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Hospitality Marketing: Top 5 Tips to Be the Best

by | CAREER GUIDANCE, Career Paths

Coming to the end of our series focusing on hospitality marketing, you can look back and see there’s been a lot to chew on. You've learned the skills you need to thrive. You read about some of the most popular hospitality marketing jobs. You’ve even heard from Denys Courtier, Regional Director of Sales and Marketing at one of the coolest boutique hotels in Morocco. 

After all that, you should have a much better understanding of why marketing is important for the hospitality industry and how you might fit the role.

Being an excellent marketing pro doesn't just happen overnight, so we’ve put together a list of some of the most essential tips to succeed in your hospitality marketing job

1 - Know your market

This is the main job of a marketing professional. You should be an expert on both your local and global market. 

To do this, you’ll need to make the most of your research and data analysis skills. You should be looking at your region and analyzing the competition to decide the best way to position your brand. 

How many competitors are within a certain radius of your location, what they offer, and how much they charge are all things you must know if you want to claim a share of the market.

The best way to stand out from the crowd is to understand where there are gaps in your market. This allows you to create a marketing strategy that uses those openings as an opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competitors.

2 - Know your product

Just as important as understanding the realities of your market, is having in-depth knowledge about the product, service, or brand you are marketing.

If you are working with a product, you should know everything about it. Study its features, drawbacks, and what makes it different from similar products. This information will help you have a better idea of how to position your product in the market.

If your task is to market a service, you need to experience the service first hand from a customer's point of view. If you are working for a cruise line, you should take a cruise yourself to see what it's like. Working for a restaurant group? You should eat at every establishment in their portfolio. 

Experiencing these services from the perspective of a guest or client will also allow you to…

3 - Know your customer

By knowing your product and knowing your market, you will already begin to know your customer. However, the customers are the ones who control the bottom line so understanding them is by far the most important.

By going on a cruise or eating at a restaurant, you’ll not only have the chance to experience what you are trying to sell to the public. You’ll also be able to interact with people who’ve already experienced your product or service and get their feedback directly.

Customer feedback is absolutely essential to be able to create and market products and services. You should seek to create as many avenues for feedback as possible so you are in constant communication with your customers. This allows you to be responsive to their wants and needs in real time and gain an edge in the market.

4 - Be authentic

This one sounds easy but can be quite difficult to achieve. People are being overwhelmed with marketing on a daily basis and most of it gets ignored. The best way to connect with customers is to strive for authenticity.

If you can create marketing content that is authentic people will respond to it. 

It could be useful or entertaining web content related to your market that you create and distribute for free. Or a cruise line company might create a video campaign that features people who actually look like their customers.

 An advert for a cruise that features people of all ages, especially the elderly would be a great example of authentic marketing.

5 - Tell stories

The most effective marketing campaigns are all about stories. The stories can be big or small, but the goal is always to create a narrative that your customers will connect with.

If you’re marketing for a resort, you might want to create a story based around escaping the worries of normal life for a week of total calm and relaxation. A story for a cruise line could be based around seeing the world without the stress of airports. For a catering company, it could be focused on how they create bespoke culinary experiences for each of their clients.

The opportunities are endless, but the bottom line is: storytelling works. It’s why testimonials are so useful in marketing. They are stories from previous customers about how much they loved your service or product and how useful or beneficial it was for them. 

If you’re passionate about hospitality but you want your work to be creative then marketing is the right for you. Check out the hospitality marketing positions available on Hosco and find your dream job today!

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