The hotel marketing strategy actually covers a large number of topics, skills, and techniques. This is something that hoteliers need to know. Especially in the digital era that has changed the way people decide where to stay.
Effective hotel marketing means that potential guests or customers will be influenced by your brand everywhere, regardless of how they choose to research, plan and book hotels.
Hotel booking paths in the digital age are vast. This can be an opportunity, you just need to focus more on the technique that is most likely to allow you to try to catch it in your net.
This article on hotel marketing strategies in the digital age will help you. Especially in implementing strategic steps to reach potential customers online.
Contents
Hotel Online Marketing Strategy in the Digital Age
For many owners, hotel digital marketing is new territory. Some don’t even know him.
Maybe today, the conventional way of marketing hotels still applies in some cases. Some of the old standards still apply. It’s about user experience. Includes comfort and service systems.
However, the digital world has changed consumer behavior in deciding where they will spend their money.
For example, millennials now account for two-thirds of the world’s purchasing power and recent statistics show that, on average, they spend more than five hours per day on social media.
From these facts, hotels that fail to maximize content on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms are practically invisible. That means, will lose sales opportunities.
To dive into the subtleties that affect hotel digital marketing and the specific actions that can be taken, let’s take a closer look.
Also read: 8 Best 4 Star Hotels in Bali, Most Favorite, and Recommended!
How is the hotel market today?
Hotels that can survive and thrive today, are those with a digital marketing strategy that covers all the points in this article.
So, if you feel your sales are starting to decline, that doesn’t mean the market is quiet. Maybe the way people book hotels has changed. And your business may not fit into the new system.
Either way, it’s not about a case of doing a little here and there! It’s about creating a marketing blueprint that will increase your hotel sales.
So, understand the main points and then make a plan that suits your target market and hotel business conditions.
10 Online Hotel Marketing To Increase Sales
To market anything online you need media. And the media that can be used for free at this time are:
1. Website
Many visitors use agoda.com, traveloka.com, or one of the many other booking engines to find the best hotel deals.
However, you will also need to know that, many online users will then search the hotel’s related website for more information or a better price for the night. And or something more personal.
Through this condition, you really need an attractive website for best results. And a good website is very important for any business in the digital age.
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of the website. And a few reasons why you should have one.
According to the Tribble Agency in its article entitled the benefits of websites, the following are some of the benefits for corporate marketing and other businesses.
- Location
Through the website, it is clear that you can describe the location and features in the hotel area. It’s not just about explaining the route by which a tourist or potential customer can come to your hotel.
In most cases, a clear breakdown of a hotel’s location is the first way in which a hotel can differentiate itself from the competition
- Voice
The ordering engine or so-called marketplace is basically general in nature. Meanwhile, by having your own website you have the opportunity to talk directly with customers.
In other words, you can make things more personal or convey full information to “speak their language” to build an emotional connection with potential customers.
- Feature
Why do customers choose your hotel over others? Having a dedicated website allows you to outline the most attractive features that set you apart from any other hotel.
As you know, marketplaces rarely take the time to properly highlight these aspects.
- Private Market
Looking for sales opportunities in the marketplace is very good. But keep in mind too, that means you are competing in the middle of the ocean. Because there are so many sellers competing in that area.
If you are able to capture some customers from there, it’s a good idea to encourage them to make transactions through your website for their next order.
This keeps your customers away from the influence of your competitors’ attractive offers on the marketplace.
Through the website, you are like building a personal market without competition. Being a big fish in a pond will be much better than being in a wide ocean among other big fish.
- SEO
Search engine optimization is critical to long-term success. It is all about attracting potential customers for free from search engines.
Digital hotel marketing will increasingly rely on these efforts to generate valuable information for end-users.
With your own website, you can increase your keywords and social media links to your booking search rankings and over time, this can reduce your hotel’s dependence on these marketplaces.
2. Generate bulk content on your hotel website
Content marketing is currently very popular and has its strengths, but there are good reasons to focus on content marketing. Content is the best way to drive sustainable traffic to hotel websites.
Creating informative content and educating potential customers is the most effective strategy. Usually, there are two forms of content that are very influential for hotel marketing, they are – images and descriptions:
- Picture
You need a professional photographer for the hotel website. High quality images tell a story and professional photographers know how to capture this story in every shot.
When you think about it, these images are the face of your brand and every booking engine will use these photos too, so it makes sense to put the time, effort and money into making the right first impression.
- description
Whether the hotel’s breakfast is a type of legend concoction or each room offers a great view from the balcony.
You need to broadcast these details loud and clear. Luxurious beds, friendly staff and a sauna are all features you might be proud of and need to communicate to potential guests.
Simply put, your guests won’t know what you don’t tell them and these features are what most people think about, when it comes to choosing the best option for their stay.
Images and descriptions are tools that represent you digitally speaking with your potential customers.
That means, you need to make sure the tool is able to give you the best image you want potential customers to know about your hotel.
