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Free Hotel Marketing

Your hotel isn't as full as you would like, but you have little or no budget left for marketing. Does this sound familiar? Don't worry. There are several ways that you can market your hotel for free, and if you aren't doing them already then you should definitely give them a go. What have you got to lose?

Improve Your Hotel Website for Free

Giving your website a radical overhaul is likely to be costly, but if you spend just a couple of hours sprucing it up you could see the conversion rate from "lookers" to "bookers" increase overnight. If your website has a Content Management System (CMS) then you can make all these changes yourself and you won't need to bother (or pay) your web designer.

  • Photos. People will decide if they like your hotel in seconds based on your photos, so you'd better make them good ones. If they aren't amazing, replace them. If there's a cloudy sky in exterior shots, the next time it's sunny you should be outside with your camera taking new pictures. The next time it snows, take some photos of your hotel looking like a winter wonderland and add them to your website at the right time of year.
  • Make Sure Everything is Up To Date. If your website mentions Christmas Dinner but its February, this is going to turn people off. An out of date website gives the impression that you don't care. And if people think that you don't care about your website, why would they think that you care about the cleanliness of the rooms or the quality of the food?
  • Promote Your Deals. If you have special offers, shout about them. Put them on your homepages as well as on any other page that they fit. Remember that people could enter your website on any page, and you don't want them to miss your offers.
Get Visitors from Google for Free

It's all very well having a great website that encourages people to stay at your hotel, as long as you have enough people visiting the website! Attracting people to your website from Google is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). There are lots of SEO agencies out there who can optimise your website to get visitors from Google, but it can be costly. However, there are some things that you can do yourself to get visitors from Google for free...

Get Your Hotel on Google Local

This will enable your hotel to be found on Local Search results on both Google Search and Google Maps. To see what this looks like, type a phrase like "London hotels" into Google. The hotels with the red pins next to them haven't paid to be there, they just listed themselves on Google Local.

If there are more than 7 or 8 hotels in your areas then you're not guaranteed to be featured on Google Local, but there are two important things that you can do to make it much more likely that Google picks you:

  • Verify Your Google Local Listing. This usually involves Google sending you a postcard which you fill in and send back to them. This proves that your hotel is at the address that you say it is.
  • Put Your Address on Your Website. This proves to Google that your website matches the hotel they have an address on file for. Don't just put the address on a "Contact Us" page as Google could easily miss it! Put it in the footer of every page, including the homepage.

Google will never charge you for appearing on Google Local, and it could get you loads of visitors to your website for free. To add your hotel to Google Local, just go to www.google.co.uk/placesforbusiness.

Free Hotel Advertising

There are several websites that offer free advertising for hotels. But remember, if something is too good to be true then it probably is. Why are the advertisements free? Why do these websites not sell them? The answer is probably because the websites get very few visitors and the adverts are poor quality so nobody would pay for them. These websites usually make their money in other ways, such as Google Ads for which they get a few pence each time someone clicks one and leaves their site.

However, it is possible to get a free trail on a quality hotel directory website which generates millions of bookings per year. Here at iknow, we offer free trails on our website. Our team of expert copywriters will create you a fantastic free advert, complete with photos, a map and a link to your hotel website. If the free trial makes you think that the advert isn't going to generate so many bookings that a paid version would pay for itself, just let us know and we will take it off with no cost and no obligation.

So the trial advert is free, and if it works then you can start paying to keep it, safe in the knowledge that it will generate you more money in bookings that what you're paying out. Sorted.

Use Social Media to Market Your Hotel for Free

Social media is so hot right now in the hotel marketing world. If you don't have a Facebook page and a Twitter Account for your hotel, you're getting left behind. And don't just set up the pages and leave them, to benefit from social media you need to interact with your guests.

Whilst large hotel chains will employ full time staff to manage their social media accounts, if you only have one hotel, you should be able to do this in your spare time for free. If you're going to be on Facebook and Twitter anyway, just log with your hotel account too and interact with your guests. Here are some ideas for how to promote your hotel with social media:

  • Promote Your Last Minute Deals. The great thing about social media is that you can interact with your guests in real time. If you're going to have lots of empty rooms this weekend, tell people on Twitter and Facebook that rooms are half price this weekend only as a special deal for Facebook fans / Twitter followers. And there you go, extra bookings, for free.
  • Provide a Concierge Service on Twitter. A "virtual concierge" service enables guests to ask questions before they get to the hotel or whilst they are out exploring. If you notice anyone mentioning your hotel on Twitter, you could Tweet them to let them know that you are there if you need anything. This kind of personal attention will make people remember your hotel and encourage repeat bookings.
  • Promote Events. If there are events happening near your hotel, use social media to tell people about them and suggest that they stay at your hotel when they're in town. Use hashtags on twitter with the name of the event (e.g. #londonmarathon) and people searching for it will see your tweet about the hotel. Combine this with a cheap deal on rooms and you could get some extra bookings, for free!
Email Marketing for Hotels

There are many ways to capture the email addresses of your guests when they come to stay at your hotel, including when they book online or on a paper form that they fill in when they check in. As long as you include a box to tick if they do not want to be contacted in future, you can then use these emails to contact your guests and gain repeat business.

Email marketing is a good way to promote your hotel for free. Just be sure that you don't spam your guests too much or you will turn them off instead of encouraging them to stay again. Don't send too many emails, and make sure that the emails that you do send are really worth reading. Including your special offers in emails is a great way to get your emails read, and get guests coming back for more.

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