Ben Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Meredith. Meredith, welcome to the show.
Meredith Goldberg00:05 — Thanks for having me.
Ben Ard00:06 — Yeah, Meredith, I'm excited. This is gonna be a fun experience. There's one part of the conversation in particular that your husband was really adamant we talk about. I'm excited to dive in. But before we get there, let's get to know you, your background, all that kind of fun stuff. If you don't mind introducing yourself for the audience, that would be awesome.
Meredith Goldberg00:23 — Yeah. So I am New York born and raised, based in DC now for almost twenty five, twenty six years. I came to DC for college and then just kinda stuck around. I started my career, my first job out of college, as a matchmaker for a dating service, which still exists. I found that I was a very bad matchmaker, but a very good storyteller.
And from there had one or two more jobs in sales, and then realized while I was doing clothing sales for a really small company in DC that we had started trying to get our shirts on television shows. At that point The O.C. was really, really popular and that was like our goal. So a shirt was on an episode of The O.C. for maybe two seconds and we were like, this is it, this is great, this is the end.
And from that I was kind of really understanding what that marketing space looks like. I decided that's what I wanted to pursue full time. I went to grad school for marketing, at Johns Hopkins in their marketing program, and from there ended up at a role in PR in hospitality, at a really historic hotel here in DC, and kind of just fell into hotels and have been with them ever since. I've worked at really small high-end luxury. I've worked at a convention center, did a little resort. And that is where I live today, in hotel world.
Ben Ard02:02 — I love that. That's so cool. I love the experience. I love how you got into marketing. I think that's a ton of fun to say, hey, let's get our shirt on television. Let's figure this out, hack it together. And like you said, we made it.
Meredith Goldberg02:13 — This was pre social. Pre social, just really looking up things on the internet and addresses of where to mail shirts to people. A lot of phone calls.
Ben Ard02:23 — I know. I'm so curious how many of our audience actually knows this show, and if that dates me, because I'm fully aware of everything you just talked about. I'm curious about the new generation, if they've had this experience with The O.C. and quality television from back in the day.
Meredith Goldberg02:39 — I mean, The O.C. is great, great TV. Highly recommend.
Ben Ard02:42 — Yeah. Very cool. I love that. Well, today we're talking about guest experience as a marketing discipline. And what I like about it, obviously you're in hospitality and hotels and things of that nature. Not everyone that listens to this podcast is doing marketing for the same kind of a business, but the principles align to creating memorable moments. You're talking about The O.C., playing into the cultural zeitgeist and all sorts of really cool things. So let's talk about guest experience. I want to dive into your stories, your experience, your elements there.
Talk to me about how you make the guest experience something different and better. How do you think about it, especially on the marketing side? You're not necessarily front of house actually interacting with the guests and things of that nature. How does marketing actually influence the guest experience, and how do you look at it?
Meredith Goldberg03:32 — That's a loaded question. So as a hotel marketer, in hotels the back end is historically very tight. So there's a sales team, there's a reservations team, and then there's like a marketer. So we are handling digital marketing, CRM, social, experiences, managing PR or doing PR sometimes. So it's really every day you're wearing a different hat.
And through that, and through garnering all the data on who's coming to your hotel and looking in the back end and who's visiting your website and where they're coming from, you can start to really craft these personas of who is coming to your hotel. So I can look at the data that comes in through the back end of my website and know that midweek I have guests that are staying for an average of one to two days. They're spending, depending on what the ADR is, what the rates are, and then they are coming from, let's say, New York, California, Texas, wherever.
And then I can see on the weekends the stay may be a little longer, and there may be people booking more double guest rooms. So that to me indicates that's a family staying. So from that data we then can see kind of who's coming and who those people are and where they're coming from, and then understanding what those needs are when they're on property. So are these people that are coming because they want to explore Washington, D.C. from a historical perspective? Do they want to look at monuments? Do they want to go to the Smithsonian museums? Are they people that are coming because they want to dine in Michelin star restaurants around the city? Do they want to experience all of our cocktail offerings around the city because we have great bars and restaurants?
So it's really taking that information and from there crafting experiences that will speak to the guests that we know are coming, and then also developing those experiences that our PR agency can then take and get a little more widespread traction on, to get more of those guests to come to the property and experience it. So that's kind of how, in a nutshell.
Ben Ard05:51 — I love that. That's awesome. I love that you're doing the homework, the research, to create this really unique experience. But obviously stuff like that has to scale. I think every one of us as marketers wishes we were marketing to a person one of one and we could just make the perfect experience, like the dream package, all that kind of stuff. How have you figured out how to scale this guest experience? Is it through personas? Are you kind of grouping them into, okay, they're here for this reason, this is what we can do. How have you managed to do that?