For advanced marketing, you may also think about creating videos for your marketing content.
3. Manage all reviews & reputation online
As you know, Tripadvisor has come under the spotlight in recent years for its fake reviews and somewhat malicious activity – thankfully they’ve also taken special steps against violators.
However, reputation is everything in the hotel industry and online reviews are still the only way to attract new potential customers.
Obviously, hundreds of five-star reviews will lead to better sales. But keep in mind that, one bad review can also seriously damage a hotel’s reputation.
For this reason, it is important to ask for positive reviews from customers and leave a reminder of this request at every opportunity.
You should also share this positive review on social media and take the time to respond with appreciation for the review. To show your concern.
Furthermore, responding to negative reviews is equally important for online reputation management.
This means that this is your chance to apologize and improve, and reduce the concern this review may cause to other guests in the future.
4. SEO for hotel online marketing is worth fighting for
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a series of efforts to increase the potential of your website to appear in the top rankings of search engines.
Of course with keywords that connect you to potential customers, when they do a search.
Keep in mind that, before booking a hotel, people tend to look for information via the internet. And when in the process they find your website, that means the potential is very close to conversion.
Digital marketing relies heavily on SEO. Organic traffic, or traffic that you get for free from search engines, tends to have a high conversion value. Even when compared to advertising.
Because, these types of users already have an interest in the keywords they type in the search box.
For example, when a user types in the keyword “hotel near the office of the ministry of religion” , it is clear that in this case they have an interest in finding a place to stay around that location. And when they find your website with a clear and convincing offer, they will call your contact number.
Broadly speaking, SEO practices are divided into two main categories namely;
- On-page SEO
- Off-Page SEO.
On-page SEO is an SEO strategy that can be done faster and easier. While Off-page SEO can be difficult, it is the most effective way to gain traction online. Let’s take a closer, basic overview of how these 2 categories of SEO work.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO – also known as On-site SEO. From the terms, it is clear that this is about what is on your site.
On-page SEO is an effort to optimize hotel website elements to increase online visibility.
This includes these strategies for improving page content, blog posts, images, to the navigation structure of the website itself.
The next element that is no less important is the strategy of determining the right keywords. Because it can dramatically increase the traffic potential of organic search on search engines.
Don’t you want to be found by users who have search intentions relevant to your hotel services?
Doing keyword research is the main strategy you need to learn.
Curious about how to do keyword research? Please read the guide here.
Because it’s about how many people search and what phrases are commonly used. It comes to a point of difficulty based on what sites have ranked for that keyword.
So you can target the keywords that are most likely to work.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO – or you can call it off-site SEO. This is a process that most often involves creating a backlink from an external site pointing to your hotel’s website. Also includes social signals through the process of sharing links on social media.
Please note that, the quality and quantity of backlinks are important factors that are taken into account by search engines in determining website rankings.
That is, the more other websites link their content to yours, it will be a signal calculated by search engines that; Your website is popular and important.
So it deserves to be promoted to their users by giving them top ratings.
Here’s an illustration, you might be able to hire a professional web developer to create a website that is of the same quality as trivago or traveloka. And of course, there are so many people who can make it even better than that.
However, when you target the same keywords as them, it will be difficult to outperform them.
The answer is, they are considered more popular and have high authority regarding these keywords. It is judged by the number and quality of incoming links to their site.
Links, are key players in an SEO strategy. And the good news, you can do that when you have a plan to compete for millions of organic traffic from search engines.
In this case, guest posting strategies, sponsored content, or using Backlink Services from professional companies are the most common ways to get quality backlinks to improve your Off-Page SEO.
And in fact, the page you are reading right now is a link-building strategy used by Garuda Website. One of the web development and SEO service companies through the Guest Posting technique, on this site.
Besides being useful in increasing the potential for website rankings in search engines. A good link-building strategy is also an effective way to brand or introduce your business to a broad audience.
At least, now you are familiar with Garuda Website, right? You are awaited by an experienced SEO team if you want further marketing strategy consultation through SEO. (This is a marketing strategy through link building, hehehe)
5. Local SEO is the focus of an effective marketing strategy in the digital era
Any business that has a physical location or serves a specific geographic area clearly needs to take advantage of local SEO. Because search engines prioritize local-based search engine results for certain keywords. And that includes hotels.
That means, when people type in the keyword “nearby hotels” around your hotel location, your business should appear at the top. It also includes Google maps.
Local SEO isn’t just about optimizing images, descriptions, tags or titles on your website for your hotel location. Because there is so much more to this process.
You need to establish a presence in local business directories. For example, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and other business directory websites. You can start your local SEO efforts by optimizing and improving the details on this directory site.
In addition, Google My Business is increasingly effective when it comes to ranking for local search queries. You need to make sure every aspect of your profile is complete to take advantage of this opportunity.
You can also focus on local content and create posts or videos about activities, events or attractions in your nearby area.
In this way, local SEO can help give your hotel website a greater sense of relevance to search queries and authority in your area of business.
