10 Amazing Digital Marketing Strategies To Increase Online Bookings

Today one of the most competitive sectors is the hospitality industry, once the pandemic was offered people started travelling like there was never a pandemic, never existed. It is also important because the hotel industry is directly linked to the tourism industry.

People travel, and people stay a lot in hotels and make bookings and plan such trips months before they go or are planning to go. Now, the problem with bookings is that too many options not only raise the competition but also create a lot of clutter and unnecessary ways for people to go search and search and never receive or reach the perfect information and website. Now, in such a scenario, it becomes challenging to come and be at the top, Therefore here we are to discuss 10 amazing digital marketing strategies to help you hike your hotel bookings directly and indirectly -

The top 10 digital marketing strategies are -

1. Strong presence and internet visibility

   Create a strong presence on the internet, now this may look more easily said than done, but there are multiple ways and operations that you need to perform daily without losing consistency to ensure that your website is receiving traction.

   To start with the first thing you have to do is to make your website SEO friendly, this is a critical task and may require months of effort to finally get your website ranked or at least get to the first page of search engines. Writing blogs, adding plugins and decorating your website with the right images and videos but at the same time, remember customers have a short span of interest therefore it is important that your hotel website runs effectively during it else the customer will never think twice about leaving your website and never coming back again.

   So, work on website load speed, optimize it well with the right keywords and take care of both on-page and off-page SEO by creating the right backlinks.

2. Remarketing

   What better way to market your hotel than to go back and re-engage with customers that have already shown interest in your hotel, they are the best potential customers you have. If you don’t get it, let us explain to you, suppose a customer comes to your website and after a certain amount of time leaves without making a booking, this particular scenario happens a lot because it is the core of human behaviour but then how do you remarket yourself to them?

   The answer is remarketing will show the same visitor ads of your hotel on different websites they will browse or log in to. The basic concept of this is to keep reminding them of the original interest and trigger them to come back to complete the booking. Moreover, it is not limited to websites but you can retarget them on social media platforms.

   Interesting fact - statistically, it is proven through remarketing more than 70% of visitors come back to complete their booking.

3. Increase budget in season months

   We are sorry to break this to you but if you think digital marketing is all about technicality and effort then our answer is no. there are ad campaigns that are executed on different platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Google ads, this way you can promote a particular post for a particular time. But the most important thing to remember is that the marketing budget can vary from time to time. Always target your peak seasons, and know when you can increase your digital marketing budget.

4. Influencer Marketing

   Now, we know you are a hotel owner and you want that extra marketing done for your hotel by some famous people, obviously not every owner can have a big celebrity endorsing their hotel but that doesn’t mean you lack options. Because today social media platforms and content creation skills have made many creators good and popular internet personalities. You can always connect with them as per their reach and track of social media engagement for example - you can connect with influencers with a reach of 25K, and in the same range let’s say you connect with 4 influencers then you can reach up to one lac potential customers.

   Either you pay them in cash or get a barter negotiation for any product. If you are generous enough you can ask them to come and stay in your hotel for a day and night recording everything they do, like, what they eat and visit and posting it on their social media handles to promote your hotel.

5. OTA Listing

   If we speak of online travelling agencies, there is a different competition going on between them, some of the famous OTAs in India are GoIbibo, Paytm, Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip and Ixigo, but we talk globally the statistics are promising as well as competitive.

   Approximately 40% of travellers prefer OTAs which means there is 60% of the customer base is yet to be captured, but that 40% is again bifurcated around 30% book through travel agents, and the rest 20% choose other small options available.

   This shows how much potential customer base is lying unattended which you can capture using good OTA listings.

   Link for statistics reference -
   https://www.travelperk.com/blog/online-travel-booking-statistics/

6. Market your location

   In this segment, let’s think about how and why should people be visiting your hotel so often, for it, there has to be a purpose or need for the visitor to come and stay in your hotel, and your hotel alone can’t be the reason for it.

   Therefore comes the element of marketing your location. Initially, it works in tourism aspects where parallel to your hotel you also market your location and play on the factor that your customers are willing or planning to visit your city. You can take advantage of your local popular sites and market them to indirectly market yourself. This is one of the key benefits of hospitality marketing that you can take leverage on other locations to promote your business. Cover festivals, and fairs, gathering and advertising them.

7. Pamper your loyal customers

   Never forget your loyal customers, they are your biggest assets, and forgetting about them is as common as compromising your taste after building a customer base for your dishes. The more important it is to have new customers it is equally important to make your old customers know how much important they are.

   And as far as new customers are concerned, remember your old customers can bring in new customers because there has been no greater publicity ever created than word of mouth and references. From offering free snacks to giving goodbye gifts, people always remember small gestures.

8. Email marketing

   Let's play out a scenario, you have visitors in your hotel and you collect their data like contact numbers and email addresses this same scenario you can play out on your website as well, by adding a feature of asking browsing visitors to submit their email addresses whenever they come to your website.

   Once you have the email addresses collected use them as a data source, remember in the age of the internet data is the new oil, start sending blogs to these email addresses or start an update service offering weekly and monthly newsletters to your database customers.

   When you do this, you always present in the inbox of your customers and target audience, and it again is a good way of creating a strong presence on the internet. For customers who have visited, this strategy helps in retaining them.

9. Target the right audience at the right place

   You need to identify places where your target audience resides, it can be an adventure camp or a happening local spot where most people come from outside. Knowing when to find your target audience and reaching out to them is the foremost strategy there is.

   When we speak of digital marketing strategies, look for online travel communities, or travel clubs and connect with them to partner or invite them for a weekend getaway. Search for travel pages and collaborate with them. Remember anything can be used for marketing, all you need is the right strategy for it.

10. Keeping one eye on competitors

    Yes, one of the most critical aspects that you timely follow is to ensure that you constantly track the business, operations, offers and activities of your competitors. Self-centred companies tend to fail in the market because eventually, they never thought about what their competitor is doing, and by the time they react, it's already very late.

    Now here we are not asking you to copy your business rivals but to have in mind the strategies that they are implementing is always a good option.

We hope the blog was insightful and interesting for you, we can always connect to discuss the possibilities of your businesses. Fielmente is often ready to serve you and partner with you in collaborative growth.