If you want your hotel to succeed in the times of the internet, you need to ramp up your digital marketing. Compared to traditional marketing, hotel digital marketing campaigns have some benefits, such as:
Better Reach - You can reach out to a diverse audience, as well as specific ones. You can target a wider geographical area as well as specify which audience you want to target specifically.
Cost-Effective - You can spend a lesser amount to gain a larger audience. You can reach out to your audience without any intermediaries. This saves up cost and time.
Flexibility - Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Hotel Website Campaigning, Landing pages etc - the scope is immense. You can integrate different strategies and platforms to make your hotel's digital marketing more effective.
We have now understood the reason’s why a digital marketing campaign is essential for hotel marketing. However, the question is - “How to formulate a successful digital marketing campaign? ”
We are here to help you here! Here are 10 Steps To Make Your Hotel Digital Marketing Campaign A Grand Success!
Table Of Content
1. What Are The Goals Of Your Hotel Digital Marketing Campaign?
amongthecan
Before you do anything, you need to first ask yourself - “What do I want to achieve by this campaign?” “How will it help my hotel?” “What will be the idea of my hotel digital marketing campaign?”. These questions will help you conceptualize your ideas and help you formulate a plan. It will give you a goal and you can determine whether you have met them or not after reviewing.
To achieve your objectives, you need to make them SMART:
Specific - Your goals should be clearly defined
Measurable - You should be able to measure your marketing performance and compare it with your targets.
Achievable - Make your goals realistic and achievable
Relevant - They should be relevant to your overall marketing and sales objectives. This will make your digital marketing campaign better integrated.
Time Sensitive - The goals should be achievable within a reasonable time frame.
2. Work On The Digital Marketing Concept.
After you have set your goals, the next thing you need to work on is a concept. You can work on the concept only after properly analyzing and finalizing your goals for the digital marketing campaign. For example, you have a goal to increase the sale of hotel rooms amongst working professionals. You can achieve this goal by offering complimentary spa therapy with a stay.
It is always better to offer extras rather than discounts. Research shows that people will prefer to have something extra. That’s the reason why the buy 1 gets 1 free offer works so well. Traditional discounts offer the same thing at a lower price, while complimentary services offer something more!
3. Who Are Your Target Audiences? Identify Them.
Before a hotel digital marketing campaign is launched, one needs to be aware of their target audience. Without properly identifying them, your campaign will not reach the right people and fall flat.
The data can be found in the Google Analytics Account. Google Analytics analyzes the existing audience of your website and provides detailed information about their age, location, gender, from where they visited your website etc. From this data, you can identify the guest personas.
For targeting new audiences, you need to do some research regarding the medium they consume, that are their pain points, what is their daily routine, who is their lifestyle influencers, which factors influence them to make a purchase, what are their aspirations etc.
When you have these points figured out, you will be able to narrow down your potential digital marketing strategies and target the new audience in a focused manner to make the most out of your campaign. This way, you will be able to make your hotel's digital marketing campaign successful.
4. Timing Is Everything
You need to ensure that your digital marketing timeline is time-sensitive and achievable. You cannot expect super-quick results - convincing the audience takes some time. On the other hand, you cannot keep the campaign running if you don’t see results after months.
You need to also plan the timings of your offers accordingly. You cannot launch a last-minute campaign for a long period, otherwise, it will be ignored. If you are targeting corporate staff, it's always a great idea to target them at the start or end of the month during their payday.
5. Decide On Your Marketing Message
The digital marketing campaign for your hotel needs to have a strong message to attract your audience. Your message should make it clear why your audience should choose your hotel over the others. This is where the Unique Selling Proposition or USP comes into play. The Hotel USP should offer unique experiences to your customers.
For example, corporate guests want relaxation, so you offer them a spa offer. How will you convenience them to select your spa offer? By promising them a unique, relaxing experience after a long hectic week. Your hotel USP should be unique and should be understood within 15 seconds.
6. Determine Your Campaign Budget
a
Before you launch a marketing campaign, you need to be sure of the marketing budget. Without a proper budget, you will incur unnecessary expenses that will be a burden for the hotel.
A fixed budget gives you an idea of how much you can spend and how to spend it efficiently to gain maximum results. It will help you identify the marketing platforms and the scale of your hotel's digital marketing campaign.
