It’s no secret that social media marketing strategy for hospitality is important to know and implement by hoteliers in this digital age. This strategy includes ways to advertise for a business or increase sales through digital/online media.
With the increasingly sophisticated technology, the platform’s ability to recommend search results or content is getting stronger and more targeted, which is highly beneficial for advertisers and online sellers.
However, how does social media influence the hospitality industry? As an industry that relies heavily on visual aspects in its marketing strategy, how can social media increase the number of hotel bookings? Find the answer in this blog!
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What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of marketing or marketing process that promotes a company or organization’s products, services, or brand through digital social media platforms. Its main objective is to increase the digital presence or sales of a company or organization.
Maybe many of you are wondering, does social media marketing have a high success rate? well, 77% of social media marketers say that social media marketing is a very effective marketing strategy for their companies.
With a very large base of social media users that come from various countries and are supported by their algorithms, businesses on social media platforms do not doubt optimizing social media as their marketing strategy.
Most Used Social Media Platforms In The Hospitality Industry.
There are already numerous social media platforms that offer advantages in marketing the hospitality business, including content-sharing features in the form of images, and videos, with engaging copywriting.
However, which platform is most commonly used in the hospitality industry and successfully delivers tangible results? Find out the answer!
You can not doubt the popularity of this platform, not only in the hospitality industry, many other business industries have used this platform to maximize their online business.
Having 2.8 billion active users with their supporting features, Facebook provides a great opportunity for hospitality businesses to expand their marketing audience.
Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most popular social platforms used by travelers for travel inspiration and planning. This is evidenced by the continuous increase in ad spend by travel advertisers on Facebook, who target travelers as their audience. This is supported by the opinion of those who consider Facebook to be one of the most effective advertising channels.
So, don’t hesitate anymore to use this platform for your hotel business!
Read Also: Facebook Marketing Guides for Hotels Business Success
When you hear the word LinkedIn, you might think of professional networking or a job search platform. Yes, that’s true. But how does this platform help with your hotel business social media marketing strategy?
Not far from its own function, by displaying profiles of your employees and your hotel company page, LinkedIn can be an effective channel for collaboration, networking, and targeting specific market segments.
Fun Fact: 61 million LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers and 40 million with decision-making roles.
Even though this platform is more suitable for hotel businesses who want to target B2B, there’s nothing wrong with using this platform to improve business image and build trust.
Read Also: LinkedIn as Effective Marketing Strategy For B2B
You’ve probably seen vacation or travel-related posts in the form of photos and videos on Instagram, right? Well, as a social media platform, Instagram has always focused on sharing photos and videos.
Instagram has become a must-platform for travel influencers to showcase their perfect photos and use popular hashtags to inspire other people to start planning their trips. Therefore, it’s essential for your hotel business to be present in the midst of this phenomenon!
By creating engaging content on social media and increasing interactions with potential social media users.
5 Successful Social Media Marketing Strategies for Hospitality Industry
The presence of social media channels is increasingly important in influencing potential guests’ decisions to make bookings in the hotel industry. Therefore, it is important for your hotel business to create an effective social media campaign strategy.
Before that, the important thing to start with in implementing a social media marketing strategy is to identify your hotel business’s target audience through market research. Are they business travelers, families, or honeymooning couples?
By understanding more about your target audience, you can also identify which social media platforms they frequently use.
After obtaining this important information, appear on platforms that are suitable for your hotel business’s target audience and plan attractive and high-quality hotel promotional content.
After understanding the above points, here are some social media marketing strategies for hotels that you can implement as a hotelier:
Define Campaign Goals
After identifying your hotel business’s target audience, the next important step is to determine the goals of your social media marketing campaign by using a sales funnel model that can illustrate the consumer journey in purchasing the hotel services offered.
There are four stages in the sales funnel that have different goals, they are awareness, interest, desire, and action.
Setting campaign goals should be aligned with your hotel business goals. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness for your hotel business, then you need to focus on the awareness stage by reaching your target audience as much as possible through social media.
With clear goals, you can determine the expectations and results you want to achieve, which can be managed for the next stage.
Maximize Video Marketing Content
Video marketing is the most commonly used strategy in the hospitality industry, especially in hotels. As we know, the selling point of this industry is safety, relaxation, comfort, and entertainment. Showcasing all of these advantages visually through video marketing is one of the best ways to attract potential guests.
