Inbound marketing is the perfect stand-out solution for hotels and resorts. People have very specific reasons for needing a hotel and also very specific amenities offered by the hotel. These specific details offer an inbound marketer a gold mine of opportunities to answer potential guest questions and put those heads in beds.
Different hotels have different guest personas. The Sandals Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica and the Hyatt Airport in Dallas appeal to completely different personas. A person at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Hyatt may wish they were at Sandals, but they booked their hotel because of their need to be close to the convention center—two destinations, two personas.
Let's say were talking about the same destination. You have the Pink Shell Resort and Lani Kai Resort, both on beautiful Fort Myers Beach, Florida. The Pink Shell's guest persona is more family oriented, they are looking for a relaxing quiet beach vacation with lots of onsite amenities. The Lani Kai's guest persona is younger, probably single or travels with friends. They are more price sensitive and looking for more of a party beach bar vibe. Same beach, two different guest personas.
Nail down your guest persona research first. It will be the basis for all your content targeting in the inbound methodology.
Let's go through a few different hotel types and come up with some inbound content ideas that would attract their specific guest personas. These are just guest personas assumptions, no actual persona research was done, but it will give you an idea of how content works in inbound marketing.
Pink Shell Beach Resort - Fort Myers Beach, Florida
Lani Kai Resort - Fort Myers Beach, Florida
Sandals Resort Montego Bay, Jamaica
In these examples, you saw content ideas that are specifically targeted to geographical locations and activities/solutions their guest personas might be interested in. You can see in the Fort Myers Beach example the two different types of people the two hotels are trying to attract. One is more family and relaxation oriented, while the other is more of a party destination. The other two are even more different. One is a convention style hotel in an urban hub and the other is a tropical getaway in the Caribbean. Yet they still use geographical keywords and problem-solving content their guest personas would be searching for online when looking for a hotel.
This style of content is the top of the funnel, or the awareness stage of the inbound marketing methodology. As you move people down the funnel with calls-to-action, the content will change to help them more with making a hotel choice. But it all starts with awareness, giving the right content to the right people. To learn more about attracting the right buyer personas to your site download this free ebook.