The need to drive to direct bookings for your hotel is now more important than ever before due to factors like increased competition in the market and with OTAs. In order to be successful, it is essential to have a well-defined digital marketing strategy for your hotel. In today’s fast-paced digital marketing environment, it can be a struggle to keep up with all of the latest industry trends and best practices. When it comes to hotels, this can be especially challenging to manage in addition to everything else happening at the front lines of the property. This is why we recommend finding the right hotel digital marketing agency to best meet the needs of your specific hotel and property.
1. Know Your Hotel’s Marketing Objectives
It is essential to have a good understanding of what your hotel’s business and marketing objectives are before vetting any potential hotel marketing agencies. This could be anything from increasing direct online bookings to generating more web traffic or driving wedding RFPs. With a solid understanding of your hotel’s digital marketing objectives, you can hone in on the types of services you are looking for and be prepared to ask the right questions. If you have an in-house marketing team, this could be a good opportunity to decide what can be handled internally and what needs to be outsourced to an agency. Knowing your business objectives will help guide you in your search for the best digital marketing agency.
2. Determine Your Hotel’s Marketing Budget
Understanding your hotel’s marketing budget is another important piece of the puzzle when choosing the right digital marketing agency for your hotel. While the cost should be a determining factor when selecting the right agency, you should not just go with whatever option is the cheapest. Agencies with higher prices tend to have more time to dedicate to your account and are much more hands-on. Instead of getting too hung up on price, focus on the value and make sure that your budget will align with the services you need to achieve your hotel’s marketing objectives. At the end of the day, choosing your digital marketing agency is an investment and you want to ensure that you’re investing in an agency that will help you achieve your hotel’s marketing goals.
3. Review the Hotel Digital Marketing Agency’s Website
Reviewing a hotel digital marketing agency’s website is a great way to evaluate their work, expertise and weed out any companies that might not be a good fit. As you review their site, it is important to take a step back and think like a user… does their site have intuitive navigation and calls to action? Does the site look and feel modern? While you’re at it, review their blog and make sure that they keep up with regular blog posts and that they are staying on top of the latest digital marketing trends. While there are many reasons why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, in this instance, it may actually benefit you to do so.
4. Find a Hotel Marketing Agency with the Right Experience & Culture
In a lot of ways, choosing a digital marketing agency for your hotel is like adding a new member to your team. You want to make sure they have the right experience and culture fit to help you achieve your digital marketing goals. This is especially important for the hospitality industry since it is unique in so many ways. The last thing you want to do is sign a contract with a digital agency that knows nothing about hotels or hospitality since you might miss out on industry insights and best practices. Instead, you want a team that speaks the same language and has a proven track record of helping their hospitality clients achieve their goals and KPI’s.
While finding the perfect digital marketing agency for your hotel may seem like a daunting task, it does not have to be difficult or stressful. The right full-service digital marketing agency will be focused on understanding your hotel’s needs and objectives and developing strategies to help achieve the best return on investment for your efforts.
If you want to learn more about working with GCommerce to see if we would be a good fit for your hotel, feel free to reach out to us directly by connecting with us