Marketing strategies for the Hospitality Sector
Marketing within the hospitality sector is a full-time job. If you’re opening a new sector or looking at relaunching a current business, your marketing strategies and efforts are valuable to its success.
Marketing in the hospitality sector serves as the vibrant heartbeat that brings hotels, restaurants, and travel experiences to life! It creates a captivating narrative around a brand, showcasing unique offerings and experiences that entice guests to embark on their next adventure.
Through its strategic efforts, marketing builds brand awareness, engages customers via social media, and showcases the stories behind the service – whether that's a chef's secret recipe or a hotel's stunning beachfront view. It drives bookings through targeted promotions and personalized experiences while harnessing the power of captivating visuals and word-of-mouth to draw in both locals and travelers alike.
Ultimately, marketing transforms ordinary stays and meals into unforgettable experiences, all while helping hospitality businesses thrive in a competitive market. So, whether it’s a cheeky social media campaign or an irresistible special offer, marketing ensures that fun and fantastic experiences are always just a click away!
What is Expected from ‘Typical’ Hospitality Marketing?
Indeed, hospitality marketing heavily relies on location, word of mouth and Google my Business Profile (GMB) which can be created through google when verifying that your company is a LIVE establishment. It is quite common for hospitality sectors to not invest in these areas as formal marketing. This is why 30% of hospitality sectors fail within the first year of opening their establishment.
However, the companies that do invest in formal marketing routes would typically go down the following:
⭐ Having 1-2 social media accounts active: Social media can help you launch your brand out of no-where. It creates brand exposure that customers can find organically or with spending behind each post.
⭐ Handing out leaflets/flyings: Handing out leaflets and flyers allows startups to effectively reach their target audience, increase brand awareness, and promote special offers, all while fostering a personal connection that can drive potential customers to engage with their products or services.
⭐ Investing in WiFi marketing via Guest Login: Investing in WiFi marketing can enhance customer engagement and loyalty by providing businesses with valuable insights into consumer behavior, allowing for targeted promotions and improved customer experiences.
⭐ Running email marketing campaigns: Running email marketing campaigns supercharge customer engagement, boost sales, and foster brand loyalty by delivering targeted, personalized content straight to your audience's inbox.
⭐ Geo-targeting push notifications when customers are in a nearby proximity: Geo-targeting push notifications activates the power of immediacy, allowing businesses to engage potential customers with personalized offers and timely updates when they're just a stone's throw away, transforming fleeting moments into impactful purchasing decisions.
⭐ Loyalty Card Programmes: Loyalty card programmes are a big deal for new hospitality sectors. They are a fantastic way to build customer relations, making them feel more than just a number. It creates a meaningful brand experience which will give you that competitive edge against other brands on the highstreet.
When you're looking at marketing strategies for your hospitality sector, it is usually down to what best suits your company. You’ll need to take into consideration what marketing ideas best suit your branding, as well as what the target audience wants. Due to this, you might see a lot of varied versions of the ‘typical’ way to market your hospitality sector. However those popular strategies will change depending on the business and could be best when mixed and matched.
Let’s put it into Practice!
Although we could show you the expected ways to start marketing your hospitality sector, there is a big question that still remains. This is ‘how to put it into practice’ - so let’s get into it!
📍 Location Marketing
We have our toes and fingers crossed that it’s not too late for you to reconsider your company location. Before committing to a property, make sure you analyze this before agreeing to contracts. The location of your new establishment can be a make or break to your business.
A large majority of hospitality sectors that are successful usually pick a great location for their customer base. Although a striking view is a lovely incentive to have, a restaurant's location makes much more sense. The location not only influences the need for success but the longevity of your business.
When producing your Google Business Profile (GBP), it’s worth a strong location for Google maps. GBP pushes hospitality sectors using a location-based searching engine tool. It also allows customers to leave reviews of your establishment, helping your company's SEO (search engine optimization), bringing you further up in the ranking when Google pushes companies - so it’s an all around winner!
🛜 WiFi Marketing
Did you know that 74% of customers want WiFi when visiting a hospitality sector. A large percentage of your customers are already expecting this from your business. Therefore creating the opportunity to keep loyal customers happy. However, to reach this demand you must consider a secure WiFi network.
