What are the greatest digital marketing trends for hotels in 2020? How hotels can see the new horizon of success with marketing in this digital world?
Well, that’s what we are discussing today.
Technology is making distances shorter. It is connecting people from different countries and cultures so that nothing is out of reach.
You can take it as if approx every person on the planet is within a hailing distance.
Information transfer is so easy in this digital world and it certainly opens new possibilities for hotel marketers.
If we want a positively curved sales graph then we will have to possess reforming thinking.
It is not just about digital marketing but it is about the overall marketing campaign as a whole. Our outdated approach will limit our brand expansion and guest acquisition.
And if we are not on our toes for digital marketing then it will be become obsolete and will not bring the results that we want.
So let us check out some of the digital marketing trends that we are going to witness 2020.
1) Data-Driven Marketing
Data-Driven Marketing means taking marketing steps after gathering and analyzing the customer’s data. And it is so much of a trendsetter.
As we know it is often said that data is the new fuel, this statement is justified by its value.
With the help of the proper interpretation of data, we can ensure a successful campaign.
Data allows you to customize and personalize your marketing efforts like advertising. When you understand your customer base or who are your potential customer you can target them more precisely.
This will give you better chances of generating more bookings.
2) AI-based Advertizing
AI systems are now implemented in marketing and advertising and they are pretty fruitful too.
Basically, they are used to manage the sale and purchase of advertising on various platforms.
The AI decides how your ad budget is spent and who will see your ad in order to get the maximum possible conversions. It spends your budget and analyzes the results data and learns which action bought the better result.
So if you are a hotel marketer then AI can give a boost in the bookings at a reduced cost.
3) The new way of SEO
Search engines like Google are trying to show more and more accurate results in their SERPs. The BERT update of google was evidence that the search engines are now more user optimized.
And still, the content will dominate the SEO. So in order to perform well on search results pages, you will have to generate a quality and focussed content.
We also know about the mobile-first approach of the search engines. So you will have to work on the mobile UI of your hotel website.
Your website should offer a neat and user-friendly interface when accessed from a mobile device. This will give your ranking a boost.
4) Voice Searches
Apart from the SEO, we will also have to take care of voice searches too. The dawn of smart devices has given rise to voice searches.
For normal searches, the user writes his query so we optimize our website for keywords and key phrases.
But the question is how we can optimize for voice searches.
Things start from the keyword research only in voice searches also.
But we will have to be more answering in our content. Try to map questions in your content.
Then we also have to optimize the website for more speed and mobile-friendly experience.
5) Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel Marketing is all about providing product information and purchase opportunity at every business-customer touchpoint on all over the web.
It is a sales approach providing the user an integrated purchase opportunity. So that the customer can make the purchase from any point on the internet.
Omnichannel is a customer-centric approach that ensures the customer gets a unified experience on all the channels.
This approach is also governed by data. You will have to collect the data from all possible sources and optimize the interaction on the customer with your hotel on these platforms.
With the help of the collected data, you will have to make buyers personas.
That simply means that you will have to segregate your customers on the basis of their location, age, and other preferences so that we can provide them with a personalized experience.
6) PWA and Push Notifications
A Progressive Web App (PWA) uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. In the progressive web apps, you can access the content that you have already explored in online mode.
So more you explore the website through the app more you to explore in offline mode.
Web apps are websites that, in many ways, look and feel like native applications with push notifications.
The Progressive Web Application is fast compared to the website and supports push notification.
With the use of this feature, the website works faster on a slower internet connection. Due to the faster performance, user engagement increases on the website and results in a very high conversion rate.
7) User data security
User is data is so valuable that there is always a threat of its stealing.
In late 2018, there was an announcement from the Marriott hotel chain that there was an attack on one of its reservation systems. In the attack, the attackers withdraw hundreds of millions of customer records, including credit card and passport numbers.
The attack was on Marriot’s Starwood property’s system back in 2014.
This was detrimental for the brand and catastrophic for the guests. Hence you must work on your cybersecurity.
We know that with the current pace technology is going to take us to a different dimension to hotel marketing. And we will have to be absorbent enough to take its advantage.
So these were some of the digital marketing trends in 2020.
I will wait for your suggestions and responses with the hope that you enjoyed the read.