If you're a hotelier, regardless of location, you won't need us to tell you that the off-season can be pretty quiet. However, as hospitality and event management courses show us, you don't necessarily have to simply accept the fact because there are measures you can take to improve things. One particular route often proves a fruitful one - social media advertising.
Why Do Hotels Need Social Media?
Anyone who's anyone these days, irrespective of industry, will have a presence on social media. The reason? It's where everyone tends to congregate. A staggering 82.7% of Australians are active on social media to some level, so it really isn't something that ambitious hotel owners can afford to ignore.
How Can Hotels Use Social Media To Get More Guests?
Now we get to the heart of the matter and how it's done. We'll start by looking at the largest and most established platform of them all, Facebook.
Facebook Offers A Wealth Of Opportunity
As you’ll discover on most good events and hospitality courses, all you need to do is create a business profile, go live, and start running ads. There are many ways in which you can advertise your hotel on Facebook, and their algorithm can ensure your ads are laser-targeted to your ideal audience.
Facebook paid ads to include:
- Image ads
- Carousel ads
- Collection Ads
- Slideshow ads
- Instance experience ads
All this is before we even start talking about content marketing, with blogs, quizzes, testimonials, promotions and more to build interest in your establishment. Facebook advertising is a huge subject on its own, and it all starts with creating a business page - which you can find out how to do here.
Instagram – The High-Quality Video & Image Platform
The next biggest social media platform is Instagram, which, interestingly enough, is also owned by Facebook. This means that there's lots of cross-over and an ability to combine the two for marketing purposes. Known primarily for video & picture sharing, it's a space that offers much to hoteliers looking to drum up off-peak trade.
Advertising features of Instagram include:
- Live streams
- Videos
- Stories
- Boomerang
The great thing about Instagram is that it feeds into the fact that images are processed by the brain 60,000 faster than text, meaning that you can get your message over well with a high-quality video or image. Again, it starts with creating a business profile if you haven’t already, something you can find out how to do here.
Using B2B Resources Like LinkedIn
While you might think that LinkedIn wouldn't be a particularly rich hunting ground for boosting your hotel guest numbers, the truth is quite different. It's right up there in terms of regular users, with 12.75 million professionals active on the platform in Australia, and there's a variety of different ads you can run on LinkedIn that includes:
- Sponsored messaging
- Sponsored ads
- Dynamic ads
- Text ads
What you have to remember is that business people are the biggest users of hotel accommodations in the world, so you're talking about a good demographic to target for year-round business.
Along with paid ads, you can create content that illustrates why your establishment should be their chosen destination when visiting your town or city, meaning that you could find yourself with a lot more guests - all year round. To learn how to create a LinkedIn profile & company page, click here.
Boost Your Marketing Skills With Affordable Online Education
We've only touched upon a few of the biggest platforms around, but you can see the potential that exists in social media for hotel owners and managers. If you want to develop your marketing and hospitality knowledge and skills, there's no easier way to do it than with our CPD Endorsed, video-based online education that can be taken on your own terms.
Our offer an immersive experience - something you can see more closely by watching our student study demo; alternatively, by visiting our website www.onlinecoursesaustralia.edu.au you'll also find that all of our courses - our learning covers more than 20 different sectors - comes with 1-to-1 mentor support.
For information about enrollment or to speak to us about your exact training needs, simply call us on 1300 611 404 or email us at [email protected], and we'll endeavour to get back to you as soon as we can.
