Power On Series: Website Refresh and Email List Building Ideas
This excerpt is from our recently published guide, Power On – Marketing for What’s Next. The complete guide offers actionable digital marketing strategies to prepare you for what’s next for hotels, resorts, & vacation rentals. You can check in daily for the next section or you can download the full version here.
To support your upcoming advertising strategies, this is also a good time to work on your website and prepare to build your email list. Sprucing up property pictures, making sure amenities are up to date and updating any property or site descriptions. Are you promoting nearby recreational activities or landmarks? Now is a good time to get those on the site. When travelers are ready to get back on the road, you can assure your site is ready to capture their attention.
Here are the strategies we’re working on with our customers right now.
General Website Maintenance and Enhancements
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- Imagery: Now is the time to be showing open spaces, privacy and peaceful surroundings. We’re recommending customers remove pictures of crowded pool/beach scenes or images of large groups.
- Property Photography: With less people at your properties or rentals right now, use the opportunity to get updated photography of the inside of your homes, resorts, lodges, etc. as well as the outdoors and surrounding areas.
- Cleaning and Sanitation Checklist: Update and prominently display your cleaning and sanitation checklists and processes. This is information we anticipate being sought out regularly by interested travelers.
- FAQ Page: Consider creating an FAQ page to increase visibility in Google Quick Answers. Content can center around the top questions regarding your property during COVID-19, such as measures taken on property to comply with the CDC, property reopening dates if it has been closed, cancellation properties and other top concerns.
- SEO: With less money being spent on paid search right now, it’s a great time to make sure you’re ranking organically for key terms related to your property or destination.
- Blogging: If you don’t have a blog, now is the time to start. It’s a fantastic way to bring the experience of your property or destination to life and give potential guests an inside look. Highlighting local destinations, events, and activities can help connect your property locally. Plus, blogging is a great way to boost your SEO
- Get Creative: We’ve seen our customers get very creative in terms of creating virtual activity centers and resources on their site. Below are a few examples.
This resort put together a whole resource center of activities for the quarantined family. These activities also tie back nicely to their property’s personality.
This Northern Minnesota resort knows its guests love the feel of the North Woods so they’ve created this gallery of options for fans to soak in the atmosphere from afar.
Who doesn’t recall a favorite meal from a destination they’ve been? This resort is betting you’ll savor the opportunity to sample their cuisine at home until you can make a return.
This is a great example of bringing the personality of your destination to life for prospective guests while offering potential quarantine activities to enjoy nature.
Conversion Optimization
If you don’t have this set up already, now is the time. Conversion optimization is an easy way to capture more travelers as they visit your site. Simple pop-up ads triggered by screen activity by the visitor can go a long way in building your email lists and give you more opportunities to continue marketing to potential leads.
On average we see a conversion rate of 3-4% of unique visitors that opt into mailing lists from conversion optimization campaigns.
Example: A visitor has found you via Google Search and is browsing through your website looking at your property. They have decided they’ve seen what they came to see and move towards the Back button on their browser. Their “exit-intent” screen activity triggers a pop-up ad that encourages them to join your mailing list to get updates on upcoming summer promotions and events. If they liked what they saw on your site, they’ll likely sign-up to stay in the loop on summer deals.
With these updates in the works you now can look at creative and unique ways to drive traffic to your site via social media and email. That will be the focus of our next installment of Power On – Marketing for What’s Next.