The capabilities of marketing continue to expand rapidly, and the word on the lips of every marketer at the moment is content marketing. No longer can you just spend money on advertisements and see people flocking to your hotel. Consumers want more, and what they want is high-quality content that is truly beneficial to them.
Alongside this, search engines such as Google now require high-quality content to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) results. The old trick of shoe-horning keywords into your website as much as possible won’t create results anymore. In fact, your website will be penalised for this and you’ll find yourself quickly slipping down the rankings in search engines.
SEO plays a critical role in the digital marketing success of hotels. Between 30 and 35 per cent of an average hotel’s revenue is generated as a result of organic search engine hits. With Google’s algorithms constantly being updated, it’s therefore imperative that hotels stay ahead of the game. 2015 saw one of the biggest changes to date, with Google implementing a mobile-friendly algorithm in April. If your website was not mobile-optimised then it was heavily affected by this change. According to BrightEdge, this resulted in a 21 per cent decrease in non-mobile-friendly URLs appearing on the first three pages of search results. If your content marketing is on point, then this should also show a boost in your SEO results. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that you’re giving your customers and potential customers what they really want and need from your website. In a world that’s inundated with media, you need to create content that can stand out from the crowd. Of course, your website needs to detail the hotel, your services and a booking system. However, if you leave it at this then you’ll quickly get lost in the noise of the internet.
Really think about what it is that your customers are looking for. It’s not just a hotel to them. They need to stay with you for a reason, and ideally you want to show that you understand this and add to that experience in some way. You need to inform and inspire the customer, and educate them not only to the benefits of your hotel but also to the destination as a whole. This means you need to create engaging content that is relevant to a variety of target audiences. If you host a lot of corporate guests, for example, you might want to give information on meetings rooms that can be hired, good restaurants nearby in case they are entertaining clients and public transport information. Alternatively, guests who are on a holiday will be much more interested in knowing about attractions they can visit nearby or any special events in the area. By providing this high-quality, up-to-date content to customers and potential customers, will feel confident in your hotel. At this point, they’re much more likely to book to stay with you rather than your competitors, and you have a better opportunity to create a lasting relationship with them.
So you know that you need to create this high-quality content, but have you thought about the format that you’ll deliver it in? If you’re creating content which has a lot of information then it’s necessary for it to be editorial based, but it doesn’t have to end there. As marketers know, consumers don’t want to read reams of information if they don’t have to, so it’s time to get creative. Infographics are a great way to share small bits of information in a more interesting way. You don’t need to include all of the information, just enough to get people interested. You can then include links through to larger web pages or brochures to give customers those more in-depth details.
The key thing that you need to focus on is drawing the customers to you in the first place. Custom graphics and illustration with just a small bit of information are brilliant for sharing on social media to catch someone’s eye. This doesn’t mean, however, that the quality of your written content can be any less. You still need to provide high-quality information to show the customer that you are knowledgeable, and also to improve your SEO results.
Google judges a website by the quality of its content, and so you need to make sure that you stay on top of this. With trends changing so quickly, you need to continuously work to create new and interesting content to ensure that you can reach the top rankings in Google and be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