Local SEO is all about how your business shows up when searches are related to a specific location. And it’s a little easier than general SEO. Because your business gets priority ranking in searches related to your area.
Many hotel owners forget that Facebook is still the king of social media and the main engine for driving digital marketing, including the hotel business.
Positive reviews – Take a look, the reviews section is placed right at the top of the Facebook page.
But sadly, many hotels seem to ignore this feature to the max. Even if you have a pile of reviews on Tripadvisor or elsewhere, the positive reviews in this section will instill confidence and trust in potential guests.
Facebook Sales – Facebook now allows business owners to place orders and even make payments through their platform.
In fact, Trivago recently awarded a resort in Mexico for its outstanding social media campaign. Which generates a large number of direct bookings via Facebook.
Twitter – Although often overlooked; besides Instagram or Facebook, Twitter is a fantastic tool for reaching a very specific target market.
Trivago also paid tribute to Cedar Manor in the UK for how this hotel managed to drive so much traffic by using hashtags to highlight events, news, and attractions in the local area.
Instagram – Needless to say, Instagram offers hotels the opportunity to reach a very large market and with the right images, this is another clear way of demonstrating high hotel quality.
People – On the other hand, social media is all about people and some of the best hotel digital marketing strategies are those that involve the staff and people behind the hotel.
However, stories are very effective in content marketing. Talking about staff is a great way to create a meaningful connection between the hotel and potential guests.
Listening to the public’s voice refers to a hotel’s digital marketing strategy that uses trackers and tools to find out your business is being referred to online on social media.
But why is this important?
Listen to what people are saying online about your hotel business; is your chance to interact with guests.
This is a great way to show potential future customers how much you care.
However, you cannot respond to what you don’t know. The following platforms can help businesses know when people are mentioning your hotel brand online;
- Hootsuite – While many people use Hootsuite to automate social media posts, the tool’s dashboard feature also works for checking mentions on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and most popular platforms.
- Curalate – Curalate is all about improving the sales process for hotels. This platform allows you to link social media content to your website, can also provide mention information in the process.
- Sprout Social – Forming meaningful relationships with guests is essential for a hotel. Sprout Social offers many solutions that can demonstrate online interactions related to business brands.
- Buzzsumo – BuzzSumo is a fantastic monitoring tool that helps you find content on social media related to your hotel. Knowing the trend of user interest in communicating. In fact, you can monitor when the domain name or link related to your website appears instantly.
8. Try Facebook’s Dynamic Ads for hotels
Facebook advertising is far from “dead” and many businesses focus a large part of their marketing budgets on this path.
In fact, Wish is now one of the largest e-commerce stores in the world with five million users and its platform, built almost entirely on Facebook Ads over the past few years.
Travel Ads is a new initiative that allows hotels to show their ads on Facebook and Instagram to people who are most likely to travel.
For example, if a user is browsing a hotel and hasn’t made a booking, a travel ad will place your hotel in front of him for a specific date and price.
As far as hotel digital marketing goes, Facebook Dynamic Ads are certainly one of the most attractive strategies for reaching potential customers in the industry.
9. Email marketing for hotels
Email marketing is increasingly important in the hospitality industry and this is especially true at a time when advertising and social media marketing is so common. At the same time, it is also still one of the most affordable ways to reach an audience and requires no upfront costs.
However, it is important to take the right approach in hotel digital marketing.
Here are some important considerations to keep in mind:
Segmentation – You cannot start an email marketing campaign without a solid plan. Among them, determining your audience is very important. This is to ensure your email lands in the right place.
In other words, you can’t just send the same email to everyone and expect success. Your target database should be divided into categories of interest.
Attention-grabbing – It should go without saying, but general content has no place in email marketing.
You need to use offers, discounts or information about local events to attract the attention of your ideal users.
In essence, there must be original and unique value in the email in order to have a good impact.
These are just a few things to keep in mind. But the overall message here is that, email marketing is effective when you take the right approach. Otherwise, your email may be marked as SPAM.
10. Enable online remarketing
Remarketing is a process that helps hotels engage with potential customers who may have visited the hotel’s website and ignored their search.
This means that you can use this strategy to get these users to revisit your website and make a second purchase.
If you think about it, this is very effective because you already know that the user is basically ready to make a purchase. It’s just, maybe they still have doubts.
But how to do it?
The remarketing ad service will only target previous users. To change their minds. Maybe you need to provide some kind of discount or special offer to re-engage the customer.
In this case, your ad will appear in the user’s news feed and tempt them with tempting offers as well.
As a rule, it is important for this type of promotion to offer a lot of value and the right keywords should be used to reach as many viewers as possible.
Conclusion
As you can see, hotel marketing strategy in the digital age is a broad topic. But the tips above are some of the most practical strategies and solutions to get ahead in the industry.
While some methods require a financial investment, most of these processes rely on knowledge or experience. That means, you must have a solid marketing plan.