7 Super Easy Ways Hotels Will Improve Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is growing in popularity among brands of all sorts. We have to start to look at what Influencer Marketing is.
Many brands tend to believe Earned Media and Influencer Marketing is the same thing. If you believe Influencers will promote your Hotel for Free then you are barking up the wrong tree. But Influencer Marketing can be extremely cost-effective when done right. Klout and Kred claim to measure influence scores, but these methods of measuring influence don’t tell the real picture.
Influence is an exchange of services that will assist your Hotel to meet a given Social Marketing goal. Hotel marketers must learn to plan, the budget for the right media, reach, and results they want to achieve. And build a Social Media strategy and foundation that supports earned media.
It also involves talking to your audience, conveying your message through a voice they trust. When you ask people who are well-versed in a subject and have the great reach to create content or amplify content for your Hotel, what you are doing is utilizing influencer marketing to help grow awareness, build trust, and drive bookings for your Hotel.
When Hotels ask influencers to write, speak or attend events on their behalf, payment should be considered not as a means of buying loyalty, but as a fair exchange for taking someone’s time and leveraging their ideas to build your own business.
1. Identify Hotel Influencers
Identifying the right influencers provides Hotels with the ability to reach that moment faster where their products and services spread naturally and generate a marketing life of their own via word of mouth and high visibility.
Influencers are very active in their Social Communities. And often they have a large Social Network. But don’t get hung up on numbers. Take time to look at the numbers. Influencers are typically looked up and trusted by their Social Communities. And they have a huge impact on their Social Communities decision processes.
85% of all consumers recognize that they tend to be influenced by experts before deciding whether to purchase one item or another (Nielsen).
2. Engage and build trust
Engaging with Social Communities will assist you in building awareness, and also help you assure you connect with the Influencers that is the best fit for your Hotel. You must recognize and value the Influencers time and effort, but it is equally important to identify Influencers that is showing interest in your Hotels content and actions.
Both parties must value each other Social Communities, time, and knowledge. Social Media is very much a two-way channel where you have to work together to find the optimal solutions. And don’t forget this is a dynamic process.
3. Ask your Social Community
Many Hotels today don’t have proper strategies, techniques or tools in place to know if the Influencers are worth the investment. Engagement and relationships are important components of Social Media, but in the end, of the day, most Hotels are looking for a sustainable outcome.
Since this is a two-way channel don’t be afraid to ask your Social Community for recommendations. You want to make sure you identify a credible influencer, and that will assist you to build your credibility. Credibility is very much part of the Earned Media. And your Social Media Community will be able to tell if they are a good match for your Hotel.
4. Learn Influencers eco-systems
It is important to connect with Influencers that know your target markets and also can help your Hotel expand to new relevant market segments.
Set up relevant Connectivity criteria for Influencers.
- Brand knowledge (1-10)
- Service & Product knowledge (1-10)
- Local relevancy (1-10)
- Demographic relevancy (1-10)
- Social Network – are their influence within the Social Networks where you targeted customers hang out (1-10)
- Social Community – are the influencer active in relevant Social Media groups/forums (1-10)
- Events – are influencers attending or presenting at relevant events (1-10)
- Content – are influencers providing relevant content (1-10)
- Crisis – are influencers familiar with crisis management (1-10)
- SEO – will influencers help with brand visibility (1-10)
Give each criterium here a point rating from 1-10, and sort your criteria’s based on Importance. If Brand knowledge is the most important criteria list that first then. And if Brand knowledge is an important criterium and the scores are low here this particular Influencer might not be a good match.
According to eMarketer Influencer Marketing is rapidly gaining popularity among brand marketers. And the question now is more if your Hotel has a strategy that meets the Connectivity criteria here.
And reports also indicate very clearly that Influencers prefer monetary compensation for their services.
5. Leverage Influencers
The key to influencer marketing is targeting the audience to reach. Look at your Hotel marketing campaigns to make sure the influencers will add value here.
Know your goals and work them out with the influencers. Most campaigns that fail is often due to unrealistic expectations.
Some effective ways to leverage Influencers can be done through;
- Interviews
- Guest posts
- Webinars
- Content sharing
- Targeted Audience
- Co-creation
- Ambassador
- Events
Leverage influencers can be done through combining 1-5, and build a Community Persona Profile that meet your Hotels marketing strategies and tactics. And don’t forget this is a two-way process where all parties involved add value to each other. We can’t to create a Win-Win-Win process;
- Win for the Influencers
- Win for the Customers
- Win for the Hotel
6. Know the 80/20 principle of Influence
The 80/20 principle also known as the Pareto principles states that 20% of the invested input is responsible for 80% of the result obtained.
The balance we want to strive for is when twenty percentages of Hotels products and services represent eighty percentages of their value (or even better). But often there is a misbalance here where 80% of the services and products only represent 20% of perceived customer value.
Influencer often represents Social Proofs. And that’s the key to the 80/20 principle of Influence you need that one key person that stands out in the crowd. The key to Social Proof is that Communities are more like to follow the action of an Influencers. This is like the Tupperware Party, where the Influencers help create awareness for the party and bring in a large Community to the Party. Once the initiate the process of one buying a product then mechanism of the Community will mirror that action and you will have ripple effects of Likes that take the appropriate action.
Your Hotels Influencer is in this example in charge of 20% of the invested input while the mechanism of the Community then represents 80% of the results obtained.
7. Measure the impact of Influencers
You must define the metrics and methods for measurement that will show the impact of the influencers. You want to measure results like visits, mentions, introductions, and leads.
One aspect that comes up when I mention Influence Marketing is the time frame to expect impacts that are in line with the initial goals.
Influence marketing is an effective tool if you know which metrics to watch that can gauge the value of your influence, define the content that works with your Hotel and the ability to interpret the data you collect.
This is a two-way process where you have to build a foundation that allows you to find the Influencers that is the best fit for your Hotel.
Hotels that focus on influencer marketing need to turn their efforts toward partnerships with entities that speak directly to the Hotels target market segments. You can quickly expand your reach and engage a large audience in short order by partnering with influencers whose trust is established. This includes bloggers, thought leaders, other established Hotel brands, and so forth.
Influencers play a key role in the research process. When Hotel can align themselves with members of their communities, they can place their product and services in the research process in front of many potential customers.
Metrics
- Awareness – Reach
- Consideration – Clicks
- Preference – Sharing
- Booking – Conversion
- Loyalty – Retention
How can Hotel build a valuable relationship with Influencer Marketers?
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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
