3 Customer-Centric Aspects That Impact Your Digital Marketing as a Hotel

Reputation Defender
2 min readApr 24, 2019

Considering that you have a good understanding of what your hotel offers and how it differentiates itself from the competition, you should switch your focus on customer-specific aspects.

Know Your Niche Target

First, find the niche market that will find your offering appealing. Keeping track of customer reviews and opinions with a CRM (customer relationship management) software is a great way to identify and segment the guests you attract.

A solid content marketing strategy for hotels will put the wants, needs, and opportunities their guests face in the foreground. This is what will differentiate you from the big hotel chains. While they are more focused on filling their rooms your hotel can provide the right guest with the right experience. Taking an inbound approach will increase guest retention as it allows you to deliver value before they even become customers.

Personalize the Guest Experience

Once you know the target niche of guests you want to attract, it’s time to get them to discover you. Whether they are prospective clients or loyal customers, sending content that is relevant to their current phase in the booking process will show that you’re listening to them.

Confirm their interest by setting up marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL) properties to know what type of content you should provide. The inbound marketing strategy for hotels works because it eliminates the typical corporate feeling of being sold to that many hotel brands still have around their marketing efforts.

The content will do the selling and since it’s not a direct selling tactic it becomes more of a communication channel and lets guests spend time reading information that is valuable to them.

It enables discovery and empowers them to make the decision themselves instead of traditional marketing efforts that try and force them to choose.

Reward Loyal Customers

Your marketing and content efforts should not stop when your guests check out. In order to continue making informed marketing decisions you need to get feedback on your guests’ experience. A few days after their stay send them an e-mail and remind them of their pleasant experience, by providing a quick and easy way to leave a review. You can also incentivize feedback with a personalized offer they can redeem their next visit.

Moreover, you can create a customer loyalty program that gives members exclusive deals to encourage repeat visits. For example send them emails with hotel updates, offer them a free room upgrade, or discounts at your hotel’s restaurant. Anything that makes them feel more important than during their first visit will improve retention rates as well as generate brand reputation for your hotel.

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