Hotel Marketing: Integrating A Human Element

Nothing turns away potential online customers like blatant advertising. Posting nothing but dry content about your business, ongoing sales, promotions, and products dehumanize your brand. By posting nothing but that type of material, your business becomes less inviting and relatable. To connect with audiences and earn the trust of potential customers, you need to make sure you incorporate the human element. 

Know Your Audience

To reach potential customers, you need to know who your target audience is. Create or analyze your established brand and decide on the demographics of your desired customers. If you are a hotel owner with a hotel located near or within a national park, you would want to cater to the interests of those intrigued and driven by nature. On the other hand, if you are a hotel owner whose hotel is located in the heart of the city, you would want to cater to the interests of those who enjoy city life.

Build a Community

Catering to the interests of your target audience includes posting or sharing content that is not just about how your business suits their needs and wants. Although content promoting your business is important, it should not saturate your social media accounts. Among the posts about your business, there should also include uploads about a variety of topics such as local areas nearby, tips for seamless travel, humorous memes your target audience can relate to, and upcoming events. Make your social media accounts hotspots for potential customers to flock to for information and entertainment. Building such a community makes your business more fun, reliable, and relatable.

Include Real People

Although posting and sharing various content that falls under your business’s brand aids in building a community, what humanizes the content shared are other people. Posting images of empty hotel rooms, dining halls, and amenities are helpful to those interested in what your hotel looks like. However, sharing photos of people enjoying their experience at your business resonates with audiences on a deeper level. Viewers of that content will look at the people in those photos and will want to have similar experiences. Typically, businesses hire photographers and models to portray happy customers utilizing the amenities of their hotels. However, a much more cost-efficient way to obtain photos of satisfied customers would be to ask real customers to share their pictures with your business. The use of user-generated content (USG) provides your company with free content, engagement, and promotion.

Be a Real Person

It’s okay to add some personality to your posts; in fact, it’s encouraged. People want to connect with other people and know that there is a real human being on the other end of that keyboard. Aside from posting witty captions, photos of staff members, and engaging questions, it is also important to show personality through responses. It is essential to respond to each review, positive or negative, promptly. Keep in mind that there are right and wrong ways to respond to feedback. Learn how to respond to negative reviews here correctly. Providing timely responses to reviews or questions customers and potential customers pose shows that there is somebody there who cares about them.

Incorporating the human element into your online marketing does take time. As opposed to sending out automated emails or responses, someone has to curate and write each one personally. Additionally, posts need to be more creative than “Our rooms start at $159 a night” or “Visit our website today.” Although this takes more time and effort, humanizing the online image of your business will earn the trust of more potential customers.