Within the hospitality and tourism sector, consumers are constantly on the look out for the latest offers and deals. This means that as a hotel, restaurant, attraction or venue owner, you need to provide your customers with the best possible offer available.
There are two types of customers which are likely to be attracted to promotional offers, the first being the logical thinkers. These customers have a particular budget and are looking at many different options for their perfect deal. They are rational and take their time to consider their options.
The other is the spontaneous type of customer who stumbles across a good deal and can?t resist but to take it up.
So, how do you entice and encourage these types of customers?
Know your audience
Firstly, when it comes to marketing, the key to offering the right promotional deal is knowing your audience. You have to focus on the right target market in order to get results and sales. To know your audience is to know them inside out.
You need to understand where they get their information from. After all, how else are you going to reach them? Find out what travel magazines and newspapers they read. What social media platforms they use and where they are asking questions online. It's a good idea to ask guests and visitors about their preferences either by a short survey or a simple form on your website.
There are many ways to find out about your specific target market. You can use market research surveys in order to get demographic information about your customers. This will help you find out specifics such as their age, household income and occupation. This way you can specifically target those who are more likely to respond to your marketing efforts.
As part of knowing your audience, you also need to know how they engage with you online at the moment. To do this you should start recording your stats from your website. Find out how long visitors are spending on your website, what they are clicking on and how they came to your website to begin with. Have they searched for it specifically or just found it by accident?
This will also determine where you advertise your offers, whether it is on your website, in print, or on other relevant websites.
Attracting the right people
Most of the time, customers will go directly to your website for special offers. This is where you only have a few seconds to capture their attention. Often, buying decisions are made with emotion so find out how you are appealing to their needs and wants. For example, think about Butlins; their target audience is predominantly families so they have offers such as 'kids eat free' or 'kids eat for ?1'. Their offers are perfect for their target audience, which would be difficult to say no to.
One of our clients is a very popular wedding venue, and has many competitors. As part of its wedding deals they are offering couples the top table at their reception for free. This is another very clever way to attract the right audience and persuade a couple to choose their venue over another by adding value to their package.
What it all comes down to is knowing your audience. Without knowing who your customers are, you aren?t able to reach out and offer them exactly what they want. But also keep in mind that when people buy at a discount, they keep buying at a discount. In order to build long term loyalty, offers and promotions aren't always the best strategy.
For more information see www.welltravelled.co.uk
