Invest in a Website for Your Hotel

If you’re looking to build your hotel business to its fullest potential, investing in a website may be one of the best hotel marketing strategies you can employ. Having an informative, user-friendly site that is SEO optimized allows customers to find critical information about your accommodations, such as contact details, pricing, amenities, and photo galleries, before making a purchase transaction. If creating a website is too costly for your budget, there are budget-friendly web design tools such as Wix or Squarespace to help you get started.

Optimize Your Website for SEO

Optimizing your website with SEO can ensure that potential customers can quickly discover it when they search online. A thorough keyword research should first determine which keywords best suit your business. Additionally, the content on your website must also be optimized with these keywords to have visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Local SEO Checklist provides more information on what needs to be done to ensure the successful optimization of your site.

Employ Seasonal Keywords in Your Keyword Strategy

Taking action with seasonal keywords is an essential part of your hotel’s marketing strategy that could help expand your reach and draw more attention from customers interested in your services! When running a hotel, customer visits tend to spike during the holiday season. To capitalize on this increase in potential customers, you should use a keyword calendar and actively track the performance of these keywords when they’re at their peak. Utilizing tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest can aid in generating relevant ideas, while Google Trends allows you to monitor search volume and search behavior for these words.

Create a Blog for Your Hotel Website

Establishing a blog on your hotel’s website is a fantastic way to generate more leads through organic means. Not only can you position yourself as an expert by covering travel, food, and tourism topics, but it can also help elevate your domain authority. And don’t worry if this seems like an unconventional step to take— competing hotels are likely taking the same approach already, so staying ahead of the curve is critical here.

If you need help getting started, there are plenty of blogs with great advice, such as One Day in City’s post on starting a blog or HotelSpeak’s article outlining unique ideas for content creation. Once your posts have been published, promote them anywhere relevant or through channels such as social media platforms or email campaigns — Coschedule has put together a helpful guide on that!

Newsletter: How to Take Your Blog to The Next Level

Are you looking for new ways to make your blog stand out and get more engagement? Sending out a periodic newsletter can be a significant step forward. But setting up a newsletter from scratch can be daunting if you need help knowing where to start. Let’s break it down into the basic steps and explore how you can create an effective newsletter for your blog.

Building an Email Subscriber List

You must first build an email subscriber list for your newsletter to reach its intended audience. To do this, you will need to add value and offer incentives encouraging people to subscribe. Give readers something they’ll find helpful, like exclusive content or discounts on products or services, in exchange for signing up with their email address. Smart Blogger offers some great tips on incentive-based subscription strategies.

Get in Touch With Local Food and Travel Bloggers

Reaching out to local food and travel bloggers is another good marketing tactic that can help promote your hotel. Invite these influencers to visit your establishment and write a review; as an incentive, consider asking them for guest posts on your blog in return for their testimonials.

Get Your Hotel Listed!

The most critical part of your hotel’s online marketing plan is getting listed on all relevant business directories – Google, TripAdvisor, Bing, Yahoo, Yellow Pages, Facebook, etc., as well as industry-specific directories such as Expedia, Priceline, booking.com, etc., are just some of the places where potential customers might come across listings about your hotel. So make sure you set up accounts and listings in every corner of the web relevant to the hospitality sector!

Your local Chamber of Commerce

Staying on top of your local Chamber of Commerce is integral to managing a successful hotel. You’ll need to check that the online listings for your hotel are accurate and up-to-date and ensure that you’re not signing up with sites on which your business is already listed. If a listing does exist, it’s essential to claim and verify it.

Reviews

Reviews are invaluable for your hotel, so investing in online review management is paramount. As soon as you register with major online directories, customers will leave reviews. All reviews should be responded to – positive and negative – either at the time they are left or shortly afterward; review response templates can help create an appropriate response for all situations.

The overarching goal should be to achieve a good star rating (above four stars). To do this, you’ll need to ensure that: customers have a great experience and that any unhappy customers who allocate bad reviews are attended to first before they leave the property. The best way to find out how customers felt about their stay is by collecting contact information whenever possible, at check-in or within 24 hours. All happy customers should then be asked to leave reviews using services such as Google, TripAdvisor, or Yelp – while those who had an unsatisfactory experience should receive an apology and a request for better feedback – if appropriate!

