COVID-19 has forced hospitality brands to adapt and diversify in order to survive. Hotels and hostels have expanded their offering to include co-living and rentals; restaurants and bars have turned into takeaways and shops overnight; and brands have taken their experiences online with virtual events. And many of these hybrid models are here to stay.
Our latest series – Hybrid Hospitality – will give you all the advice and strategies you need to effectively adapt your marketing to this new type of hospitality.
First things first – who are you talking to? Your target markets today might look very different to those you were targeting this time last year, and this means you need to adopt a new marketing approach.
Let’s get started with tips on how to market to multiple audiences for your hybrid brand…
ANALYSE YOUR DATA AND RE-STRATEGIZE
If you have expanded or made significant changes to your business during this period, then your marketing strategy will need a big overhaul.
If your strategy wasn’t informed by your analytic data before, it needs to be. Review where your web traffic is coming from in terms of location, age and interests and use this information to inform your tactics to reach your new target audiences. You should also set out new objectives to track and measure your marketing success.
Without a refreshed marketing strategy, you are pretty much promoting your brand blindfolded.
REFRESH YOUR GUEST PERSONAS
As your offer has expanded, so too has your target audience. While your customer base may have always been diverse, you will now be trying to reach a wider range of guests and entering into markets you haven’t been in before. That’s why it’s important to define who your new target audiences are and what they are looking for.
One way we do this for our own clients is through guest personas. Guests personas are data-based fictional profiles of your guests. We recommend creating at least one guest persona for each segment you are targeting.
You should use your data here to start to build a picture of your guests – how old are they? Which locations are they from? Your reviews will also offer valuable insights into their booking motivations. If you’re entering new markets – for example, by offering a coliving space – then you also need to research the type of guests and their booking motivations in these specific markets.
Having your guest personas pinned down will help you to tailor your marketing to your different segment’s interests and preferences. The goal is to make your target audiences feel you are speaking directly to them through your marketing.
Ready to get started? You can download our free guest persona template here – feel free to drop us a message if you have any questions about filling this out.
ADD NEW WEB PAGES + SWITCH UP YOUR COPY
Okay, so you’ve started a new marketing strategy and you’re clear on who you’re talking to. The first thing you’re going to want to do is audit your website to ensure it appeals to your new target audiences. If you can, we recommend creating dedicated pages on your site to communicate your new offerings. For example, if you are a hotel who has converted part of your site into a co-living space, create a dedicated page or subdomain for this space that you link to from your homepage. This way, you can keep your messaging on point for each segment.
Creating new site pages will also help with ads, which leads us to…
CREATE SEPARATE AD FUNNELS FOR EACH TARGET MARKET
Using paid advertising on social media is a highly effective way of boosting brand awareness among your target audiences on a much wider scale than is possible via organic channels. In order to reach the right kind of people with the right kind of ad – aka, an ad with content and copy that resonates with them – we recommend creating separate ads funnels for each target market you are trying to find when running a brand awareness campaign.
Each funnel will include multiple ad sets and ads, which will guide your potential guests through the booking journey. Using this tactic means more work upfront and more ads management behind the scenes, but we promise the ROI is worth it.
We see a very high return on investment for paid social advertising and strongly encourage you to invest in this tool. Looking for support with improving your paid ads and boosting bookings? Drop us a message.
DO SOME #RESEARCH
Whether you are a hotel looking to promote your staycation package to domestic travellers, a hostel introducing a coliving space to the market or a bar seeking out remote workers for your new coworking space, you need to be using relevant, targeted hashtags on your Instagram posts.
Using hashtags is important because they are one of the quickest and easiest ways for your images to be seen by the right people on Instagram – posts with one hashtag receive an average 12.6% more engagement than posts without.
We know that millennials and Gen-Z use social media for inspiration and to research places to stay, work and play – hashtags are one of the tools they use to conduct this research.
To reach your new target markets, carry out some #research. Take a look at what your competitors and industry leaders are using as well as relevant influencers that have previously collaborated – or who you would like to collaborate – with you. Engage in some social listening – that is, looking at what sort of hashtags your target audience are using and pick up those, too.
CHECK OUT THE COMPETITION
It’s really important for you to be conducting a competitor analysis, especially when entering into a new market. Checking out the competition is a great way of igniting inspiration for your own brand and also reviewing what to do – and not do – when marketing to your new target audiences.
If you are opening a co-working space in London, we don’t expect you to research every existing co-working space in the city – instead, determine 3-4 service providers who you feel will appeal to the same target audience as you.
Take a look at their social media, website, blog, email marketing and search engine ranking and note down what they are doing well (and not so well). Also, keep an eye out for ads – if they have retargeting set up, you should see their ads after you have visited their website, signed up to their newsletter or engaged with them on social media.
CREATE AND POST NEW TYPES OF CONTENT
After months of lockdown, many people are desperate to get out and about again. More people than ever are taking to the internet to research new places to visit – this is your opportunity to reach your target market with creative (and optimised) blog content.
Creating blog content for your website is a valuable area to invest your time in order to improve your organic search engine ranking, especially when you are starting out in a new market. Be sure to optimise the content you share with relevant keyword phrases – to both your blog post topic and your product – in your copy and meta descriptions.
Using relevant keywords and phrases in your blog content that are likely to be searched for by your target audience(s) will boost your discoverability and in the long term, increase web traffic and direct bookings.
BALANCE THE CONTENT YOU SHARE
Like we’ve mentioned, what worked to market for your brand pre COVID-19 might not be enough now, especially as you’ve added new offerings to your business. To reach new target markets that could be interested in your brand – as well as represent what your hybrid brand now offers – it’s vital that you are diversifying the content that you share and ensuring it is balanced across the services and experiences you provide. An easy way to do this is to plan and schedule your social media content in advance so you are able to review your posts and double-check what is being sent out across your platforms.
Keep an eye out for upcoming posts in our Hybrid Hospitality series – next up, we’ll be talking all things coliving…
