Inbound marketing — 8 top tips to attract hotel customers like a magnet
Every business needs a marketing plan. Whether you’re an independent hotel, a chain or a B&B, marketing is the glue that keeps your business alive.
For smaller hotels, traditional marketing can be too expensive and far-reaching to take on. Cold calling, buying email lists and printed adverts, is for the most part, unattainable.
But don’t fret, there is a better way.
Inbound marketing is about attracting prospects to you rather than hunting them down.
It relies on your valuable and helpful knowledge reaching potential guests at the right time, using the right format, through the right channel.
This is the best approach for smaller and larger hotels alike, and it’s not as difficult as it sounds.
Here are 8 actionable tactics you can use to attract customers directly and build raving fans for your brand.
Research — know your audience
Inbound marketing creates a powerful connection between you and your customer.
This bond only happens when you build a foundation and understand the ins and outs of three core areas — your business, your industry and your customer.
Your business — You need to define your business and its goals to the letter. What are your revenue goals? What will you measure? How many enquiries and guests will you need? What kind of content will you create? What’s your sales process?
Your industry — No matter how well you think you know your industry, changing trends and updates happen all the time. To keep your finger on the pulse, you need to research the content your competitors distribute, keep an eye on the latest news and current events.
Your customer — Create your buyer personas and tailor your website’s content to suit those personas. What kind of questions do your customers ask you? What are your customer demographics? What kind of content resonates the most?
Build a personal brand
To become a relatable and likeable hotel brand you need to create an image people feel an affinity to.
By bringing your own name and personality to your marketing, your potential customers relate to the person behind the business.
Authenticity is key in the digital age.
Your personal brand can define you as a leader — an expert within the hospitality industry. Everything you share online (from your website to your social platforms) has a direct impact on your personal brand, and when done right, can deliver an incredible ROI.
When combining your personal brand and the overall branding of your hotel, you need to think about how you want others to perceive your business.
Discounts and promocodes
Offering discounts, promocodes or coupons is a highly effective marketing tool for any size hotel. Remarkably, a study by the A.C. Nielson Co revealed 95% of customers like coupons and 60% actively look for them.
We’re all hardwired to seek out deals that give us more for our money. With a compelling discount, your ideal customer is more likely to take your offer over a competitor’s.
Look at websites you can partner with to promote your offer and post heavily through your social channels. This will expand your target area and appeal to wider audiences who are willing to travel further to redeem a discount voucher.
Build your onsite blog
A quality, regularly updated blog is one of the most effective ways to increase your website’s traffic.
There are a few considerations for a successful blogging strategy to support your inbound marketing efforts, these include:
Provide quality, helpful content — What kind of questions do your customers want answers to? What kind of topics will help them progress to the next stage of the buying cycle? Create useful content around solving these problems.
Publish consistently — Whether you publish once fortnightly or once a week, create a publishing schedule and stick to it. The best blogs are consistent and predictable.
Be unique — Look at your competitors blogging strategy and consider ways you can set yourself apart. What kind of topics can you cover that you know well and will make you stand out? This can be essential for establishing your business niche in the industry.
Include a Call to action — Be sure to add a CTA at the bottom of each post. Can you entice your readers with a promocode or get in touch for more information? Think of ways you can entice them to interact further with your brand.
Optimise your website
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Search engine optimisation doesn’t have to be complicated. If you know exactly what you need to do to optimise your website for higher search rankings, SEO is easy.
The key is to know the kind of phrases and terms your customers are searching for.
Here are a few simple website additions to consider:
- Include your keywords in your header, page text, subheads, URL, meta description, image names and alt tags
- Build relationships and generate links to your website from high authority sites (Guest blogging is great for backlinking)
- Hyperlink keywords within your page content to other pages on your website. Link your keywords to blog posts, landing pages and website pages
Drive traffic with social media
Maximise your social platforms — this means focussing on engaging with real people.
When someone mentions you, respond. When someone retweets you, thank them. Ask questions and post answers to people’s problems in your industry.
Monitor your brand. Whenever someone interacts with you it’s an opportunity to engage and convert a new prospect or sale.
As well as engaging, make sure you fill in each profile entirely and align that presence with your brand image.
Create credibility with social proof
Social proof is verification to a potential guest that your brand is established and trustworthy. Essentially, if someone else has stayed with you and talked about it online, that’s social proof. There’s no denying good online reviews have a positive impact on customer buying decisions.
In fact, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. According to business2community.com, reviews increase marketing effectiveness by 54%.
There are a number of ways to generate social proof and in turn increase online sales. These include:
- Customer reviews and ratings
- Social likes, shares and followers
- Video testimonials
- Trust symbols
- PR
- Celebrity endorsements
You should put focus into establishing multiple types of social proof. Consumers feel far more inclined to do business with a company others say they know and trust. In the end, social proof can be a formidable sales tool.
The Booking Factory
