Video marketing for hotels
They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words” so since one second of video consists of 25 pictures, a 60-second image film of your hotel is worth 1,500,000 words. Add sound to it and you have a million-dollar salesperson working for you around the clock!
Video is consistently rated as one of the most effective types of digital marketing, both by consumers and businesses alike. In 2022 online videos made more than 82% of all internet traffic! In fact, around 65% of people watch videos when planning a trip and choosing a destination, with a further 54% opting for videos when searching for accommodation. On YouTube, 71% of travel searches are for destination names. Video content gives travelers a sneak peek into every aspect of their potential vacation experience before they even take off on their trip.
WHY DO HOTELS NEED A VIDEO MARKETING STRATEGY?
Video marketing can be an effective way of promoting your hotel, building your brand awareness, and driving bookings. Even the best-written and most engaging content won’t be able to display a hotel the way a video can. Studies show that people remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, but 80% of what they see! But video creation is a little more than just a pretty collage of images with a soundtrack.
As technology evolves, more and more people are turning to video as their main source of entertainment and news. According to data from Miles, 85% of marketers consider video as an effective way to get target audiences’ attention online. All this is leading to an enormous amount of produced videos! Whether it’s an image film, product video, or employer branding, you need a good plan to stand out from the crowd. Here are some inputs from Sandra Schmidt, director of the Schweizerhof Flims hotel:
PLANNING YOUR VIDEO MARKETING STRATEGY
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Effective planning of your video marketing strategy can optimize your budget and ROI. While planning your video marketing strategy it’s essential to know the why before the how. Of course, the ultimate goal is to grow your business but video content can assist you at various stages of the growth process. First, ask yourself the question “am I”:
- Building trust and a strong brand image?
- Increasing visibility and audience reach?
- Highlighting specific products, amenities, services, or events?
- Employer branding – retaining and finding passionate employees?
This question is crucial in determining the type of video content you need to create and the appropriate distribution channels to use in achieving your goals. If you want to be a video marketing master, create videos that cater to multiple goals simultaneously having multiple distribution channels and use cases in mind. For example, if you’re making a hotel promotional video and have already invested in resources, time, and people, consider scheduling an additional shooting day to create an employer branding video with your employees. This will help you to present the hotel as an attractive employer and attract qualified employees. By producing video content with multiple objectives in mind, you can make the most of your resources and optimal ROI.
Once you’ve established your goals, it’s time to answer a very important question: who am I marketing to? Is my target group families or couples, adventurers or luxury lovers, business professionals, or maybe digital nomads? The answer to this question will help you to create a video marketing plan and use your video content most effectively. For example, newer generations have a much shorter attention span, which is why Instagram Reels and TikTok videos have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. But is this your target group?
VIDEO MARKETING DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS: HOW CAN YOUR HOTEL USE VIDEO IN ITS MARKETING STRATEGY?
When you understand the why and to who you’re marketing, you can delve into the specifics of your video marketing strategy. This requires a more detailed analysis of the components that make up your video campaign, such as the content, format, and distribution channels. You will put a lot of time and resources into producing your video content, whether is it your new image film, product videos, or employer branding video. Are you going to use your videos horizontally on YouTube or the website, or vertically on social media? If you plan your distribution channels right, you can use your videos most efficiently. The most popular and effective marketing tools for video content are:
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Email marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Google Hotel Ads
- Google Business Profile and Google Maps
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Nearly 60% of the world’s population, that’s 4.66 billion people, are now active internet users. Social media reach continues to explode, with nearly 4 billion people now active users compared to just over 2 billion in 2015. Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users, while Facebook has nearly 3 billion!
The numbers tell themselves, it makes a lot of sense to have a strong presence on social media platforms. Your potential guests are spending there a lot of time during their planning and decision-making stages of travel. If you still don’t think so – know that almost 50% of hoteliers are already ranking social media as a top two sales and marketing priority.
Keep videos on social media platforms, like Instagram, short and sweet. Specifically for informative content, 73% of consumers prefer to watch short videos when learning about products or services, and videos of up to 2 minutes long get the most engagement. The majority of videos are viewed on mobile devices, so ensuring your videos are short and punchy is key.
And last but not least, YouTube! YouTube is a great distribution channel for hotels to showcase their video content to a vast audience. With over 2 billion monthly active users and a mobile app, YouTube offers easy access to videos on the go. The platform also provides tools to optimize video content and track performance, making it an essential tool for any hotel’s video marketing strategy. You can also embed your videos from YouTube on your website and blog for free!
CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing for hotels involves highlighting their property’s unique story and brand to attract the right kind of travelers. The ultimate goal is to influence travelers to book a stay, become loyal customers, and recommend the hotel to others. Although videos are a powerful tool, the in-house marketing process requires patience, and it may be difficult to track its effectiveness in the short term.
