Regardless of the type of accommodation you manage, whether it is a large resort, cabins or a hostel, there is a constant need to attract new customers and make the service you provide better known. For this reason, we bring you examples of how to promote a hotel on the Internet.
“It is clear that large hotel chains and luxury resorts have large budgets for marketing and positioning their accommodations, but here we will give you 5 examples of how to position a medium or small hotel with digital marketing”
Why is it important to promote your hotel online?
Today it is clear that people are eager to travel, see new places and more after a season in which they could not leave home much, becoming visible to all these users will be the key to obtaining new clients.
The first place where all those people eager to travel will go to look for information about activities and accommodations will be the Internet, this reference point is the most important today to publicize and promote your hotel or accommodation.
But what are the advantages of promoting my hotel online? Here are some of the main reasons why you should not ignore digital platforms to promote your accommodation:
It is easily accessible
As we mentioned before, nowadays the Internet is so easily accessible to everyone, it is the first place we go to when we need information about anything, such as in this case, about accommodations and tourist places.
Multiple resources
The advantage of promoting your hotel online is that you don’t have to limit yourself to just one resource, as you can find multiple platforms, applications and websites where you can get your hotel listed and positioned.
Low costs
Compared to other traditional methods of promoting your hotel, the costs are significantly lower in relation to the reach and impact it has on your potential customers.
Allows you to measure results
One of the most important advantages of promoting your hotel on the Internet is access to the results of the impact that your digital strategy can have,
Digital marketing for hotels
Digital marketing has become an indispensable tool for all types of hotels, whether large or small. This is largely due to the digitalization of the entire accommodation search and reservation process.
The Internet is a huge showcase that you can be a part of, but all your potential competitors will also be there. When the user can change their mind at the last second about where to finish their reservation, the key will always be to stand out.
A digital marketing strategy for hotels must cover the main channels in which a user would search for information about travel, vacations and experiences; the presence of a brand on multiple channels generates trust and security for users.
Some of the platforms where it would be ideal to be present when promoting your hotel or accommodation are the following:
- Youtube
- Metasearch engines
- Your own website with a booking engine
Knowing these platforms where you can promote your hotel, we bring you 5 examples of how to promote it on each of them.
Example 1: Digital Guideline in Google Ads
An example of how to promote your hotel is with Google Ads, this paid advertising platform from Google. As this is the most used search engine in the world, it is a space in which it is essential for our hotel to be visible.
This ad tool offers a variety of placements, so you need to strategically choose where you want to have yours.
Anyone can be looking for your hotel without you even realizing it. Choose what you want your potential customers to see when searching for your accommodation through two strategies that you can implement through Google Ads.
Google Search
It is the Google Ads tool that will allow you to position the name of your hotel in a paid manner in the Google search engine. To use it you must choose which keywords you want to position your ad with so that when these words are searched for you appear among the first results.
This tool can be a bit costly if your hotel’s marketing budget is not very high, competing with large hotels and metasearch engines can sound like a very expensive task.
An example of what you can do on Google Search is to pay just to position the name of your hotel, since other platforms are possibly also doing it as a competition strategy.
This way, you will be ahead of these competitors, who are usually metasearch engines, and those who want to stay at your hotel will make their reservation or enquiry directly with you.
Google Display
The Google Display Network is a set of more than 2,000,000 websites, videos and applications where your ads will be displayed in banner or video format according to the targeting options you choose. This is the key to success for this type of campaign.
When choosing the image or video that people who visit the websites where your ad is displayed will see, make sure that it shows the pleasant and unique experience that can be had in your accommodation’s spaces, so that they want to know more.
Choose the locations where you want to display your ad, use the display network on sites where your potential customers may be, what people who want to visit your city are looking for or need is something essential to know when choosing the segmentation of your ad.
For example, visitors to a city will always look for things to do at night or what museums or tourist attractions there are. Locate all these activities in your city and segment your city taking into account these preferences and keywords.
Example 2: Social networks
Social media has become a showcase for people to come and see what the experience of staying at a hotel would be like. Having an Instagram account is an excellent option to achieve this goal and show the best of your hotel.
Don’t overwhelm yourself thinking that the photos or videos you upload to your Instagram account must be perfect and show only luxurious aspects. Today, the humanization of social networks is the key to having successful posts.
A great idea for the type of content you can upload is to showcase your accommodation’s differentiating factor and invite visitors to upload content and tag you.
A simple example, if the best attribute of your accommodation is its location, upload videos and content about how easy it is to get to everything and about the attractions or restaurants that are close to your area.
Another example is if your accommodation is more remote from everything, show that relaxing vibe and the activities that your hotel offers so that they want to stay for a weekend or more.
Example 3: Your website and search engine positioning
Having a website for any type of accommodation or hotel is essential or at least a key part if you want to have a complete digital marketing strategy. A website can be a purely informative page or it can be transactional, allowing reservations to be made directly on it.
A website on its own can easily be overlooked by search engines without adding anything to sales. The key to prevent this from happening is that it has everything necessary for search engines like Google to take it into account, and to achieve this, several factors must be taken into account:
- Valuable content
- Good navigation
- Fast charging and good performance
By achieving a good positioning of your website in search engines like Google, you will be able to have a greater reach organically, more people will arrive at it and you will even be able to have inquiries and reservations without an extra investment in ads.
Being visible on Google can be free. Optimize your website, create informative and valuable content that may interest those who are planning to visit your city so that when they search for travel tips or tourist places, you can provide them with quality content.
Example 4: Youtube Videos
Creating paid ads on YouTube can be a bit expensive, but having a channel and creating content to showcase your accommodation or hotel is an excellent strategy and can be practically free.
Having a quality video showing your accommodation will always be useful to link to your website and social networks, but also, an excellent content option to feed your YouTube channel is to upload reviews and testimonials from your clients.
This website works like a search engine, in fact, many of us go to YouTube first rather than Google when we want to know more about a place or product, and if you are actively giving reviews of good accommodation in the city, you will be one step ahead of many of your competitors.
Example 5: Influencer Marketing
Among the marketing strategies that you can apply to your social networks is the one known as influencer marketing. It consists of making paid or exchange agreements so that people dedicated to creating content on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube talk about the product or service in question.
When our hotel or accommodation is new or we are in a relaunching stage, this is an excellent option since it can give it the visibility needed to make the place known among the influencer’s followers.
Photos and videos of a place attract a lot of attention from travelers and many may even plan their vacations with a photo of a place in mind that has captivated them.
Carefully analyze which influencer you want to associate with your brand and remember that it is often better to have a team of micro influencers for promotion than just one with many followers.
