10 things to include in your hotel marketing budget – Hotel-Online

Stephanie Smith | October 21, 2019

Through Stephanie Smith

Now is the time to apply for funds for your 2020 hotel marketing budget.

Here are some must-have digital marketing elements to include and how to think through the process.

Note for branded hotels: make sure you understand what brand made for you, and what you need to manage at the hotel level. The brand sets aside funds for branding but usually doesn’t go out of its way to promote specific hotels. For Marriott, you have the option of opting for Marriott Digital Services. If you are a Hilton, you are automatically enrolled in Hilton Advance and can upgrade to Hilton Amplify and Elevate.

Collect reports and analyze trends

When considering what a hotel may or may not need, first consider the historical data available. Here are some high-level elements that most hotels will be able to access, whether branded or independent:

• Channel Mix – What percentage of revenue does the website generate compared to other channels? Is it an upward or downward trend?
• Traffic – Is the organic and total website trending up or down year over year?
• Paid Marketing – Look Back and Determine What Worked and What Didn’t

Here is more granularity on Hotel digital marketing KPIs

Analyze your hotel booking cycle

If you determine that your hotel has opportunities, determine where in the hotel booking cycle things break.

• Is the problem related to your comp game?
• If traffic is up, but revenue is down, do you have a conversion problem? Does it make sense to invest more in content and images or review your pricing strategies?
• How is the communication with current and past customers to ensure they come back again and again? Do your reviews reflect overall positive customer experiences?

Make sure you dedicate resources within your internal team

When developing next year’s hotel marketing plan and setting budgets, be sure to allocate both TIME and MONEY. You can’t expect a vendor to do 100% of the work. They still need information and directions and a MAP of the hotel. In the relationship between the owner, the seller and the hotel, be sure to have a “digital quarterback”. Dedicate internal resources to driving strategy, even if you outsource execution.

Make sure your plan is holistic and you need to have all the fundamentals in place before you can use it. Make sure all of your online channels tell a cohesive story that promotes your value proposition against the set of competitors. Check your warranty and see if the same story is told. And that you have a website that is fast, modern and easy to navigate. We won’t go into website costs here, but consider having a website refresh your website design every 2-3 years and stay on top of the technical components mentioned in point 5.

Where to allocate funds in your hotel marketing budget

Now to meat and potatoes from what areas to consider spending funds.

1. Conferences/Courses – Invest in your “digital quarterback” to ensure they have the tools to develop strategy, execute and hold all vendors accountable for digital presence.

$500 to $1,000 for registration plus travel

2. Contents – Having strong content is the foundation of any good website or story. Read your entire website if you haven’t in a while. If you recently underwent a renovation, now is a good time to refresh your static content. For independent hotels, dedicate resources to a good blog to connect with new audiences through search engine optimization (see #5). Budget for a content writer if needed.

Consider refreshing your static content every 2-4 years and expect to pay $0.10 to $0.30 per word.
If you need a regular blogger, expect to pay $100-250 per blog, depending on length and frequency and if SEO and topic selection are involved.

3. Pictures – Make sure you have the images to support that storytelling you’ve created in your content and your value proposition against your set of competitors. Try to have at least 4 images per room type. Focus on enhancing all dimensions of the bedroom and bathroom. Examples are shuttle, fire pits, pet friendly amenities, local demand generators and more.

$100 to $200 per image plus travel expenses. Here is more information on how to choose a hotel photographer.

4. Social Media – It looks different at every hotel. If you’re a select-service branded hotel, you may not need to invest time in regular postings (unless it’s brand standard). But, no matter the hotel, there are ways to take advantage social media advertising to align your hotel with local demand drivers and target markets as defined by sales or revenue management. Thus, you may need to devote resources to both content marketing and paid social marketing. Generally, full-service hotels or hotels with more meeting space and outlets will need higher budgets.

$300-$1,500/month for publishing depending on number of channels, volume of engagement to be met, and goals. $100-$1,000/month for social media advertising to target demand generators, specific markets, and remarketing.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – There are different tactics to get your hotel ranked on Google. Most people tend to focus only on the keywords used, and while relevant, that’s just part of the effort. This is considered on-site optimization, but consider other components. The operations team should focus on Google reviews, the sales team should focus on getting the hotel site listed on demand-generating websites (off-site optimization), and you should ensure that the technical aspects of your website are in place. Your website should be fast, have a schema and good interconnection as a base.

You can hire companies that do SEO only or can be part of your website developer or agency services.

6. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Consider SEM if you are not ranking well for your niche keywords. In some scenarios, a hotel’s physical address may prevent it from competing in sister markets organically on Google, so you have to “pay to play”. If your budget is limited, start with niche keywords where you are most likely to convert with the lowest competition. Also get a report on your feeder cities to further your research. Those who buy non-branded terms, remember that these people are in the early stages of research, so consider this if you wouldn’t otherwise be part of their consideration set.

$500-$5,000/month for Google and Bing Ads PPC, but varies widely depending on keywords, market and strategy complexity, and funds for agency management.

seven. Expedia Travel Ads – It’s like a tap that you can open higher during the slower season to steal market share. Then lower or turn off in high season. This traffic is usually further along in the booking cycle and tends to drive higher conversions. You can target windows (weekdays vs. weekends, indoor/outdoor 21 days). Actively managing your scheduled ads and your target windows against the CPC sweet spot will yield the best return on investment. Before running them, make sure you have optimized your OTA ads.

$20 to $40 per day is a good starting point for low season but varies by market and hotel size. E-mail [email protected] ask your Expedia Travel Ads Manager and they can advise you on your region.

8. Metasearch – These are sites like TripAdvisor, Google Hotel Ads, Kayak and Trivago. Participating in metasearch does not increase your placement on any of these sites, but allows the transaction from these sites within your own listing to go directly to your website. Participate here if your channel mix has a strong OTA dependency.

$200 to $1,000 per month, depending on the size of your opportunity to switch jobs. IHG and Marriott both use Kodias a partner and can give you 3 levels of budget recommendations based on your level of aggression. E-mail [email protected] for more details.

9. Advertising by e-mail – Hard to do as a branded hotel, but a MUST for independent hotels. If you don’t have a database, make sure your website collects them and all other systems like your PMS and CRS can collect them according to GDPR rules.

For bootstrap email marketing you can use MailChimp Where I contact but ownership of the design and execution rests with the hotel team. For independent hotels, systems like revitalize enable automated eblasts to dynamic lists and integrate with PMS.

ten. Partner sites – Dedicate resources to partner sites. Some partner sites may have databases aligned with your target market and accessing them should be part of your strategy. Partner sites could be your CVB, Chamber, Cvent, FedRooms, marriage sites, and pet-friendly sites, to name a few. Most brands and all independent hotels should be able to see the traffic and production of these partner sites by looking at the domains referring to the website.

Each website has its own advertising options (sometimes free!), so contact them individually.

This list is not exhaustive and is practically endless for an independent hotel. It doesn’t include the tools you might need for reputation management or posting to multiple social media channels. Choose partners who know the intricacies of the hospitality and hospitality industry.

The hotel marketing plan and costing should be a joint effort between marketing, sales, operations and revenue management. If you establish the hotel’s marketing budget when working on the marketing plan, you can determine which segments have opportunities and create a marketing plan broken down by month that includes events, trends, and seasonality.