Meredith Goldberg06:23 — Sometimes it's spaghetti on the wall. A lot of times with hotels we have packages and offers on our website that are constant. So there's best rate available. When you work for a bigger company that has loyalty programs, you're gonna get a lot of that loyalty guest that's coming in because they want the points. And then we try to keep kind of one of each open. So at any time we'll try to keep at least like four or five different offers running at a time at the properties where I work.
So we'll have length of stay. So the longer you stay, the more you save. That attracts the guest that knows they need to be in the city for a little longer. We could do a weekend offer, so that attracts the guest that's more for the guests that we know is coming on the weekend. We have a family offer for those families that are coming in. And depending on time of year, we'll open and close parking packages. Those are guests that we know, especially now gas prices are high, people that may be driving shorter distances or not flying as much. So we'll have a parking package open.
So it's really kind of looking at the time of year, who's coming, what those needs are. So we have those evergreen offers that are kind of always on, and then we'll do something special. Like in DC we've got cherry blossom. That's a no-brainer. We've got, there's always holiday, there's always summer, there's back to school. Some of those ongoing time of year promotions that we'll always kind of pick and choose on what we're gonna do and what we're gonna offer.
Ben Ard07:57 — Very cool. Now, one question that I'm kind of curious about, I'm gonna throw you a curveball. You're talking about all of the data before the event. You're understanding how long are they booking, what's the season, how many rooms, if they're adjacent, combined, all that kind of stuff. What does the data collection and understanding process look like after the stay? How are you able to understand if you hit the mark, miss the mark, and then use that data to increase the guest experience?
Meredith Goldberg08:23 — Yeah, so all properties have a post-stay survey. So we ask a lot of questions. It's cleanliness of the room, quality of the Wi-Fi, did you dine in our restaurants? So if they say yes, okay, which restaurant did you dine in? And from that, a series of questions cascade down. Did you have a meeting here, yes or no? Then those questions. Did you use our fitness facility? If we have a spa, did you use the spa? So it's really up to the marketer to craft the post-stay questions to get that information. Now, whether or not the guest replies to it or not, you know.
But we always encourage guests to share their experiences, whether they're posting on Google, on TripAdvisor. We get a lot of guests that come in from the OTAs, or online travel agencies, your Expedias, your Booking dot coms, so they will post their reviews there. So we're always reviewing and looking at what people are saying, and then identifying those trends.
So if we get four reviews that say my soup was cold, okay, well that's something we need to address with the kitchen. If we get really kind words about people at the front desk, we make sure to share those with the front desk manager and say, okay, this person is doing something really great, let's give kudos to that person, and maybe there's someone that can train the next group of people coming in. So we try to take that information and fine tune the experience.
Ben Ard10:03 — I love that. Very cool. Awesome. Well, I want to get to this point because I would be remiss if we didn't. The dog effect. The part that your husband wanted to bring in. What is the dog effect? How does that play a role? All of that kind of fun stuff. I'd love to hear more about this.
Meredith Goldberg10:20 — So we are dog people, love dogs. When I was at my last property, the general manager of that hotel when I had started, he was living at the hotel during the week and then flying home on the weekends. And he was a big dog person. And when I started, he was like, I think we need a hotel dog. And I said, great idea, let's get a hotel dog.
So we interviewed a lot of dogs with a lot of different local shelters, and we landed on this sad little beagle. And I was working at a hotel called The Jefferson at the time. We named the dog Lord Monticello. We called him Monti. It turned out that he was a very sad beagle because he had a fused disc in his back. So we had his back fixed, and then he became the loudest beagle you have ever heard in your entire life.
Meredith Goldberg11:12 — His bark would reverberate in the hallway, these marble floors. So we were this very high end hotel with this beagle that was just so loud. And it was at that time around an election year. It was twenty sixteen and everyone was just kind of like, ugh. In DC it's always a slow time because everyone's left the city to campaign.
So we said, what do we do? What do we do? And then I was like, we're gonna run the dog for president. My GM was like, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm not quite sure. We're gonna run the dog for president. We ran Monti for president. Everyone got involved. We found other dogs, other hotels that had dogs, and partnered with them and we built out his cabinet. His vice president was a dog named Buster that lived at a hotel in San Francisco. And we just went for it. He had a campaign video, he had a platform, he had an official poster that was designed by a local artist that is based in DC. He had business cards. We threw a convention for him sometime in August, and our director of housekeeping at the time was furious because we invited all these dogs.
