5 marketing tips for boutique hotels

Marketing is everything in the hospitality industry. If people don’t know about your hotel, the chances are you won’t get many bookings.

Unlike the large brand-name hotels who have an endless pot of cash to spend on their marketing and advertising, boutique hotels tend to be small privately-owned businesses, which can feel overwhelming when it comes to competing with large resorts and international brands. Here are five marketing tips for boutique hotels, helping to attract new visitors to your brand.

Use SEO

First things first, if someone is checking out hotels in your local area, it’s likely that they will use Google, Yahoo, or Bing to complete their search. Guests will want to research into rates, amenities, and attractions nearby, so if you’ve just started running your boutique hotel, there’s a chance your business listing won’t show up in immediate search results, therefore, using SEO (search engine optimisation) can help market your brand and have it appear higher in search results. Make sure to use specific keywords which will allow your website to climb up the Google search ranks.

Use Social Media

We all know how popular social media platforms like Facebook are. With millions of users from across the globe using such websites every day, using social media to market your boutique hotel can do wonders for your business. Whether it be setting up a business page on Facebook or creating an Instagram account to appeal to a younger demographic, the more people who see what your boutique hotel is all about, the better.

Offer Discounts

We all love a knocked down price, so to get more people through the door, why not offer special discounts? It can be a fine line between reducing the price too much and still making money for your business, so you will need to work out how much you can afford to knock off. There are plenty of websites such as Groupon that you can use to promote discounts for you. Word of mouth can make or break a business, so providing incentives and exclusive perks to new and regular customers can see your boutique hotel flourish.

Create Your Own Blog

As a way to engage with your customers, creating your own blog can be a great way for guests to get to know you on a personal level. While you should already have a website in place, keeping your viewers updated with the latest developments in your boutique hotel can show guests how dedicated you are to your business. There are all sorts of platforms you can use to set up your own blog, such as WordPress.

Digital Signage

Keeping up with the times and using digital signage in your boutique hotel is important. Whether it be information points, interactive kiosks, or menus, there are lots of ways on how you can vastly improve your guests’ experience, which is essential when it comes to marketing. You may be interested in using digital signage software by Cenareo who are specialists when it comes to providing digital signage for the hospitality sector, helping to increase customer engagement, sales, and brand loyalty. Cenareo can help your guests have a comfortable stay at your boutique hotel and show them how to navigate the different areas.

Whether you use SEO, social media platforms, digital signage, or create your own blog, there are lots of things you can do to market your boutique hotel. What’s more, many of the options listed are completely free to use, meaning you don’t have to have lots of cash in order to attract more guests to your brand. As with any business, make sure that you have a marketing strategy in place first which can give you more direction on what you need to do to get more guests through the door.

Could TikTok be the next massive social network for small firms?

When you are at the helm of a small but ambitious business, trying to get the word out about it can pose various problems.

After all, your marketing pockets aren’t as deep as those of the long-established, big-name players, and even marketing on social media can seem expensive these days.

That’s because, unfortunately, every marketer and their dog seem to be on there, giving you a lot of tough competition to fend off. However, levelling the playing field could be just a matter of choosing the right social network. Could the emerging TikTok be exactly that network?

A beginner’s guide to TikTok

We know what you’re probably thinking: you have no idea what TikTok actually is. That would be understandable, given its largely teenage fanbase; according to Business News Daily, over 40% of the TikTok app’s users are aged between 10 and 19.

However, this begs another obvious question: “what is the TikTok app?” The app itself enables its 500 million monthly users to shoot short-form, musically-influenced videos, sprinkle them with a few chosen lenses, filters and AR features and then share these video creations on the TikTok network.

Yes, it already sounds like fun – no wonder so many members of that young demographic cohort, Generation X, are addicted. Being able to unlock the conundrum of how to reach those people is just one reason why marketing on TikTok is well worth considering.

No huge marketing budget? No problem!

Trying to scrape together the money for an extensive advertising campaign on social media can be arduous for a small business, and that’s hardly surprising when you consider what they would be up against. On the likes of Facebook and Twitter, there is so much competition for advertising spots that the gatekeepers – the social media sites, we mean – hold much of the bargaining power.

However, until relatively recently, TikTok had no paid advertising opportunities of which to speak. The network has recently been implementing options, including takeovers of both brands and hashtags, while native content ads can be inserted seamlessly into feeds.

Even now, though, advertising on TikTok is much cheaper than doing so on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as you won’t be faced with nearly as much competition in your bid for sponsorship and ad placements. You should act on these lower costs now, before saturation sets in…

Gen X marks the surprisingly lucrative spot

It’s tempting to dismiss Generation X as a bunch of smartphone-addicted youngsters, but such ridicule would be at your own peril. Their buying power is growing, and you can build trust with them by producing content that is both authentic and consistent.

That’s straightforward on TikTok, where overly polished-looking content could actually look out of place amidst the eccentric creativity that runs riot on the platform. With Generation X weekly streaming an average of 23 hours of video content as per a Forbesreport, the case for marketing on TikTok – and reaching out to the notoriously hard-to-reach Gen X – gets even stronger.

Good start-up businesses to consider opening in Singapore

Many of us dream of escaping the boring office life and just build our own small business empire aka home-based business.

In any case, there are some technicalities that prevent us from getting started, such as lacking start-up fund, networking, and the plain and fear of risk.

Looking to earn money through freelancing, and eventually even turn it to full-time business? Here are some money-making small business ideas that generally require less investment and professional skills.

Many of these business ideas can even be systematised to create passive income streams. Thanks to technology, many tasks can now be automated, giving you the ability to take more of a hands-off approach and focus on the most important part of your business.

