Being in the industry I am and the work that we do at Internet Moguls, I have the privilege of meeting with and picking the brain of game changers like Gary Vaynerchuck and Patt Flynn and getting access to the latest updates and trends from the digital world. One of my favourite topics that I love discussing is Facebook marketing. It’s absolutely brilliant what Facebook can do for you today. In the last 2-3 months, it has been rolling out updates like a machine gun. In this blog, I’m going to show some simple ways to monetize your hotel services.
As an hotelier, there are many opportunities you can take advantage of – you want to sell your hotel rooms, you want to sell your spa, you want to get bookings for your banquet service, and other facilities like Food & Beverage.
Sell your rooms with Facebook specific offers
We know that booking engine conversion rates hover around 0.5%. So the leads that you’re generating already will have very low chances of getting converted and monetised. Don’t send your Facebook traffic over there! Here’s what you can do instead.
Advertise a time sensitive package on your Facebook page, with a special landing page that has a reservation option for these warm leads. If you have decent reservation team, 10-15% of these leads can be converted!
Click to chat option
Sometimes a potential guest may be busy, or may not be in the commitment mode just yet. At that time, you cannot initiate booking or reservation conversation right away. What you can do is, add a chat or message option in your Facebook post. You can either have bots or actual humans answering questions on chat.
Leverage Food & Beverage
F&B services are great source of revenue for your hotel. There might be a lot of corporate offices in your vicinity .You can have time sensitive offers for local audiences – you can advertise messages for lunch hours like offering a free beverage with meals on showing a particular coupon. This will help you generate revenue like never before.
While this was for local audiences, you should also create and target ads for Lookalike Audiences on Facebook. You can upload a database or excel of previous guests on Facebook using data from your CRS. Facebook will create similar audiences who are as likely to be interested in your services as your best guests.
These people will get to know special lunch offers that you may have coming up or a theme night in your restaurant. You are likely to get much more traction from these guests.
Sell affiliate services like never before
I always say – yes, you can definitely generate revenue from your gym, spa, etc. using Facebook. Suppose you want to sell more gym memberships to the people living in your vicinity. Create an event on Facebook, and promote offers like “Give the gift of health to your sister this Rakhi!” The best way is to hold Meet & Greet sort of events and invite people for a demo session, or a free BMI evaluation, etc. You can promote this on the basis of location, or even on the basis of companies. So why not create special offers for employees of companies near your office and sell you services to them. This will generate a lot of footfall which you can convert to revenue.
As you can see, Facebook can be a highly profitable marketing tool for hotels. By following these simple tweaks to Facebook advertising over a long term, you will see a dramatic increase in your ROI – and a boost to your bottom line!
Share this blog with someone who’s been having trouble monetizing his business on social media. Don’t forget to check out the latest episode of the #AskAviArya show!