Why and How Hotels Should Do Digital Marketing
Digital marketing can be very useful for a hotel business. This can help the hotel, big or small, to recapture lost revenue as well as generate more revenue. In this age of competition, it is important to stay ahead of the competition. And keep your marketing strategy up-to-date to avoid the competitive niche.
One of the main reasons why digital marketing is so highly profitable is that most consumers these days are tech savvy. They like to explore and find out information about a hotel through the internet. So you need to make sure you have a good presence online in this modern era.
Few easy tips for hotel digital marketing:
- Competitors and their strategies
First of all, you need to visit your competitor’s website and research what unique benefits they are offering to the visitors. Research is an important part of the digital marketing strategy here. Knowing what your competition is doing is the first step towards formulating your own well-defined strategy. You can also pinpoint gaps or flaws in what the competitors are doing so that you can go ahead of them by implementing things they are not currently implementing.
- Maximize local SEO
Maximizing your local SEO will make your hotel more visible to potential visitors, giving you more brand awareness. Examples of local SEO opportunities for the hotel industry include the use of Google My Business, Yelp, and Trip Advisor. You can also get your hotel connected to major OTAs (online travel agents) to provide more exposure.
- Create a strong social media strategy
To develop a strong social media strategy, it is important to understand and analyze all the available social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., all of which are an important part of online marketing strategy. These platforms will help in providing accurate information to the passengers at the right time. The social media plan has to be comprehensive and solid as most of the world nowadays is on social media.
So if you are not playing the social media game well, you are probably losing out on a lot of potential guests. Ignnore social media marketing at your own peril. Social media platforms can be useful to present a good picture of your hotel, present all the important details about your hotel, entice people to visit your place, know more about your target audience and also to build a rock-solid relationship with the customers.
- Mobile friendly website and app
Creating a mobile friendly website, and even an app has become a necessary step for growth in the hotel industry. As more and more people use their mobile phones to search in several different hotels simultaneously and book their hotel online, the importance of a website accessible via mobile is clear.
5. Get to know your audience
A good marketing strategy is the one that matches the right kind of hotel with the right kind of traveler.
Your own hotel can be a boutique hotel, luxury hotel, hostel, B&B hotel, motel, resort hotel, garden hotel, etc.
Similarly, there can be many types of travelers – some may prefer to stay in one type of hotel while another group may like another type of hotel. Knowinng your potential customers and their tastes, preferences is a very important part of marketing – whether you are marketing online or offline you just cannot skip this step. You need to be aware of your potential customer’s preferences so that you can formulate a suitable and proper digital marketing strategy.