For hotels, the first priority in online marketing is to make sure travelers find you when planning trips. That?s become increasingly challenging in the realm of paid search, where online travel agencies, big brands and now Google Hotel Finder dominate results, driving costs up and organic results down.
Why even try to compete? Instead, shift resources to where you?ll get a bigger bang for your buck: owned and earned media.
Paid vs. Owned and Earned Media
Whereas paid media is purchased content like cost-per-click and display advertising, owned media is content you own on platforms you control: your website, social profiles and listings on third-party sites like TripAdvisor, Google Places and OTAs.
Earned media is user-generated content (UGC), or content your guests and other third parties post about your business. It includes reviews and ratings, blogs, media articles, photos, videos and social endorsements like pluses, shares and likes.
Unlike paid and owned media, you can?t control earned media, but it?s more influential because consumers trust the opinions of other consumers more than any other advertising source. (Nielsen?s?Global Trust in Advertising?survey, 2012).
Plus it?s free. Well, almost. To maximize reach and impact you must incorporate earned media into marketing strategy.
But first, how to generate earned media? Above all, it?s cultivated on property, in that fertile ground between guest expectations and results. Simply put, pleasant surprises generate positive reviews, social endorsements and visual content sharing. Then it?s a matter of leveraging the power of this content on the social Web.
The Social Website
Don?t let Facebook and Twitter distract you too much; your website remains the primary platform for promoting your hotel online. But to maximize effectiveness it must become a living, breathing, social entity that integrates fresh, local content with user and expert content.
In addition to social icons and widgets, many brands now feature a review feed on their website. Why compromise this last bastion of control with raw, unedited guest feedback? Because it increases conversions?even when reviews are less than glowing. Travelers aren?t seeking perfection, they?re seeking the truth. And if they can?t find it on your website they?ll look elsewhere.
It?s not just the quality of reviews that?s important. Travelers and algorithms, including TripAdvisor?s popularity index, lend greater weight to a high volume of recent reviews. This has ignited an arms race in the hotel industry to stockpile reviews.
And don?t overlook the other type of earned media travel planners seek: expert content. Post or link to the latest media articles and blog posts that mention your hotel, and include travel journalists, bloggers and influencers in social networking activity.
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Source: Daniel Edward Craig (2013). Trends in Hotel Marketing: Social Search, Utility Marketing
and Converged Media, Hotel Online?http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2013_2nd/Apr13_HotelMarketingTrends.html published Apr 23, 2013. Viewed Apr 24, 2013,