From online vouchers to emailed discount codes, the benefits of using discounts in your online hotel marketing campaign should not be overlooked. Here’s a look at how you can use this tactic to drive traffic to your resort’s website, as well as a few of the potential pitfalls to look out for.
Voucher Codes
Voucher codes are one of the best ways to offer your guests discounts when they book online and are a great way to generate interest in your resort. This potential for massive word of mouth publicity means you should be careful when deciding how much of a discount to give – if it gets spread over the web too much you might find huge numbers of people decide to take advantage of it.
Mailing Lists
Your Newsletter Mailing lists allow you to maintain communication with prospect guests so that you have a better chance of converting them in the future. They also serve as a valuable extension of your resort’s website, giving you the chance to reach out to guests, without them having to search for you again.
Crafting an effective email marketing campaign takes real skill though - your emails need to be interesting and engaging and ideally include exclusive discounts and insider information each time. It’s also a case of quality over quantity – send out too many emails and you’ll end up lost in the recipient’s spam folder.
Like-Gating
Like-gating is the slightly devious tactic of forcing Facebook users to ‘like’ your property’s page before they can take advantage of your special offer or discount code. There’s no doubt that it increases your number of ‘likes’ but it does little to help people warm to your business.
Step out from behind this digital wall and promote your offer on your website’s homepage, in your email newsletter and on your blog and you’ll achieve a much bigger, more receptive audience than you could ever hope to find with Facebook like-gating alone.
Organic Traffic
Online offers are a great way to create extra content and drive more organic traffic to your website. By keeping all your email newsletters in normal HTML form on your website, for example, you can create a search visible archive full of valuable keywords. Each time you launch a new discount or special offer, make sure it’s followed up with a carefully key-worded blog and if it’s a very special offer, consider creating a blog post for it too.
Publishing online discounts will generate inbound links, improving your search results ranking and strengthening customer loyalty over time. Used effectively, these discounts more than pay for themselves in terms of online bookings.
Read how the eTourism Online Reservations System can make online vouchers and discount codes work for your resort.