Build a Google My Business Page for Your Hotel

With Google’s powerful search engine optimized for search and discovery, your hotel must be registered on Google My Business. No matter the type of business, having a Google My Business listing is essential for any business that wants to build an online presence. You can learn how here.

Google has added new features to its already prominent platform with announcements from last year, including updates from recent Google I/O 2018 events. Here is a list of what you can now find on your Google My Business dashboard:

• Reserve with Google – this feature allows you to add a “reserve” button directly to your listing when it appears in the SERPs (search engine results pages). This will enable customers to search for information about your business, reserve tables at your hotel restaurant, or make bookings without leaving their search results page.
• Google Questions & Answers – This is a crowd-sourced FAQ platform that will appear directly in SERPs, giving you a chance to post common queries anyone might have about your business and answer them promptly.
• Service Menu – use this area to showcase all packages and services available at your hotel so that it will show up directly in the listings generated by searches.
• Chat & Messaging – customers can reach out directly from their mobile device’s text message app or through Google Allo, thanks to direct messaging options available from their search result page.

Leverage Social Media: Create a Facebook Business Page

Another great way to give your hotel more exposure is by creating a Facebook business page. Facebook boasts two billion active users, so investing in a Facebook page for your hotel should be an obvious choice if you want greater user engagement and repurposing of marketing efforts on the social media platform.

Once you have set up a Facebook business page, there are plenty of tools at your disposal which can aid audience engagement: posts with various multimedia elements, polls, and surveys, boosted posts, targeted ads, and events integration are just some examples. Find out more about how to create a Facebook business page here.

Build a Referral Program

Generating word-of-mouth marketing is an excellent way to ensure the success of your hotel. Constructing and promoting a referral or loyalty program can be incredibly beneficial. Provide discounts or other incentives for customers who refer your establishment; this could take the form of coupon codes they pass on to their friends and family.

In addition, remember to include your staff in these efforts! Offer rewards like spa days and monetary bonuses based on how many successful conversions they bring in. Don’t limit yourself to solely traditional methods, either. Utilize social media platforms with relevant hashtags, statuses, tweets, snaps, etc., which you and your employees can post, to draw further attention from potential customers.

Promote and Partner with Other Local Establishments

Partnering with other businesses within your local community is another excellent way to expand awareness about your hotel and generate more coverage. Create posters for events hosted at your location and any amenities and services offered; hand them out at local bakeries, car detailing shops, NGOs – anywhere people frequent. Spread information through social media by including joint content featuring both establishments in posts shared across various platforms.

If you’re feeling extra creative, develop partnerships with Airbnb or similar sites; provide small packages featuring items branded with the name of your hotel (e.g., soaps, toothbrushes) for people renting out spaces through those sites. This allows you to increase brand recognition while simultaneously building networks within the area.

Promote and Localize Your Hotel’s Cafe, Bar, or Restaurant

When you construct a hotel marketing strategy, remember to promote your establishment’s cafe, spa, bar, or restaurant areas. You can push for these services through social media platforms and more traditional advertising methods. By doing this, you reach out to tourists and travelers and engage with local clientele.

Live Events: An Effective Way to Attract Customers

Hosting live music or comedy events is an efficient way of drawing in customers. Please find a local up-and-coming band or comedian and arrange a gig; placing it on a day most people can attend is recommended. Ensure you advertise the event well ahead of time and post it on social media frequently.

Advertise Hotel Space for Business and Community Events

Your hotel has plenty of rooms and amenities; capitalizing on this by advertising conference rooms or halls is critical. Seek out community events that your hotel can target specifically. Create packages with special deals featured in them and add them to your website’s catalog to further attract audience attention.

Get a Chatbot for Your Website

To ensure effective customer service via your website, implement chatbot interactions through services like Drift or Intercom. This way, visitors can locate information such as amenities offered by the hotel, pricing details of accommodation options provided, and facilities for booking reservations – all from the home page! The data collected from inside conversations can also be used to identify what customers are interested in learning about you so that necessary changes can be made toward optimizing website content and SEO strategies accordingly.