With billions of users on the internet, digital marketing opens nearly infinite new opportunities for people to connect with your hospitality business.
Cayuga Hospitality Consultants will work with you to find different channels that will work best for your brand. Then they will guide you in developing unique strategies to your property and help you implement digital marketing plans.
Having a cohesive multi-channel digital marketing plan is an effective way to:
- Build your visibility and brand identity
- Engage your customers/guests
- Generate bookings
- Boost revenues
Find a Digital Marketing Consultant that Specializes in Social Media, Search Engine Marketing, or Search Engine Optimization.
Hotel Social Media Marketing Consulting Services
Understanding social media marketing and learning to take advantage of these platforms is imperative.
These channels are where your targeted audience is congregating. On these social platforms your audience can take notice of your hotel, restaurant, spa, and/or club. This is essential to your hotel marketing.
Cayuga Consultants know how to design balanced campaigns and understand the value of rich content. Should you be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and/or anywhere else? Our experts know where best to direct your attention and can guide you in organic or pay-per-click placements on social media platforms.
What is Social Computing?
Social Computing: The technological ecosystem that helps users communicate, maintain relationships and make collaborative decisions.
Society and technology are all experiencing rapid transformation. As a result, marketing management objectives, business processes and enabling technologies must evolve to keep pace with a changing economic, competitive and cultural environment.
Business relationships are becoming more individualized, personal and portable. Highly engaged customers are seeking real-time responses from organizations that have invested in earning that individual’s loyalty. This new environment creates a necessity for social media engagement.
Despite the growing need for greater customer engagement, one must realize social media is a completely worthless pursuit if:
- You aren’t listening
- You don’t have anything relevant to say (Content)
- Customers can’t find you (Search Engine Optimization)
Therefore, before taking the dive into social media, it is critically important to make certain that product operations and service delivery systems are performing in line with customer expectations. If not, a good portion of your social media resources intended for deepening customer relationships and inspiring advocacy will need to be re-allocated to damage control stemming from product/service shortfalls.
It All Starts (and Ends) with Listening
If you are not listening to your customers, you will ultimately fail as a business. Even if you are wildly successful at the present time, a new competitor will rise up that will not only listen to your customers, but treat them better and take them away from you. That is no prediction – that is a promise.
Active listening skills are essential for social media success:
- Listen & Learn
- Identify problems
- Solve the problems
- Test potential solutions
- Engage greatest influencers
- Nurture fans to become advocates
There are two simple rules for content creation. It must be well written and relevant to the reader. Well written means avoiding overly promotional messages, while ensuring differentiation points are well supported with proof.
Organizations typically have more content than they realize. Types of content vary wildly and hold varying relevance across target market segments. Some examples of social content include:
Textual Content – Blog Posts, eBooks, Case Studies, Newsletters, Data Sheets & White Papers
Multi-media Content – Images, Streamed Events, Podcasts, Presentations, Videos & Webinars
Interactive Content – Demos, Free trials, Online Courses, Surveys & Widgets
All content should be crafted in a manner to make it as Search Engine friendly as possible. On-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes utilization of keywords and phrases entered into search engines by individuals.
On-page SEO is augmented by link building initiatives that increase the number of quality links to a page from influential and topical websites. Additional promotional opportunities exist that not only reach customers and prospects on the social networks they frequent, but links from these sites back to the business website help improve search engine rankings. Social promotion opportunities include:
So, is social media a panacea or bane for marketers? If you fail to plan appropriately, social media can burn corporate resources faster than a retained earnings bonfire.
However, supported by a solid product and operation, coupled with sound strategy, a well-executed social media strategy can help differentiate a brand from its competition and increase ROI from an engaged customer base, but also muster an army of advocates.
Hotel Search Engine Marketing Consulting Services
Cayuga Hospitality Consultants are also skilled in guiding search engine marketing (SEM) practices.
One of the major players is Google Ads, and being able to effectively target your pay-per-click (PPC) ads is essential to find guests who use Google Search and are ready to book for your hotel, or eat at your restaurant.
Many considerations go into a PPC campaign that drives conversions. Ultimately it comes down to your return on investment (ROI). With testing and careful targeting, there is a good chance that this would be a channel to grow your hospitality business.
SEM For Hotel B2B Sales
With the rise of social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, sales associates are increasingly being challenged to go out of their comfort zones to engage with business customers by ‘connecting’ and ‘friending’ with current or potential customers through these channels to maintain engagement. Many team members do not currently have much, if any, experience in this field. Additionally, the adoption of search engines as the first point of research by meeting planners and key decision makers is also prevalent. Ergo, search engine marketing (SEM) – that is, retargeting and Google Ads as well as search engine optimization (SEO) – also play a dominant role in this endeavor.
There are two important statistics to stress the underlying importance of building a hotel’s presence on both social networks and search engine platforms.
“57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier.” (CEB)
“67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.” (SiriusDecisions)
The world has indeed moved online, and we need to move with it. Understanding how consumer behavior has evolved with the proliferation of these digital spaces is critical to effectively formulate a plan going forward.
Hotels must understand their business audiences and how they may vary by segment in order to then determine what search terms are relevant for their properties and destinations. SEM isn’t something that just tacked on to the marketing budget; these new digital channels need a well-defined strategy with specially tailored content if they are to be successful.
This may require a vastly different mindset in the hiring and training of the sales associate of the future as these methods of digital marketing must be incorporated into the everyday practices of the hotels’ sales teams. Moreover, the collaboration between sales and marketing is no longer an option; it is a vital necessity in today’s digital and social world.
Contact Cayuga Hospitality today to learn how our digital marketing experts can help your revenues grow.
Search Engine Optimization Consulting Services for Hotels and Resorts
Cayuga Hospitality Consultants have expertise in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to use search engine algorithms to serve the right web pages to your target audience. Don’t neglect this channel for your digital strategy, for most websites organic search is their biggest source of traffic.
Important questions to investigate:
- Are all your pages on Google Search?
- Can Google easily find and crawl your website?
- Most importantly, does your website create a good user experience?
Having a hospitality digital marketing consultant conduct an SEO audit is a great place to start, so you can start to make the most of finding guests for your hotel, restaurant or other assets on Google Search.
Our Hospitality Sales, Marketing and Revenue Management Consultants
David Adler
Driving events and meetings demand, profitability and efficiency in a post covid world with smart technology, up to date strategies and creative solutions for leadership and innovation.
Susan Barry
Helping hotel owners achieve superior top line revenue performance through sales, marketing, and revenue strategy consulting, retainer engagements, and projects.
Aureliano Bonini
International Hotel, Restaurant and Destination Marketing Expert - Focusing on market positioning, e-marketing, operational audits, market evaluations.
Bill Carroll
Actively engaged with hotel ownership groups, intermediaries and start-ups in the areas of revenue, pricing, and marketing management.
Haydee Cruz
Helping hotels to reach targeted market segments, securing and implementing lucrative sales strategies, developing innovative operating practices to ultimately yield profits.
Dr. Chekitan Dev
Internationally renowned scholar and thought leader on marketing and branding in the hospitality, travel, and tourism industries. As an expert witness, he has testified in numerous cases involving hotel owner–brand relationships and the online travel industry.
Stephanie Smith
Helping hotels drive incremental exposure and revenue to their website and online channels through digital marketing / advertising. Specializing in new hotels and conversions.