Introduction
No matter who you are or where you are located hotel marketing is very important for your hotel business and brand.
Although the hospitality industry has been negatively affected by the COVID19 pandemic and the lockdowns the hotel marketing strategies have become more increasingly focused on the internet.
Believe it or not Online Content Marketing and Digital Marketing are the way to go during the 2020s decade.
With an effective digital marketing strategy as part of your hotel marketing, you are fully guaranteed success in your hotel business.
Digital Marketing and Content Marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Copywriting and Video Marketing allow you to work less whilst being successful in the hospitality business.
After reading this article you will have gained some important hotel marketing trends and ideas for the year 2022 and beyond.
It is important to know that these marketing strategies and marketing ideas are much more relevant for internet marketing.
Whilst this has been written for those with small and medium hotels like boutique hotels it is also relevant for large-scale hotel owners.
Continue reading on for some hotel marketing ideas.
Hotel Marketing Definition
First and foremost, Hotel Marketing refers to the offline and online strategies that are utilised for marketing hotels by hotel owners. These strategies to increase hotel revenue will attract more guests as well as promote your brand.
The Traditional Hospitality Marketing Strategies
In the past before the internet boom hotel marketing was mainly done through traditional media channels. Such included the television, radio, direct mail as well as the other print materials that were mainly used for advertisements.
Whilst such traditional media marketing strategies are still used in the 2020s the internet usage trends show that Hotel owners will succeed in the present world by focusing on Online Marketing more.
On the other hand, take note of the following:
Some 2020 statistics showed that customers were 9 times most likely to be responsive to direct mail campaigns than they were to an electronic mail message
Direct marketing campaigns are still trusted than internet marketing strategies. Over 75% of consumers trust direct marketing when it comes to their purchasing decisions
Over 74% of the customers still take the time to read the direct marketing campaigns they receive in their households
Hospitality marketing strategy through content
Statistics show that about half of your potential customers will most likely consume 3 - 5 pieces of content before contacting your company’s sales representative or admin. With more content on your platforms, they will be able to decide if your business is right for them.
Content marketing is usually confused with Digital marketing.
What is important to know is that Content Marketing covers both online and offline marketing through content.
Content marketing has been used in the past before the internet.
Therefore digital/internet marketing is a part of content marketing.
Content Marketing is a very broad subject that includes some of the strategies discussed in this article.
When it comes to Content Marketing your Hospitality business' marketing team must focus on the creation as well as distribution of content that is highly valuable and relevant consistently.
This is meant for attracting new customers as well as retaining your target clients.
Since video marketing is highly important you should consider it in your hotel marketing business.
Examples of content you can come up with for marketing your hospitality business:
FAQs as well as question and answer articles - answer the Frequently Asked Questions as well as coming up with an interview with an expert on your hotel that can be read, watched and listed
News - Write news updates on your blog. This should also be posted on all your social media platforms
Videos - such include videos promoting your business
These must be done by subject matter experts (SMEs). Videos are a quick way to educate anyone. You will learn more in the video marketing section below
Blogs - Keep your site with fresh content always
Destination guides and information - paint the perfect picture of what your guests and customers will benefit from when they visit your venue. This includes mentioning other local attractions they would enjoy visiting
Photos - A picture tells a thousand words. Use these to your advantage. Pictures are highly important for your hotel room sales strategies. Put these on your website as well as all your social media platforms
Other highly important additions
Email newsletters - These are important for retaining your customers
Direct mail - besides the internet marketing strategies, many people still rely on these
Important steps to take
Outsource content creators - Over 85% of B2B marketers invest in the services of content creators like video producers, designers and writers
Have a clear content strategy. Highly effective content marketing has been 3 times more successful at generating leads than paid search advertisements.
Content marketers must create and develop relations with each client and or prospect as well as focus on professionally making them your loyal customers from now.
Internet Marketing for Hotels and Resorts
More so, in the Internet Marketing world, you should work on getting attention through search engine traffic and social media.
You can do so by offering hotel and destination stories and "what to do when you get here" guides .
Your videos and other online multimedia must be professionally done.
It is also important for your business to utilise a copywriter who writes benefit-focused content as well as other copy offers that will highly perform across the wide variety of digital marketing channels your hotel business has.
