By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer
Background:
Digital Content Marketing involves the distribution of engaging information across digital marketing channels – from blogs and social media to the property website and email marketing. The sole objective of this type of marketing is to lure travel consumers to engage with the hotel property and brand, providing enough value in the form of useful content to ultimately result in a hotel booking.
The big question is, if Digital Content Marketing has been around since the mid-1990s, why is there so much attention on this marketing format lately? A big reason is the emergence of this multi-device, multi-touch world we now live in and the dramatic shift from desktop to mobile, tablet and wearable devices. Last year nearly 40% of web visitors arrived from non-desktop devices (mobile and tablet), while nearly 21% of bookings came from tablets and mobile devices (HeBS Digital Research).
Living in a multi-device world means travel consumers are now always connected. Today’s sophisticated travel consumers do not trust the “hard” sale, nor are they impressed by “in your face” desktop-era advertising formats like banners, website pop-ups and sponsored emailers, which are perceived as more intrusive on smartphone and tablet devices. These consumers demand a personalized and highly value-rich marketing approach. They want to be courted and intrigued in order to consider your product or service. They need to be engaged with and by your hotel before booking their stay.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of consumers claim that content marketing makes them feel closer to the company distributing the content. This is certainly one of the main objectives of digital content marketing in hospitality: to create a deeper level of engagement between the hotel brand and the “new” travel consumer through enticing and value-rich content. This connection or increased level of engagement inevitably results in concrete bookings, recommendations and social media shares.
Why is Digital Content Marketing Important for Hoteliers?
The marketing of a hotel is all about storytelling. A hotel must “tell a story” to potential travel consumers through the visual and textual content on its website, blog, social media, email marketing, etc. Ultimately, potential guests cannot “touch or smell” a hotel product – so you need to sell them a dream, an anticipated experience, through the digital realm.
When the hotel is “selling a dream” via visual content on the property website or editorial level textual descriptions of the hotel and destination, they are immediately conveying the type of experience the guest will have, as this website does through its use of high impact, colorful images of families having a great time:
In addition to creating a deeper level of engagement with the always-connected travel consumer, which has serious long-term monetary and loyalty benefits, an equally compelling reason digital content marketing is so critical today is the great SEO benefits. High-quality and engaging website, blog and social media content generates social shares and inbound links, significantly improving search engine rankings.
What are the Most Popular Digital Content Marketing Initiatives in Hospitality?
- Website content: search engines demand fresh, unique, engaging and deep relevant content. This includes continuously creating new content around the unique, local experience that represents your property.
- Blog on the property website: through a blog, a hotel may constantly push fresh content on the site while highlighting new property features such as a spa or restaurant, and promote upcoming events on property or nearby.
- Videos of the property and destination: with more people watching video than ever (according to Google, an increase of 300% between 2009 and 2014), videos on the hotel website and YouTube.com are essential forms of content for inspiring travel consumers in the planning and purchasing process. A great example of utilizing video is how the Turpin Meadow Ranch website brings the luxury dude ranch experience to life:
- Destination Guides on the property website: makes the property the “hero” of its destination by providing information on what’s nearby, making sure to include a points of interest map.
- Mini-sites or content-specific sections: offers an opportunity for fresh and frequently updated content on the property website that is focused on speaking to a particular customer segment: Family travel, honeymoons, Weddings, meeting planners, spa, golf, etc. The Nickelodeon Suites Resort does this through an interactive “Kids Corner,” section of their website featuring entertaining quizzes and a collection of kooky jokes and riddles:
- Blog articles in local and national travel blogs: any third-party mentions of the property and its product, services and activities should be considered great content to promote on the hotel’s own website, on the blog, and through social media. Content featuring points of interest and activities in the destination that are related to the property could also be used to the benefit of the hotel.
- Calendar of events: a great calendar of events can really highlight happenings at and around the property.
- Email marketing: content on the property, destination and area events should be included in email newsletters on a least a monthly basis.
- Social media: distributing content about the hotel and surrounding destination on social media channels will build awareness of your property and increase the likelihood of people sharing your content and ideally converting to bookers in the future.
