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WHAT we DO
brand positioning
Strategically positioning hotel and travel tech company brands. Formulating the strategic and tactical plan to capture the right position. Training teams on tactical marketing elements and measuring performance.
thought Leadership strategy
Creating effective campaigns driven by useful content and measurable results. Building brands through thought leadership campaigns and meaningful content.
Public Speaking and Education
Fun, engaging and instructive speaking for events, education seminars and hotel schools. Always including pragmatic and useable takeaways.
ADVERTISING ART DIRECTION
Assisting marketing and advertising teams to optimize advertising layout, messaging and design for increased visibility and impact. Planning trade-show and campaigns to maximise returns on trade show investment and improved brand awareness.
strategic & SALES messaging
Working with management to craft the story that will resonate with the market and communicate the right message to customers.
PRODUCT/MARKET FIT
Assist management and product managers to find the right product/market fit for hotel and travel tech products. Adapting product direction to increase chances of success by understanding and testing the market needs.
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key principles
IT MUST BE CLEAR
Marketing must be easy to understand, clever puns are fun. But more often than not it doesn't help get the message across. It is more important to communicate clearly and quickly than cleverly.
IT MUST BE EFFICIENT
Marketing needs to generate measurable results. If those results are brand awareness, leads, sales or other results they must be measurable and plans must be agile enough to change if they aren't performing.
It must be elegant
There's a fine line between pure efficiency and elegance in marketing. One can argue that the ROI of spam it great, but it isn't elegant and to remain in the minds of the customer, it should be elegant.
IT must be truthful
Marketing is worthless if it promoted untrue or altered facts. Getting a thousand disappointed visits is worth nothing, but a hundred satisfied visitors will turn some to customers.
it can be ON A BUDGET
Great marketing isn't great because the campaign costed millions. Great marketing can be done on a budget. Big ideas work because they can be executed with the resources at hand. Huge budgets just open the floodgates for Big Ideas, the smaller the budget the smarter one must get to find the Big Idea.
It can follow trends
One doesn't always need to set the trend, great marketing can follow existing trends, as long as one is aware that one is following a trend and that it may soon be over. Obsessing on setting new trends is both expensive and inefficient, unless one has billions to spend.
IT IS NEVER Confusing
Whilst there are always many messages, plenty of options and even more exceptions the marketing and its design is always focused on a single message for that moment. It may not work for everyone but it works for the majority and that is most important.
IT never CHASes SHINY OBJECTS
Unfortunately too many marketers are chasing the latest channel and shiny objects. One must always look out for new channels. But it is more important to understand why and how they fit in the mix because many don't and they become a distraction.
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about US
After a string of successes in hotel management, hotel marketing and hotel technology startups the next logical step for Martin Soler, was to build a company to help hotels, hotel technology companies and travel tech startups build and scale their efforts to a global audience. Soler & Associates' was created as a means to assist companies grow their marketing efforts and appeal to their audiences.
Driven from a passion that finding the right message and the right audience makes marketing helpful for companies and for customers. We work to help our clients find the right problems as these make the solutions obvious. We're passionate about marketing, we believe modern marketing is about finding ways to help customers find the right solution to their problems and it normally works out quite well.
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Some of our Clients
From developing thought leadership campaigns, to building brand awareness. From redesign brand identities and messaging to developing new market positioning. Some of the services and clients we have helped.
SnapShot
citizenM
Fastbooking
Shiji Group
Hetras
Entre Cielos, Argentina
Education
ESSEC Business School
Ecole Hoteliere Lausanne
MBA ESG, Business School
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What people say
“Great marketers know how to simultaneously educate, support, and sell through their communications. Martin has demonstrated his capacity to do this in multiple contexts. As one of the industry’s visionaries, Martin’s work is widely referenced as the strategy foundation for thousands around the world. If you have the chance to work with him, do it. ”
“I really appreciated working with Martin for his motivation, his help to focus and develop new ideas thanks to his solving problems skills. He has great advertising and marketing culture which helps tremendously.”
“I can highly recommend Martin to anyone - his energy and enthusiasm makes him a pleasure to work with, and his industry knowledge is exceptional. He has a deep understanding of online marketing and selling, and this combined with his travel background makes him an important figure in this industry.”
“If you’ve got an online project Martin is the one to go to. Professional, relevant and innovative. It’s always a pleasure to work with Martin.”
“Martin has almost singlehandedly changed the ways in which we all conduct digital business across the hotel spectrum.”
“I consider Martin a top reference on Hotel Online Marketing, and I’m always amazed with his passion on the topic. I first knew of him through his research hotel marketing and he kindly shares his experience though multiple channels.
He is enthusiastic on the matter and always trying new things. I feel fortunate for having him on board helping us with direct reservations.”
“Hotel marketing in a current digital transformed landscape requires a complete different skill set than what hoteliers are used to. Martin exemplifies the digital marketeer, while able to bridge constituencies in the needed transformation.”