Omnichannel Digital Marketing Services for Hotels & Hospitality Companies

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the modern hotel industry. More than half of all bookings now occur online, which means that customers rely on the brand’s digital presence to book their rooms. Two-thirds of travelers will also use video to influence their activities and excursions. The digital world has become an important touchpoint for hospitality customers, allowing brands to engage with them and introduce them to their hotel.

As with any type of sector, modern marketing helps those in hospitality build a strong brand to represent what they can offer customers. These marketing efforts work to create an appealing picture in the mind of the customer, connecting this particular hotel with the experience that they would like to have during their next stay. Rather than relying only on traditional forms of marketing, however, modern digital marketing enables businesses to actively engage customers and offer them this appealing picture of a trip through search and social media, expanding their reach.

To create a quality marketing plan that will help bring in more customers and generate more interest for the hotel, there are a few key steps you can take.

• Research the comp set, RevPAR and, their offering and compare it with hotels offering
• Analyze your current position. Gather data surrounding your current site rankings, your site traffic, your conversions, customer satisfaction during the stay, social media following, and position compared to the competition. This provides you with a baseline and ideas about where you perform weakest and need to focus your efforts.
• Decide your goals. Knowing your current standing will help you set goals for your marketing strategy. For example, goals might be to increase conversion percentages, increase customer ratings, or build a stronger social following.
• Create campaigns that will help you reach our goals. Determine how the different marketing platforms impact your hotel marketing goals and how they can be used to work towards success. For example, if you want to build a social following, you might create more content designed for social media, invest more time in analyzing behavior on the site, and transition PPC campaigns to focus more on the social platforms. To increase bookings, however, you might build more bottom-of-the-funnel content, spend more time on social driving specials or deals to booking options, and create PPC campaigns centered around this goal.
• Measure your progress. Track regular data to see how your campaigns perform compared to the easier baseline. Use this information to inform future campaigns.

To promote your hotel, you need to focus on who your audience is and what will convince visitors to book a room directly with you. You can accomplish your goal with a few careful steps.

• Understand the hotel comp set and RevPAR goals
• Identify your target customer segments and the pain point you want to solve for them
• Research where this customer can be found online
• Create campaigns that help you to speak to this particular target’s pain point
• Launch campaigns using omnichannel strategy across multiple channels and platforms, creating a unified brand impression
• Use social media to engage with customers and promote content related to the campaign
• Use PPC to promote your material to people making searches related to your hotel and your area
• Leverage email campaigns to help you re-engage with people who were interested in your business in the past.
• Focus on building positive reviews on sites like Google My Business and Yelp to cultivate positive reviews and a high number of stars. This increases attention for people making local searches on Google or Yelp.

As you promote your hotel on these different digital platforms, remember that customer service plays a large role in gathering positive reviews and recommendations. It impacts reputation and perception. Make it a priority for every engagement with customers.

For hotel businesses that want to improve their hotel marketing, it is important to look at three main areas:

• Understand the competition set of the hotel, RevPAR and hotel business segments
• The target audience
• The target message
• The content designed to promote that message

Data plays a critical role. The businesses will need to analyze how site visitors react to their website and content across different platforms. They also need to know their rate of securing bookings from the customer engaging with their marketing materials.

• Collect data on customers who complete bookings and those attracted to the website and compare this information to the targeted audience of the business.
• Monitor the success of the content to interest target customers. How does the content rank? How much traffic does it attract?
• Finally, look at how customers behave after engaging with the content. How many join email listings, look at booking pages, and schedule a stay?

Using this data, find the weakest points in the hotel marketing strategy. You can also look at competitor pages and gather ideas and techniques you can use to improve your ability to attract the right customers and encourage them to convert. You can also engage with customers to learn more about what attracted them to the hotel and use that information to continue to build the most successful areas of your strategy.

Hotels have to compete in their competitive local market for similar types of customers. A few key local marketing best practices can help them rise to the top and create a highly visible web presence.

• Claim and optimize your Google My Business page. Make sure that the page contains accurate information and highly appealing, enticing images of popular amenities and rooms.
• Focus on the customer experience and feedback. Reviews on Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor all have impact on local SEO. Use feedback in concrete ways to improve your business.
• Build a presence across major platforms, including SEO and social media to engage customers.
• Create local-focused content. For example, cover local events of interest to guests or showcase local places people enjoy visiting.
• Track your progress with data. Use data to monitor how customers find you, how you rank for local searches, and how customers engage with you digitally and in person. Use this to learn what attracts your customers.