As the world is becoming more digital hotel marketers must also come with modern strategies for marketing their websites.
A study by Hubspot showed that 67% of customers in any industry prefer to work with chatbots than communicating with the company representatives through calling the helplines or contacting via email.
Also, the American Marketing Association projected that merchandisers are going to utilise machine learning-driven chats with the agenda of creating a sense of human connection on the internet.
It is therefore recommended that hotel marketers must use chatbots as well as user experience (UX) writing strategies on their websites.
Hospitality Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Furthermore, SEO is very important if you want to have a very successful hospitality website.
Content has always been King, Having top-notch and high-quality content will boost your business
SEO for hotels:
Stay up to date with the recent SEO trends and changes. SEO is evolving consistently
Utilise white hat SEO strategies only. This will drastically improve your ranks and end up showing up on the first pages of the search engine within a few months
Have an SEO checklist to leave all stones turned
Utilize the correct keyword words and or your target phrases in each page’s headings, content as well as metadata. Investing in services like Moz and Neil Patel’s Uber suggest will give you a boost
Remember that over 50% of traffic on the internet is from the organic search results
More than half of all website traffic comes from organic search results.
Focus on summarized answers or featured snippets for those who surf on the internet. This allows you to dominate the search results since you will be receiving more traffic unlike the regular search results
Answer all the questions your customers might have
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for Hotels
Moreover, you should also consider paid advertisements for promoting your hotel Business.
Such strategies include utilizing paid advertisements when there are popular events in your area as well as on the popular holiday like the festive season.
Google ads are the most popular, but you can also have other options.
Social Media Marketing (SMM) for Hotels
In addition to the above, currently, people use social media for researching brands and other businesses they might be interested in.
This is a popular way since they can see testimonials and what other fellow customers have said about your business.
They also share their experiences with various brands which get to be seen by their family and friends who will be influenced by the concept of social proof.
There are many top hospitality marketing agencies that can assist you in coming up with content and copy for your ads.
Your social media strategy must include:
Improving the competitive advantage of your brand
Risk mitigation
Protecting your brand
Each post must have a certain goal - Write with a purpose in mind.
Growing your hotel brand organically
Paid ads when closer to holidays and popular events
Improving your brand awareness
Showcase your social media sites on your website
Improve the customer experience
Get promoted by influencers
Consistently work on strategies to go viral (viral marketing) By this you will be making your customers and prospects do the marketing for your hotels
Target new social media sites like Tik Tok. As of January 2022 TikTok had 1 billion Monthly Active users worldwide! Wondering what to post? For inspiration check out content from some Luxury Hotels
Pinterest which has over 440 million active monthly users - definitely worth considering.
Facebook marketing
Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly users.
As of today, Facebook is the dominating social media platform.
This is the most used platform which is used for B2C and B2B marketing.
If you can take advantage of the Facebook live platform
Your Facebook page should allow customers to have the option to book
The page must have all the contact details
Consider location tagging in all of your posts. Posts with location have higher chances of getting engagement than those without.
Twitter marketing
Furthermore, you cannot ignore Twitter which has over 330 million active users per month.
Come up with copy for all your Twitter posts
Be responsive to all queries
Instagram marketing
Instagram has over 1 billion users all over the world.
Take advantage of Instagram Stories for your videos
You can run contests and other promotions on Instagram and Facebook
LinkedIn marketing
In your digital marketing strategy, you cannot ignore LinkedIn which has been rapidly growing and has over 700 million professionals who are most likely to be interested in your hotels and or resorts.
More and more organizations are utilizing LinkedIn as well as other social media platforms for the distribution of content.
For your Business to Business marketing, you will have to include LinkedIn since this platform cannot be ignored for it has many potential business travellers.
Make sure you create content that will get noticed, shareable content and content that will bring in more business for you.
Hotel Email Marketing
Furthermore, with over 318 billion emails being sent and received each day all over the world email marketing for your hotels is highly important.
Email copy and email marketing should be taken into consideration to a greater extent.
For instance, Hubspot reported that the email open rates have risen by over 25% than was before the COVID19 pandemic.
Given that email marketing has an ROI of up to 3800% than any marketing strategy this cannot be ignored in the hospitality industry.
Include hiring freelance email marketers and email copywriters in your hotel marketing strategy
Hotel marketing plan through videos
According to Hubspot watching videos and social media are currently the most popular activities on the internet.
