Social media has proven itself time and time again as a reliable and innovative tool in your repertoire when it comes to hospitality digital marketing.
Your Guide to Powerful Hospitality Digital Marketing
Summary
- What is Hospitality Digital Marketing?
- Why Should You Take Advantage of Hospitality Marketing for Your Brand?
- Creating an Effective Hospitality Digital Marketing Strategy on Social Media
- #1 Do Your Audience and Industry Research
- #2 Find the Right Platform for You
- #3 Create a Content Calendar
- #4 Create Eye-Catching, Engaging Content
- #5 Measure. Analyze. Improve. Repeat.
- How Social Paid Advertising and Hospitality Digital Marketing Go Hand-in-Hand
- Why You Should Consider Utilizing Social Listening for Your Hospitality Digital Marketing Campaigns
- In the Hospitality Industry, Your Online Reputation is Vitally Important
- Frequently Asked Questions
From connecting you with potential guests and brand ambassadors to raising awareness about the amenities and luxuries of your hotels and resorts, we’ve got some social media marketing secrets up our sleeves that are bound to take your hospitality marketing efforts to new levels of success.
1) 5 METRICS TO MEASURE FOR YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING SUCCESS
2) SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
3) DIGITAL MARKETING ANALYTICS 101: BEST WAY TO SPICE UP CAMPAIGNS
What is Hospitality Digital Marketing?
Hospitality digital marketing is the art and science of marketing your hotel, guest home, resort, restaurant, event center or other managed, leisure service online.
It often involves search engine optimization, social paid ads, social media marketing, and more.
Today, we’re going to be focusing on the social media aspect of hospitality marketing and how it can benefit your hospitality brand.
Why Should You Take Advantage of Hospitality Marketing for Your Brand?
If you manage a hospitality brand or are looking to expand your marketing efforts, taking advantage of hospitality marketing can open a lot of doors for you and your business.
You’ll have the opportunity to build a unique brand presence, voice, and personality, plus open the door to connecting with potential guests in and from specific locations, while also targeting specific demographics.
Creating an Effective Hospitality Digital Marketing Strategy on Social Media
You know the why...but what about the how?
#1 Do Your Audience and Industry Research
The first step to creating and implementing a successful hospitality digital marketing social media strategy is to do your audience and industry research.
If you’re going to cater to the needs of your audience in a way that makes them want to choose you over your competitors, you need to know what they’re looking for in a hospitality brand. The goal is to wed creativity and data to get the best possible results.
Look to market trends and analyze how they will impact your efforts, as well as your hospitality brands competitors.
- Who are they following?
- How are they engaging?
- How does their audience respond to their messaging?
- Are they experiencing significant growth month over month?
#2 Find the Right Platform for You
It’s hardly surprising that Instagram and Facebook both have a reputation for being a particularly successful set of platforms for the hospitality industry.
Instagram especially calls for a specific “vibe” from snapshots of hospitality venues, catering, displays and more.
But both platforms have their benefits and drawbacks when it comes to marketing in the hospitality industry.
You can utilize features like “Facebook Live” and “Instagram Live” to show off particularly flashy venues, catering, guest rooms, spas, etc, to drum up excitement around what guests can expect from you.
Other features, like Reels, Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, traditional, organic posting and social paid advertising can boost your clicks, views, website traffic and conversions in no time.
If you’re looking to garner views and sales from the professional world, it might also be worth checking out LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a platform built specifically for business professionals and allows you to connect with them and interact to solve problems. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next best destination for a medical or vision conference!
#3 Create a Content Calendar
Now you know WHERE to post. But WHAT do you post?
This is where a good old fashioned brainstorm and a content calendar can make your life ten times easier.
Creating content last minute is over-rated and becomes overwhelming faster than you’d think. Instead, sit down with your team and sort possible content into categories. For instance:
- Food
- Sights
- Tourist Attractions
- Amenities
- Specials
- Featured Guests
- Featured Staff
- Fun Facts
- Educational
When you have a good list of the types of content you’ll be creating you can lay them out in a calendar view, picking what KINDS of content will fit into each category. A good example of this would look like:
- 1 featured guest post
- 2 featured staff posts
- 6 fun facts
- 4 educational posts
- 2 tourist attractions
- 7 amenities
Now filling in those ideas are a piece of cake because there’s ZERO brainstorming involved! You can even write copy for photos, graphics and videos in advance to save yourself even more time.
#4 Create Eye-Catching, Engaging Content
Now you’ve got your ideas, it’s time to set to work!
All of your graphics, videos, pictures and content needs to be in a similar format. Pick 1-2 fonts and stick with it. The same goes for a color palette, style and a general “vibe”.
You want rooms and restaurants to look airy, clean, relaxing and full of light. You want to be professional, but approachable.
The more professional, bright, engaging and relaxing your atmosphere seems from videos and pictures, the more likely you’ll attract a crowd who wants to escape to be there. That’s your goal: provide an escape. This isn’t home, so it doesn’t have to be “lived in”. The curtains and towels and sheets can be crisp, clean and pulled taut because that’s why people come stay in your hotel.
When it comes to hospitality marketing, there’s no such thing as too clean, too professional or too relaxing. Make it all look like a top-notch luxury getaway and watch the comments pour in.
