Digital Marketing for the modern day hotel marketer by Karla Pearce

After spending ten years in marketing for hotel chains, I have never seen a bigger change in digital marketing than in the last five years.

In a bulletin by Adobe, it was mentioned that marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the past fifty.

Based on a broad survey of marketing by Adobe, less than half (48%) of professionals who consider themselves primarily digital marketers feel highly proficient in digital marketing. A majority of digital marketers haven’t received any formal training in digital marketing, and 82% report learning on the job.

The hotel industry has remained, in my opinion, a bit in the dark ages regarding digital marketing, mostly because a lot of it was outsourced to agencies. This left only a few positions within the hotel exposed to the information and trends the agencies brought to the table.

The solidification of the revenue and marketing manager role helped the hotel industry keep up with technology, making the two relatively new roles a necessity to every hotel. More hotels now have a consolidated marketing and revenue strategy and are growing these departments to stay competitive.

It isn’t a surprise that key stakeholders like the director of sales and general managers struggle to keep up with digital marketing trends generated by other hospitality companies. It is clear to me that hotels that are open to new ways of selling their property are usually the ones thriving.

Take video marketing as an example, in my opinion, the star of digital marketing. This tool is essential to any hotel’s marketing strategy. Thanks to simple tech tools and social integration, it’s easier and more cost-effective to promote your brand, drive traffic and engagement, and convert leads into booked business.

The key, in my opinion, is education – directors of sales and general managers are extremely busy and have an enormous weight on their shoulders to make the hotel profitable, leaving them with little time to catch up with the latest trends in digital marketing.

At Cvent, we acknowledge this and decided to create an educational white paper that will help sales, marketing, and management teams to better understand digital marketing.

We have included the essential topics below, designed especially for the MICE business, but can easily be rolled out to digital marketing in general.

• Website experience
• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Digital Advertising
• Video Marketing
• Trends

We have also included a glossary that it is crucial for every sales, revenue, and marketing professional, including terminology such as CTR (Click through Rate), SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and SEM (Search Engine Management).

Click here to download our whitepaper and start learning more about digital marketing!

About Karla

Karla Pearce is Cvent’s Product Marketing Manager EUROPE and previous winner of the Young Marketer of the Year Award. She has held on property and regional marketing positions with Melia Hotels International and Wyndham Hotel Group.

About Cvent

The Cvent Hospitality Cloud is an end-to-end platform that enables hotels and meeting venues to generate, manage, and measure group demand. In a nutshell, the Hospitality Cloud platform combines software and digital marketing solutions that enable hoteliers to manage and assess their group leads, while connecting them with event planners looking to source venues.