We always advise businesses investing in WiFi Marketing. This is when you create a separate WiFi portal for your customers to access. This would usually be called ‘guest WiFi’ upon accessing the network. For customers to access your guest network, it would usually create a web page pop up form requesting information of the customer in exchange for free access.
Once the customer has complied with the form, they will then gain full WiFi access during their hospitality visit. It is a very simple yet effective way of obtaining customer information with low effort from your business. Considering the demand for WiFi is so high in our day and age, it’s a no brainer.
You can also take this datapool that you’ve collected through WiFi and put it into a separate campaign. This can be transferred to the relevant email marketing tool of your choice. Therefore creating show-stopping campaigns landing straight into the inbox of your email recipients.
Correlating customer data through WiFi is amazing because it allows your company to build a backlog of recipients to utilize for campaigns. You can also use this data to create an SMS campaign without the worry of sourcing contacts. Overall, the data you collect can only be used beneficially to your hospitality sector!
🚚 Social Media Marketing
Creating an online presence is a brilliant way to push brand awareness whilst attracting new customers to your establishment. Social media marketing is an unscratched surface, beaming with opportunity. There is so much potential, this is why we insist that you tap into your best marketing efforts to unleash the full potential of this growth platform. Whether this is through creating captivating posts, show-stopping reels or everlasting partnerships, it is a whole next way to put yourself into your audiences fingertips.
We would advise selected 2 social media platforms to utilize to your company's full advantage. Ideally, it would be where your target audience deems to ‘hang-out’. Facebook and Instagram allow for equal opportunity if you’re wanting to target the younger to middle-aged demographic. With the correct social management tools, you can sync posts across your platforms, meaning no posts go unmissed!
Luckily, social media isn’t used just to attract new customers but to sustain your current loyal customer base. Social media keeps viewers in the loop of your company's activities, from new deals to new events. Running these accounts allows your company to continue to build strong brand messaging and character online.
🎉 Event Marketing
This type of marketing across the hospitality sector is a stand-out strategy. Showcasing upcoming events creates temptation for current and new customers. It catches their eye upon browsing and re-attracts them back to your business.
Event marketing helps boost brand awareness and increase company revenue if it is a ticketed event. Therefore also opening new avenues for other marketing strategies to be introduced. This can be showcased across your socials, email marketing opportunity and even sign-posting app for when customers come and visit you.
You can run events on any avenue you see fit. Whether this is for seasonal holidays such as Easter, Christmas or Halloween. It can also be events just surrounding your venue such as wine tasting evenings, quiz night and more!
The type of events you run are solely dependent on the type of brand you run. However, for the hospitality sector, event marketing is one of the best forms of marketing that they can do. Creating fun and exciting events to get people out of their home-environment and out to your for the evening!
The Benefits of Investing into my Hospitality's Marketing Plan
There are many reasons as to why you should invest into your company's marketing plan. However, let’s run you through the top 3 things you’d notice amongst those hospitality sectors that invest into this area already.
⬆️ Marketing Boosts your Overall Guest Experience
An often overlooked advantage to this is that the company improves their guest overall experience. An example of this is through WiFi Marketing. Due to our economy relying so heavily on WiFi day to day, having this available as a guest network is already meeting their expectations.
Due to the Wifi being on a separate network to the companies main staff WiFi, it makes the overall portal much more secure. As the guest network is for visitors, it will remain at good quality with speedy connection due to that network being available for mass logins at one time. Having this alone is already improving your customers' overall experience!
🚀 Brand Growth
Who doesn’t want to grow their business! Being able to grow your business is one of your top priorities, which also means having increased revenue to your business.
The higher volume of customers means the more income. The more income, means the more finance you can reinvest into your business enabling continued growth.
Who doesn’t want business growth? Growing your business is a top highlight, and it means increasing profit, too.
👂🏼 Getting Customers Opinion
Your customer's opinion is vital for long-term business success. Their opinions help you to target the right individuals for future motives. This is essential to building loyal customers and growing your current customer base.
Being able to do in-store customer profiling is a huge benefit at kyco. Usually, we advise clients to ask their customers a series of questions which allows them to really understand who they’re selling to.
Let’s get you set up!
Now you understand all the basics that you need to prioritize, we’re eager to get you set up! At kyco, we make it quick and easy for you. We take our time to learn and understand each of our individual clients. Allowing us to fully understand their brand and everything they stand for. Get in contact today to go through all of your options and to fully understand all of the things that kyco has to offer.