Quoting marketing strategies from Think With Google – “Travelers in APAC are planning their trips more thoroughly than before, and online video has become a vital resource for them.”
Video marketing is not only an effective strategy for attracting potential guests but also an efficient resource for providing visually appealing information to travelers who are highly concerned about the quality of their accommodation.
With video marketing, your hotel business can provide a deeper experience and build trust with potential guests regarding the quality of the hotel offered.
Pro Tips: To maximize the use of video marketing content on social media, create a YouTube account as a platform to share both full-length and short-form videos (YouTube Shorts).
Read Also: How to Create Viral Marketing Campaign to Increase Hotel Growth
Influencers Collaboration
Collaborating with influencers or public figures who have an image that aligns with your hotel brand can help increase brand awareness and expand your reach on social media.
The hotel industry is closely related to marketing strategies that focus on visual imagery, which is a strong reason why content or user-generated content created by influencers tends to attract users’ attention.
Influencers have followers who are interested in them personally, so collaborating with influencers who can portray their authentic personalities, and offer entertaining content for social media users can help to depict a pleasant stay experience at your hotel.
Therefore, the influencer collaboration strategy has a high success rate. It can increase the visibility of the hotel business and build a positive image in the eyes of the influencer’s followers. This can increase the interest and trust of potential customers, thus increasing the number of guests and overall business profits.
Read Also: Benefits of Influencer Marketing for Hotel Business (2024)
Interacting with Your Audience
Interacting with your audience on social media can improve the positive image and guest loyalty towards your hotel business.
When interacting with your audience, it is important to provide quick and satisfying responses to guests positive and negative feedback.
This can demonstrate that the hospitality business values and pays attention to every feedback from guests, and can help strengthen relationships with customers through personal interactions on social media.
Use Advertising Features
Social media platforms with a large number of active users commonly have advertising or promotional features that you can use as your next strategy. Here are the social media platforms that have advertising features:
- Facebook Ads
- Instagram Ads
- TikTok Ads
- Linkedin Ads
- Youtube Ads
With social media Ads, you can increase conversion opportunities and expand the reach of your hotel by displaying ads that promote your hotel business to the right target audience based on their age, location, interests, and user behavior. This way, you can effectively reach potential guests in a short period of time.
Use Analytics
One of the important long-term strategies is to use analytics platforms to analyze the performance data of your hotel’s social media to optimize future campaigns.
Each social media platform has its own insight feature, such as Instagram with Instagram Insights and Facebook with Meta Business Suite Insights.
By utilizing analytics, your hotel can obtain important data to measure the ROI of your social media marketing and gain better insights into its audience while measuring the performance of its social media content.
Read Also: Social Media Marketing Strategy for Hospitality Industry to Increase Booking Rates (2024)
Social Media Features You Can Use For Your Hospitality Business
Profile Business
This feature allows your hotel business to create a business profile on social media, making it easy for social media users to find information about your hotel such as an address, website link, phone number, and operating hours.
Story
This feature allows you to post more temporary content, such as photos and videos that last for 24 hours. You can use this feature to give visitors an idea of the hotel’s atmosphere or to promote deals for a specific period.
Hashtag
This feature allows you to add relevant hashtags to increase the visibility and reach of your posts. You can create a custom hashtag to promote your hotel or use popular hashtags related to the hospitality industry.
Live Streaming
This feature allows you to do a live broadcast that can be viewed by your followers. You can use this feature to hold special events such as virtual hotel tours or discussion reviews with visitors about their travels.
Read Also: 13 Online Review Response Examples to Manage Your Online Reputation Across Multiple Platforms
Advertising Features
Some social media platforms offer advertising features that allow you to promote your hotel business to a wider audience. You can select your target audience and adjust the advertising costs according to your budget.
Social Media Marketing Trends in Hospitality Industry
With the intense competition in the hospitality business in this digital era, social media has become an opportunity for hotel businesses to compete by inspiring potential guests and showing their authenticity to attract more bookings.
Short videos, trendy posts, and behind-the-scenes snippets on social media have become a popular way for hotels to provide inspiration and experiences to potential guests.
Overall, social media has a significant impact on the hospitality industry, allowing hotels to reach a wider audience, enhance brand credibility, and engage with customers in new and innovative ways.
Let’s increase your hotel business’s brand awareness and booking rates with our best hotel social media marketing strategies. SATUVISION has years of experience in the hospitality industry and has successfully provided the best digital solutions for hotel businesses. Create your digital presence for your hotel brand with us today!
