DO'S & DON'TS in Digital Marketing

Keeping up with the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing can feel like traversing a maze without a map. Yet, when the right strategies are in place, businesses can unlock boundless opportunities to engage and captivate their audience. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes into the digital waters, understanding the fundamental principles is paramount. In this comprehensive article, we'll unveil 15 crucial DO'S and 15 critical DON'TS to steer your digital marketing endeavors toward success, helping you harness the power of online platforms to propel your brand forward.

  1. Optimize for mobile: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and provides a seamless experience across all devices thanks to an adaptative web design as 70% of research is now done on mobile.
  2. Leverage social media: Engage with your audience on platforms like Meta (Instagram, Facebook) to showcase your hotel's unique features and attract potential guests through organic posts, reels, and stories. Including Paid social in your digital marketing strategy can also boost your visibility and tap into a qualified pool of travelers.
  3. Invest in quality visuals: Use high-resolution images and videos to showcase your hotel's amenities, rooms, and surrounding area to entice potential guests. Utilizing high-quality images (especially videos) greatly improves the user experience and drives direct bookings on your website. So, favor photos and videos taken by a professional.
  4. Convey unique and impactful storytelling: Tell your story and what makes your hotel unique. Your web and ad content should support your images in transmitting emotions with clear, precise, positive, and impactful speech. Your storytelling must be well-written and highlight your establishment while connecting with your audiences.
  5. Utilize email marketing: Build and maintain an email list to send targeted promotions, special offers, and newsletters to past and potential guests, based on your CRM data and customer behaviors. Thoughtful email campaigns can help attract new guests and build loyalty to encourage repeat bookings.
  6. Create a content calendar: Creating a content calendar ensures consistency in your digital marketing efforts by planning and scheduling content in advance. It helps you stay organized, maintain a strategic focus, and align your content with your marketing goals. Additionally, a content calendar allows for better collaboration among team members and provides a clear roadmap for content creation, ultimately saving time and maximizing the impact of your efforts.
  7. Use retargeting: Retarget previous website visitors or those with abandoned carts. By pairing these individuals, based on their past actions, with hyper-targeted offers you’ll increase the likelihood of conversion, improve brand recall, and maximize the efficiency of your advertising budget. Bonus: you can easily set this up in your CRM as automated emails with personalization.
  8. Offer a seamless booking journey: Less is more. Make it easy for guests to book directly through your website by providing an intuitive, user-centric booking interface, with visible “Book” call-to-actions and a sleek design, otherwise you will lose direct bookings.
  9. Encourage reviews: Entice satisfied guests to leave positive reviews on platforms like Tripadvisor, Google, and Yelp to build trust and credibility. In 2023, as 92% of consumers looked at reviews before buying a good or service.
  10. Personalize content: Tailor your marketing messages and offers based on guest preferences and past interactions to create a more personalized experience. You can leverage CRM data integrated with a digital marketing platform to elevate your advertising efforts and optimize your campaigns.
  11. Incentivize direct bookings: Along with competitive rates, offer additional benefits for direct bookings, such as free breakfast, or discounts on spa services. Highlight these special offers and make sure they are clearly visible on the reservations page.
  12. Boost your visibility with paid search: Implement paid search campaigns such as Google Search Ads and launch brand protection campaigns to seize the top spot on search engine result pages, protect your brand name against competitors and OTAs, and reclaim direct bookings. You can now launch Google Search Ads in Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform in a few clicks, alongside your other campaign types.
  13. Track KPIs: Monitor metrics like booking conversion rates, website traffic, and ROI to measure the success of your marketing efforts, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy for better results.
  14. Launch Google Performance Max for travel goals campaigns: Capitalize on Google’s machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase your visibility and reach a qualified audience on all Google surfaces for better conversion rates. This type of campaign allows you to rapidly gain media coverage and increase your visibility on all Google platforms, in addition to your other automated or manual campaigns.
  15. Appear on metasearch: Metasearch engines are used by 72% of travelers preparing their trips. Posting your rates on metasearch will give you greater visibility and increase direct bookings on your hotel’s website by up to 30%!

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