Discover 10 effective venue marketing ideas
Marketing is one of the most important pieces of your business. But building a venue marketing plan takes time, and considered thought and research. Furthermore, once completed, it must be kept current and relevant to guide your organisation’s marketing efforts and have an impact on your business.
1. Maximise your website
It is no secret that the internet is an incredibly powerful tool. Your hotel’s website should be user-friendly and optimised to make sure that when planners are searching for venues, your hotel is ranked first in their search results. Search engine optimisation means that your site is more likely to garner views organically — basically for free. While you can also utilise paid SEO to increase your hotel’s relevancy in search results, optimising your page and working within the SEO algorithms will enable your website to gain more views and clicks for free. There are many sites and tools that will help you optimise your website. They are designed to help you understand ranking factors by search engine and help you integrate those learnings into your webpages.
2. Optimise your Cvent supplier network page for safe meetings
Take advantage of that concentrated interest and make sure your hotel’s page on the supplier network is optimised. Make your profile detailed, including multiple high-quality photos of your meeting space, dimensions, and all information that you can provide. Planners know what they need and it is up to your team to make sure they have the most up to date accurate information about your venue and the ways you're ensuring safe meetings.
3. Focus on an established social media network, and an emerging one
Social media platforms are incredibly powerful ways to get information about your venue out to the world, but can also serve as an influential positioning tool for your venue. They enable you to interact with your customers and prospects in a personalised way and give your venue a voice. From Facebook to LinkedIn and TikTok, there's a social platform for every type of crowd. Rather than overcommit, focus on building real relationships by investing in just one to three platforms. Spend 80% of your time on the network driving the most engagement for you today, and put the other 20% of time into building a following on an emerging platform (think Snapchat, TikTok, gaming environments, and so on).
4. Send content marketing postcards
You can use content marketing to provide event planners helpful tools and insights. Just stick to your brand themes and present new thought leadership in the form of a postcard, ebooks, a digital magazine, podcasts —whatever fits your strategy. You can promote your venue’s amenities, highlight the interesting hot spots around your venue, and show off innovative ideas your team uses to increase value and elevate onsite experiences for guests.
5. Create a virtual tour to share on any marketing channel
One great way to use a virtual tour is when you are responding to an RFP. Build out the space as described in their request and go the extra mile to really exceed their expectations. It’s a great opportunity to show off what your team can do and how your venue can be perfectly suited to your prospect's needs.
6. Updated imagery for your property
Show, don't just tell! This may seem fairly obvious, but it can be a major miss for your venue if the imagery on the various platforms you are utilising in your marketing mix is not up to date. Use the imagery on your website and on your supplier pages to highlight new renovations, updates to your venue, and to show the space in action. Hiring a professional photographer may also be a good step to help you with this endeavor. They will help you with shot lists, ideas for space set ups, and they can help you really hone in on what images are going to work the best for your audience and space. They can also help you highlight the versatility of your space.
7. Create short, one-minute videos
Posting engaging video content is a powerful method of promoting your venue. It can be placed in various platforms and will go a long way to show event planners what you can do. Videos are naturally engaging and when done well, they allow a venue to show special features, amenities, and their venue space in action.
8. Send an email with your safety best practices and an offer
Email marketing should be a part of any marketing mix. Today, it remains a very effective way to engage with your target audience, planners, and make sure they are seeing the content, promotions, and updates that you are posting on your other platforms. Email campaigns should align with your other marketing efforts and can be harnessed for virtually anything you need. Updating prospects on renovations, highlighting an event that just happened, and promoting new safety measures to your past customers and current prospects can drum up new business opportunities.
9. Create an email newsletter with timely updates
Email newsletters are a great tool for venues to get information and updates out to their list of past and present clients. Making these newsletters robust, engaging, and actionable is the key to success when creating and deploying these emails. Use engaging, actionable copy that will keep your clients and contacts interested in what you have to say, and make sure that the content is relevant and timely. If your hotel is undergoing renovations, keep a space open for updated pictures and stories about the progress and how it is going to enhance your venue. If you have content about updated safety measures required by your local and state governments, keep a space in your newsletter open for that. In all spaces, link back to your content elsewhere.
10. Encourage Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews
Yelp and TripAdvisor are powerful platforms that consumers and planners use to rate venues based on other clients' reviews. These services allow past customers to publish their experiences and opinions of venues and other businesses. TripAdvisor generates hundreds of millions of reviews and word of mouth commentary every year, and not having your venue on their site is a miss. Planners do check reviews on venues as part of their due diligence, and making sure that your venue has planner reviews and leisure traveller reviews will only enhance your presence online and your marketing mix. You can and should solicit reviews from planners and incentivise groups to write reviews of their event with your venue. It will help you grow your following online, and you can link to your other platforms from your hotel profile. With so many people writing reviews, you can use your venue profile to gather more leads and increase conversion.
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