While social media marketing is a valuable tool for reaching your target audience, it’s important to remember that you don’t fully own your audience on these platforms. If a social media platform were to shut down or change its algorithm, you could potentially lose access to your audience. This is why it’s crucial to generate traffic to your website, blog, etc., as it provides a more secure and long-term way to engage with your audience. Here are a few examples of how to engage with your audience with your in-house online distribution channels:
Website
Leveraging content marketing on your hotel website is essential for building brand awareness, and fostering lasting customer relationships. Ultimately all other distribution channels, such as social media, email marketing, and SEO, lead to your website. It is like a permanent business card in the digital world. By including high-quality content in the header, embedding it throughout your site, and using relevant links to it, you can attract and engage potential guests, establish your hotel’s brand, and drive conversions.
Blog
Starting a blog is a great way to kick off your content marketing journey as it allows you to cover a range of topics that will interest travelers and guests, such as local area guides, and listicles of the best things to do, see, or eat. Additionally, supporting these blog posts with videos can make them even more engaging and effective.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Another question to consider in creating a plan is whether influencer marketing could be a useful shortcut to achieving your goals. This type of marketing relies on endorsements, mentions, and recommendations from individuals who have built up trust with their dedicated social followers.
You’ll first need to find influencers who are a perfect partnership in terms of your brand and the message you want to get out there. Have they worked with similar hotels before? Do their values and aesthetics align with yours? Is their audience made up of the type of people you’re trying to reach? You can then approach the influencer by contacting them directly via the social media platform. If they are well-established influencers they may have specific contact details for someone who manages this type of partnership for them in their profile.
EMAIL MARKETING
A study has found that emails that include the word ‘video’ in the subject are more likely to be opened than emails that do not. Even better, the click-through rate for introductory emails that include a video increases by 96%.
Email marketing provides a direct line of communication between you and your customers, making it a great opportunity to include video content. Not only do videos make content stand out, but it is better received by consumers than emails with standard text and photos. If your hotel has experienced any new renovations or updates to your services, you can update your guests with this information through a video.
Tip: Make sure you’re building a strong email database by collecting guest details wherever possible.
Newsletters are a type of email you can send to people who have specifically subscribed to it, and it’s usually sent out on a consistent and regular basis. For example, you might send one newsletter on the last Friday of every month and support it with your video content.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
Businesses and hotels that add videos throughout their website and on blog posts are more likely to have increased visibility in search results, leading to more traffic to the site. Including video content in your content marketing plan can provide further brand recognition and improved SEO (search engine optimization) positioning in SERPs (search engine results pages). It can significantly boost your SEO efforts by increasing engagement and dwell time on their website, which are important ranking factors for search engines like Google. Video content can also attract high-quality backlinks from other websites, which can further improve a hotel’s search engine ranking and visibility.
GOOGLE HOTEL ADS
Google Hotel Ads, formerly known as Google Hotel Finder, offers hotels a powerful tool to reach potential guests who are actively searching for accommodations. Google Hotel Ads allows hotels to target specific audiences based on their search queries, location, and other factors. By targeting the right audience with your videos, you can increase the effectiveness of your advertising and maximize the return on investment.
One successful example of a Google Hotel Ads strategy is AccorHotels, which used the platform to increase traffic to emerging markets. This resulted in a significant boost to year-over-year bookings, with a 65% increase, and an impressive 84% growth in revenue.
GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE AND GOOGLE MAPS
By adding videos to your Google Business Profile profile, you can showcase your property and highlight your unique features and amenities. Potential guests can view the videos directly on Google Maps, making it easy for them to get a better sense of what your hotel has to offer.
In addition to giving potential guests a better sense of your property, videos on your Google Business Profile can also help with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Google favors businesses that have more complete profiles and provide useful information to users, such as photos and videos.
To get started, make sure you have a verified Google Business Profile for your hotel. Once your profile is set up, you can add videos that showcase your property and its amenities. Be sure to include a mix of footage highlighting different areas of your hotel, such as guest rooms, the pool, dining options, and more.
OTHER VIDEO USE CASES
Meetings
Hotels can also leverage their video content at meetings and trade shows to showcase their property and amenities to potential customers and partners. By incorporating video into presentations, hotels can bring their brand to life and create a memorable experience for attendees. Video content can also be used to educate event planners on the capabilities of the hotel and its event spaces, ultimately leading to increased bookings and revenue.
Screens: In-house and external
By displaying videos and other visual content in common areas, such as the lobby or elevators, hotels can showcase their brand story and unique features to guests. Additionally, partnering with local businesses to display each other’s content can help to promote the hotel and the surrounding area, creating a positive and immersive experience for guests.
Online Travel Agencies
Your OTA profile is a major touchpoint for travelers, even if they end up booking directly. You should treat the video content on your OTA profile with as much care as the content on your own website to ensure visitors stay interested in your hotel.
TIPS AND ADVICE FOR VIDEO MARKETING
User-generated footage
User-generated content is a powerful tool that hotels can leverage to create new content and reduce the number of internal resources that goes into the process. Encouraging guests and followers to create content about their experiences can help organically promote the property and provide an authentic view of what it’s like to stay there.
