Hotel marketers should be reading the most useful articles on the web. Unfortunately, those can be hard to find.
As a hotel marketer, as serious as you are about growing your hotel business, you’re busy! Where should you be getting your information from? You don’t have time to trawl 20 news sites and blogs in the hopes of finding something useful for your hotel. So we’ve broken it down for you.
We’ve cut through the clutter and found 5 essential blogs for you, the modern hotel marketer. We’ve focused on conversion rate optimisation (CRO) blogs that’ll make you a smarter hotelier, along with blogs that are tailor-made for hotel marketers. Conversion optimisation is the art and science of tweaking each element of your site and marketing to drive up the percentage of visitors to your site that convert into real bookings.
With a few articles from these sites under your belt, you’ll be able to refine your strategy to drive direct bookings.
Let’s get started!
1. Conversion XL
ConversionXL is one of the strongest CRO blogs out there. It never fails to provide rigorous, data-driven content that you can put to use right away. You won’t find fluff-filled or generic content that’s been plastered everywhere else. Instead, you’ll be greeted with meaty articles that tackle topics like user-based design, research, analytics, copy, testing, and more.
These topics are incredibly valuable for creating guest personas, creating content for your website and marketing materials, and finding out what works and what doesn’t for your hotel site.
Must Read Post For Hotel Marketers:
4 Things That Work More Often Than Not For Mobile Landing Pages
Mobile device usage has skyrocketed in the last 4 years. Mobile searches surpassed desktop searches for the first time in 2015 and mobile devices now account for over 60% of all digital media consumption. However, mobile conversion rates aren’t matching up.
For hotels, that’s not surprising – there are many factors getting in the way of mobile bookings. One of the biggest ones is guests’ hesitancy to make big (hotel-room-sized) purchases on mobile. However, there are steps you can take that the data shows works. Here they are.
2. Conversion Rate Experts
Conversion Rate Experts is a unique CRO blog. The writing team is made up of consultants from all around the globe, all with their own expertise in specific industries and topics. They have also been the “go to” guys for worldwide brands like Facebook, Amazon and Google.
With that kind of experience and expertise behind it, their blog contains extremely insightful content on a number of conversion rate-related subjects. Take a look, and find out how their articles can be turned to powering up your hotel’s marketing strategy.
Must Read Post For Hotel Marketers:
How We Made $1 million for SEOMoz With One Landing Page and A Few Emails
This fantastic article breaks down how Conversion Rate Experts boosted SEOMoz’s revenue by $1million a year. You’ll gain a ton of marketing and conversion insights from this article that can be used to improve your hotel business, and you’ll be a step closer to thinking like a true conversion rate optimizer.
3. Unbounce
The Unbounce blog exclusively focuses on landing page optimization. That may seem a little specific, but an incredible amount expertise has gone into the advice they give. Created by Oli Gardner, a man who has “probably seen and critiqued more landing pages than anyone on the Internet”, the blog is packed with high-quality, well-written content designed to help power up your landing pages.
Must Read Post For Hoteliers:
29 Landing Page Reviews That Show Why Clarity is the Key to Conversion
Thinking of building a landing page for your next special offer? You should! Your landing page is where potential guests will either take action, or leave. It’s an extremely important part of your hotel website. This post drills into the gritty details behind stellar landing pages. It reviews 29 real life landing pages, providing detailed feedback on how they can be improved.
4. ReviewPro
Guest-centric cultures and bookings go hand in hand. If you can’t build a positive online relationship with your guests, you’ll have a hard time getting repeat bookings – or any bookings. To convert visitors into guests, they need to see that you’re trusted! ReveiwPro’s blog focuses on actionable insights to increase guest satisfaction, rankings on review sites and ultimately revenue. You’ll find articles dealing with specific reputation management subjects that can be used to improve your relationship with your guests. As a natural result, this will also improve your conversion rates.
Must Read Post For Hotel Marketers:
10 Essential Steps to Managing Your Hotel’s Online Reputation
In recent years, online reputation management for hotels has emerged as a critical function, a means of measuring guest satisfaction, guiding improvements and attracting more bookings.
But not every hotel is clear on the best approach to managing reputation. By taking an organized, hotel-wide approach, you can reap the benefits and avoid pitfalls such as missed opportunities, negative reviews and wasted time.
To help you stay focused, here are 10 essential steps to managing your hotel’s online reputation
5. Net Affinity
Sorry – we couldn’t resist! Our blog is tailored specifically for hotels and their needs. We tackle the issue of growing direct bookings from every angle – industry trends, website design, revenue management, digital marketing and social media. Our writers are experts who all have experience in the hospitality industry, so we know where you’re coming from and what key challenges you have to overcome.
Must Read Post For Hotel Marketers:
18 Ways to Boost Hotel Bookings and Get More Revenue
“How can I get more bookings and more revenue?”
This is the question that all hotel marketers must answer to keep their business alive. The question is simple, but answering it can be a challenge. This post gives you 18 tips that’ll help you get more bookings and boost your hotel revenue. Take a look at the bigger picture.
Your Turn
What are your “go to” blogs for learning about how to snag more guests and raise conversions on your site? Is it a straightforward conversion blog, one specifically for hotel marketers, one on hospitality trends, or something else? Please share with us in the comments below.
