Resources
Since innumerable travel options are available online, one of the most significant issues faced by hotel owners is how to increase the traffic on their hotel website. This traffic needs to be quality traffic that includes travel shoppers who are making plans on actually visiting the area and need a place to stay. Just any old traffic won’t do. Here are some digital marketing strategies that you can use to increase both the quality and quantity of the visitors who log in to your website:
Provide rich, engaging content
Good content is a fundamental requirement of any digital marketing strategy. Marketing differs from advertising and provides the users with something they will find valuable. Content marketers, therefore, try to provide travel shoppers with content that they will see relevant. This can be blogs, curated content, social media posts, images, or videos.
There are two ways good content can help you:
Firstly, it can help you get discovered online. Secondly, it helps increase conversion rates. Producing engaging content that can help travel shoppers and entertain them will ensure that they spend more time on your site. This will directly boost your SEO rankings. Moreover, it also helps you with improving your rank for long-tail targeted keywords. Today, the majority of search results are long-tail keywords. These keywords are four or five words long and are used to search for something very specific. Therefore, instead of competing with OTAs on the generic keywords, it’s usually a better idea to take into account particular terms travel shoppers use.
You can do this by focusing on targeted content
Think about how your ideal guest will be. Then, create a persona that they would find appealing. Find out what drives such a travel shopper. What types of attractions and destinations are they looking for? Build a persona accordingly and use that to create content.
Update your content
Once you have published something, don’t let it become outdated. For improved SEO, you need to update your content regularly. You don’t necessarily have to invest a fortune in content marketing. It isn’t too hard to post small blogs or images regularly. Being active on your websites and social media can have a significant positive impact on your SEO ranking.
An easy way to have updated content is to share others content
Content curation is one of the best ways to put new content on your social media feed or website. Partnerships and cross-promotions can accelerate your digital marketing efforts. It would help if you had a unique hashtag that would motivate people to share their content on social media. When you reshare the material that has been posted using your hashtag, make sure that you ask for permission first. Don’t forget to add credit!
Tell your local story
Your hotel is a part of a community – it’s not an isolated entity. It would help if you talked about the local people, how the hotel relates to the local community, and what the guests of the hotel find interesting about the locality. You can do this
– Partnering with event organizers and doing cross promotions
If people are coming to your town for a unique event, you can talk to the festival organizers and have them promote your hotel while you promote their event
– Promote local events and attractions
You can promote what the local restaurant is serving, or what new event is scheduled someplace near your hotel. You can share it on social media as well as the official website. Travel shoppers look for local insights.
– Curate your local destination
Every property is special. A hotel can become popular because it is located close to a beach, or because of its proximity to the airport. Whatever it is that makes your hotel special, focus on it and promote it. You can use images and videos to tell people about it. Not everyone will find that appealing. However, a specific segment will find that it is just what they’re looking for!
– Be Social
Do not undermine the importance of social media when it comes to online discoverability. It is the default place for travel shoppers to look for destinations and accommodations. Almost four out of five people want to visit a location after seeing photos on social media.
Here are some ways to boost your social media presence:
– Add website links to your social media
It is crucial that you are active on a small number of platforms instead of having a mediocre presence on a larger number of platforms.
– Properly select your social media channels
Pick the social media channel to be active on depending on the type of people you want to attract. Instagram is the best place for millennials. For Baby Boomers, Facebook is a better choice.
– Be regular and interactive
On social media, you need to post, share and communicate with your followers. Be open, give credits and maintain a healthy relationship with your past as well as potential guests.
Web Connection Asia provides digital marketing solutions for hotels – get in touch today to see
how we can help!
