There’s no denying it — budgets are tighter than ever and more than a handful of GMs will have already looked at every expense several times. We’re no fools, of course, and we know that we need to keep advertising and marketing, even when times are tough. Besides, (potential) guests still want to be engaged online and continue to message you with questions and comments, which require speedy replies. Social and digital media marketing has a reputation for cost effectiveness, but more is needed. So how can you lower your social media costs without compromising effectiveness?
Tough times call for tough measures and — as a GM friend reminded me a little while ago — no expense is sacred anymore. Provided somebody who knows what he or she is doing runs your social media activities, bigger budgets, both time and money-wise, usually produce bigger results. Having said that, there are a number of ways to reduce your monthly social media costs without compromising results overly much.
As so often, the key is to look at the auxiliary costs first, before reducing paid advertising spend or man-hours. Now is the time to audit all the little apps and software your team is using to see if they’re all still needed or if you could do without them, at least for a while. Sure, most of them are only a couple of dollars per month, but it all adds up. Are you using a social media scheduling and analytics dashboard? Check that you’re still getting the best deal. You might want to temporarily switch to a cheaper provider or even do without a dashboard. Also make sure you’re really using all the functions an app or a piece of software offers. For example: you might subscribe to Revinate and also pay a monthly fee for a social media scheduling dashboard. If most of your social media activity is on Facebook and Twitter, Revinate offers scheduling to these platforms as part of its service. In other words: make sure you’re not paying twice for the same service.
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Equally, stock photo websites like Shutterstock can really help with sourcing images for online flyers and social media posts, but they come at a price. In recent years, a number of cut-price or even free-of-charge stock photo services have started, which could be a useful (and free!) temporary alternative. Just search for “free stock photos” and you’ll see what I mean. If you need free tools to make your free images look even better, there are hundreds of great apps and programs available ranging from GIMP, the free-of-charge Photoshop alternative for MacOS to canva.com, a site that lets you design just about anything in minutes even if you’re not a professional graphic designer.
Perhaps the best money-saving tip is to revisit your audiences and targeting. Funds are limited and marketing your hotel online isn’t like playing Pokémon Go — you can’t catch them all. In other words, you have to be selective. Go through your various offers and take another look at your target markets, then put your advertising money into the offers that are most popular with your key markets and push them out on the right platforms. We recently managed to increase a hotel’s advance bookings by more than 50% pushing the number of such bookings from two digits to three digits per month — all for less than AED 900 (US $245). You can do it, if you take some time to plan and test. A certain amount of ruthlessness may be required, of course. Contrary to popular belief, not everything can be successfully sold or advertised online. If an offer doesn’t show good traction, change it or move your paid spend elsewhere.
Do not reduce or even stop your social media outreach efforts. Sure, unlike paid advertising, the ROI of engaging guests online is often difficult to calculate, but the fact remains that the best and cheapest form of advertising is electronic word-of -mouth. Get your guests talking, sharing, and recommending. Nobody should be able to leave a positive comment about your hotel on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform without being thanked and asked to also review you on TripAdvisor. Besides, engaged guests generate more pictures and videos, which you can then use across your various social media services — another great free source of content.
Whatever you do: Keep it social!
Make your budget go further — Five things to try today
1. Evaluate your platforms: When times are good, it’s easy to get carried away and open accounts on any different social media platforms, but with time and money in shorter supply, it makes sense to only focus on your main platforms, which the majority of your guests are using.
2. Check what you’re paying for: Whether it’s a piece of software, an app, or an outsourced service provider — now is the time to make sure that you’re not paying twice for the same services.
3. Is there a free alternative? You’d be surprised how many popular (and expensive) programmes, apps, or online services have entirely acceptable free alternatives. From office suites to graphic design software, and even entire online booking engines — a lot is on offer. Always google before spending.
4. Reactivate your teams: Having your employees generate even a few pieces of content will save money and time. This works if they’re given achievable targets, e.g. two pictures or post ideas per week, per department.
5. Put your data to work: The data your guests share is a potential goldmine, yet very few hotels (other than the big players) turn it into anything useful. Start segmenting data in more useful groups and target them with offers that fit. Nobody abroad wants to receive another email from you with local F&B offers — give them something more enticing to read.
About the Author: Martin Kubler is the founder of Iconsulthotels and the CEO of sps:affinity. Iconsulthotes is now sps:hotels — aleading hotel management consultancy that provides its clients forward-looking business strategies, keeping them ahead of the market. Email: hello@spsaffinity.com.
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