Meredith Goldberg12:32 — And we really just used it as a chance to lighten a very heavy and not a lot happening time in DC, because the election and voting happens. And it just struck with something. He was in People magazine. The dog was in People magazine. And this is where having a really great PR agency partner is really helpful. So he got a spot in People magazine. There was so much social media. He was asked to write an article for an in-flight magazine about being a dog from the streets of wherever he was from. I think he was from West Virginia.
And it just took off because we hit on a time when people just wanted something completely different. And so we became this very high end hotel with this very rambunctious, hilarious dog that ran for president. And so from that point on I try to really make these kind of little dog moments, I think, because most people love dogs. All of the properties that I work with now are all dog friendly. I think especially during COVID a lot of people got dogs and now they're like, well, I have to travel with this dog. And we want you to travel with your dog. We want your dog on property because we want to pet your dog always. So it just became something that I always try to infuse into any programming.
Ben Ard14:06 — I love that. Okay. Story was worth it. I love it. I love how these two themes tie together. So we're almost out of time. What I really want to focus on now is you found this opportunity. There's this down season. Obviously everyone's aware of the elections. And you went for something a little out there, but you took over this opportunity. I mean, even going back to The O.C., this is a moment where, hey, how do we get in front of people in a unique way? How do you discover these ideas? And what are you doing to constantly take advantage? And I like how you phrase it, the cultural zeitgeist. How are you taking advantage of this, and how can others start to do the same?
Meredith Goldberg14:48 — So I'm a chronically online human, which I don't recommend. It is terrible. But I try to take bits and pieces of information from everywhere. I listen to a lot of different podcasts, some cultural, some more business, some news. I live in DC, so I'm inundated with things constantly.
But I also just try to keep my feeds diversified. I subscribe to a lot of different Substacks about anything from marketing to social media to just fashion, culture. Understand what people are reading, understand what people are interested in, and then from there I try and find those little moments that I think will hit.
When I start a year, I always look at what movies have milestone years. So there's always, at one property in DC, it was The West Wing twentieth anniversary. That's a beloved show for people that live in the city. So that was a no-brainer for us. Looking at other cultural moments that have been able to transcend generations and hit on a lot of different little touch points, those are the moments where I sometimes just get a feeling, like I know this is gonna take. Sometimes it's a feeling and it's wrong, sometimes it's a feeling and it's right. But I've never been too concerned about whether or not it's gonna hit. Like I'm just like, we're gonna go for it, and if it has the right support, it'll work.
Ben Ard16:40 — And what I love about that is this mentality, because I do think, after you're talking about a couple of big wins, you got the shirt on The O.C., the dog is in the magazine, all sorts of cool stuff. Sometimes marketers feel like we kind of have to bat a thousand. We always have to get it right. And I love that point that if you're gonna do some of these things, some of them won't land. And that's okay. That's a part of the process. Like you said, go all in. It would suck to not have it land because you just kind of half baked it. Go full in, give it full send, get the support. And if it doesn't land, it doesn't land. Move on to the next one. Media cycles are short. People are like goldfish. We forget quick. All that kind of stuff.
Meredith Goldberg17:22 — Yeah. I mean, I think a perfect example of this. We have a program that we are running at one of my hotels for the summer. Our PR agency and my team put together a preview event last night for this. Two creators showed up. And I was just like, this has never happened to me before. But I think as marketers, as we lean into more of the creator space, this is what happens.
And so did I feel super sad and go home and need to sit with my dog and just have a moment? Sure. But you wake up today and you're like, okay, this didn't work, but we still have a program and I know this is a good program. So all right, agency, let's pivot. We can't depend on these creators to maybe get this message out. Let's go back to traditional. Let's go back to some paid social. There are so many avenues now that when one doesn't work, just because one doesn't work, and it's the one that you're banking on and it might be the cheapest one, you might have to spend some money to make sure that it works down the road. So whereas I was bummed, I'm not down and out, because I know there are other avenues to get out this messaging.
Ben Ard18:45 — Yeah, I love that. Meredith, I think that's a great way to end the episode. Thank you for the candor, all of the examples. This is so cool. I think everyone can learn from this.
Meredith Goldberg18:53 — I hope so.
Ben Ard18:57 — For anyone who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Meredith Goldberg19:01 — Well, I'm on LinkedIn. Meredith Goldberg is my full name. I'm on every social media channel as a lurker. I'm on Instagram at MJG0614.
Ben Ard19:15 — Okay, perfect. For everyone listening, scroll down to the show notes and we have links to everything inside of the show notes. Feel free to click on the link and connect with Meredith there. Meredith, thank you so much. That was amazing. Really do appreciate the insights.
Meredith Goldberg19:29 — No, thanks so much. This was so fun.
