Hotel Influencer Marketing & 7 Tips for making your campaigns effective
Content marketing is an essential component of any successful hotel direct marketing strategy. As one of Thailand’s leading digital marketing agencies, specializing in the hospitality industry, we understand the importance of creating compelling and engaging content to attract and retain your guests. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll explore a few effective content marketing strategies tailored specifically for hotels, covering everything from content creation to distribution and measurement. Let’s dive in!
As one of the leading hotel digital marketing agencies in Thailand, we often get asked about Influencer marketing. We have had a lot of success marketing hotels online in the last 20 years, and firmly believe that to be sustainably successful, a hotel needs to take an omni-channel approach to digital marketing and Influencer marketing is undoubtedly one of those elements.
The hotel booking process is now more fragmented than ever, with potential guests often having multiple touch-points with the hotel’s digital profiles prior to booking. Given that hotel bookings are often emotion led purchases, Influencer marketing, provided the right audience and environment, can help grow your audience significantly.
In this article, we will look at the potential impact of Influencer marketing for your hotel along with some top tips for how you can get started in this space:
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves partnering with individuals who have a significant following and influence over others on social media platforms and are able to leverage their audience to promote your products or services. In the hospitality industry, collaborating with travel influencers, food bloggers, and lifestyle vloggers can help your hotel drive awareness, reach new audiences and generate a buzz around your offerings.
What are the potential benefits of using Influencer Marketing for your hotel
Influencer marketing in the hospitality industry, if properly executed, can be a highly effective strategy for reaching and engaging with your target audience as booking a hotel can be an emotionally led decision. Remember many people save money all year for 1 annual vacation, so if your influencer campaigns can tap into that lifestyle, it can help drive significant engagement.
Here are some of the key benefits of properly executed Influencer campaigns based on our past experiences:
- Creates Increased Reach & Exposure for your brand: Influencer marketing allows your hotel to tap into the large and engaged followings of relevant influencers, thereby extending your reach to new and potentially lucrative audiences. If you want to drive awareness within a certain segment of guests, influencer collaborations can certainly result in greater brand exposure which can potentially convert to sales going forward.
- Gives your campaigns enhanced credibility & trust: Consumers in general will often perceive recommendations from 3rd parties more favorably than from your brand itself. The right influencer has built trust, authenticity and credibility with their audience over time and that genuine connection with their audience can act as social proof for your brand and help give potential guests the confidence to try your brand over others.
- Offers improved engagement & conversion: Influencer-generated content tends to be more engaging and relatable to audiences by virtue of their established connection, which often results in higher levels of interaction and engagement on social media platforms. Your Influencer marketing campaigns can drive meaningful engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares, which can then ultimately lead to increased bookings and more direct revenue.
- Allows you to reach a highly targeted guest segment: By collaborating with influencers whose followers match the target demographic of your hotel, you can increase the odds of campaign success. The identification and selection of influencers whose audience demographics, interests, and behaviors align with the brand’s target market is critical.
What are the challenges of creating influencer marketing campaigns
While influencer marketing clearly offers numerous benefits as discussed above, it also presents challenges and risks for your hotel. The industry is rife with issues such as fake followers, influencer fraud, and there are significant risks to your brand if you collaborate or partner with the wrong influencer.
Aside from bad actors in the industry, there is also a risk that despite the best efforts of all parties involved, the campaigns simply do not have a material impact, but this is often a simple case of audience mis-match with your brand. Therefore, it’s essential that you conduct thorough due diligence when selecting and partnering with influencers to mitigate these risks and set yourself up for success.
How to get started with Influencer Marketing?
Now that we have the basics out the way, here are 7 top-tips for implementing effective and successful influencer marketing campaigns for your hotel in Thailand:
- Clearly define your goals & objectives: When developing content generation strategies and influencer marketing strategies, it’s important to determine in advance what the hotel aims to achieve through influencer marketing campaigns so that at the end of the campaign, you can measure performance against this set of goals. Some key goals may include:
- Increasing market-level brand awareness
- Driving direct bookings
- Promoting hotel special offers or amenities
- Reaching specific target demographics
2. Clearly identify your target audience: A well executed influencer campaign can undoubtedly help you reach a large volume of people, but it will have no impact on your revenue performance if the demographic reached has no interest in your product or service. Therefore, it’s important to understand your target audience and identify those who are most likely to convert to a booking. Carefully select influencers whose followers align with your desired customer base and ideal guest profiles.
3. Research and Identify key Influencers in your segment: Conduct thorough research to identify key influencers who have a significant following, influence within the target audience and whose message resonates with your brand. When evaluating potential influencers, you should consider factors such as follower demographics, engagement rates, content quality, and brand alignment.
4. Reach out to your selected Influencers: Contact the selected influencers to propose collaboration opportunities. In that communication, you should clearly outline the scope of the partnership, including deliverables, compensation (if applicable), and any specific requirements or guidelines to ensure that everyone knows where they stand.
5. Collaborate on content creation: The best results come when you work closely with influencers to co-create engaging content that resonates with their audience while showcasing the hotel’s unique offerings. Provide influencers with access to your hotels amenities, services, or experiences and this will help facilitate authentic and compelling content creation.
6. Launch and promote campaign: Once great new content is created, coordinate with the influencer to schedule the publication of sponsored posts, stories, videos, or other promotional content across relevant social media platforms. You can also amplify the campaign’s reach by sharing influencer-generated content on the hotel’s own social media channels and website.
7. Monitor and Measure the Campaign Performance: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of the influencer marketing campaign. You can use tools such as Google analytics, meta analytics or other tools provided by social media platforms to monitor the key metrics such as:
- Reach & Impressions: Measure the total number of people who were exposed to the influencer’s content.
- Engagement: Track likes, comments, shares, and other interactions with influencer posts to gauge audience engagement.
- Click-through Rate (CTR): Monitor the percentage of users who clicked on links or calls-to-action included in influencer content.
- Conversions: Measure the number of bookings, reservations, or other desired actions generated as a result of the influencer campaign.
- Return on Investment (ROI): Calculate the overall return on investment by comparing the cost of the influencer campaign to the revenue generated or other tangible outcomes achieved.
By tracking these KPIs, your hotel can assess the impact of their influencer marketing efforts, identify areas for improvement, and refine future campaigns to maximize results going forward.
The Key Takeaways
Influencer marketing can be a valuable and impactful string to the bow for your hotel’s digital marketing strategy and can help enhance the all-important brand awareness, credibility, and social engagement. By leveraging the reach, credibility, and authenticity of influencers, you can effectively connect with your target audiences, drive meaningful interactions, and ultimately drive increased direct booking volumes.
However, it’s crucial that you approach influencer partnerships strategically, consider factors such as audience alignment, content authenticity, and risk management in order to maximize the success of influencer marketing campaigns.
Do you have a hotel? Do you need help marketing your hotel online more effectively? Get in contact with us to find out about our full suite of digital marketing services available to hotels in Thailand and beyond.
