Hotel Marketing Strategy – 47 Tips for Instant Growth in 2023

About 30% of all websites are able to grow their traffic with My Codeless Website partners.

If you qualify, you’ll be contacted by our 3 recommended growth marketing agencies.

Whether a website qualifies, depends on 3 variables:

• The type of website
• The marketing goals
• The marketing budget

Enter the checklist below to find out if your website qualifies. 👇

1. Go viral with a viral give-away

Imagine.

You send your website to 5 friends. Who each sends it to 5 friends.

Now, these friends also send it to 5 friends.  Oeh la la! Continue this loop for a while, and your website is actually going viral.

Viral Loops is a referral marketing tool that helps you to explode your website with new visitors.

We’ve used Viral Loops to create virality with multiple websites. It allows you to build a sustainable referral scheme that helps you to grow your website rapidly.

 

2. Do a press release

Yikes! A press release? That’s not for hotels, right?

Well. It is actually. Journalists entrepreneurs of local businesses. It makes sense – if you’re at a birthday party, friends are probably always asking how your business is doing.

Everybody loves entrepreneurs.

Write a press release about a milestone your business achieved. It doesn’t really matter what it is you did, just make it juicy and interesting.

Create a list of journalists and reach out to them. The key in this process is the follow-up. If you’re just sending them just one email you’re probably not going to have a lot of success. Remind them at least once within a period of 7 days.

Being featured by local news outlets actually is good for your SEO. The more websites mentioning you on their website, the higher you’ll rank in the search engine.

3. Use a LinkedIn bot to generate traffic on autopilot

All right. You’re now probably thinking one of two things:

1. That sounds spammy. I’m not going to do that.
2. A bot? How does that even work? I’m not a scientist.

Trust me, I thought the same as you. But it’s not as sketchy as it seems.

Dux-Soup is a LinkedIn tool that allows you to ‘look’ at 100 LinkedIn profiles per day.

This tool automatically visits LinkedIn profiles of people of your choice. In the past, I’ve used this a lot to get in touch with business owners.

I would have Dux-Soup open the profiles of 100 business owners per day.

It’s actually pretty simple:

1. Download the Dux-Soup tool
2. Open your LinkedIn account
3. Search for ‘business owner’ or any other job description’
4. Click the ‘Visit profiles’ button.

Now here comes the important part: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized.

This means:

• A good looking profile picture
• A good tagline that describes what you do
• A great profile description that tells about your hotel
• Some nice hotel images on your LinkedIn profile

Let’s say 20% of every profile visit converts into a ‘return visit’. That will mean 20 potential clients who look at your LinkedIn profile every day.

That’s 600 potential clients in a month.

4. Target hot traffic with retargeting ads

Imagine.

A potential client is looking for a hotel and stumbled upon your website. But after scrolling through your website for 30 seconds, he or she got a phone call from a friend. After calling for 20 minutes they forgot about your website and they close down their computer.

Auch.

That’s why I use retargeting advertisements to bring back these lost leads.

This will enable you to display advertisements to people who visited your website.

Just install a Facebook pixel on your website to target all your website visitors with an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram.

If you like, we can help you with that.

5. Outsource your social media management

Back in 2015, organic social media could have an enormous impact on your business. Nowadays, not so much.

There’s way more competition than before. That being said, it can still be done. You just need to be consistent.

That’s where most businesses fail. They handle the social media themselves. For a while. And then they forget about it.

That’s why I recommend you hire a social media management agency. 

6. Use paid advertising

Yes. This one is super obvious. But when used well this can be the biggest source of quick growth for your business. Let’s say every client brings you $100 in profit. And let’s say 1 out of every 100 clients becomes a client. That means you’re allowed to spend $1 to acquire a website visitor.

Now let’s say you’re running Facebook ads and you only pay $0.60 for a visitor.

That means you’re profiting $0.40 on every person who visits your website. I’d say, start spending on paid advertising!

 

7. Collect email addresses from your visitors

Did you know 98% of your website visitors never return? That’s a shame. Leverage an email capture tool that allows you to collect the email address of your visitors. This way, you’re able to reach out to them in the future.

Getting someone to visit your website is one thing. Getting them to become a client is the next one.

Make it easy. Add a ‘call me back’ contact form to enable them to get in touch with you. Once they’re on your email list, send them automated emails every now and then.

 

8. Pay friends and family to bring you traffic

Now your friends wouldn’t be your friends if they didn’t help you to get clients. Right?

Wrong.

Your friends probably have many things going on in their life and aren’t naturally ‘trained’ to promote your business.

But there’s a way to change that. 

Give them a 10% commission cut on every client they bring in. Now suddenly they have something to gain. Therefore they’ll remember to promote you.