A strong local digital marketing strategy for those in the hospitality industry can help your hotel appear in the local pack for your area and attract more bookings.

A hotel marketing strategy describes the steps and strategies that those in hospitality take to increase their visibility online and in the minds of customers. It will focus on building the business brand and creating a highly searchable site. Each hotel marketing strategy will contain steps like these:

• Identifying the main target audience. For example, identifying if you want to attract wealthy traveling couples seeking a luxurious experience or family-friendly budget travelers.
• Creating a message to broadcast to this target audience. The hotel next wants to identify the message they want to broadcast. This might include special deals, upcoming local events they have bookings for, or enticing bookings for popular travel seasons.
• Drafting a plan to reach this target audience. Hotels should use a variety of different platforms and channels to engage with their target audience. This includes SEO, PPC, social media, and email marketing.
• Measuring results. As the campaign goes live, hospitality businesses should measure their results every step of the way to better understand customer engagement and progress. This can help them improve their marketing strategy moving forward.

Businesses that take the time to develop and articulate a concrete strategy will find it easier to understand their successes and shortcomings so that they can create highly effective campaigns.

How can I market my hotel online?
Marketing your hotel online can help you attract the attention of those planning trips and vacations through search and social media. While there are a variety of different strategies your hospitality brand can use, there are a few that should be incorporated in your strategy.

Organic search
Create high-value content that customers want to read about your hotel and your local area. Let them know about material that matters to them, such as information about your hygiene procedures and safety precautions, local amenities, and what sets you apart from the competition. Target topics that travelers are likely to use.

Social media
Engage actively with customers on social media by answering their questions, posting helpful material, and promoting your brand across the different channels. You can spread word about the content you publish as well as bargains you offer to attract followers and build your brand reputation.

Paid search
Employ paid search to reach customers on the SERP and social media. You can target those making particular relevant searches or who fit demographics with which you want to engage.

Push Notifications
Engage recent website visitors with reminder messages on their desktop and mobile devices when there are announcements or updates to share. Push notifications bypass the inbox and get in front of users quickly.
Email
Encourage past customers as well as site visitors to join a marketing list so that you can keep them up to date with what your hotel has to offer. You can also keep them informed about local events and other local attractions that might encourage them to visit your area again.

A hotel marketing mix describes the different segments or target audiences that the brand wants to reach and the marketing strategies they use to engage them. To find their marketing mix, the hotel will need to identify the key population segments that they want to target with their marketing. For example, they might want to reach:

• Luxury travelers
• Those planning major events, such as weddings
• Those interested in group travel
• Businesses planning conferences

Identifying the segments will then allow the hotel to determine the type of marketing channels that they want to use to attract the attention of these key audience members. Identifying the marketing mix and the messaging they want to use will require the brand to consider where their target audiences typically engage online and where they go when they want it more information about hotels or travel.

• Look at competitors to see how they build their marketing mix
• Speak with existing customers to see where they heard about the hotel and where they usually go to learn more about hotels and travel
• Look at the existing brand’s campaigns and see where they have the most success with engaging the different demographics and audiences

Using this information, build a marketing mix that incorporates a strong digital presence with a website, social media, paid advertising, and email along with any relevant traditional marketing strategies to create a marketing mix that will convert customers.

Hotels face large amounts of competition within their industry. They have to consider both the large hotel brands that have a presence in their geographic area as well as small hotels that specialize in this particular space. Those that neglect their optimization will struggle to build their digital presence and attract customers interested in staying in the area.

Optimization for hotels focuses on understanding what customers want to see from the hotel brands that they select when making a particular trip. The better a brand can align their digital presence to customer interests and desires, the higher the site will rank. Therefore, optimization for the hospitality industry focuses around:
 

• Understanding what customers interested in hotels in this area search for online
• Building a social media presence that allows the hotel to engage with past and perspective guests to nurture relationships and answer questions
• Creating content that offers genuine value for site visitors
• Incorporating site designs that reflect the latest interests and desires of customers
• Create sites that make it easy to engage with the hotel, whether booking a room or contacting them directly.