7. Digital Marketing Platforms
Your marketing is as good as the marketing platforms. Your hotel digital marketing needs to make optimal use of these platforms to gain the maximum and appropriate audience for you your property.
Here are some of the platforms you should utilise in your hotel digital marketing campaign:
Paid Social Media
Everyone is on social media and hence, targeting social media users is paramount in your hotel's digital marketing. Facebook is one of the most popular and useful social media platforms for digital marketing since you can run ad campaigns for a wider audience. The best part is that on Facebook, you can specifically select your audience based on age, location, interests etc.
Instagram is a visual platform that is also great for hotels. You can control your Instagram advertising through Facebook and also boost posts individually. Make use of Instagram stories to post more engaging content.
Hotels also need to incorporate booking engines on their Facebook and social media platforms, along with contact options, to make the most out of it.
Google Ads
Google is the most used search engine amongst internet users. You need to advertise your hotel on Google to gain maximum audience and revenue. You can promote your hotel website through Google Ads.
Google also offers various tools such as Keyword Planner, Performance Planner, Reach Planner, Google Analytics, Negative keywords and so forth. Your hotel digital marketing campaign will be more streamlined and efficient by making use of google.
Hotel Website And Landing Pages
Utilizing your hotel website is the best way to increase direct bookings. You need to make use of Google Ads, Social Media Ads as well as email marketing to get more traffic to your website. Two pages are essential in that aspect: Home Page and Landing Page.
Your homepage is the first impression of the hotel website. As they say, “The first impression is the last impression” The Homepage needs to be well-designeand d, crisp and should have all the relevant information regarding the hotel and its amenities.
Landing Pages are single web pages whose main purpose is to inform the audience of a promotion and then engage and convert that audience. You can convert the audience by making them take a specific action - clicking the “Book Now” button or giving them an email address for further communication.
Email Marketing
Your hotel marketing campaign should include email marketing. Email marketing is considered to be an integral part of direct marketing. Hotels can directly engage with their database and customise their messaging based on different audiences.
Hotels can launch a campaign to promote an exclusive offer as well as promote different rooms with special discounts add-ons ons.
8. Design Is The Key
The first
After you have taken care of the first 7 points, you need to give your best for the 8th point i.e design. The visuals of the campaign need to be bang on - one cannot compromise on it. The design should meet the branding of your hotel as well as communicate your message effectively.
The images need to be of high quality and the headers, body and captions need to be well organized. Any compromise on these aspects can doom your digital marketing campaign before it even starts. One should use stock images and high-quality hotel images. Even if you have to make a financial investment for it, so it be. The visuals should have a purpose as well - to communicate what the hotel is all about, and its various offers and promotion.
9. Test Your Campaign After Launch
Your hotel digital marketing campaign needs to be tested regularly. For example, when you put out an offer on your booking engine. You should do a test booking and see whether the digital campaign makes sense, awhether nd it is leading the audience in the right way. Through testing, you need to tweak and optimise ads to make them work.
For platforms like Facebook, hotels need to set up multiple adverts to check which one is working in which one is not. Then you need to stop the ads that are not working and promote the ads that are working. You need to set up your website with Google Tracking, then Google Analytics will do the job for you. There are many tools you can use to gain more data, such as bit.ly and Google URL Builder.
10. Report And Measure Your Success
While the hotel's digital campaign is running, the hotels need to measure its performance to see whether or not the campaign is meeting its objectives or not. The main advantage of digital marketing over traditional marketing is that you need to measure the performance in rreal timeand also make changes accordingly.
While tracking your main KPIs is important, you need to understand that you won’t get results instantly. It will take time - a few hours and even a few days to get results out of your digital marketing campaign. If the hotel has just launched itself in the digital marketing sphere, it can even take a few months for your hotel to get an online presence after various digital marketing campaigns.
Once the marketing campaign ends, you need to prepare a report about the performance of each platform. Google Analytics will give you information about the various indicators such as ROI, CPC and CPA, leads and conversion. You can then modify your marketing according to the results of the campaign.
With these steps, you will be able to crack digital marketing for your hotel and earn the desired leads and conversions. Check out our blogs to know more about the hospitality industry.
Comentarios