They earn a nice side income, you build your business. Win-win!

 

9. Use local SEO

SEO is a great way to attract local clients. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and helps you to get free website traffic through search engines.

Check out these articles about local SEO if you want to learn more about this:

• https://ahrefs.com/blog/local-seo/
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/local

 

10. Experiment with offline marketing

Here’s one I absolutely love. If you send cold emails to potential clients, probably 10% or less will open it. Now, what if you change that to physical letters? That’s more like 90%.

Now I don’t want you to write the entire sales letter by hand, simply the name+address on the envelope will do.  

Bonus tip: I’d recommend you to buy colored envelopes, as they get noticed better and will increase your open rate.

11. Understand where your current traffic is coming from

To rank higher in Google, you need to understand your visitors:

• What are they looking for?
• What pages do they like?
• Where do they come from?

Only after you’re able to answer these questions, you’ll be able to optimize your website for Google.

Fortunately, there are tools that can help you out!

1. Sign up for a free Google Analytics account
2. Log in with your Gmail account
3. Sign up for Google Analytics
4. Enter your details
5. Follow the instructions
6. Problems? Hire our team to help you out.

Now you know where your visitors are coming from, and what they’re doing, it’s time to figure out what search phrases they used to find your website.

1. Sign up for a free Google Search Console account
2. Log in with your Gmail account
3. Sign up for Google Analytics
4. Enter your details
5. Follow the instructions
6. Problems? Hire our team to help you out.

 

12. Understand what people are searching for on Google

Now you know what people are searching for in Google, it’s time to figure out what search phrases people use to land at the websites of your competitors.

It’s time to research your competition and get their visitors to come to you.

1. Sign up for a Semrush account
2. Enter the URL of your competitor
3. See what organic keywords are giving them the most traffic

13. Understand what people are sharing on social media

Now you know what type of people are visiting your website, where they come from, and what they do.

That’s nice, but it would be even better to also understand what type of websites or pages gets them excited.

Buzzsumo created a tool that allows you to see how many times a URL has been shared or liked on social media.

Definitely have a look and play around with it, it’s fun and interesting!

14. Figure out what your competition is doing to get traffic

If you created your Semrush account as described in step 12, it’s time to take it 1 step further.

Go to the ‘competition analysis’ section, and click on ‘top organic pages’.

Here you can see what pages are getting the most traffic.

Do you already have a page like that? Try to create one yourself, and make it even better.

15. Add related keywords to your existing pages on your website

In the previous steps, you discovered what type of keywords people are searching for on Google.

Now it’s time to reap the benefits of these findings.

Go to your most popular pages and sprinkle the most important keywords throughout your pages.

Don’t overdo it, as that is considered keyword stuffing. Just add the most popular keywords 3-4 times on each page you see fit.

This will make your pages more visible in Google.

16. Add title and metatags to your website

The title and metatags are summaries of your pages. If you’ve ever used Google you’ve seen them before.

For example, a few minutes ago you probably searched something like ‘hotel marketing strategies’ before you landed on this page.

When you did, you clicked on a search result that looked like this.

Title – Hotel Marketing Ideas – 46 Hacks For Instant Growth in 2023

Meta description – The best hotel marketing strategy tricks that actually work in 2023. This article will inspire you with some creative ideas!

17. Write articles with keywords you want to be found on

Now you’ve learned how to sprinkle popular keywords throughout your existing pages, it’s time to create new ones.

Writing blogs is the perfect way to do this:

1. Select 1 keyword for each new blog you write
2. Write a blog of at least 1000 words
3. Use your target keyword at least 5 times throughout your article
4. Use your target keyword in your title and in your meta description
5. Use your target keyword in your h1 title

18. Make sure your website is responsive

Last year over 52% of all the website traffic worldwide came from mobile devices.

More than half of the website visits are on a mobile device.

This percentage will only increase in the coming years, therefore the mobile design of your website is crucial for the success of your website.

When designing your website, think about mobile design before you build your desktop website.

Divi is a great tool you can use to build a responsive hotel website.

19. Improve your site speed

I’ll admit, this one seems daunting at first.

Getting your website to load fast is extremely important. Did you know 38% of your visitors will bounce if it takes more than 5 seconds to load a page?

Check your page speed at https://tools.pingdom.com/ to test it yourself.

My solution?

1. Get the WP Rocket plugin if you own a WordPress website, it will make your website way faster
2. Get Fast WordPress Hosting that is optimized for page speed.

20. Create interesting meta descriptions

You can use your meta descriptions to convince people to click on your website. This sentence basically ‘advertises’ your website. Make it snappy and interesting!

