Most marketers now know the importance of creating content to help promote their hotel brand. But is your content strategy working well enough for you? Are you engaging and converting guests as well as achieving better customer satisfaction?If you’re not sure, read on as we take a look at how to create an effective content strategy that produces the right content at the right time for travellers. Different content for different stages The important thing about content creation is that you need to see things from your target audience’s point of view in order to recognise what they want to be reading.
For travel, there are typically a number of different stages to cater for:
1.Inspiration Someone might have heard about the wonderful holiday their friend from the office has just been on, or be feeling fed up with their everyday life and keen to daydream about far-flung locations. This is when you can capture them with inspirational content. Have plenty of professional photos taken of your property and publish them prominently on your website, then share them on sites like Instagram. You want to make people almost envious of what you have and eager to go on to seriously considering booking a holiday.
2.Research People at this stage know they’re going away, but they just aren’t sure exactly where and haven’t sorted out any details yet. Your hotel can draw them in by providing plenty of written information about the benefits of staying with you in your resort. This can be in the form of landing pages or evergreen articles on things like what to do in the local area, how to travel around the town or city and top five must-see attractions. You can also explain your facilities and unique selling points. Remember that the key tone here should be persuasive – you want would-be guests to become paying customers.
3.In-stay requirements You’ve achieved your goal, convinced someone to make a reservation and the time has come for them to check in. However, your responsibility as an effective content creator doesn’t stop there; you want to dazzle them with your customer service and be as useful as possible. You can do this by offering content including restaurant recommendations, guides to where to shop and tourist information on sightseeing, among other invaluable tips. Remember that tourists are now carrying smartphones more than ever and expect to be able to look things up ‘in-destination’ as well as before they go.Time-sensitive contentAs well as evergreen material, you should also keep on top of local news and happenings in your vicinity, as blog posts of this type could provide the impetus someone needs to book a stay with you over your competitors. You can include special offers under this category too.
Content promotion Finally, once you’ve created your fantastic and relevant content, you need to promote it. Always add calls to action to things like articles and blog posts and optimise them for search engines using tools such as title tags, meta tags, keywords and links. Hashtags and links for social media shouledn’t be forgotten either, as they allow internet users to find you.With an effective content strategy, you could become a thought leader in your field as well as helping your brand to come alive in front of your target audience – what’s not to like about that?
To check out a great hotel internet marketing solution, visit the World Hotel Marketing website.
