Effective Hotel Marketing Campaigns for More Direct Bookings

What does someone look for in a hotel? Well, that depends on the person, doesn’t it? Although it’s true that people may have specific needs or preferences, it’s also safe to assume that everyone has common factors they check out first before booking a room. 

Those factors are usually safety, comfort, location, price, and so on. That begs the question: does your hotel meet the expectations of your potential guests? If so, are you making sure that your target audience is aware that your hotel has exactly what they’re looking for? 

You see, the number of direct bookings, whether in-person or online, is directly tied to the number of hotel marketing campaigns you have ongoing. If you’re not promoting your hotel, people won’t even know that it exists.

 In today’s day and age, consumers conduct research online, and if your hotel doesn’t appear before them either on Google search or on social media, then it’s practically invisible. 

This is why marketing is of vital importance in the hospitality industry, and we’re about to go over some of the most effective marketing strategies and campaigns that will result in increased direct bookings for your hotel. So, shall we get started then?

What Exactly are Hotel Marketing Campaigns?

Hotel marketing campaigns are targeted advertising measures used by hotels to increase visibility, raise bookings, and promote brand awareness. Such campaigns include a variety of marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, email marketing, and search engine advertising (SEA).

How to Choose The Best Hotel Marketing Campaigns?

The fact of the matter is that there is no magic marketing campaign that will help you overcome every obstacle and ensure stable growth. An effective marketing campaign consists of multiple marketing strategies and tactics that perfectly align with your business goals and needs. 

For example, if you’re running a luxury hotel, you’d want to tailor your marketing campaign to match the needs of your target audience as well as your own needs. The same goes for budget hotels, boutique hotels, and so on. 

Therefore, before you craft an ideal marketing campaign for your hotel, you’ll have to identify your goals and determine how to best achieve them, and which marketing strategies will be most effective at helping you do so. By the by, let’s have a look at some of the most efficient marketing strategies and tactics that can help you in your endeavors.

1. Referral Programs

A Word-of-mouth promotion is arguably the most efficient method to attract guests to your hotel. If you’re wondering why that is, the answer is simple. Consumers trust other consumers more than they trust companies and brands. 

If you were a consumer who shared a positive experience with a hotel, restaurant, or any other product or service, people would take it as a personal recommendation from a friend or family member, even though you’re a complete stranger. 

The great thing about this trend is that you leverage it to your advantage through referral programs you can implement right away, should you wish to do so. If your guests are happy and satisfied, you can always ask them to refer a friend or a colleague to get some kind of incentive in return.

For example, your rewards may include discounts, room upgrades, additional services, and so on. Don’t forget to include your referral programs in your promotions so that people are aware you have one and will, therefore, be more willing to make a direct booking at your hotel.

2. Loyalty Programs

Referral programs reward guests who bring in more guests, but why not take everything to the next level and reward guests for their loyalty? Customer retention at hotels is a bit difficult to keep up with and measure. 

It’s not like the same guests will book a room every week or every month. However, you can work around this and reward guests for consecutive stays, for instance. Let’s say someone books 5 nights in a row, and as a reward for their patronage, the fifth day is one the house. 

This type of loyalty program won’t hurt your revenue, but it will do wonders for your reputation and visibility among potential guests in the future. Most importantly, this is where you can get really creative and truly capture the attention of your target audience. 

Have you considered partnering up with other businesses to help with your promotion? Affiliates like Booking or Tripadvisor can help extend your reach, and anyone who books a room through third-party OTAs gets a discount or some other reward. It’s not a direct booking, sure, but this method helps you attract more guests and ensures steady traffic for your hotel.

A great example of a hotel loyalty program:

Ever heard of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts? They have over 9,000 properties across 95 countries where you can earn and redeem Wyndham Rewards. You can earn 10 points per dollar spent or 1,000 points per stay, whichever of these two is higher. 

Their rewards are redeemable at tiers of 7,500, 15,000, or 30,000 points per night, depending on the hotel or resort. Moreover, you get 75,000 points if you opt for a Wyndham Rewards Earner card, which is 10 free nights at some of their hotels.

3. Social Media Marketing

If you want to boost direct bookings, you’ll have to be present everywhere your target audience is, which usually means social media platforms. 

Now, social media networks have a unique environment and a specific set of rules you must follow if you want your audience to pay attention to what you have to say or offer. Speaking of which, here are a few things you should pay attention to:

• Post relevant and meaningful content regularly.

• Manage audience engagement through contests, giveaways, and other events.

• Remain consistent across all platforms.

• Use different content formats like images, videos, and articles to showcase your hotel’s features.

• Encourage user-generated content (UGC)

Now, if you’re in the process of branding your business, it’s of the utmost importance to ensure consistency with your branding efforts on social media. That means using the right tone of voice, posting regularly, using the correct color scheme for your pages, and so on. 

That said, it’s advisable to hire professionals who can provide proper hotel branding services and manage your social media marketing at the same time. This will not only ensure consistency but also maximize your presence on social media platforms.