21. Create page titles that use a little bit of ‘clickbait’

1. Verwerk je primaire keywords zo vroeg mogelijk in je titel
2. Mits relevant, voeg Polem informatie toe na het plaatsen van een | scheidingsteken
3. Zorg dat je titel tussen de 60 en 70 karakters is
4. Hou de Google gebruiker in je achterhoofd, let goed op concurrende pagina’s

22. Submit your address in Google My Business

Probably this is something you’ve already done. But just in case, I put it on the list. It’s a must-have!

1. Sign up for a free Google My Business account
2. Log in with your Gmail
3. Enter your details
4. Verify your location

23. Ask your clients to review you on Google Maps

Google Maps reviews are essential if you want to show up on Google search results.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Google’s goal is to show people the right information to the right people.

If someone is looking for a hotel, would Google recommend a hotel with 2 stars or with 4.8 stars?

Probably the last one.

That’s why you should reach out to all your clients and ask them to give a 5-star review on Google Maps.

24. Make sure your page URLs are readable

Have you ever paid attention to the URL of the website you’re visiting? Frequently, you’ll see something like this: website.com/893128uiuox.

Auch. Missed opportunity!

Not only does it look silly, but it also hurts your Google rankings.

25. Add alt-tags to your images

So you optimized your title tags and your meta descriptions. Now it’s time to make Google understand what your images are all about. That will give a direct boost to your rankings.

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on Media Library
2. Open all your images in a new tab
3. Add a title, alt text, and, a description

26. Delete spam comments

Although most comment features have automatic spam filtering, it could still happen that your website ends up with a lot of spam comments.

Not only does it look silly, but it also hurts your Google rankings.

27. Make optimal use of internal links

Whenever you’re writing a blog, see if you can place an internal link to relevant pages or blogs on your website.

The more you do this, the more Google is able to understand the structure of your website.

This will have a direct impact on your rankings.

28. Analyze your SEO score

Every now and then I like to do an SEO scan to see if I’m missing anything. There are 2 great ways to do this.

• Semrush SEO scan (recommended)
• Neil Patel SEO scan

29. Add FAQ schema markup to your most popular pages

If your website stands out in the Google search results, you’ll get more clicks.

So, how do you do that?

With FAQ snippets.

Sounds complicated. It’s not.

Just go to https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/ and click on ‘FAQ’ in the dropdown, and answer the questions.

It will generate a code, that you can paste on every page you like.

30. Add Organization schema markup to your homepage

To enable Google to understand your website and your organization better, you can include Schema Markup to your website.

Sounds complicated. It’s not.

Just go to https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/ and click on ‘organization’ in the dropdown, and answer the questions.

It will generate a code, that you can paste on your homepage.

31. Register your business at online business directories

This one might be old-school, but it still works.

The more website link to your website, the more relevant your website is in the eyes of Google.

An easy way to do this is by submitting your website in a local business directory. It’s a quick way to collect a lot of backlinks fast.

32. Ask for backlinks from industry partners

I love this one. As I mentioned:

The more website link to your website, the more relevant your website is in the eyes of Google.

An easy way to do this is by simply asking for a backlink at other businesses you work with. It’s a small favor to ask but can yield big SEO results for your business.

33. Create a dedicated page for each service you offer

This one might not seem intuitive, but let me explain.

People do a Google search for services, such as ‘hotel near sea Netherlands’, not ‘hotel’.

That’s why you need to create separate pages for all potential services and problems you’re solving. By doing this, you’ll increase your chances of appearing on the #1 spot in Google if somebody is doing a Google Search for it.

34. Create service pages for the surrounding cities you serve

Just like you want to appear on the top of the search results for every service someone is searching for, you also want to show up if somebody searches for ‘hotel + city’. Or even better, ‘hotel + city area’

The more cities you serve, the better.

By creating a unique page for all cities you serve, you’ll increase your chances of appearing on the #1 spot in Google if somebody is doing a Google Search for it.

35. Remove duplicate content

I’ve seen many websites make this mistake.

They create a page, forget about it, and create another one – about the exact same topic.

Ouch.

Google will be confused about your website. As you created 2 pages about the same topic, what page should they put on the #1 spot?

None of them.

Seriously, you don’t want to confuse Google, as this will lead to bad rankings.

36. Use lead magnets to turn visitors into clients

Once you see your website traffic increasing – trust me, if you did all of the above, you will – it’s time to convert visitors into clients.

There are a couple of ways you can do that.

Simply by asking them to schedule an appointment, or by asking them to call you.

Or you could use a clever technique to capture their email address and convert them to a customer via email.

Offer a free PDF in exchange for their email address. This PDF could be something like this:

“Top 10 Tips To Keep Your Teeth Healthy”.

