It’s budgeting season, which means your hotel is probably ready to start planning how, when and where you’ll be investing during 2018. In the following two-part series, we’ll be offering expert tips to help you budget for two areas that could define how successful you are next year—your digital marketing strategy and your hotel website.
When it comes to allocating your digital marketing budget for 2018, our top tip is simple: allow for flexibility in your monthly spend.
For example, say your hotel has $24,000 per year to spend on digital advertising. The tendency in making budgets is to allocate $2,000 per month across the 12 months. The digital marketing agency is often told to “use it or lose it.”
But when monthly budgets remain rigid, this could result in lost opportunity in the few months of the year where the marketing team suddenly needs extra money in a period that’s busier than predicted.
Instead, build in leeway each month to go over or under depending on demand. Ideally you’ll want to be able to save money on months where overall bookings are typically lower than usual, and use that saved money on months where there’s increased demand. An experienced digital marketing agency can help to advise you how to best balance this out throughout the year.
Why flexibility is important
Two major factors that come into play when considering how to spread the digital marketing budget across months, especially when it comes to search marketing: seasonality and unplanned events.
Hotels that have a strongly defined high and low season will want to make sure there is extra marketing budget for the months leading into high season—right when travelers are making their initial searches for their upcoming trip. Because search patterns vary between countries and lead times, it’s important to have a bit of flexibility to bring that marketing budget up if you see a sudden bump in searches for your brand name or for hotels in your local area.
