Internet marketing is an umbrella term to classify a range of practices, that may involve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Content Marketing, E-mailers, Article and Blog distribution with a backlink to your hotel website, Online Booking Engines, OTA management, website analytics and campaign tracking, and many more. A successful internet marketing campaign is one, that can strike a perfect balance between all these various practices associated with E-marketing.
Internet marketing has some inherent advantages over marketing through traditional media, which are as follows:
• Advertising on the internet is much cheaper than advertising on TV, Radio, or even Newspaper.
• The message reaches its target audience, as it is possible to package different messages for people belonging to different age groups, and professions. Social media sites study its users’ search history, and post advertisements based on their interests. Thus your specially crafted message reaches its intended target audiences.
• The success and failure of any marketing campaign on the internet can be tracked and analyzed very easily by using Google analytics, and various other means. And any campaign if not profitable can be altered, or terminated completely at any stage. Such a Return On Investment (ROI) based approach was not possible with traditional media.
• Through internet marketing brands can establish a regular committed community of their fans and followers, and engage with them in a two way communication. They can introduce their new plans, offers, packages, and services to their followers on a real time basis, and also get their feedback. The customer feedback is very important as it can help hotel properties in filtering out their bad services, and negative impressions.
Besides, all these generic benefits, Internet marketing also have some special benefits for hotel properties. A carefully, and strategically designed hotel website can provide its prospective clients a lot information about rooms, tariff, facilities, bar and restaurant menu, health and recreational facilities, nearby tourist attractions, pictures and videos of hotel and rooms, guest comments, and much more. The availability of online booking engine on your hotel web page, can boost your online bookings.
Also as most of the prospective travelers use the internet to gather information about their destinations, and hotels, hotel properties can ignore internet marketing only at their own peril. Given that advertising and marketing on the internet is much cheaper, than advertising on any other platform, and also that the profitability of these campaigns can be analyzed at any given stage, marketing on internet seems to be the new ‘Guru Mantra’ for success in the hospitality market.