Digital Marketing Trends in the Hospitality Sector

From social synergy to the impact of mobile search, digital marketing is a new landscape of creative engagement, seamless integration and the customer journey. There are several designed innovative strategies for online visibility, content engagement, conversion, ROI tracking and the user experience. 

Importance of Mobile Presence for Hotels

Mobile search is the star trend of digital marketing. The universe of mobile users is massive – 3 in 5 people use mobile devices to search and 80% of local searches on mobile devices convert to purchase. With Google rolling out a new ranking factor for mobile-friendly sites, it is essential that your hotel website is optimized for mobile search and responsive on all mobile devices. The target is to enhance mobile traffic and ensure a robust and seamless experience with content that can be shared on social media.

Expanding Your Hotel’s Paid Search Presence

The key to a highly successful hotel paid search campaign is to maximize your outreach and diversify your channels, via Facebook, Google, Yelp, and HotelFinder.  Make sure you bid on your brand or hotel name, leverage social channels, and allocate your budget to tap into mobile conversion, which is higher than ever! Customize marketing messages to your specific target audience, and focus on the customer journey.

Content Marketing – Engagement and the Customer Journey

Empower your audience with engaging content, including local attractions and activities, visuals and trending topics. Your content should be optimized for local and conversational search and saturate diversified channels – from your website to blogs to Facebook. Look at KPI indicators – time spent on page, bounce and click-through rates and engagement patters. Once you determine top converting pages, enhance the content to encourage the path to purchase.

Hotel Social Media Marketing

Most of the world uses social media sites, including Google+, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Social media is a driver of brand awareness and customer relationships and retention. To be in the social conversation and derive traffic from social platforms, your web content must be interesting, build connections, and inspire conversion

Attribute Hotel ROI Across All Touch Points

The customer journey is evolving, so businesses need to alter their approach to measuring digital marketing ROI.  With the dramatic spike in mobile search and social signals, the conversion funnel is not linear and the purchase journey can begin at any point along the decision path. It’s important for hotels and businesses to tap into this dynamism, target the audience journey, and personalize the content. With new innovations in digital tracking software, we can attribute ROI to every channel. By understanding the conversion path, attributing ROI, and integrating a dashboard to break down the data, we can see the value of each touch point.