A Modern Marketing Game Plan for the Hospitality Industry
Your modern marketing game plan in the Hotel and restaurant management industry has changed considerably in the past few years. As travelers scour the world with little more than a travel app, fanny pack, and a passport, the age-old hospitality industry has undergone a huge overhaul, from making staycation hotel reservations to jetting around the world on standby.
Here are the no-nonsense rules for everyone from boutique Hotels to travel bloggers for creating great content, pushing it to your wandering audience and reaching out to the digital hospitality community.
Optimize or Else
Take a cue from the e-commerce world and get your website optimized for mobile immediately. Retailers have been shocked by the incredibly fast demand from consumers to be able to purchase items on cellphones and tablets as easily as possible.
And the website you see on your laptop or desktop is not the same website on a tablet or smartphone, so it’s important to make sure your website is easy to use from all the major devices. If it’s not, you risk alienating customers that would have otherwise found your website to be beautiful and helpful.
If you’re investing in building an app, it’s important to remember that simplicity is key. The purpose of an app is to truly solve a problem for the consumer. If it doesn’t have a distinctly handy purpose, it won’t be worth the energy it takes to download it.
Costco’s app, for example, snaps a picture of your credit card and automatically repopulates the information whenever you place an order. It’s simple, easy and helpful.
Imagery Is Your Bread and Butter
Whether it’s your website or your Social Media accounts, pictures and video are everything when it comes to communicating with your target audience. Remember that it takes the time to develop an artistic eye and it’s never been easier to fake it til you make it.
Start with a great camera on a phone like the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, and ditch the self-awareness of being the person snapping pictures on your phone.
To get a great shot, you need to move around. Check different angles, stand on a chair and crouch down low. Houses, resorts, sunsets and other horizontal subjects look more expansive and impressive from down low. People almost always look better from above. Try it with the flash and without.
Get friendly with Instagram. Not only does the program have the best in-app filters available (forget fake-looking FaceTune), Instagram also allows you to get specific while editing your pictures. You can adjust the contrast, saturation, and clarity of a photo in varying degrees without sacrificing too much image quality.
The best thing you can do to make sure your pictures and videos are on point is to watch what your competitors are doing and aim to do it better by keeping the needs and desires of your customers in mind.
And keep flooding the feeds with pictures of your property or travel destinations. Never stop delivering content in the form of information, beauty, and joy to your customers; make it a daily habit, and you’ll never be far from their minds.
Partnerships Are Part of Success
The best way to expand your marketing efforts without expanding your budget is to partner with other non-competitive businesses in your industry. Own a Hotel? Partner with some local attractions for a package deal. Run a Hotel or travel blog? Reach out to local restaurants and trade some beautiful pictures of their establishment for a shout out on their Social Media.
Always be contributing, always have some skin in the game. Soon, these companies will be sending business your way or pay you for a blog post.
But even if they aren’t, the purpose of Social Media is to join a conversation, not sit and talk to yourself. So no matter what Social Media platform you choose to engage in, make sure you do it wholeheartedly by constantly reaching out to everyone from industry titans to local leadership.
Integrate your Hospitality Marketing Game Plan
- Clearly define and differentiate your Hospitality brand
- Design and deploy a content-driven Hospitality website and blog
- Go beyond prospects, and consider the impact of your inbound marketing efforts on all audiences (e.g. peers, competitors, employees, job candidates, vendors, media, prospects, and customers)
- Establish measurable and meaningful key performance objectives designed to achieve the primary goals of generating leads and building loyalty
- Build an integrated performance campaign fueled by core online marketing strategies for search marketing, Social Media, content marketing, and public relations. The success of each strategy creates momentum that drives your organization forward
- Establish dynamic budgets that can be easily shifted based on campaign performance and analytics
- Define performance timelines with milestones, tasks, and responsibilities
- Measure key performance data, and be willing to adapt and evolve
- Build relationships and trust with your most active audience (loyal fans, authorities, and influencers), and establish your Hospitality Social Community
Do you have a sustainable and effective Hospitality Marketing Game Plan?
Surprise and delight are what makes dreams come true.
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About the author
Are Morch is the founder and owner of Are Morch – Hotel Marketing Coach. Get more from Are on Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Pinterest | Instagram| Podcast
