5 Mobile Marketing Strategies for Hotels
In late March of 2014, Matt Cutts of Google, posted a blog indicating that mobile marketing queries would likely surpass PC searches. Is this surprising news? No, not if you consider how attached people are to their mobile devices. It stands to reason then that any business with a website, especially hotels, need to focus on providing not just mobile friendly content, but also mobile optimized content. Sadly, for many businesses, the idea of restructuring websites into a mobile friendly apparatus becomes a chore, and it is a chore that hotels should avoid. It is not that your hotel site does not need mobile, but what it needs is mobile optimization. Mobile friendly is a patch, but mobile optimization is 100 percent geared towards conquering the mobile hotel market. The good news is that there are a number of strategies that make the entire process easier. In this blog, we explore five mobile marketing strategies for hotels.
1. Keep your hotel mobile marketing It Simple and Sweet (KISS)
The philosophy revolves around the fact that mobile searchers look for specific information, and they want it quick. With mobile marketing, there is no good reason to go into great detail though richer content should be available to mobile searchers. What mobile searchers want are fast loading sites. More than 50 percent of mobile searchers bounce to another site if the current site takes longer than 3-4 seconds to load.
2. Make your mobile content Easy to Share
Social media is as much of the driving force behind mobile marketing. While mobile content is skinny, over 90 percent of the mobile crowd share media, such as photos. Making it easy for your visitors to share media about your site enables the mobile crowd to help you promote your hotel.
3. Book it or Break It
There is little reward for your business if your website is mobile-optimized, but your site’s booking engine is not. Extend your mobile strategy to include the entire mobile experience. Why? Mobile-optimized only works for your hotel site when the entire process is optimized for the mobile market. That fact is one of the differences between mobile friendly and mobile optimized.
4. Easy, Simple Contact for your hotel
Mobile markets need one-touch connect. Either a phone number that auto-dials, or an email form that is simple to fill out and send are what the mobile crowd wants. When mobile users encounter something that is complex or tedious, they bounce, and your site loses a potential customer.
5. Which is Better — Mobile-Friendly or Mobile Optimized?
The entire process begins with knowledge. Learn the difference between terms that sound like they mean the same thing. Mobile optimized and mobile friendly are not the same thing, though on the outside they have the implication of seemingly being the same. The big difference is this:
Mobile friendly means that mobile users can use the site, but that the site adaptation comes from a PC based site; whereas, mobile optimized means the site was created for mobile users and not PC users. Which is stronger for the mobile market, Mobile Optimization is stronger than Mobile Friendly.