Social media is a necessity these days. Marketing experts have said if you’re not already using social media to get your message out, you’re missing a good communications opportunity. If you are just getting started, we suggest focusing on Facebook, X, and YouTube.
- Facebook is a global social networking website that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Users can add friends, send them messages, and share their profiles.
- X is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts up to 140 characters in length.
- YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload and share videos.
- A 2013 Public Opinion Research study found that 73% of Americans use social media, and of those, 67% interact with companies on social media websites. One in four interacts more than once per week. This is a communications media that is pulling in reservations for our industry. According to Marketing 2.0, from the book titled “Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing”, if you are considering focusing on social media, it is suggested to assemble the marketing team and your CEO and ask these questions:
- Why do we think we need a social medial strategy?
- What is our objective?
- What are the staffing requirements?
- What are the risks?
- What are the opportunities?
- What are our competitors doing in social media?
Content is King. Marketing experts recommend promoting your business in a blog (thus, creating content), which can also drive content to Facebook and X. This enables you to post material in one place that will automatically update Facebook and X; thus, saving you from updating all media sources. You can also separately post special experiences from your guests, upload their videos to YouTube, then link them back to your website. All this also helps increase your Search Engine ranking.
One of the main benefits of The Reservation Sales Suite is being able to track the revenue from different social media sources by connecting it with a unique toll-free number and using a Revinate Unique URL/Dynamic Coding. Adding a social media source-specific unique toll-free number to the info pages of your social media sites is easy to set up.
In order to use the Unique URL/Dynamic Coding, you will want to first implement Dynamic Coding on your website. To do this, refer to the White Paper, Internet Keyword Tracking with The Reservation Sales Suite. Dynamic Coding works by adding a “keyword” or token at the end of any URL that references your website.
This keyword or token references the original marketing source by reading code written by your web developer. Based on the keyword read, a unique toll-free number will be displayed to the customer throughout the website experience. When the customer picks up the phone to call one of your reservation sales agents, Reservation Sales Suite users can track which keyword generated the call and how much revenue is associated to the originating marketing source if the customer booked. Most social media sites limit the number of characters you can use in your URL, so we suggest using TinyUrl or Bitly. These are free services that allow you to convert a long URL into a short URL making it fit within the guidelines of most social media.
One of our Revinate clients contacted the city of Charleston, South Carolina Facebook page. Island Realty added numerous posts on the Charleston page including a weekly contest promoting a 4-night getaway if the web visitor became a fan of Island Realty’s Facebook page and then clicked on the contest post. Island Realty was able to gain over 2,000 Facebook fans in just a couple of days with this promotion. They also gained fans via email campaigns to their repeat guests and hot leads. Their fans are very engaged in the Island Realty Facebook page. Now that fans are established, she is working on keeping their fans interested so they will book their next vacation with them or spread the word to their family and friends.
Reservation Sales Suite Facebook
Measuring and tracking your social media content posts is one of the foundation pieces of any results-driven social media marketing plan. There are a variety of tracking technologies available. However, the Reservation Sales Suite allows your business the ability to create five unique Facebook campaigns types to track which type of posts are the results you are looking for.
Revinate recommends that each of your five Facebook campaigns has a specific purpose or goal. Those types of goals could be:
- Drive lead calls
- Drive contact form submissions
- Brand your company
- Create awareness and excitement around the destination and experience
Before setting up your five dedicated Facebook campaigns, contemplate your desired outcome for each type of post. Typical outcomes could be:
- Increasing your “likes”
- Increasing click-throughs to your website
- Increasing lead calls and bookings.
Below are some suggestions on how to develop and optimize content categories to drive your desired outcomes.
Contact your Customer Success Manager for ways to better integrate components of your website into your Facebook page by adding Facebook apps. Examples are your Contact Us form, Push2Talk and Push2Chat features.
Interactive Campaign Type
Daily/Weekly Postings
Interactive posts are designed to engage your audience with your brand and destination.
Of the five categories, this is the most social as it facilitates a dialogue between your business and the public. Although not necessarily a direct lead generator, it does expose your brand and destination to your fan’s friends and family who may see the interaction between the two of you on their Facebook News Feed.
Questions can be designed to get your audience talking about their favorite experiences whether they have visited you recently or not. For example, “What’s your favorite thing to do while relaxing on the beach?” invites a response from everyone who sees it. Other interactive posts can be designed to engage your fans right after they have stayed with you using open-ended questions such as “What was the highlight of your recent vacation with us?” Responses to this interactive approach are referred to as the “Trip Echo Effect.” The marketing benefits come from a positive vacation experience that is shared not only with immediate friends and family, but to a much wider group (friends of friends, coworkers, etc.).
Another way to drive interaction is to place the Facebook “Like” button your website. Ideal placement is property/room type specific pages or any other page on your website dedicated to selling the experience (amenities pages, etc.) More information can be found at http: //developers.facebook.com.
The key to this type of post is crafting the right wording to facilitate a conversation that sparks the echo effect. To maximize this type of post, always encourage posting of photos by your fans.