More marketers are using videos than ever before because videos allow your customers and potential customers to understand your business and offers.
Video marketing is important since it increases the time visitors spent on your site which promotes you before Google and the other search engines.
This is an important content marketing strategy you must utilise since the competition is focusing on creating more video content.
Videos are very important if you want to build brand awareness well as boost web traffic the conversion rate.
According to siteminder.com “At your property, bookings are 67% more likely to happen when a video tour is available”.
Video marketing strategies for hotels:
Get the services of excellent copywriters - Employ or hire professional copywriters for your video scripts. Scripts for the videos must not be written by just anyone.
Have high-quality video content - The pre-production, production and post-production phases must be done by pros. Your video content creators must be creative and very good in using software like Adobe Premiere Pro (for videos) and Adobe Audition (for high-quality audio)
Your video content must have captions - Nowadays some people do not prefer playing the sound of the video. This is mainly due to their location, time and or other reasons. Having captions in your video content will allow you to reach a wider audience anytime, anywhere
Consider subtitles - If you are targeting some tourists from other non-English speakers you will be a step ahead of your competition when you add subtitles.
Remember the value of video marketing. From early 2022 videos will contribute over 80% of the consumer's traffic online. Over 79% of marketing specialists have seen that videos have directly increased their sales and conversions in the past.
Mobile Marketing for Hotels
Mobile marketing refers to the multi-channel internet marketing strategy that focuses on getting the attention of a certain audience or prospects on their mobile devices.
Such includes personal tablets, smartphones, feature phones as well as other related devices via SMS, MMS, E-mail, websites, social media and or mobile applications.
From 2022s Mobile marketing will be very important in hotel marketing.
This is because about 70% of the traffic on the internet comes from mobile devices.
Nowadays people have two times more interaction with various businesses and brands on their mobile devices compared to anywhere else.
It is highly important to have a mobile marketing strategy whilst also addressing the Frequently Asked Questions.
This is very important for your hotel business since over 65% of smartphone users are likely to give their money from businesses that have mobile sites that address their concerns and questions easily.
Hotel mobile marketing strategies to consider from now onwards:
Create content that loads quickly on all the devices (This includes reducing/compressing the sizes of your images and the other strategies that allow your website to load faster )
Come up with content that is readable for the mobile devices
Make sure the mobile users can easily see your contact info
Bookings must be easily done by anyone who visits your site using any device
Understand that nowadays the average person spends about 69% of time online using their mobile device
Optimize your website for voice searches. These are usually done on the mobiles and have been projected to become popular soon
Copywriting for your hotel
Copywriting is the key ingredient to succeed both offline and online.
It is important to utilise Copywriting in most of your content including Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Video Marketing, Paid Advertising etc.
Copywriting for the hospitality business ideas
Personalized content marketing is very important for you to have more bookings and. Conversions. This means in your marketing strategy you need more content that addresses your various customers. Have content for the new millennials, for the old and consider various personal factors
Learn and master the art and science of copywriting
Come up with more variations of content that is high-quality, specialized and personalized
Know your target audience. Choose who your target clients are between Value Seekers, Luxury Travelers, Social Travelers, Independent Travelers, Habitual Travelers and Researchers. Your content must be more tailored messaging for each of your target audiences
Make sure that your copy has the following:
Intriguing headlines
Customer-centric content
FAQs
SEO keywords and LSI phrases
Easily readable content
Testimonials and endorsements
Call to action
Use copywriting for:
Email communication
SEO content
Website and blog content
Social media posts so that they will be shareable
Direct mail since many consumers trust it more than the internet strategies.
Conclusion and Keynotes
In a nutshell, this guide has focused on the modern trends and strategies for ensuring bookings and better sales for the luxury hotel business.
If necessary, in your growth marketing plan you must increase more personnel that will focus on content marketing.
With the rise in internet usage and mobile penetration worldwide the latest marketing trends show that the old hotel offline marketing strategies can be used at the same time with modern Content Marketing and Digital Marketing strategies
Showcase your facilities online
Video tours are the King in influencing a traveller's decision to visit your luxury site
Social media has influenced close friends and relatives in deciding which area to travel to
Copywriting must be used in all your content
Be strategic and calculative at all times