4. Social Media Advertising

Maintaining a strong presence on social media networks and ensuring your pages are active is an organic way to boost visibility, credibility, and awareness for your hotel. If you keep your audience engaged you will also boost direct bookings through your efforts. 

But there’s also the paid approach that will get you the results you need much faster than organic means. Social media ads are very effective at targeting the right audience with the right message at the right time. 

What’s more, every social media platform has customizable ads that allow you to tailor your messages as you see fit. Here, you can use different tactics to boost direct bookings, like fear of missing out (FOMO), seasonal promotions that offer discounts, promote your loyalty program packages, and so on. 

5. Email Marketing

If you want to significantly increase direct bookings, email is the best channel to do so. The main reason is that you own this channel completely and you can tailor your campaign to perfectly suit your needs. 

In other words, unlike other channels like social media, for example, email is strictly messaging between you and your potential guests, so no distractions get in the way. And, the best thing about email marketing is that you can also tailor your messages to potential guests depending on where they are in your sales funnel. 

You can achieve this using email segmentation. Basically, you segment all prospects into groups based on various criteria. In this case, your groups would be segmented based on how willing potential guests are to book a room. 

After that, you can send personalized messages to every individual with either a promotional offer or educational content in order to nudge them in the right direction and ultimately toward booking a room at your hotel. This also allows you to run multiple hotel email marketing campaigns at the same time to drive different business goals.

6. Search Advertising

Search engine advertising, or SEA, is a paid approach to getting your ads on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). Some time ago, this was called Google AdWords, which was later rebranded into Google Ads. 

What’s important is that the purpose of this marketing strategy remained the same. Like with social media advertising, the purpose of SEA is to get your message directly to your audience, but this time, you’re targeting consumers who use search engines to conduct their research. 

Keep in mind that even though you’re paying search engines to push your messages, you still have to rank well and boost your ad quality score in order to get to the first page of SERPs. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Conduct thorough keyword research - Ad quality score largely depends on the keywords you opt for and their relevance to user intent.

• CTR - The higher the clickthrough rate your ads have, the higher the quality score will be.

• Landing page optimization - Like keywords, search engines will analyze your landing pages to determine if they are relevant to both your ads and user intent.

• Optimize your ad text - Your ad copy has to be precise, highlighting the main features and benefits of your offer. Including a captivating call-to-action is also important for boosting ad quality score.

Hotel Marketing Made Seamless with Kōvly Studio

Promoting a hotel in an oversaturated market can be quite challenging, to say the least. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone. Here at Kōvly Studio, we have the experience, expertise, and a team of professionals who can elevate your hotel’s marketing endeavors to a whole new level. 

That said, we encourage you to look at our projects and see how we do things. Not only that, but our services encompass more than helping your hotel with its brand identity and design. 

We can also manage your marketing campaigns, website content, social media promotions, and much more. So don’t hesitate to contact us today, and we will find a way to help your business grow and develop further.

Conclusion: Increasing Direct Bookings with Effective Hotel Marketing Campaigns

It’s a well-known fact that modern consumers do everything online these days. Whether it's shopping or booking a hotel room, people rarely do things in person. If your hotel doesn’t boast a strong online presence, it will be almost invisible to your potential guests. 

This is precisely why you need creative hotel marketing campaigns to ensure that your hotel stands out in the crowd. The more you invest in marketing, the more people will be aware of your hotel and the services you offer. 

FAQ:

What are the 7 P's of marketing in the hotel industry?

If you want to ensure success for your hotel’s marketing endeavors, you’ll have to focus on the 7 P’s that pose as guidelines you need to follow. Here’s what every P stands for:

• Product - Your hotel and rooms.
• Price - The costs and deals.
• Place - Online presence and physical location.
• Promotion - Your marketing and messaging
• People - Your team.
• Process - The overall guest experience.
• Physical evidence - The overall service

What is the best way to market a hotel?

If you wish to promote your hotel the right way, the best approach would be to combine different marketing strategies and tactics that will yield the best results. Now, which strategies to opt for entirely depends on your goals and needs. But, if we look at the bigger picture, marketing strategies that have proven to be most effective include social media marketing and advertising, email marketing, search advertising, and so on.

What are the 4 P's of hospitality marketing?

The standardized guidelines for the hospitality industry, more commonly known as the 4 P’s, are product, place, price, and promotion. Over the years, the 4 P’s evolved into the 7 P’s mainly because consumer expectations have grown, and thus, more standardized procedures were required to satisfy those expectations.

What is hotel digital marketing?

Hotel digital marketing encompasses every online method a tool used to help hotels promote themselves to potential guests. Since everything happens online today, it’s vital that hotels leverage their online presence to extend their reach and present themselves to their audience in the best way possible. For example, a hotel will create a website as a tool to portray their rooms, services, features, and amenities and use different marketing methods to draw consumers to the website where they can make a direct booking.