Hospitality and social media: converting to a sale

In hospitality, every post is a chance to turn a follower into a booking.

Lots of followers, not enough bookings? Here is where the funnel usually leaks. But what is your first step? How do you reach people online? Most importantly, how do you convert to a sale?

It is a tale as old as social media. The likes are there. The bookings are not. Sure, you can throw more money into as many platforms as possible, but you need to know why you are doing so and if spending this kind of money will solve your issues.  

There is no magic dust. Bookings come from getting the small things right, every time. 

Here are a few tips to help you convert to a sale from social media more often. 

1. You need a social media strategy 

Social looks like fun and games. For a hospitality business it is a crowded, competitive market.

That is why it is crucial to have a watertight social media strategy before you even think about logging on. 

So, how do you go about developing a social media strategy? Well, the first step is pretty easy: goals. 

When first starting with your social media strategy, you should begin by considering your goals. What do you want to achieve on social media? What do you want to get out of each specific platform? 

Here are a few common goals to get you started: increase brand awareness, improve customer service, reach a wider audience, and grow your social media presence. 

2. Let UGC tell your story

User-generated content (UGC) is content (images, videos, reviews) created by a brand’s customers, and it is a goldmine for conversions.

It works because guests trust other guests.

And everyone wants a look at the real thing before they book.

Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising study found 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel. UGC is the closest thing to that at scale: real guests vouching for you, which no ad can buy.

Your posts say you are good. Your guests prove it. 

If you’re ready to build trust with customers, start collecting UGC in the form of reviews, photos, videos and using it on social media and also your website. 

You can run a branded hashtag campaign to encourage people to share photos of themselves at your location.

3. Your website must be optimised

You may very well have the best social media page in the world. However, if your website is poorly optimised, slow, and difficult to navigate, how many conversions do you think your social media pages will make? 

Your social media pages and website should support each other. Just like your Facebook or Instagram page, your website should be clean, fast loading, easy to use, and straightforward. Visitors coming from your social pages to your website shouldn’t need to do detective work to figure out where they are and where they need to go. 

This is especially important for hospitality businesses that take bookings and sales through their website. If your checkout process is clunky and overly complicated, your potential customers will not have the highest of expectations for your service and products. 

4. Don’t underestimate the power of landing pages 

If you are a hospitality business, there is a high chance that you run specials and promotions on your social media pages. With consistent branding and information, unique landing pages allow people to know they are in the right place. 

Landing pages make booking smoother because they build confidence. The guest knows they are in the right place, and you look like you know what you are selling. 

Think of it this way: if a customer clicks on an ad for your holiday specials, wouldn’t you like them to land on a page that talks about your holiday specials? Pretty simple, right? 

5. Track, learn, and adjust

So, you have put in all the hard work and got a few conversions. Job done, right? Wrong.  

While getting a conversion is great, knowing why you got said conversion is even better. Why? Because you want to make sure it wasn’t simply dumb luck. If something is working for you on social media, you want to make sure you can repeat it. Tag every link you share with UTM parameters and check Google Analytics 4 each month, so you can see which posts and platforms send bookings. 

If something is not working, find out why before you spend another dollar on it. Then change one thing at a time, so you know what fixed it.