Virtual Assistant. Virtual assistants require a phone, a computer and stable Internet access. This is a fantastic job for those looking for flexibility. A virtual assistant’s work varies and can cover tasks like editing, data entry, researching, preparing a report, social media management, etc. They typically charge $15-20 per hour dependent on the job specifics.

Tutoring. If you’re good with certain subjects and have passion for teaching, then tutoring can be the right job for you to get an extra income. You can be a home tutor or an online tutor, which won’t require any physical classrooms.

What you need is simply skill in the subject you want to teach, and willingness to spend a few hours weekly to help someone else. You can use tutoring websites to sign up with and begin your tutoring job. Current rates for tuition jobs are around $15 to $50 per hour, which will depend on your qualifications and the education level of the tutee.

E-Commerce. Alibaba recently smashed its Single’s Day record as sales hit 168.3 billion yuan or $34.6 billion. This shows the huge potential of the e-commerce market. To set up a functional e-Commerce store, you just need to register a good domain name, setup a hosting and web design. Still, the efficiency of your marketing and advertising effort will affect the profit you earn. To be successful in your business, it’s not always necessary to sell a hundred products. What you need are the right items to sell.

Photographer. Photographers don’t always need to have an expensive studio or an office to begin getting clients since he can conduct his business anywhere. You can be of service to weddings, family events, marketing events. Indeed, people a lot of money for professional photography. One research showed that professional event photography charges $100 to $150 per hour.

Social Media Consultant. Social media as you know is one of the most popular and influential advertising channels for awareness. Consequently, many companies now look for people who are adept in social media to aid them in managing their social media presence.

Posting for Facebook and tweeting on Twitter is conventional, so you need more knowledge and skills in advertising tools plus other sites like LinkedIn and Instagram or even YouTube to become an expert in social media.

Find one that suits your preferences? After choosing a business type, the next order of importance is to register your domain nameto save it for yourself, after which you need to find a web host and create your own website. Once you have completed all of these, work consistently on your business. Be prepared to invest time, patience, resilience to get the success you want.

Photo by Sven Scheuermeier on Unsplash

How to build a website from scratch

Here we are well into the 21stcentury, and conjuring a website from thin air is still a daunting task, though it’s not as technical as it used to be.

Here’s the good news: You do not need to know a single iota of HTML, PHP, CSS, or any other web language. Everything is built to be plug and play. So at least at first, for just the set-up, you’re fine not knowing any code at all.

We assume you have a web hosting provider and package already set up, a domain picked out and registered, and are likely looking at your cPanel interface wondering “now what?” You can follow the more in-depth instructions at https://www.greengeeks.com/how-to-create-a-website, but we’ll provide a quick overview here.

Completely lost? Hire a freelancer!

You can easily obtain the services of a temporary web designer, developer, or general script jockey at freelance market websites such as UpWork. For a reasonable fee, you can hire a third party to do almost anything, from providing a two-hour walk-through chat to setting up the site for you, to designing your logo and doing other customization. You might also consider if you’re going to host a blog, in which case you might want to hire a blogger to help keep that content coming fresh on a regular basis. It’s worth keeping a freelancer or two on call in case you don’t want to do all the work yourself.

Pick a platform

A platform is a pre-fab website mold that will shape the content of your website into the form that suits your business. For blogs, there’s WordPress. For more advanced users who need more customized content, there’s Joomla and Drupal. For e-Commerce sites where you will sell something directly from your site, there’s Prestashop and CubeCart. For 99% of users, they are best off to go right for WordPress and move on. It’s the most-used software on the web and has the broadest support base. Additionally. it has an automatic install and set-up wizard.

Customize

This is the simple step of picking a theme for WordPress. Any default theme will do for now. After that comes adding graphical elements such as logos and banners. Over time, you can shop around for WordPress themes and also install plug-ins. Plug-ins add additional features to WordPress base functionality. You’d be well-served to consider two caveats:

(a) Web design is all about “less is more.” Avoid the temptation to overload your website with colors and shapes. Modern web design is 99% white space with plain black text, maybe a few lines here and there. A main column for content and a sidebar for navigation. Keep it simple!

(b) Be conservative in what you install. There’s a temptation to install lots of WordPress plug-ins because there are all these fun toys to play with, but the more plug-ins you install, the more you risk having two of them being incompatible. Removing WordPress plug-ins can be a headache. Likewise, you don’t need to run through cPanel clicking install on everything. Do your research and be sure you have a need for any service and that it’s the “best in class” for the function you want.

Set up content

Now’s the time to shine! Put up a “welcome” post on WordPress, write a few paragraphs about you or your business under “about us” or “our team,” and start adding blog posts. At this point, you’ll run into the term “SEO,” for “Search Engine Optimization.” Be assured, 99% of website owners overthink SEO.  According to Google’s own webmaster guidelines, if you talk naturally about a subject, you’ll rank just fine for that subject. A few businesses, such as a local-directed service (exterminator, landscaper, attorney), will want to ensure they rank critically for that location and service. If you have more concern about SEO than that, your best bet is to hire an expert, because it gets very technical quickly.

Market

The top priority for new websites is to get noticed, and to do that will require a deep dive into social media. At the least, you should get or have accounts on Twitter and Facebook. Variably, you might also want accounts at LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Instagram. You will want to promote your site from the social media accounts, and also make your content shareable on your website to social media. On your social media accounts, don’t just automatically promote your own business, but link to it from your profile and then engage the community – make friends, be followed and follow back, be a positive voice.

This is a very brief guide for the minimum steps to go from zero to website. There is no shortage of whole website resources devoted to this topic, however, and web design and maintenance is practically a business in itself. Good luck, and we’ll see you on the web!