From Social Media to your Hotel Guest
There was the Industrial Revolution post the World War II, then came the Information revolution with the birth of Internet and now we live in an era of Social Revolution. Having already established the fact that there is a BIG Social Commerce play for the Hospitality Industry on the Social Media channels and Direct to Consumer is the real deal, here is a DIY approach for those Hotels who want to go at it alone to target your Social Media audience to your Hotel and bring in Direct Business.
Step 01: It always starts with the WHO?
Get clear about who your Target user group is. Though as a Hotel you cater to everybody but look at your Regulars they would have some similar characteristics and this would tell you the "WHO" you should be focused on. You must be doing something right for this Segment and hence they are regulars at your Hotel.
This could be gender specific, or age specific, what you need to do is observe your regular guests and figure out what keeps on bringing them back. Is it your Tea Lounge? Is it your Restaurants? Do they stay with you when they are in this location?
Step 02: Build your Audiences online
There are thousands of people who would share the similar traits as the ones who are your regulars. You need to put in the work now and find more people like them. If your is a B2B Audience (Corporate Clients) then do this on LinkedIn, if its B2C then Facebook Business Manager is where you should be headed.
Leverage the Audience Insights tool and find out what your audiences like and dislike. from this list build multiple audiences to split test.
Marketing follows a 40-40-20 approach. 40% of your success comes when you reach out to the right audience, 40% success comes when the offer matches the Audience. Its also referred to as product market fit and only 20% of it comes from the copy of the promotion. So getting your first 2 audience and offer is mission critical for your Hotel.
Step 03: The Right offer for the right Audience
Make sure that your offer is appealing enough to be noticed by your audience, there is a lot of noise out there, your competition is probably also reaching out to the same people, how do you get noticed? The offer has to make sense to your audience, I see this mistake being made by over 75% of the audience. As an example, if you are targeting an audience for luxury, offering discount does not make any sense, highlight your offerings and why it makes sense for the targeted audience to choose you over competition. Appeal to the audience. This is a make or break point in your being considered v/s being rejected.
Step 04: The Copy
This is where you need to be crystal clear on your AD Copy. In a perfect world you would have a great creative which stands out and gets people to notice. From here you should be bringing them over to a landing page where the offer is described in greater detail and has clear well defined calls to action. You have brought the traffic over now give them something to take action on.
Step 05: The Strategy
Analytics: Have your analytics installed on your Website/Landing Page. This usually means 3 codes, Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics and LinkedIn Insight Tag. These are important.
Start with the End goal in mind, We want to showcase targeted audience this AD and we want them to take this action and if they take that action our Goal 1 is achieved. This should ideally be to get them into your marketing funnel. As an example, at the awareness stage your Goal could just be to bring them over to your Landing page and showcase your offerings. Let them know you exist and consider you.
All Hotels who are a part of large chains miss out on the Power of Analytics and Landing pages. Since they have no control over the main website, they don't get to leverage the analytics.
Once again since the website cannot be tailored to add individual Hotels landing pages, they miss out on creating a lasting recall. Expecting an AD Copy to do the trick for you is not really going to help.
If your Marcom or you are going to go direct, this is how I would advise you to proceed, Have a Sequence of Creatives for this Objective ready (what is the expectation from this campaign), remember it takes 12-15 touch points to create a Brand Recall, Create a compelling AD copies, where possible leverage Videos. Start with at least 4 creatives which have to be shown to people in Sequence, each adding value to the previous one.
If you start with a Video, it would make most sense for you. This would be your Targeting phase, in this phase showcase your product to an audience set (I hope you have made multiple audience sets as explained earlier in Step 2) Set this AD with a generous Budget (minimum I recommend is Rs. 300 a day) and let it run for at least 30 days.
Now set up another AD which should be for Re-targeting those who saw certain percentage of your Video AD. Let those who saw 30% of your video see this AD but here bring them to a landing page and have a definite call to action. It could be that they subscribe to your mailing list, inquire about your promotion etc. Once they have taken action they need to be moved to a separate audience, they need a different strategy.
Those who did not take the necessary action now need to be re-targeted, this is where your Facebook Pixel comes in handy. The Pixel has recorded who came to your page and if you have defined the events in the pixel, those who subscribed to your list or took the call to action. Re-target people who did not take any action by showing them a 3rd AD in the sequence and repeat these steps till you have completed your campaign sequence.
These are the basic steps you need to create a Brand Recall, when we work with Our Clients where we are helping with the complete Brand Management on Social Media, we go into minutest details of building these campaigns and defining the budgets at each step.
Where possible we also like to leverage the Google Analytics to measure the campaign effectiveness in the chosen geographies, Google analytics is a unique tool which can give you detailed insights into which geographies are working for you. Where is your marketing effective and where it needs to realign itself.
Google Analytics is also effective in telling you what gender is engaging with you content and this tells you who is more likely to convert and how you need to shape your content. Just posting organic content on Social Media may get you a client or two, but it would not prove to be an effective strategy to grow your Direct Business.
Want to grow your Direct Bookings by 30%+from your chosen Geography in your chosen segment, then get in touch with us.