Photo and Video Campaign Type
Daily/Weekly Postings
Posting photos and video is a great way to encourage engagement with and among your fans. Be sure to provide ongoing, updated variety in this category. Although everyone loves a sunset or photos of snow-capped peaks, these types of photos can get old if you lean on them too much. Use a mix of destination-focused visuals (e.g. scenery), as well as people- focused (guests enjoying your destination) photos and videos. It’s also a good idea to humanize your brand by posting photos of employees, like front desk, beach and pool staff, etc.
If you already have content on YouTube, you can add the YouTube app to your Facebook page to provide instant content. Video ideas might include guest interaction, behind the scenes footage and testimonials.
Asking your audience to “like” or “comment” on your photo or video post increases the likelihood that your post will show up in the news feeds of hundreds or even thousands of other Facebook users.
Flash Sales Campaign Type
Monthly/Quarterly
Posting limited time only “flash sales” is an effective way to drive lead call volume during times of the year when your occupancy is generally lower or during busier seasons in an attempt to sell-out lower occupancy periods during your high season.
This type of post should create a sense of urgency for the viewer. Limit the time frame of the offer to less than 48 hours, the first x callers or to a specific home or room type. Always provide a strong call to action (Click here now to lock-in this incredible deal!). When you create the illusion of scarcity, your fans will act quicker.
Offers and Deals Campaign Type
Monthly or Quarterly
Offers differ from flash sales as they can be valid for longer periods of time, or they can discount other ancillary items as part of a package (ski free when you stay with us for 3 or more nights in March). Offers create the perception of value, especially when you include other vacation expenditures, such as lift tickets, drinks, gas, etc., into the total price. Again, provide strong calls to action and create limits on the offer.
Deals are a way to increase ancillary spending for those guests who have checked in and have the Facebook app on their smartphone. You can find more on Facebook deals at www.facebook.com/deals/business. This functionality allows you to target your marketing or ancillary items such as spa, golf, and restaurants to those who have already checked in. Experienced Facebook app users know how to find these deals, so all you need to do is post them. For the less tech savvy, but smartphone-wielding guest, signage and reminders at check-in are helpful. Make sure you claim your Facebook Place first.
Keep in mind that these promotions should be based on when you are trying to drive additional revenue. The frequency depends on your business seasonality as well as your ancillary options.
Contests Campaign Type
Quarterly
Contests combine components of the some or all of the above categories in that they can be interactive and make good use of visuals. Contests should also have a well-defined goal such as building your Facebook fan base or collecting emails. Like the previous post categories, goals should be well defined so that you can measure their effectiveness.
When designing a contest, be mindful of your diverse Facebook audience. Facebook Insights can give you some basic demographic information about your audience. When designing your contest and prize(s), always consider who the players might be, especially if a contest might garner more interest from women than men.
Contests should instill a sense of excitement and fun (like your destination). Make the rules simple to follow. Consider including other hospitality partners such as a local activity provider, tour company or restaurant in your contests.
Finally, contests can be included in a larger promotional effort, such as a business anniversary or local/regional happening or event.
Note that Facebook terms require you to run your contests using an app. The most popular app is Wildfire.
Frequency
Creating a content or “editorial” calendar is a great way to space out and leverage the best timing for all the above strategies. It can also help with “content fatigue” and times when you have run out of social media posting ideas.
Interactive and photo-video posts should be done on an ongoing daily-weekly basis. These posts are easy to conceive and take up little time to create as you can rely, in part, on your fans to create the content. When using interactive comments make sure to ask a question your fans would WANT to answer. The more activity a post gets the more often it will show up in your fan’s news feed.
Flash sales and contests should be done with less frequency, perhaps monthly or quarterly. Remember, over-posting of flash sales diminishes the value of your brand and the content experience.
Contests should run for longer periods of time relative to the other content types and be used on a quarterly or biannual basis.
Evaluation
Each campaign should be evaluated often to gauge its effectiveness. The reasoning behind breaking your content down into five basic categories is to better enable you to understand what makes consumers act and buy. You may quickly find out that the type of contests you have been running only result in a handful of new fans and emails and that they simply do not make the phone ring. Your photo and video posts may drive more lead calls and bookings than you previously thought when 100% of your Facebook posts were consolidated under one Reservation Sales Suite campaign.
Seasonality, economic news and other external (and internal business factors) should be considered when making changes to your posts. Ultimately, the broader social media content strategy should be driving new revenue for your business. The granular analysis that The Reservation Sales Suite can provide will help you better understand when, how and if your social media marketing strategy is working.
Make sure all these campaigns are tied to the Marketing Category “Social Media” so you can evaluate the results as one strategy.
User Review Sites
User review sites can be a powerful lead generation source. Closely related to other social media types, user review sties rely on the influencing power of social proof and individual opinion to rank and promote lodging options. The largest and most influential of these sites is Trip Advisor, with over 170 million reviews and 100 new contributions posted every minute. The best thing you can do is either hire a dedicated resource to watch your rating and respond to reviews with your branded response or use a company such as Revinate to manage this for you.
Creating a New Reservation Sales Suite Campaign