The Smart Hotelier’s Action Plan to Digital Content Marketing
What key elements should make up your hotel’s Digital Content Marketing strategy? The following steps offer an action plan to follow in terms of creating and distributing your hotel property’s digital content.
1. Identify the right “brand voice” for your property’s audience and demographics:
Use the right “brand voice” when creating your content. Your storytelling should not be too playful if you primarily cater to a corporate market, and on the reverse side you don’t want to come across as too serious and stodgy if you are a lifestyle boutique hotel. Use humor whenever appropriate.
Content on the hotel website, the property blog, email newsletters, social media, etc., should be crafted to appeal to both existing and potential customers. Focus on providing valuable information, on educating and even entertaining existing and potential guests. Placing “hidden,” subtle advertising in engaging, editorial-level content is much more effective than trying to do a “hard” sale!
2. Choose the right website technology to power your website
In order to have a successful Digital Content Marketing Strategy, properties must have a Content Management System (such as HeBS Digital’s smartCMS) that offers complete control over their textual, visual and promotional content. Properties should also be able to easily create an unlimited amount of fresh and engaging content in the form of landing pages, add sections of the site speaking to key customer segments, add events to the calendar, and post on the blog. The CMS should also enable hoteliers to personalize content for each website visitor.
3. Find and Nurture Brand Ambassadors
Finding engaged customers to act as influencers and “content sharers” for your property is a great way to multiply the digital content distribution efforts of your hotel. Hotel social media profiles, loyalty and frequent guest recognition programs or VIP Clubs can easily be turned into tools for cultivating such brand ambassadors.
Another great way to find brand ambassadors is to ask them to share their favorite photos of the destination and property, and include an incentive to do so. One resort in the Florida Keys launched a “Postcard Perfect Summer” Campaign to drive summer bookings with a Limited-Time Offer including up to $250 dining credit.
To encourage consumer-generated content, this multi-channel campaign also featured an Instagram contest asking users to follow the hotel and share a photo answering the question, “How do you unwind in paradise?” with a dedicated hashtag. Entries were featured on a live feed on the resort website and the resort instantly had consumer-generated content to share. The campaign resulted in 250 contest entries, 417 Instagram followers, 614 email sign-ups, 3,680 unique website visitors, and 44% increase in bookings year-over-year.
4. Utilize a ‘Local’ Content Strategy to Target Local Guests
In many cases, a hotel property caters to locals as well as out-of-town guests. Locals may have friends and family staying at your hotel, they might be patrons of your restaurants, or clients of the property’s spa, golf, gym, etc. Local content is required to appeal to your local customers, and can be created in the form of a local “news” type of website section or blog posts, local resident-focused social media posts, interactive sweepstakes and contests, email ‘advertorials,’ etc.
Engaging and nurturing local travel bloggers to write about happenings and activities at the property is another great way to provide “third-party” opinions and recommendations about your property. The search engines in particular like this type of local content and highly value ‘editorial’ links to the property website.
5. Increase Relevancy with Dynamic Content Personalization:
Increasing the relevancy of your property’s website content for the user creates a higher level of engagement and shortens the user’s path to purchase. When a website visitor feels that your content has been personalized for either demographic, by interest, or past browsing and/or stay behavior (or all of the above), there is a much greater chance of them staying on the website longer, of returning to the website, and ultimately booking when they are ready.
A great example of personalizing content is to serve useful information to users from fly-in feeder markets about the hotel’s amenities that would pertain to them – such as a complimentary shuttle from the airport. On the other hand, drive-in markets could be served marketing messages informing them about parking packages offered by the hotel.
6. Target Group and Meeting Planners with Digital Content Marketing
Targeting group and meeting planners typically involves a B2B Digital Content Marketing approach, which requires producing specialized content pieces via blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos, etc. Content needs to focus around the needs of the meeting planner: details on meeting/event space, things to do in the area for attendees, and amenities relevant to the group’s stay.
One example of content produced for a client with a large amount of meeting and event space involves an Interactive Sweepstakes Application and supporting digital marketing campaign. Indian Wells, a destination in Southern California with meeting space at four full-service resorts, wanted to promote its meeting space and amenities. Content on both the Interactive Sweepstakes Application and on the website was focused on educating meeting planners on everything the resorts’ had to offer, and included a quiz to increase awareness of the venue and drive RFPs.
