There is no denying that COVID-19 has had a massive impact on the hospitality industry in the UK. Despite drastically changing how they operate, many hospitality companies are cautiously optimistic about their future.
Although competition is hotting up again, hotels and restaurants are learning to become even more clever with their hospitality marketing budget. Since the pandemic, there has been a massive shift toward social media marketing, which has now become an integral tool for business owners and customers to help keep bookings rolling in.
Nowadays, it is more important than ever for your team to understand the best hospitality marketing methods and know how to promote your business to raise awareness of your hotel or restaurant and target your ideal customers.
Here we look at some practical tips for marketing your hospitality business to help carve out a profitable and sustainable niche for yourself.
1: Social Media Marketing
Social media has evolved to be an excellent platform for promoting hospitality businesses. It allows you to engage directly with your ideal customers, build loyalty with existing customers and attract new ones.
Many booking systems now integrate with social media platforms, making it easier for customers to book hotel rooms or a table at your restaurant without needing to pick up the phone or search for your website.
With social media, authenticity is essential. You need to develop your voice and show the real people behind the keyboard. Your customers will be more inclined to book with you if they can put a face to a name. You can share staff and management profiles and encourage your customers to engage with you live in messenger chat, where they know an actual staff member will handle their requests and answer questions.
2: AdWords
There are some marketing tools that hospitality businesses can use to help promote their business and narrow down their niche audience. AdWords, for example, is a pay-per-click tool that allows you to create and run timed ads for your hospitality business.
AdWords is a valuable marketing and analytical tool because you can measure how successful your ads are and tweak and improve them to deliver better results. You can also specify your keyword match types, which display your ads for exact keyword searches. You can get help from a professional marketing agency if you don’t feel confident enough to use AdWords by yourself.
3: Local SEO
Local SEO is essential to attract customers on your doorstep living in your local community. The chances are you will be competing for customs from other restaurants or hotels in your area, so getting pole position in the SERPS can help place your business head and shoulders above your competition.
When used correctly, local SEO can vastly increase your chances of ranking high in search engines, and you can do much of this for free. You should select and use relevant keywords that describe your service and locality and embed these into your website content, including your meta descriptions and social media sites. You can research relevant keywords on Google AdWords and look for search terms that people use but are unsaturated in your marketplace.
4: Mobile Apps & Push Notifications
The massive growth in smartphone use is now heavily influencing the fate of many businesses, including those in the hospitality market. Under the pressure of ever-increasing competition, hospitality businesses have to work harder to earn the attention of their client base, whether it is attracting new customers, maintaining current customers, or re-engaging and attracting back old customers.
Push Notifications are effective new-age marketing tools that help businesses make their brand and services more accessible to their customers. They are small, clickable messages that appear on customers’ smartphones and are used to impart helpful information to customers.
Push notifications land in the banner or notification panel rather than the user’s inbox, like an SMS message. A push notification does not always rely on user action and can be sent anytime to any user as long as they are online. They have become one of the best direct communication methods between brands and consumers.
Again, if you are unfamiliar with how push messages work or how to utilise them, it can help to work with a professional marketing company that will handle this for you.
5: Traditional Hospitality Marketing Techniques
While modern digital technology is a beautiful development, don’t forget that there are tried and tested traditional hospitality marketing techniques that are still as effective today as they have always been.
- Loyalty Rewards: Customers appreciate being rewarded for their loyalty, and offering loyalty rewards is a cost-effective way to keep your current customers happy. A happy customer is the best form of marketing for your business, and they will be more than willing to talk positively about and recommend your hotel or restaurant to their family, friends and work colleagues.
- Signature events: Your hotel or restaurant can become the beating heart of your local community when you offer signature events that your customers will love. This could be hosting a regular live music night featuring up-and-coming local bands. Or you can hold a special all-you-can-eat buffet night to attract more customers to your restaurant on your quietest night of the week.
- Review sites: Any good restaurant or hotel will welcome customer reviews, but you must ensure your reviews are well-managed. Any negative reviews must be addressed as soon as possible to lessen damage to your business reputation. Potential new customers will be pleased to see that you care about your business and are happy to help resolve customer issues.
Get Your Marketing Started
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to hospitality marketing so you will need to try a few techniques to find the ones that work well for your business.
Incorporating different marketing techniques and mixing up traditional and digital options can cover more bases and customer preferences. You can try out a few things and then review and analyse your results to see what is working for you and which ones may be worth more investment in your hospitality marketing budget.
