First of all, you should keep in mind that traditional or Outbound marketing is also called Push marketing for a reason. We could say it pushes indiscriminately the message to consumers. While there is always a market study behind, the goal is to get the most visibility, as it’s possible. That’s why you cannot stop to identify those so important details when defining the profiles of your potential consumers.
On the other hand, Inbound marketing is also defined as Pull marketing. Unlike the previous one, it attracts or pulls a much more concrete and worked consumer. And the key to that is the use of relevant content. That is, in this case, content is what your hotel’s website can offer so you are able to:
1. Provide value.
You may think that this is not really a compelling reason and, in fact, it is. Nowadays, providing value is critical when attracting the right kind of traveler. And you may be wondering why only the right one? Because you need to attract the kind of consumer who is more susceptible to book one of your rooms. And to understand these users you have to start a dialogue and win their trust.
How? By creating valuable content for your hotel’s website and your social media platforms. Through all your publications you can meet the preferences and needs of these users, segment them and get a database of potential guests to win over with personalized content so they think there is no other option but to book in your hotel.
2. Be more profitable.
For hotels with background and hoteliers with years in the travel industry, it’s difficult to think of leaving behind the classic ads in travel magazines, promotion on television or retargeting. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than Outbound marketing, given the B2C type of businesses.
Think that traditional marketing reaches a wide range of people. Not all of them are really your target and even less people belong to your potential clients group. But with Inbound methodology, your communication channels are low cost and your main concern is the generation of relevant content aimed at a very specific sector. And this is what makes it cost effective.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of a good audiovisual production. Videos are, after all, one of the best formats to present valuable content with. Besides, video is highly consumed among Internet users, especially on YouTube. But on the other hand, you can save the costs of its promotion or PPC online ads.
Getting qualified leads that will become your final guests has a minor cost with Inbound marketing. That’s why, among other reasons we assume that these travelers are within a buying cycle (traveler’s journey) that is inherent to consumers looking for content on the Internet. And if you provide the content of value that they seek, you will get the traffic that leads you to win more customers.
3. Create long-term results.
Yes, it is true; with Inbound marketing you will not get short-term results. But you will not bore users with the unnecessary bombardment of ads they don’t want to see because they don’t belong to your potential clients group. Do you know how that can negatively affect your reputation?
On the other hand, with Inbound methodology, content delivery is not aggressive. Travel consumers come to your website because they engage in the same conversations as other users on social networks and because they have accessed your content through the search engines.
When your publications are relevant, they don’t have to be obsolete if you know to reuse that content after a while and revamp it with the appropriate tools, such as social networks. It’s all about delivering the right content, at the right time, for the right people.
Perhaps with Outbound marketing you get short-term results, but also for a short period of time. On the other hand, with Inbound any content you deliver will have more durability and that will mean getting more effective results over a longer period of time.
4. Improve your ROI.
Inbound marketing helps hotels improve return on investment (ROI). HubSpot, the forerunner of Inbound marketing, has discovered that 92.3% of companies using this methodology have increased traffic to their websites, with blogging strategy being the most effective method.
HubSpot has also discovered that Inbound has made it possible to increase lead generation by 92.7%, while the conversion of Sales Qualified Leads (SQL’s) was 42.2%.
So as you can see, this methodology gives results, and very good ones, since measuring the return on investment or ROI, thanks to your data, is one of the best ways to determine if the online strategies implemented for your hotel are effective.
5. Generate engagement.
This is one of the big problems to date. Engagement among travel consumers is difficult to achieve if good practice is not applied. Above all, you need to listen and understand them. Because it means a lot to consumers that you spend the right amount of time in creating giving them something else than your products and services.
Building relationships based on trust is not as complicated with Inbound Marketing. This is because it’s base on the knowledge of you potential customers needs and preferences. For example, with surveys on your landing pages, you can learn valuable information that will lead you to generate personalized content that can build long-term relationships with them. That is, generating a reliable and lasting engagement.
As you can see these are important reasons to implement the Inbound marketing methodology. But if you think that you’re still lacking motives we recommend you our post to know how to increase your hotel’s revenue with the best online marketing practices, which Inbound collects.
