How To Do Hotel Marketing: Strategy, Ideas & Digital Tactics
Introduction
Our experience has been working alongside hotels for years to improve their ROI through customer-centered marketing strategies. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the best practices of hotel marketing from defining your unique value proposition to engaging travelers at all the different stages of their stay.
A well-thought-out hotel marketing strategy will reduce reliance on third-party booking sites and facilitate guest loyalty over time. The framework of this guide outlines proven tactics to attract guests, create revenue, and strengthen your brand.
Key Takeaways
- Hotel marketing encompasses activities related to branding, price setting, and online advertising to drive direct bookings.
- SEO, social media, and email campaigns are utilized to improve the hotel’s online visibility.
- Loyalty programs and targeted offers during peak reservation season help to engender guest loyalty.
- Managing the management and response to relevant guest hotel reviews and confirming consistent brand experiences creates shadowing and trust with the guest.
- Data-driven personalization and AI tools are changing the now and future of hotel marketing.
How to do hotel marketing effectively?
Join together data-driven digital marketing and authentic storytelling, prioritize direct bookings through SEO and email campaigns, then use guest reviews to build credibility.
Key steps:
- Build a strong brand identity
- Optimize your website for search and conversion
- Run targeted social and paid ad campaigns
- Create loyalty programs to encourage repeat stays
Understanding Hotel Marketing Strategy
A good hotel marketing strategy consists of three components:
Branding and Positioning: The first question to ask yourself is what differentiates your property. Is it luxury? Family-friendly? Boutique accommodation?
Pricing Strategy: Change rates based on demand and seasonality with dynamic pricing. You can easily make your prices go up and down based on research you’ve done.
Customer Segmentation: Determining which key audience segments are most important to you (such as business travelers, couples, or families) and creating messaging specific to each audience segment.
Direct Bookings vs OTAs:
OTAs, such as Booking.com, will give you reach but at a high commission cost. You must create an effective strategy for direct bookings–this is about generating more revenue for your hotel, directly through your website, email, and/or loyalty program.
Digit Cure helps hospitality brands design digital strategies that drive guests to book directly while building a brand for the long term.
Key Hotel Marketing Ideas
Reward and Referral Programs: Reward guests for returning stays with membership upgrades, discounts, or credit to the restaurant, and refer friends for additional guest membership.
Packages Created Around Events and Experiences: Packages that create value around local events or experiences, such as spa weekends, wine tours, or adventure getaways.
Content marketing: Share guests’ experiences, promote local attractions, and increase your trust, SEO value, and visibility with video and/or blog content.
Digital Marketing Strategy for the Hospitality Sector
Search Engine Optimization Best Practices:
- Target keywords based on your location (i.e., “5-star hotel in [city]”)
- Create landing pages specific to the amenities and attractions of the destination.
- Test mobile and fast load speed.
Social Media:
Instagram/TikTok: Communicate and share your story through images and moving images in reels and highlights.
Facebook: Post about events and offers.
LinkedIn: Focus on corporate/MICE clients.
Email Marketing: Segment your guests based on their booking behavior. Send them pre-arrival tips, thank you emails, and offers to “come back.”
Paid Media:
- Utilize Google Ads for searches with intent.
- Utilize retargeting to re-engage visitors.
- Collaborate with influencers for authentic exposure.
Analytics & Insights: Follow booking sources, conversion percentage, and audience demographics to optimize campaigns.
For expert digital marketing services, visit Digit Cure. Digit Cure provides end-to-end digital marketing strategies tailored to your business. From SEO audits to social media management, we ensure every campaign drives measurable results.
Campaign Planning and Execution
- Establish your goal (grow 20% in direct bookings).
- Define your audience and selection of content.
- Choose 3–4 applicable channels.
- Develop a content calendar around key dates.
- Implement, manage, and adjust the results.
Consider allocating 5–10% of total revenues to marketing, plan starting out with organic and email, and then grow paid advertisements.
Hotel Marketing Best Practices
- Maintain a unified brand recognition across all platforms.
- Reply to all reviews in a timely and professional manner.
- Encourage your team to help with the online activity.
- Assess your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including website traffic, conversions, and repeat bookings.
- Don’t ignore mobile optimization, email follow-ups, or continuous posts. Decrease the dependence on OTAs and invest in a good direct booking engine.
Emerging Trends
- AI and Chatbots: Give immediate responses and enhance guest service.
- Personalization: Use CRM data to send personalized offers and packages.
- Voice Search Optimization: Target natural language queries (“best pet-friendly hotel in Miami”).
- Mobile-First Marketing: Design for mobile-first users with app-based loyalty and push deals.
Conclusion
To successfully market hotels takes planning, creativity, and analytics. Leverage these hotel marketing tips and best practices to attract hotel guests, increase direct bookings, and foster loyalty.
Are you ready to prepare your hotel for new growth? Contact Digit Cure today for customized digital marketing strategies that work.
FAQs
What would you recommend as a strong marketing strategy for hotels?
Use a marketing strategy that plays on various channels – SEO, social media marketing, email automation, and Google Ads – which generally has a great ROI. It becomes even more necessary to increase direct bookings through your hotel website and loyalty program.
Can you suggest hotels with direct booking marketing ideas?
Provide direct booking incentives (like free breakfast and upgrades) on your website, and optimize your website for conversion – focusing on your content and presentation to increase direct bookings. Employ retargeting ads on your social networks to remind those who received the booking engine pop-up on the website, but did not complete the booking (7576+ people visited your site – Don’t forget to book our hotel!).
What are some hotel marketing ideas for smaller hotels?
Using local SEO, tapping into local businesses for reciprocal marketing, check with your other followers for user-generated content to interact with on your social, and develop an email marketing campaign related to your former guests & their prior experiences.
How is social media for hotel marketing?
Very important. Instagram and TikTok can serve as good platforms to display the unique selling proposition of your property, create access for travelers who are planning travels, and grow a community by showcasing the real experiences of guests.
How much should hotels budget for their marketing campaigns?
In the hotel industry, a general guideline is to spend 5–10% of total revenue on marketing. For new marketing plans, start with 5%, and depending on the conversion tracking stats and overall ROI based on marketing spends, you can increase that amount over time.
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