Everything You Need to Know About Marketing Your Hotel on Social Media_

Use other people

I don’t just mean use an agency – that’s a given! No, I’m talking about user-generated content (or UGC, if you didn’t know). UGC is content that has been posted by someone who isn’t an official rep for your business – in other words, your guests. Did I mention it’s free marketing?

When someone tags you in a picture they’ve snapped at your hotel, USE IT! You can encourage UGC by creating a themed room, or photo opportunities like a pretty, ‘instagrammable’ wall. This marketing strategy is a really easy way to build a tribe, get word of mouth promos, and make your guest feel like the influencer they were born to be.

Speaking of influencers, you could get in touch with value-aligned influential people to visit your hotel and promote your brand. Make sure they have a great engagement rate, speak to the right audience and you’re sorted. Although this will need allocated spend, it’s a worthwhile investment in someone that can speak to the masses.

Invest in ads

If you’re looking for a solid return in investment, paid social media advertising is the one for you. Although there’s a plethora of different types of ads you can go for, there’s two that are a firm favourite of mine. That’s right, we’re chatting about page like ads and dynamic ads – whether you like it or not.

Page like ads appear in Facebook’s feed, showcasing and telling people to ‘like’ your page. This can help you to build followers, and targeting means you can reach the people you actually want to reach. If a targeted user has friends that already like your page, they’ll see that they do and get horrific FOMO.

Dynamic ads are adverts that automatically change in order to adapt content to each user, dependent on what they are most likely to interact with. You can swap out images, text and even CTAs to see which perform best. You can then use these insights to build even more targeted ads, using them as an opportunity to constantly improve and learn.

Refresh the feed

Social content running dry? Spice up your hotel marketing strategy with a new and exciting campaign! Set some solid goals of what you want your campaign to achieve, then get cracking. These can be anything from brand awareness to bookings – be ambitious.

Your campaign should be quirky and different enough to stand out from the crowd in the saturated hospitality market. Not sure of where to start? Have a good old brainstorming session. Grab your team, bounce ideas off each other and collaborate to create something unique.

No one likes a copycat, so do your research to make sure your campaign is unusually fab and hasn’t been done by hotels before. Even if it’s something unavoidably similar, find a new angle and catch people’s attention.

Who do you think you’re talking to?

Marketing 101: You can’t speak to everyone. Not everyone is going to be interested in staying at your hotel, so why even speak to the people who aren’t going to? Put simply, you don’t. Many hotels are opting to use alienation, crafting content to appeal directly to a certain audience and forgetting the others.

It’s not just about who you’re talking to on social media, but how you talk to them. It’s really important that you nail your tone of voice and keep it consistent. It gives your brand personality, which can make your hotel stand out in the saturated market. If you need any help to get under the skin of your brand, we run some fab Tone of Voice workshops.

Finally, think about your platform. Unlike most other social media platforms, LinkedIn is a B2B (business-to-business) platform, so having a presence there puts you in the thick of the hotel marketing community. Having a presence on LinkedIn might not target your primary audience, but it can raise your hotel’s profile amongst peers and encourage people to book a business break.

Engage your audience

One of the best ways to get people talking about your hotel is to encourage in-platform engagement. This refers to the amount of likes, comments, shares etc. you get on your posts – the more the better! There are many ways to get people interacting with your content, but here are a few of my suggestions.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get – or in this case, if you don’t instruct, you don’t get. Use clear call to actions on your social posts to tell people exactly what you want them to do. This can be anything from ‘hit like if you love comfy beds’ to ‘comment your holiday pictures below’ – watch your engagement soar.

Another way to encourage engagement is to host a competition once in a while. Whilst you shouldn’t do this too often as it can attract serial competition enterers; competitions with specific metrics can see your engagement rise dramatically. The better the prize, the more people will enter, and the higher your engagement will be!

I hope I’ve helped you with some tips! If you need a marketing agency with hospitality expertise, Punch Creative is here for you.