as well and if your request gets approved you can always move from your initial category into the new one that is a better fit later.
2. Full-Service Marketing Campaigns
Run Full-Service campaigns like eblasts, site takeovers, banners and more
The other way to leverage HTR to proactively get your brand and products in front of our audience of hoteliers is to run outbound marketing campaigns.
How it Works. You select the type of campaign you want to run and HTR does all of the work from graphic design to editorial through campaign setup, optimization and reporting on final results (View process overview)
Outbound Marketing Campaign FAQs
💡 Campaign Examples and Inspiration
Below are some examples of various companies who have run outbound campaigns to promote products that don't fit perfectly into a category in the HTR App Store.
What Do These Examples Have in Common? None of these products fit perfectly into one of the categories in the HTR App Store but they are all still relevant products for HTR's audience. These companies therefore opted to promote their products by running outbound promotional campaigns.
Product | Example | Campaign Type |
Google Direct Booking Links | Eblast | |
Apple Pay for Hotels | Site Takeover | |
Bevi Smart Water Dispenser | Eblast | |
PriceWaterhouseCoopers IoT Division | Eblast + Sponsored article + Banner | |
Tidemark Venture Capital | Eblast | |
Life House Tech Enabled Hotel Management | Site Takeover + Eblast + Sponsored Article | |
Stripe Payments | Site Takeover + Sponsored Article + Banner | |
Matterport Virtual Tours | Eblast + Site Takeover + Retargeting | |
Poly.ai | Eblast + Site Takeover | |
Cartstack Booking Abandonment Recovery | Eblast | |
Impala Contracting | Eblast + Site Takeover + Banner + Sponsored Article | |
Juicer Pricing | Eblast | |
VendorPM | Eblast | |
HotelFurniture.com | Eblast + Site Takeover + Banner + Sponsored Article |
FAQs
What's the difference between the Inbound App Store vs Outbound Agency Campaigns?
It's important to remember that the App Store is just one of the ways to promote your product on Hotel Tech Report. If you're reading this, you likely have a tech product for hotels that doesn't fit neatly into one of the categories on HotelTechReport.
For some high level context, there are essentially two ways that you can leverage the HTR platform to drive visibility and leads which are (1) inbound App Store and (2) outbound campaigns:
HTR App Store (inbound)...This is the self-service aspect of HTR where hotel tech companies list their products and then collect reviews and post content through the vendor dashboard to generate visibility and leads.
HTR Agency (outbound)...This is the full-service aspect of HTR where companies leverage HTR as an outsourced marketing agency to produce fully turnkey advertising, sponsored content, and demand gen campaigns (view sample campaigns) to drive you more visibility and leads year round on the platform.
Can I suggest a new category that should be created on HTR?
Its important to note that HTR has to be extremely careful when rolling out new categories in the HTR App Store. The more categories we roll out, the less traffic/demand each category gets. Not only is adding more categories dilutive by spreading traffic thinner throughout the site but it also runs the risk of confusing users.
In order to create a category we have strict criteria to ensure that we'll be able to generate demand to make the category a success. If we created every category that each company wanted every company would have their own category and we'd have thousands of categories all with little to no hoteliers visiting them.
If you think we're missing a category you can 👉 Petition to add a new one here