The “From Meetings to Memories” campaign promoted a Meeting Planner Sweepstakes to enter to win a grand prize and daily prizes, with the following results:
7. Use a Multi-channel Marketing Approach to Tell Your Property’s Story
The Multi-channel Marketing approach allows the property to present its story to travel consumers across all channels and devices. When you are reaching travel consumers along the different stages of their travel planning journey with your content (on the website, on your blog, in paid search marketing ads, in email newsletters, in social media, and in your online media campaigns/banners), you want to make sure you are communicating a consistent message that aligns with your brand. For instance, it’s never a good idea to promote your property as a ‘hip, boutique hotel’ to one audience through social media, and then as an ‘all business, all the time’ property through paid search ads.
8. Create Buzz Around a Theme
Creating buzz around a new service, opening, renovation, or new restaurant can increase the likelihood that your hotel property’s content is shared. Launch Interactive contests, sweepstakes, and scavenger hunts to help build that buzz and provide an incentive for sharing.
A great example of how to create ‘buzz’ around a theme is Red Lion Hotels’ “Resolve to Explore” New Year’s Campaign. In order to encourage potential guests to fulfill their New Year’s resolutions, while at the same time highlighting the brand’s hotel destinations, amenities, selling points and perks, the campaign featured an Interactive Sweepstakes allowing users to enter to win four free nights and $1,000 by selecting a resolution.
To drive bookings, this mini-site also included a booking link for 20% off stays. By supplementing engaging content with multi-channel initiatives, this campaign generated a 1,365% ROI.
9. Measure ROI from Digital Content Marketing Efforts
Utilizing best-in-class analytical tools such as Adobe Analytics allows hotel marketers to measure customer engagements, leads, bookings, roomnights and revenues from all Digital Content Marketing pieces. Measure things like:
- How many people are consuming the content available on my website and blog?
- Which content pieces are the most engaging and (on the website, blog, email, social media) are being shared?
- How many content pieces am I producing over the course of the month?
- Which content pieces are leading to initiated bookings, initiated leads, and conversions?
- How is my content driving revenue overall?
By analyzing which content pieces resonate most with your audience, you can increase your efforts on that type of Digital Content Marketing to further engage your target markets and boost conversions on your website.
10. Budget for Digital Content Marketing
The hotel digital marketing budget should include funds to cover Digital Content Marketing initiatives mentioned in this article: new content creation for the website and blog, video, CMS technology, email marketing, social media content creation, multi-channel campaign development and interactive marketing applications. It is extremely important to be able to answer the question: Who “owns” digital content marketing for the property? In many cases it is far more economically feasible to hire the services of an experienced digital content management firm.
For example, here at HeBS Digital we have a professional copywriting department staffed with seven creative travel writers, three of which have Master’s Degrees in Creative Copywriting from top universities. This team of digital content experts focus on creative copywriting for website blueprints, blog postings, email marketing newsletters, social media postings, multi-channel marketing campaign messaging.
The recommended allocation of funds for each initiative may be found in The Smart Hotelier’s Guide to 2015 Digital Marketing Budget Planning.
Digital Marketing = Digital Content Creation
Content Marketing, while not a new concept, is more important than ever in today’s always connected, multi-device world. In hospitality, Digital Content Marketing is especially important in telling a hotel’s story and bringing an intangible experience to life. Done well, the hotel website can act as the “hub” of all content and digital marketing initiatives, supporting the storytelling effort throughout the consumer’s travel planning and purchasing journey.
Creating quality content on a consistent basis is very time consuming, requires a great deal of effort, and must be driven by a well-executed strategy. To help you meet your Digital Content Marketing challenges, consider finding a partner that can provide you with overall strategy direction and help with execution. Work with a partner that is an industry leader in all facets of Digital Content Marketing, with in-house Copywriting & SEO, Paid Search, and Online Media Departments as well as skilled consultants and Account Managers that understand and are trained in the art of storytelling for the hospitality industry.
