Broadening the range of client support through digital marketing, and strengthening our own know-how

■ What they do
・Hotel marketing
・Outsourcing
・Products

By harnessing the power of IT, Connector Japan Inc. helps connect users with a wide range of businesses, including hotels and other accommodation, restaurants, beauty salons, travel, experiences and transport. Its main business is hotel marketing, alongside outsourcing and product businesses.

In its core hotel marketing business, Connector Japan felt the need to build new measures and methods tailored to customer needs. We asked Mr Kamio, manager of the design department, about the background to asking us for digital marketing support, its effects, and what they expect from us in future.

To respond to changing customer needs, they needed digital marketing expertise.

― Before this work with us began, what marketing challenges did you have?

Our core hotel marketing business supports operators of accommodation facilities across Japan in attracting guests. For example, we apply our hotel marketing know-how to support listings on OTAs (Online Travel Agents) such as Jalan, Rakuten Travel and Booking.com, helping increase the number of hotel bookings.

In that context, our customers, the accommodation facilities, were asking to reduce the share of guests coming through OTAs (Online Travel Agents), which charge booking commissions, and increase the share coming through their own channels.

To respond to this change in customer needs, we needed digital marketing expertise.

― How did you come to know about us?

Our executive officer Aoyama already knew Mr Imamura (NowVillage’s representative), and NowVillage had previously produced a know-how document for us, “The Complete Guide to Hotel Marketing”, which we use as sales and marketing content. We were satisfied with that support, so we consulted them again this time.

― How did you find our support?

This time, they collaborated with us on digital marketing support for our customers, accommodation operators, and helped us bring it in-house.

Specifically, we built a new website for an accommodation operator, and NowVillage collaborated with us on SEO for that site and on creating SEO content, as well as helping us bring that in-house.

What was good about NowVillage was that they taught digital marketing in detail, tailored to each member of our team.

With some other digital marketing companies, you can’t get support tailored to your level of understanding, and you often end up with the impression that digital marketing is difficult. NowVillage, however, taught us in detail, matched to our level of understanding and our personalities.

Working on the project together was also fun and exciting. Our team members’ daily reports included positive comments about what they had learned, and bringing digital marketing in-house moved forward.

Wider support for customers, and know-how they can use in their own marketing.

― Please tell us about the results you gained through our support.

There are two main ones.

The first is that the measures we implemented for our customer, the accommodation operator, are actually bringing in bookings. The operator who commissioned us is very satisfied and has even added to the budget.

The second, and a big one, is that we were able to bring digital marketing in-house. We have brought the creation of SEO content in-house and have progressed to the point where we can teach it to new members. Not only did we gain knowledge from this project, we can also apply that knowledge to our own marketing, which I feel is a major result.

― Finally, what kind of companies would you recommend our services to?

I recommend them to people in a position like ours: a newly launched department with no marketing staff, but which still has to provide digital marketing support to customers.

I think even companies without much digital marketing expertise will get the chance to build up new discoveries in an enjoyable way with NowVillage. In this project, too, we noticed many new customer perspectives in areas such as selecting keywords for SEO, and learned a lot.

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