Additionally, engaging with user-generated content by liking, sharing, and commenting on posts can make followers feel recognized and help build a stronger sense of community around the hotel brand. Overall, user-generated content is a cost-effective way to create engaging and authentic content that can drive bookings and build brand loyalty.
Pro tip: create a hashtag to re-share user-generated content, for example, #YourHotelsNameMoments
Testimonials and customer reviews
Boost your social media marketing efforts by creating video content featuring customer testimonials. Organize interviews with customers or clients who have stayed at your hotel, or create an animated version of written reviews from review sites or cards. Highlight key benefits of your property in these videos, such as staff quality, hotel ambiance, and overall guest experience.
Including customer reviews and testimonials adds a human element to your social media marketing and builds trust with potential guests. To encourage customers to participate, engage with them consistently across various social media platforms and review websites. Encourage guests to leave feedback on your website or other review services after their stay.
Introduce your employees
By showing your staff in action, guests can see the skills and knowledge that make your hotel stand out from competitors. Staff interaction videos can showcase the skills of your chefs in the kitchen, the attention to detail of your housekeeping team, or the expert knowledge of your tour guides.
But these videos are not just about showcasing expertise. They also give your hotel a personal touch and convey the message that people are here for people. By featuring staff members in your videos, you can show that your hotel is not just a faceless corporation, but rather a warm and welcoming community where guests can feel at home.
Tracking your marketing: a data-driven strategy
Do you know how to calculate the return on investment (ROI) you get from social media or Google Hotel Ads? Are you wasting hours and money without any return?
Data-driven marketing strategy is crucial for you to gain insights into your target audience’s behavior and preferences, measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, and make data-driven decisions that can help increase direct revenue and maximize return on investment (ROI). To do that, follow these steps:
- Implement a data-driven revenue management and distribution culture
- Always know which distribution channel is selling your inventory and at what price
- Use data to implement dynamic pricing strategies
- Analyze your hotel’s net profit across all marketing channels
- Know your customer’s online journey and booking behavior
Data analysis: learn and optimize your marketing for better ROI
It’s important that you utilize Google Analytics to collect and learn from data. The analysis is important for any strategy you put in place at your hotel. By gaining more information on who might be searching for a hotel like yours and what content is of interest to them, you can really start optimizing every aspect of your website.
Google Analytics can help your staff:
- Assess the traffic volume of keywords
- Measure page views of content
- Record where traffic is coming from
- Decipher what devices visitors are using
- Understand which traffic sources have the highest conversion rates
Video content management
With many employees needing access to visual content (videos and photos) and the need to share it across multiple channels, it’s important that everyone has quick and easy access to it (from the cloud), whether they’re on a mobile or desktop device. It’s also essential to have a good description of the content, so anybody can find it with ease. The description should also include technical information where to use it, how, and when. For example, a description could include details such as “vertical video for Instagram reels, featuring a couple eating a romantic dinner in our restaurant. It can be used on Valentine’s Day to promote a deal that we have on this special day.” To take it a step further, having a content distribution calendar or plan in place can help you stay organized and publish the content most effectively.
Include CTAs
Your video content should always include a call to action. It would be a wasted opportunity to not direct viewers onto your site or further down the path into a conversion. Highlight any discounts, promotions, or seasonal offers; these may differ between types of video content and should be based on your target audience.
Invoke emotion and tell a story
Create emotionally-driven video content to establish a connection with potential customers and drive the success of your hotel marketing. Use imagery, sound, and effects to tell a compelling story that makes viewers feel like they are there. By establishing a positive emotional association, customers are more likely to trust and purchase from your hotel. Consider involving employees and showcasing your brand’s personality through personal stories and interviews to further establish a human connection with your audience.
Get help from a video production company
As you can see, there are many important factors to consider when using video as an effective marketing tool. As a hotel owner, you may have a lot on your plate, and creating high-quality video content can be time-consuming and overwhelming. That’s where a video production company can come in to help. Here are a few reasons why you should consider hiring a video production company:
- Professional expertise: A video production company can create high-quality videos that will showcase your hotel in the best possible light, giving you a premium brand image and a competitive advantage.
- Efficient use of time and resources: By hiring a video production company, you can save time and resources that would have been spent on researching, planning, filming, and editing the video yourself. Instead, you can focus on running your hotel while the video company handles the production process.
- Increased brand awareness and engagement: A video production company can help you create videos that are aligned with your brand’s message and voice. They can also help you distribute the videos on the right channels to reach your target audience, which can increase brand awareness and engagement.
- Cost-effective: Although it may seem counterintuitive, hiring a video production company can actually save you money in the long run. They have the equipment and resources to produce high-quality videos that can last for a long time and can be used for multiple purposes, such as on your website, social media, and other marketing tools.
Check out our video services for hotels in the video below:
Video marketing is not just a trend, but a powerful tool that can help you build a strong brand image and attract new guests. By creating compelling video content and utilizing the right distribution channels, you can connect with your audience on an emotional level and leave a lasting impression. So why not take the leap and invest in a video marketing strategy today? As the saying goes, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”