Introduction
A digital marketing strategy is a plan that involves leveraging online platforms to develop an internet presence and achieve specific marketing goals.
These channels can involve organic search, social media, paid advertisements, and other web-based channels such as your website.
The strategy should consider other elements like your target audience, strengths, flaws, and competitors.
Table of Contents
1. Why do Hotels need Digital Marketing?
The hospitality industry has seen its biggest changes in the 21st century.
It is needless to state the importance of online channels when it comes to developing a marketing strategy for a hotel.
These numbers clearly show that having a strong online presence is crucial to succeeding in the growing digital age.
Therefore, having an effective digital marketing strategy in place has become an important strategic component for hotels that aim to reach an increasingly tech-savvy audience.
2. Marketing Strategies for Hotels: How to Optimize Key Marketing Metrics?
By monitoring these metrics, hotel managers will be able to undertake fact-based decisions based on prior performance, providing a clear picture of the hotel's evolution.
Furthermore, hotel data analytics allow the organization to identify the numerous factors that influence its performance.
a. Website Conversion Rate
This indicator counts the number of website visitors who complete the booking procedure successfully.
It examines how many visitors to the hotel's website convert into new guests.
It is for this reason that investing in a well-optimized website pays off from both a financial and a marketing perspective (brand awareness).
i. Tips to Improve Website Conversion Rate
Most online visitors leave before completing a form. Simplify the process for the user by:
Removing unnecessary questions
Including automatically filled-in forms
Making the forms mobile-friendly
Hotels save money when converting a higher percentage of website visitors as it also lowers the marketing costs per booking (MCPB).
b. Assisted Conversions
This indicator assesses how different marketing channels contribute to revenue generation.
This is effective when multiple channels have no direct influence on the booking process of customers.
Measuring the money earned by a social media campaign, for example, might be difficult to quantify.
With Google Analytics multi-channel funnel analysis, hotel digital marketing organizations can see how marketing channels like social media influence client booking decisions.
i. Tips to Attract Customers at the Top of the Funnel
Create a unique landing page to draw in internet visitors from social media campaigns since they are typically not ready to make a reservation just yet.
Make a call to action for people to sign up for the newsletter rather than pressuring them to make a reservation right away.
This is also a fantastic opportunity to contribute some extremely helpful content, such as travel guides for the region the hotel is from (eg. biggest city hotspots, hidden restaurant gems, local shopping streets, etc.).
c. Organic Traffic Growth & Net Promoter Score
The possibility that current customers will refer you to others is gauged by the net promoter score (NPS). This indicator asks customers how likely they are to suggest your business to others on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extremely probable.
By increasing the natural interest that people have in your hotel, you can increase your reservations without spending money on advertisements or other digital marketing strategies.
i. Tip to Improve Organic Interest
d. On-Page Interactions
Teams designing hotel marketing strategies can pinpoint friction points where customers abruptly exit the website by studying on-page interactions.
This behavior report also tracks if visitors fail to do the intended action, such as pressing a call-to-action button.
Managers should concentrate on pages with high conversion rates that provide clients with the most crucial information.
Here, it is essential to guarantee a seamless online experience in order to increase conversions.
i. Tips to Decrease Page-Exists (Bounce Rate)
Distractions must be kept to a minimum on websites in order to encourage visitors to stay on the most crucial pages.
This implies that exit points and links to the hotel's social media profiles should be eliminated from the reservation pages.
Be cautious when adding upselling options during the reservation process.
Remember to include these options either in the confirmation email or after the booking is complete.
Finally, disclose all fees upfront to prevent clients from becoming impatient throughout the checkout process.
e. Impression Share
The impression share displays the percentage of times your ads were shown on the results page when they were eligible, to put it another way.
For instance, if your impression share is 80%, your advertising was displayed in the SERP 80% of the time.
Due to competition from other ads, the remaining 20% were unable to rank.
Digital marketing hotel managers can compare their hotel's visibility to that of rival accommodations or OTAs that are competing with your brand name using impression shares.
This statistic is used to further improve website exposure and brand recognition on search results pages.
i. Tips to Improve your Visibility on Search Engines
Also, re-marketing should be used to win back past visitors and increase your brand awareness with the people who have already visited your page.
For those guests who have made a purchase on your site, provide them with a special discount available at your website or send a follow-up email to remind them about their check-in date or activities accessible at your property.
f. Keyword Ranking
It is crucial to rank for relevant keywords in your niche in order to boost your online presence and allow the target to find your business.
Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are of utmost help to measure and identify these insights.
i. Tips to Improve your Keyword Ranking
Increase your CTR by using goal keywords in your meta titles and meta descriptions to make them more SEO-friendly.
One approach is to look for fresh keyword possibilities that your hotel can rank for.
To improve online visibility, it is best to use a combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords.
g. Bookings from Different Channels
You should differentiate the visitors and reservations that come from, for example, OTAs like Booking or Kayak, those that come from organic Google search results, social media, advertising, traditional agencies, etc.
The team managing the hotel's digital marketing strategies should gather the information and make the necessary optimization on each campaign to make the most out of each channel and increase revenue.
You can establish precise objectives or assign a monetary value to customer actions in order to better visualize the customer journey for each channel.
This displays the value that every marketing channel offers to your brand.
3. 3 Main Digital Marketing Indicators for Website Performance
a. Bounce Rate
A bounce occurs when a user arrives at your website and leaves without clicking on anything else.
This might help you determine whether your website's design needs to be improved.
However, a low bounce rate does not imply that everything is in order.
For example, visitors may search your website for certain information but are unable to locate it.
As a result, when examining your condition, you should constantly consider the big picture and a variety of measures.
b. Pages per Visit
This indicator is closely related to the bounce rate because it measures the website visitor's behavior.
This figure represents how many pages of your website the user views before leaving.
When a large number of visitors abandon your website after only a few pages, it indicates that your website did not provide them with the information they were seeking for.
As a result, strive to write only valuable content for your clients and keep it as concise as possible in order for them to remain interested and continue to visit your website.
c. Time On-Site
Another important metric is the amount of time spent on-site. This indicator informs hoteliers about the amount of time online visitors spend on a given page of your website.
Depending on the type of page, this number is extremely reliable. Blog posts and information pages, for example, aim for a longer duration on-site than booking pages.
Conclusion
It is important for the team working on the hotel's marketing strategies to leverage their customer data and other analytics to boost their business growth.
Having a clear set of goals in mind and measuring the right metrics for your hotel is the first big step to improving the demand generation activities.
Create data-driven digital marketing strategies to improve your website’s performance in a smart and efficient way.
This will attract more quality visitors who will more easily convert into new guests.