How To Do Social Media Marketing For Hotels
Social media marketing is crucial for hotels to build an online audience, generate interest, and ultimately drive direct bookings.
As consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to find their next stay, rather than traditional search engines, social media marketing for hotels has become vital for increasing visibility and building a strong online reputation.
A well-crafted social media strategy for hotels is now more important than ever.
What Is Social Media Marketing For Hotels?
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses platforms such as X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Linked In and Pinterest to interact and reach a wide audience of consumers which in turn drives traffic to the website.
Digital marketing can include:
Ultimately, the goal is to increase brand visibility, showcase the hotel’s amenities and foster positive guest relationships.
With these activations combined, your hotel is in good stead to make a new, steady prospective customer base and keep revenue coming in.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Important For Hotels?
Social media marketing is important for hotels to reach potential guests and grow and as a company. Through marketing your hotel digitally, you’re able to increase visibility and reach guests through non-traditional search channels.
You can interact and engage with potential customers, building relationships through responding to comments and direct contact with guests.
You’re able to showcase your hotels amenities and experiences reactively with visual content such as pictures and videos – this is great when highlighting unique hotel features, experiences and rooms that can’t simply be shown through pictures.
Targeted advertising is an integral part to brand growth, it allows hotels to reach specific demographics and interests, which can lead to higher conversion rates.
The use of marketing insights are also extremely valuable to hotels as they offer insights into guest preferences, behaviour and trends, helping hotels tailor their marketing strategies and offerings.
How Is Social Media Marketing For Hotels Different To Other Businesses?
Due to the nature of the business being part of the hospitality industry, social media marketing for hotels has distinct differences compared to other businesses.
When marketing a hotel, visual storytelling is key. Potential guests look for high-res imagery and videography of rooms, local attractions, amenities and restaurants whereas in other businesses the level of detail and emphasis on aesthetics isn’t as crucial to potential sales.
The customer journey for hotels is also very different to other businesses. Guests may research/ follow a hotel on social media for months before making a booking, as travelling is often booked in advance. In industries such as e-commerce, the buyer journey is usually shorter and people might see a product and make a purchase within days or even minutes!
User-generated content is essential to gain trust and loyalty with guests as many people would like to see guest-generated content such as reviews or images, more than the hotel’s own promotions.
Whilst UCG is still important for other businesses, sectors like retail or B2B industries wouldn’t benefit as much and direct product information and features are more integral.
How To Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy For Hotels
Now, let’s examine how you can create a social media marketing strategy for any hotel business.
Choose the Right Platforms
When marketing your hotel on social media it is crucial to reach your audience across all platforms. Different platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn allow you to approach your target audience in different ways, effectively.
Typically, Instagram is the most popular platform for promoting hotels digitally due to its focus on visual content, whereas Facebook is great for both organic and paid promotions.
Identify Your Audience
Understanding your target customer is essential to tailoring your content and messaging. Some internal questions to consider would be ‘What is your typical customer demographic?’ Are they families? Couples? Solo travellers?
Consider geographical locations of your followers and look into their interests through who else they are following and the content they’re engaging with. Understanding the age, income level, and interests of your audience will help you craft content that resonates.
Identify Your Content Style and Tone
In order to build a recognisable presence online, maintaining a consistent content style and tone is critical. Your tone of voice should reflect your hotel’s brand identity, eg.
If your hotel is more luxurious, we’d recommend a more sophisticated tone, whereas if you target your hotel towards being friends and family friendly, a more relaxed and welcoming tone will compliment your content better.
In terms of your content style, high quality imagery and videography is essential. Showcase your hotel’s best selling points through a variety of content types.
Some content pillars to include would be: Rooms and property tours, guest testimonials, local attractions and events, BTS content, food and beverage content and seasonal promotions.
Collaborate With The Right Influencers
Influencer marketing can play a major role when marketing a hotel on social media. Influencers can help increase your hotel’s visibility and credibility, but working with the right influencers is important.
When picking the perfect content creator for your hotel, consider ‘Travel Influencers’ who specialise in travelling and make sure that their audience fits with your target demographic.
As well as ‘Local Influencers’ who can be highly effective in reaching a regional audience. Also consider ‘Micro-Influencers’ that have a following between 10,000-50,000 followers, these accounts tend to have higher engagement and content can be more authentic.
Combine Paid And Organic Social Media
Organising a balanced approach to a paid and organic social media strategy will help towards maximising your reach and engagement.
Optimising an organic social media strategy will help focus on building your hotel’s social media through high-quality content, where you can engage and share guest experiences with your audience. This is a slower method but is crucial for building brand loyalty and community.
Combined with a paid social media strategy, you’re boosting your hotel out to a larger, targeted audience allowing you to create highly specific ads that reach users based on location, interests, travel behaviour, and demographics.
Set Goals And Measure Performance
When creating the social media marketing strategy for your hotel, it is important that you set clear goals and measure the performance regularly.
Some important metrics to track would include: Engagement Rates, Follower Growth, Website Traffic, Conversion Rates and ROI (Return On Investment).
Set yourself goals that are specific such as “Increase Instagram followers by 20% in the next 3 months” or “Drive 30% more direct bookings through Facebook ads by the end of the quarter.”
By regularly reviewing your performance, you are able to review your strategy making space to focus more on what is working and what isn’t.
Tips To Promote Your Hotel
Here are some tips you can use to start promoting your hotel today.
Highlight Unique Features And Amenities
When promoting your hotel digitally, it’s very important to showcase your hotel’s strengths and what sets your hotel apart. Shout about local experiences, room types and special offers as well as BTS content.
Promote your hotel’s USPs whether that’s a rooftop pool or a Michelin-starred restaurant, feature these things on your profile.
Run Contests And Giveaways
When beginning your digital marketing journey, it’s beneficial to run competitions and giveaways. This helps to engage with your audience and create an online buzz.
Using contests as a way to get your followers to interact with the account whether that is tagging friends, gaining followers or simply gaining organic likes; these are all things that help get more eyes on your hotel.
Post UGC Content
Use organic UCG (User Generated Content) such as guest photos, videos and reviews builds trust and allows potential customers to trust organic marketing materials.
You can also encourage guests to tag your hotel and even create a branded hashtag to collate all of your hotel’s digital marketing resources under one feed.
Promise Special Offers
Social media is also a great way to offer exclusive offers to guests. This can include last minute offers, seasonal promotions and loyalty rewards. By tying offers to specific occasions and public holidays, this can make them more attractive. You can also make use of the links feature in your hotels Instagram bio to allow guests to book directly after looking at posts.
Keep Your Profiles Consistent
When marketing your hotel digitally, it’s important to keep your profiles consistent across all platforms. Ensure that all branding is unified, eg. Each platform has the same profile picture, as this will make your hotel recognisable and guests can easily associate with your hotel.
Remember to have a consistent tone of voice, making sure your copy style matches up across each platform as well as upholding a consistent posting schedule and making sure all information you share and have pinned is up-to-date and relevant.
This will help to avoid confusion for potential guests.
Summary
By executing an effective social media strategy for hotels, you will significantly enhance visibility, drive bookings and build lasting relationships with guests.
By choosing the right platforms, showcasing hi-resolution content, and understanding your customers preferences, you can create an online presence that showcases the unique experiences your hotel offers.
When done correctly, social media marketing can be a pivotal turning point for your hotel and standing out against competitors
If you are looking for digital marketing services for your hotel, get in touch with CEEK Marketing to align on business goals and develop a bespoke strategy with execution.