#5 Measure. Analyze. Improve. Repeat.
At the end of the day, there won’t be a way forward if you aren’t measuring and analyzing your efforts and then improving upon them.
You can use tools like Sprout Social, Google analytics, Hubspot and other tools to make the most of your efforts and measurements and know what steps you need to take to improve in the coming quarters.
Maybe you’ve noticed that certain posts garner more clicks or conversions, or you’ve noticed an uptick in followers when you are diligent about outbound engagement. Whatever it is, measuring, analyzing and improving upon your hospitality digital marketing efforts is one of the most important things you can do in the long run for guaranteed company growth.
How Social Paid Advertising and Hospitality Digital Marketing Go Hand-in-Hand
Social paid advertising, like what you’d see on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and even Snapchat is a wildly popular and effective way to market a brand or business.
#1 Front and Center Stage
It puts your content front and center. And in a world where most social media platforms are prioritizing content from family and friends, this is a sure-fire way to make sure that your target audience can see and interact with your content.
#2 It’s Cost-Effective
While we wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a “cheap” solution for hospitality marketing, social paid ads ARE the CHEAPEST way to drive traffic and book guests in 2021.
#3 You’ll Be Able to Re-Target Effectively
One of the best things about social paid advertising for powerful hospitality marketing is that you’ll be able to effectively re-target customers who have previously visited your website and have shown an interest in your services or location.
It allows you to utilize particular amenities as selling points and put those particular things at the forefront of your hospitality digital marketing efforts.
Why You Should Consider Utilizing Social Listening for Your Hospitality Digital Marketing Campaigns
Social listening is the art of tuning into the efforts and interactions of your competitors and related industry brands to relate to and understand where your audience is coming from, as well as what kind of content they’re looking to you to post and share.
In addition, it’ll help you to understand what guests and potential guests are saying about your brand online. Good OR bad.
How insensitive would it seem if you mentioned someone and they never responded? This is a reality for many customers online, so when you take the time to carefully and quickly respond, it can mean the world to them, as well as demonstrate to others that you’re an attentive, caring, customer-centric brand. (Which makes visitors more likely to choose you!)
In the Hospitality Industry, Your Online Reputation is Vitally Important
If you’re not monitoring your online reputation, now is the time to consider doing so.
Searching for hospitality brands online and on social media is one of the first things your potential customers are going to do before booking a reservation or using your hospitality services.
Monitoring your online reputation and social listening go hand-in-hand, because both require monitoring what others are saying about your brand and services online. However, reputation management takes this a step further by correcting false information, monitoring review sites and making good on bad experiences for increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Customers want to know that you’ll make good on your promises when things go sideways, as well as provide a clean, aesthetically pleasing experience. Their research online will help them come to a conclusion about whether you’re capable of doing this, so keep things sharp! ✨
Frequently Asked Questions
If you’re taking a deep dive into the world of hospitality digital marketing, you’ve probably got a million questions- and we want to answer them all!
If you’re not ready to hop on a call with one of our experts, grab some of the most important answers below! ⬇
How to Market Your Hotel Online?
Marketing your hotel online is an incredibly powerful, effective way to spark interest in guests, drive traffic to your website, re-target potential customers and past customers, as well as boost growth and brand recognition.
It can be complicated to know where to start, though. If you've skipped the article above and are here just for a summary, here's a few quick trips to marketing your hotels and resorts. (And aside from hiring an agency.)
1) Create Your Brand
You can do this by choosing a logo, a tone/voice, fonts, colors and a general "attitude" for your brand.
2) Develop Thumb-Stopping Content
Content is the driving force behind marketing your brand. Without it, you won't get anywhere. Your content needs to be educational, fun, informative and above all, a good representation of what your customers can expect from you.
There are some epic content creation tools, including Canva or other Canva alternatives that you can utilize for successful content creation.
3) Analyze and Improve
Not only on YOUR efforts, but the efforts of your competitors as well. If you can take whatever they're doing and make it better, your audience is sure to notice.
What is the Role of Marketing in Hospitality?
Driving hospitality brand awareness, drumming up business and establishing your brand as a "thought leader" in your industry with carefully curated thought leadership content.
Should I Engage in Hotel B2B Marketing?
In short, YES. Imagine if you could be the "go-to" spot for corporate meetings, conferences, parties or other B2B related necessities.
Utilizing social media networks like LinkedIn can be huge for hospitality brands when it comes to hotel B2B marketing for this exact reason.
Do I Need a Hotel Marketing Strategy?
We're going to answer this with a question of our own:
"Do you ever go on vacation without a destination in mind?"
Think of a hotel marketing strategy as a map to your destination. And the destination is more customers, more clicks, greater brand awareness and greater customer satisfaction.
Ready to Take Your Hospitality Digital Marketing Efforts to a New Level of Creative Innovation?
Our team has the tools, expertise and creativity to take your hospitality digital marketing efforts over the moon. 🚀
With a full-scope social media agency on your side, you'll be able to focus on the things that matter and leave the social media scheduling, brainstorming, analyzing, content creation, photography, competitor analyzing, social listening and reputation management to us.
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