Bed And Breakfast Marketing - Who Is Coming To Visit?
If you want to be successful then effective bed and breakfast marketing (or gite
marketing or guest house marketing or whatever you want to call it) is a vital aspect of building your accommodation business. The trouble is, marketing isn't something many of us learn and it's all too easy to waste money. Hopefully this series of articles will help you make the most of your budget.
The internet is a prime example. It is without doubt the most powerful tool for drawing in more guests, but it's also an opportunity to throw a lot of money in the wrong direction if you don't know what you are doing!
Anybody can put together a decent bed and breakfast website. Not so long ago professional help was vital but today programs like Wordpress allow you to build remarkably powerful sites that can compete with anyone. What's more, they cost you a fraction of what a professional web designer does and you retain complete control.
But I digress. I'll get into the secrets the pros don't want to tell you about web design in another article!
Let's assume you've got your website up and running and you are happy with it. There is one area that is frequently overlooked but which has a tremendously impact to the effectiveness of your bed and breakfast marketing. Most people never know who is coming to visit.
I don't mean who is visiting your bed and breakfast. What I mean is who is coming to visit your website? Where are they coming from? Which pages did they visit? What did they type into search engines? Which of the external sites you might use for advertising are actually sending you visitors?
That's a lot of questions, but you can see how the answer to each one is important. Without the right information you are simply guessing what people want. With good market intelligence you will know what's working and what isn't. You can accurately target specific areas. You know where to spend every cent.
The stats that you get from your web host aren't usually adequate to get you accurate answers. The solution is to install Google Analytics (or get your current webmaster to do it for you). You then have valuable bed and breakfast marketing intelligence at your finger tips every day - and it's free!
Bed And Breakfast Marketing - Who Is Coming To Visit?