Digital Marketing is indeed the best way to promote and expand your business. When we talk about the hotel industry, digital marketing has been an important and effective tool. Digital marketing isn’t merely a word but the combination of several techniques and strategies, including social media, web design, email marketing, video production, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and blogging.
Even in hotel marketing, digital marketing has proved itself a successful operation for increasing the visibility and sales of the business. Here are 40 digital marketing tips and strategies that you may follow to make your hospitality brand stand out from the crowd.
Websites are the ultimate key to grabbing customers’ attention these days. As a hospitality brand owner, you must build a professional and engaging website for your hotel or resort. IFW Web Studio, a branch of IFW Techno Creation, builds a mobile-optimized website for different businesses.
Social media marketing is the superhit strategy for promoting your hospitality brand. Almost all age groups spend sufficient time on social media. Thus, social media is a profound way to build a potential customer base. IFW 360X has skilled social media marketers in its team who may assist you in taking your brand to the next level.
Try to hold your visitors once they visit your website or social media. You can ask for their email somehow, either by asking for more information or by other means. Later, you can send them regular updates about your business and its offer through emails. This trick is known as email marketing.
The logo is the actual representation of your brand. It is essential to get your brand logo designed by some experts as a logo is the public identity of your brand and thus, matters.
Among all social media, Instagram affects the mindset of the audience most. This is so because a large community of influencers is already entertaining the platform. Also, the audience itself looks for Instagram-friendly places these days. Thus, Instagram can be a powerful tool for promoting your hospitality brand.
Mere creating a social presence isn’t sufficient. Engage with your audience to avail of maximum benefits. Reply to their queries and comments and reshare their story tags and mention.
Video marketing is marked as the latest trend in the world of digital marketing. You can promote your hotel or resort by creating short videos featuring your property and services. These videos can be posted as reels and YouTube shorts.
You can collaborate with bloggers or vloggers to enhance your hotel’s or resort’s visibility. You can invite a blogger with sufficient followers to visit your property and promote it. By this, you can hit a massive audience instantly.
The reviews from your customers are essential. You can bind up positive reviews from your customer in the form of small videos, comments and testimonials.
If you are someone with high financial support, you can also launch a mobile application for promoting your hotel or resort. Big names like JW Marriot utilize such strategies to build their empire.
Every hotel or resort has something that makes it different from other existing ones. Highlight the uniqueness of your property to stand out from the crowd. If your property can provide locations for pre-wedding shoots or model photography etc., invite such people for more visibility and additional revenues.
Modern families prefer to take a combo package rather than spending on individual services. So, make sure you plan some fun combo packages to attract families. For example, you can plan some packages for summer vacations, etc.
At least once or twice a year, offer exciting discounts on your services to rejuvenate back your old customers. You can utilize it on special occasions like New Year, Valentine’s, or major festivals like Diwali and Christmas.
It is essential to update the local folk about your services and property. Local marketing includes marketing tactics through local shopkeepers, news agencies, and local influencers.
You can also run some paid search marketing campaigns via Google ads, Tripadvisor, Bing search etc. As lakhs of online readers go through these sites, your hotel or resort is highly likely to get promoted without extra effort.
Having a mere website isn’t enough to promote hotels and resorts over the internet. You need to hit the SEO also to get identified by search engines. This can be achieved only after thorough research and keyword planning.
Once you launch your website, make sure that you effectively maintain it too. Add regular blogs and articles to improve your SEO and build consistency with your readers.
While posting the photographs of your rooms, pools, restaurants, banquets, food and other services, ensure you share only high-quality photos captured by a professional camera.
Live interaction is essential to maintaining your online audience. You must come live on special occasions to promote your hotel or resort business. For example, if someday a big event or concert happens at your property, you can grab the opportunity and showcase your property.
Google reviews help people worldwide check the quality of your services. Improve your google review and ratings by asking your customers and staff to write feedback about your property and facilities.
Just like google reviews, TripAdvisor is also important. Improving your ratings and reviews on TripAdvisor can also aid you in promoting your hotels and resorts digitally.
Design some membership programs for your regular customers. You can also curate some heavy discount offers for your loyal customers.
Another advantageous way to utilize social media is by running giveaway alerts and contests. You can end the competition by offering the winners free dinner or heavy discounts.
If you have any popular tourist attractions near your hotel or resort, make sure you use them in your brochure and menu to attract travel bees.
You can also upload an attractive e-brochure to flaunt your services and property amenities on your website.
Binding up emotionally with the audience is also essential. Share the success story of your hotel founder, co-founder, CEO, or other staff to make an emotional bond with the leader.
Facebook Check-Ins and Instagram locations play a pivotal role in building online traffic. You can increase your online check-in by giving special offers to the customers who post pictures of your property on their accounts.
Showcase your staff group pics or pics of them doing activities in the kitchen area, cleaning something, setting up a bed or serving some beautiful dish etc. The human connection always does wonders. This also creates a feeling of brotherhood and family between the audience and staff.
Invite local media persons to feature your property and its facilities in local newspapers or media blogs. Also, share the news coverage of events happening in your property on your social media platforms.
Unique facilities and amenities always attract the urbanized crowd; if your property has features like a gym, spa, pool and gaming area, highlight it on your e-brochure and brochure.
Frame a proper and complete corporate video of your property. Record the interviews, drone shoot your property, and record some testimonials or fun activities performed by your guest. This highlights the USPs of your property.
While framing videos or photos of your hotel or resorts, you can add some detailed happy moments like a guest’s pet at your property, a beautiful little flower blooming in your garden, etc. Again, this little thing will help in building emotional connectivity.
If someday a celebrity visits your property, ensure you take as much advantage as possible. Ask them to tag you, reshare the mention, and update the news on your website and local newspaper.
While posting on Instagram and Facebook, you can use sufficient hashtags related to your place or services. This will increase your online visibility.
Also, you can run advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can constantly personalize advertisements as per your budget and requirements. Moreover, these ads help you to hit only a particular region and target customers.
For a business person, it is somewhat challenging to stay connected with the internet trends; for this very purpose, you can hire a trustworthy digital marketing agency. A digital marketing agency will take all charges of your online activity. IFW 360X is one such reliable digital marketing agency firm.
Creating an SNS account isn’t sufficient; you should update it regularly. Hit different kinds of posts every day, someday a questionnaire, on another day polls etc.
To give your marketing strategy a professional turn, you can also create a LinkedIn page of your property. Use your LinkedIn page to attract corporates also for hiring new employees.
Finally, always remember Digital marketing is an ongoing strategy that demands patience and consistency; no name is ever made in a day. Have faith in your team, and don’t ever stop giving efforts.
IFW 360X is a digital marketing agency focusing on brand growth and development at a major level. Ask our experts how you can take your business to the next level.