Most travel customers make a large number of online searches before they book a hotel. This means that while competition may be fierce in the industry, you have an excellent opportunity to attract business by hiring a professional for web design in Teddington. If you can get your online marketing strategy right, you can soar ahead of the competition. Here are some tips..

Understand micro-moments

Critical to building a successful marketing plan is understanding all of your potential customers’ micro-moments. To do this, you need to know the journey that people take when they book a hotel. This is split into four stages – dreaming, planning, booking, and experience. Each stage has hundreds of micro-moments. These are the ‘I want to know’ and ‘I want to book’ moments. If you are to benefit from their custom, you need to be there at these micro-moments. This means you need to market, producing content, with them in mind.

Invest in a mobile website or an app (or both!)

If you do not have a mobile website, now is the time to invest in one. Responsive web design will ensure that your website looks great no matter what device it is viewed on. This is important because more people are using mobile Internet than ever before. If your website is not optimised for mobile use, it will be unsightly and difficult to use, and this will result in viewers going elsewhere.

Create a video of your website

Video marketing is booming at present. This is largely because videos can evoke an emotional response, which can cause people to take action. There are many videos you can create, but why not start off with a virtual tour of your hotel? An expert in web design in Teddington will be able to integrate this into your website.

Encourage previous customers to leave reviews

Reviews are exceptionally important for any business, but even more so for hotels. You need to build up a good reputation on independent review platforms such as TripAdvisor. Customers are increasingly sceptical, and they won’t trust feedback if it is merely posted on your site directly by you. You need to encourage past customers to say a nice word about you. You can do this by following up with an email after their stay. You may also want to consider running a competition to encourage users to leave feedback. For example, whoever leaves a review could be entered into a prize draw to receive a voucher for your hotel. Regular reviews are important, as users are most interested in recent reviews, and tend to read the first 6-12 posts before making a decision.

Produce original, engaging, and informative content

Finally, content marketing is a powerful tool that all hotels should be taking advantage of. This will help you to be there at those micro-moments mentioned above. Moreover, you will show your business as an expert in the industry, and you can boost your search engine result rankings. You should always put together content with the customer inside – think about what they want to know, not what you want to tell them.