Accommodation Marketing
As a holiday accommodation owner, you will appreciate how an effective marketing strategy is central to your accommodation business plan. Yes, you can have a wonderful hotel, guest house or self catering property, but if nobody knows you exist then you don’t have a business. There are lots of different ways that you can market your accommodation, and a variety of media to use, such as magazine advertising, leaflets, signage and word of mouth. However, the biggest and most important medium to use when marketing your hotel is the internet. By a long, long way. So many people use the internet to find holiday accommodation these days, that if you decide to advertise only on the internet and nowhere else, you will do just fine.
Advertising Accommodation OnlineInternet marketing is in itself a huge topic. Here is a very simple outline of what an online accommodation marketing strategy might look like:
- Get a great website
- Optimise your website to get traffic from search engines (SEO)
- Buy paid advertising from search engines (PPC)
- Buy advertising on other websites and directories
- Create a blog or other content on your website
- Participate in social media (Facebook and Twitter)
- Email marketing
Internet marketing for your accommodation can easily turn into a full time job and can quickly become expensive, even for a small guest house or pub with rooms. Still, if you would like to give it a go, we would recommend this Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing pdf.
Successful Accommodation AdvertisingInternet marketing, like traditional marketing, is often hard to measure. Yes you will know how many people looked at your website, but what exactly was it that you did that made them able to find your website? Was it the 3 hours that you spent creating written content or was it the 5 directory links that you created that boosted your website to the top of Google for that particular phrase? Out of the 20 people who looked at your website yesterday, do you know for sure how many of them booked a stay?
If you really want to measure your return on investment, this can be done by advertising with one or more of the major accommodation directory websites such as iknow. Buying an advert on iknow allows you to access statistics detailing exactly how many people viewed your advert, how many of these people phoned you, emailed you, clicked through to your website and booked online. Then will some simple maths you can work out how much return on investment your advert is generating.
Free Accommodation AdvertisingHere at iknow, we are currently offering free trials of accommodation adverts. This means that you can guarantee that your advertising will provide a suitable return on investment before you spend any money. Our team of expert internet copywriters will create you a full page advert to your exact specification, which includes loads of pictures and contact details. We will be happy to amend your advert as often as you like for free.
If you discover that your advert would pay for itself, then great! You can pay to keep it on the site. Or if you decide that it’s not working for you, just let us know and we will remove it with no cost or obligation to pay anything. It’s that simple.
Advertising Accommodation Online without a WebsiteProfessional websites can cost as little as a couple of hundred pounds and are a worthwhile investment for any type of holiday accommodation. However, we understand that if you have a small business such as a guest house or holiday cottage, this can be difficult to afford. That’s why you will have no problem advertising on the internet with iknow, whether you have a website or not.
Even if you don’t yet have a website, you can still have a fully functional advert on iknow, the only difference is that guests can contact you by phone or email instead of being transferred to your website. On iknow you get several pages about your property and these can function as your own website would. If someone types the name of your accommodation into Google, they could see your page on iknow instead of your own website.
Advertising Unusual AccommodationIf you run a hotel, advertising online is fairly simple. There are lots of websites specialising in hotels that can be booked online. But what about niche holiday properties like lighthouses, windmills, camping pods, restaurants with rooms or houseboats? At iknow we love unusual accommodation types and often give them extra attention as we like to promote quirky and exciting holidays to tourists in our email newsletters and with social media like Facebook and Twitter.
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