Every hotel faces different challenges today in relation to digital marketing. Some hotels are stuck on hiring top talent and skills, while others still struggle with the right technology for their needs.
Digital marketing represents the use of connected devices to engage a customer with online marketing campaigns in order to promote products and services. Connected devices include web browsers, smartphones and IoT.
The single largest difference between traditional hotel marketing and digital marketing is that, historically, marketing was one way.
Today every respectable hotel focus on value innovation in a digital market to reach new customers.
New technology, software, and mobile evolution have provided customers with unique and easy access to information.
This has put the customer in control of their journey. As a result of these hotels now have to think outside the box. It starts with listening, care and connect that sets a foundation for a newfound relationship.
In this article, we’ll cover exactly how you can use digital marketing and relationship marketing to connect with your customers and increase your hotel’s revenue.
1. No Time
One of the top challenges hotels report with digital marketing is the lack of time and resources.
Time is not the real reason hotels don’t take on digital marketing. In most cases, it is an excuse, and the real reason often is that they don’t know what to do.
You have to be ready to shift focus and attack the challenge.
Today hotels have an unprecedented opportunity to implement smarter and more effective strategies.
Looking behind the date of the excuse of no time or resources we learned that;
• Only 33% of US workers are engaged
• 16% are actively disengaged
• 51% of employees are muddling around and waiting for their next job
The numbers are staggering. And in a sense time and resources is a challenge. The time is available, the resources are available, but they are not installed in a high-value effective setting.
It is becoming more important than ever to focus on employee attention and retention. Today we have to look at value innovation and new alternative solutions.
How can your hotels use digital marketing to create a more purposeful workplace?
The pace of change means that today’s hotel leaders need to be proactive in the face of challenges.
To do this hotel leaders must integrate a digital marketing funnel that listens, care and connect with customers.
Engagement and building relationships will help amplify the digital marketing funnel, and it supports processes that will help save time and resources.
2. Content and No Resources
Content in itself is not hard; what is hard is producing high-quality content.
Producing high-quality content today requires a unique skill set. Resources is not a real challenge; it is the distribution of the resources.
Hotels today has to be willing to pay for quality content production as part of an effective digital marketing plan.
Do your hotel have a content strategy that reaches;
• The ideal customers
• Knows the key performance metrics to measure
• Understands resources that are available
• What customer pain points to solve
Understanding your hotel’s goals and key performance metrics is key to digital marketing success.
Do you know what content is currently working for your hotel?
One of the first things a social media management team do is to perform an audit to understand what is working and what’s not working.
Quality content is today part of both inbound and outbound marketing for hotels. Today everyone wants to create higher quality and more efficient content.
To achieve this, we create digital marketing funnels that identify the content that works best at every micro-moment of the customer journey.
Often, we experience hotels that focus on content that converts into direct bookings. This is just the starting point. Today hotels have to implement content that focuses on ongoing support and retention.
An effective digital marketing funnel creates a customer journey map that;
• Have clear objectives
• Identifies the ideal customer and identify their goals
• Understand all-important micro-moments
• Identify all the content you want to show
• Let you take an active part in the journey yourself
• Adapt and make changes when needed
3. Attracting the Right Customer
Hotels crave more online visibility to attract the right customer at the right time.
Here is a clue to online visibility – it requires time and resources!
One of our key tasks as hotel marketers is to focus on value innovation where opportunities for profitability and growth exists in new uncontested markets. Creativity and innovation have been essential to marketing success long before the internet or digital marketing came about.
Creativity is a transformation process that focuses on shifting viewpoints.
Value innovation makes it easier to grow, regardless of the size of the hotel.
Creativity and value innovation will allow you to offer something unique to your customers.
Be authentic, build authority and trust. A quality relationship will lead to customer share your content with their peers and network and end up providing great reviews.
Going beyond your social proofs and building a quality relationship allows hotels to go beyond online visibility.
4. Converting Leads into Customers
Lead generation today is very much part of the customer journey.
Close to 90% of customer will research their buys online before making a purchase. So, hotels today have to build a digital marketing plan that provides high value at every micro-moment of the customer journey.
Through building quality relationships with the customer, we have to showcase that we understand their pain points and can provide a unique solution that solves their problems.
Social media can be an effective lead generation channel when done right. Be smart and use time and resources to build an engaged audience so you can convert them into leads.
Within a digital marketing funnel using Facebook Advertising is one of the most effective ways to convert leads.
Facebook advertising for the hotel is very cost-effective, and in context with high-value relationship strategies, it drives high-quality leads.
Hotels can use the data from their Facebook advertising and pull it into a remarketing campaign that provides new unique incentives to capture the leads.
5. Optimizing ROI
Today what is important for the hotel marketer is to optimize the experience.
In that effect, we look at optimizing the return on investment (ROI). And when we look at Facebook advertising, we look at the return on ad spend (ROAS).
ROI focus on optimizing the strategy while ROAS focus on optimizing the tactics. Both important elements of the digital marketing funnel.
Hotels must understand the different key performance indicators; how they are performing, how to improve them, and who you should target with them.
If you don’t know what you want from your digital marketing effort there is no way to tell why customer shows up or why they don’t show up. Happy accidents happen, but that is no way to run a business.
You have to understand the details of the data. It’s the only way to optimize them.
ROI will measure the profit or loss generated by an investment in the amount of money invested. ROAS measures the revenue generated as compared to the money spent on advertising.
With Facebook advertising, we look at ROAS in context with ROI to optimize both performance and advertising cost.
6. Hiring new Talent and Skills
One of the biggest challenges for hotels today in context with digital marketing relates to hiring new talent and skills to take on these challenges.
And one reason many candidates prefer other alternatives is salaries.
But if we set apart the salary challenge there is a huge skills gap in the hotel industry. People taking on digital marketing roles at hotels lack knowledge and experience.
Behind this, we have seen challenges that involve strategy and planning.
Today hotels face highly skilled digital customers. The band-aid solutions end up being creating a digital content creator role for the hotel.
What the hotel needs are a strategic digital marketer that understands the digital marketing funnel.
Today there are so many cost-effective front-end applications available that there is no excuse not to invest in this to start to build new knowledge and skillsets. Allow your hotel’s employees take an active part in forming their future.
7. What does Customer Experience look Like?
Customer experience is all the micro-moments the customer interacts with your hotel. It represents the lifetime value of the customer, mapping the journey at every micro-moment.
Today it is important that hotels put in place strategic funnels that enable them to respond to every micro-moment of the customer journey.
Listen, care, connect and building relationships is core elements for a communication strategy that add new values and help the customer reach their goals.
Use a digital marketing funnel to identify your ideal customers. And as mentioned provide a cost-effective platform to educate your employees daily.
An effective funnel together with a skilled team will position your hotel to optimize every micro-moment of the customer journey.
Focus on value innovation and building relationships that ensure new lifetime customers. Start leverage inbound and outbound marketing with effective reputation management.
Listen, care and connect is the foundation pillars that allow us to better understand the customer experience.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing is improving with technology. Focusing on value innovation open new doors to tell your hotel’s story.
Digital marketing requires new skillsets to take advantage of new technology.
There are many ways around challenges and being competitive with digital marketing.
Today social media management services dedicated to hotels will help you through this journey.
To get a free quote of our hotel web design and digital marketing services, contact HashKube today.