Use an email tool like Convertkit to set up email automation to get this one.

If you like, we can help you with this.

37. Create a sitemap for your website

Although most website builders will do this automatically, you have to make sure your website has a sitemap.

If you don’t, Google is unable to view all your pages. And therefore won’t show them in their search results.

If you have a WordPress website, the Yoast Plugin is a great tool to get this done.

38. Use our on-page SEO checklist to optimize your on-page SEO

Let’s say you’re trying to rank #1 for the keyword ‘best hotel new york’. Here’s what you should check:

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ at the start of your page title?

– Is ‘best-hotel-new-york’ in your URL?

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ in your meta description?

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ your H1 title?

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ in your H2/H3 title?

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ at least 4 times in your text?

– Is at least 1 image called ‘best hotel new york’ in the alt-text?

– Is ‘best hotel new york’ at least 1 time in the first paragraph of your page?

– Is your page at least 500 words? And is it at least as long as the other pages ranking in the top #3 for the search result ‘best hotel new york’?

 

39. Make your headline as concrete as possible

The headline is the most important aspect of your website. It’s the first sentence you read on your homepage.

This sentence will decide whether a visitor will continue or bounce.

That’s why you need to be VERY clear about:

• What do you do
• For who are you doing this

Bad example: Welcome to company X. Our mission is to make your life healthier and better with our proven methods.

Good example: Fitness club for students based in New York.

40. Add call to action buttons

The call to action, also known as your money button.

The call to action button leads your customer to the part of your website where you want them to go. It’s the most important part of your entire website, since this is where your visitors turn into customers.

Depending on your type of website, it could redirect to a contact form, a shopping cart or a newsletter signup.

On every page you design on your website, make sure to have an appealing call to action button.

41. The text on your call to action button should mention the perfect outcome

When creating a call to action button I have a trick for you. Think about what it is, that the visitor of your website wants. Let’s say you own a fitness club and you’re trying to acquire more fitness members with your website.

What should your call to action be?

Well – let’s think about what a potential fitness member wants. He probably wants to try your fitness club before getting a subscription. In this case my call to action would be:

I want to ‘Sign Up For A Free Introduction Class’

42. Make your call to action buttons visually appealing

Call to actions buttons should be notable. It’s the part of your page which should draw the most attention.

You can accomplish this by:

• Use a slightly bigger font size
• Use a notable background color (anything flashy)
• Use an engaging text which ‘seduces’ the visitor to click on it

43. Remove all unnecessary menu items

Distraction is bad for conversions. Let me give you an example.

Scientists once researched the impact of choice on buying decisions. They opened a brownie store with 24 different types of brownies.

Then one week later, they tried it again but with only 6 types of brownies.

What do you think?

The second week they sold more than twice as much. It turns out, people don’t like to choose.

Therefore, get rid of all the unnecessary items in your navigation menu.

44. Add testimonials to your site 

Sure, your company has the best product and the best customer service.

But why would a visitor who never heard about you before trust you? You’re nothing but a stranger to them.

That’s why you need to add testimonials of your clients. It builds trust and shows social proof.

To get a great testimonial from your clients, you should ask strategic questions:

1. Before you became a client, what were your doubts about this product/service?
2. How did you experience this product/service?
3. What results did this product/service bring you?
4. What type of people/businesses would benefit from this product/service?
5. Do you have any other nice things to say about this product/service?

Pick the best ones and summarize them to a short and powerful testimonial.

45. Add logos of existing customers to your site

Testimonials create credibility, but so do big brands.

Is Apple or another big corporate one of your clients? Perfect. Add a section called ‘Some of our satisfied customers’ and display their logos.

The more relatable these logos are to your visitor, the better. For example, if you’re creating a website for kitchen supplies, a logo from a restaurant magazine is more powerful than one from Apple.

46. Social media buttons shouldn’t dominate your site

So you want to have more followers on your social media?

Great.

But unless you’re some sort of an influencer, this probably isn’t your number one business goal.

Don’t add social media follow buttons in prominent places of your website, these should be reserved for your call to actions.

Of course you should add social media follow buttons on your website, but add them to your footer.

47. Use storytelling in your text 

Nobody likes boring texts.

Your visitors want to feel like you’re talking to them.

For example:

Version 1. “Our processes are optimized to guarantee permanent support to improve your kpis.”

Version 2. “Your company was built with blood, sweat and tears. We respect that, that’s why our team is available 24/7 to help you in any way we can. Yes, we answer the phone during christmas eve”.

Which one is more appealing? Which one would make you pick up the phone? I bet it’s the second.

It’s talking straight to your visitor and tells an appealing story.