Happy customers are always a good marketing tool, demonstrating that your business is doing a good job and your customers love it, especially as they have the ability to recommend you to your future customers. Hotels can harness the power of this by ensuring, and encouraging their customers snap and share their experiences on their favourite social media platforms. Reviews, shares and likes are now part of the marketing toolkit for any hotel, and ensuring your hotel is Instagram ready is a big part of a hotel’s marketing plan.
There is, of course, another side to the coin. And a picture certainly paints a thousand words, so what happens when it all goes wrong? If your guests snap a picture of themselves outside your hotel and your front of house looks a little shabby, for instance, it could do more damage than good if that picture finds its way onto social media.
Why You Should Invest in Fresh Signage
Making sure that your hotel front and other locations in your business have smart new signage is important. The Instagram crowd will at some point take a snapshot of your property and post it to their friends and family. While you may be relaxed about this, ensuring that you make the most of this free advertising opportunity is important.
Get it right and a whole host of ways to market your business should present themselves in the future. You’ll get your brand across to the wider world and, in the process, create a connection that brings new customers through your door. Bad signage, on the other hand, will simply raise questions in the minds of those viewing an image that has been posted on online sites like Instagram by your customers or passing tourists.
It’s Time to Take a Fresh Look at Your Signage
The first thing you need to do is step outside your hotel and look at it from the point of view of your customer. Does it look clean and inviting? Is it clear? It is exciting? Our advice is to take a few snaps with your smartphone camera and see how it looks. Is there anything you can do better? Perhaps there is an opportunity to put some new vinyl signs in the windows to highlight any promotions you may have. Perhaps your main hotel sign is looking a little tired and needs refreshing.
The next step is to look inside your hotel and check the signage there, particularly in areas like the restaurant. If you have a spa, for example, are you highlighting all that this offers to your guests? Once you start looking around your hotel purely from a photographic point of view, you’ll hopefully begin to see the possibilities.
Next, it might be useful to look on social media to see if there are any selfies of your hotel business already out there. That will give you an idea of the type of images people are taking and the response they are getting.
Social media has certainly revolutionised advertising and marketing in the last decade or so. Hotel owners can often see themselves as passive bystanders when it comes to the eponymous selfie.
But there’s a lot you can actually do to influence things if you look at the world from your customers point of view and, more importantly, their camera. A signage refresh here and there will certainly add subtle but important benefits to that next quick selfie. All it requires is a bit of thought.
