From the use of sanitizers to social distancing, the hospitality industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, hotels and restaurants are adept at tackling challenging situations, with creativity and ingenuity. We’ll consider a few ways you can improve your marketing strategy in order to adapt to the post-pandemic state.
Audit Your Marketing Assets
This may be a slow period, but you can still audit your content performance. Your content assets include photos, blogs, videos, email, articles, infographics, and e-books. Just to name a few! Make sure these align with your brand, conveys the right message, and keeps up with current trends. Here are a few tangible tips:
- Evaluate each asset critically
- Consider which assets can be repurposed
- Note opportunities for optimization such as adding fresh content, adding new keywords and calls to action, and adding internal links to new services/products.
Make a “Frequently Asked Questions” Video or Plan Webinars
In the digital marketing world, webinars are all the rage. Don’t let your hotel get left behind. It’s a very effective marketing tool that you can use to do the following:
- Introduce new team members in an engaging way
- Answer FAQ’s about your hotel, including its services, highlights, and locations
- Market business-to-business applications
If developing a webinar is too daunting, you could simply create an FAQ video and blast it on all your social media channels. Alternatively, you could place an FAQ section on your hotel website.
Interview Employees and Customers
This pandemic period is a great time to collect essential data that will come in handy later. You should take the opportunity to conduct interviews with your employees, as well as your customers. This may actually be easier to do with people having more availability. Don’t worry about not being able to do face-to-face interviews. Technology has closed this gap and you can use the likes of Zoom or Google Hangouts. You can garner customer’s views on your culture, services, and products. Make sure to always record the videos (with the requisite consent of course) since these transcripts can feed into your post-pandemic marketing material.
Improve Your Online Reviews Strategy
Every business should have a robust online review strategy. If you don’t already have one, you really should have an online review policy. This is crucial also for your online reputation management. Having a process and guideline for responding to reviews gives you the opportunity to prevent and manage negative feedback. Make sure to train your staff on relevant tools, monitoring systems, and escalating to the right people.
Brand Photoshoot and Video
Have you been putting off creating your brand video or photoshoot? Well, this is a convenient time to just bite the bullet. You may have been putting it off because you were busy with customers and the day-to-day running of your hotel. Take advantage of great deals and special offers from photographers who may not have much work at this time. This will not only benefit your business but help out other professionals too.
Update Your Website
Your website is basically the face of your hotel. Perhaps your website is already your best marketing machine and doesn’t really need an update. However, there really is no perfect website and you can always find ways to tweak and optimize it. So, whether it needs fixing, updating, or an overhaul, roll up your sleeves and get started. You won’t regret it once you see more inquiries and bookings coming in post-pandemic.
The hotel industry, like most others, will bounce back eventually. There is light at the end of what’s happening right now. Focus on what you can do in the meantime, such as improving your online reputation management. Your business will spring back to life in no time.
