How To Market Your Hospitality Business - Practical Tips from a 32 Year Veteran

Okay, so thank you for tuning in to the Boostly podcast. You're listening to the Boostly podcast that helps give hosts the tools, the tactics, the trainings, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and so you can go out and get more direct bookings. I'm Liam Carolan. I'm Mark Simpson's co host and this is the Spotlight mini series on the Boostly podcast where we shine the light on services and businesses that you need to know about as a hospitality host or as an owner. Today we've got the amazing Craig Webb. He's been a Boostly member for a number of years. He's had 32 years in hospitality, which is amazing. So lots and lots of experience and 17 of those was as a general manager for a hotel. He's now started up his own venture called web marketing where he focuses on helping people with digital marketing and search engine optimization. And today's episode, we're going to be diving into both his journey in hospitality and so you can pick up tips and tricks from his 32 years worth of experience. But then also we're going to be talking about what you need to be considering in your hospitality business regarding digital marketing and SEO. So let's dive into it. Welcome along, Craig.

Hello, Liam. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. I know we've known each other for, for quite a while, buddy, and we were just talking about the Boostly Academy and for anybody listening into this, basically Boostly has got. For anyone who purchased a website or training through Boostly, there's a private Facebook group which is how I met Craig initially. He's one of the, or has been or still is one of the sort of best people in the group for experience and has been an ambassador and has helped Mark with various different things over the years. So I'm excited to have you on here and for us to, to finally be having a recorded conversation that we can share with people.

And lastly, yeah, thank you for the introduction. Well, I think you've covered everything, really. Yeah, 32 years in hospitality. Started out just washing up and then just grew from there. I carried on when I was, while I was at college, didn't know what else to do. When I left college, I was always going to be a police officer. That never happened because I just kept getting promoted in hospitality. You know, people kept leaving, you know, to do other things and I kept getting promoted. So never, never looked back really. And before I knew it, I was a, I was a general manager with Bespoke Hotels. I've got about 100 hotels around the country and I've managed about six or seven hotels for them. I can't even remember now, all around the sort of Cotswold Oxfordshire area, Heathrow sort of, and different, different markets, some leisure, some tourism and some sort of commercial corporate type hotels as well. So I've sort of seen, seen everything in the industry from weddings, conferences, events, waits, you know, you name it, I've, I've pretty much done it. But my love of digital marketing came when I was lumbered into a hotel that was in administration. It was, it must have been about 2008 when there was a crash and the property was managed by Bespoke but owned by the bank, was given to Bespoke to manage. And you know, it's kind of like there's the keys, we'll pay you to manage it and look after the place and it's your job to get it sold. So we need to turn those red figures black and, you know, make it look like a good business composition for someone to buy. So if I, if I did a good job, I was going to be out of work because the hotel would be sold. But actually I just thought, well, how can I do this? I don't have anything to spend, how can I improve the hotel? How can I change its fortunes? And digital marketing was really just becoming a thing. Facebook people didn't have Facebook pages for businesses and I think I was one of the first people in the, in the UK to actually have my hotel to have a Facebook page page. And people were commenting on it going, well, you can't do that. And I said, well, why not? There's no rules to say why not. So, you know, I had like three or four thousand followers on Facebook before anyone even even had a Facebook page. And I was doing competitions on a Friday, giving rooms away. I was really, you know, leading away on this stuff. And yeah, it just grew and grew. Instagram wasn't even a thing then, Twitter wasn't a thing. And I think most of them I've kind of ignored as they've come along. But then when I. Because some of them, they never become something, do they? All these different things that come along, these new websites, most of them are just a flash in the pan. So I tend to wait to see if it's going to become of anything and then learn and do a deep dive into it, such as Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn is a very good one. So I do a deep dive into them, learn them and ply the trade and apply, put that into use for the hotel to get free business. So that's what I did. I just thought, how do I get customers? So I just started doing Facebook, reaching out to the community, trying to do everything that I could do that was free to bring business to the hotel. And it just grew and grew from there. I just kept doing it and became an expert, I suppose.

That's brilliant. And do you know what I love about that is, first of all, the early days of Facebook, I wish I was in on that at that stage because, you know, it must have been exciting. First of all, you're doing something different. So this is that get different sort of marketing. When everyone else zigs, you're zagging by putting it out there. And I love what you said, and this will resonate with a lot of people listening into this, is that, you know, we don't have big marketing budgets. We're not Airbnb, we're not booking dot com. So how can you get your business to stand out compared against everybody else's? To stand out instead of people going to book on the OTAs. And by one thing you mentioned was competitions on a Friday night. And this is something which, you know, that sounds amazing. Can you just talk us through what you did? And does that still work now? I guess is the question for people listening.

Yeah, it can work. It can work now. It certainly gives you an audience. You have to be careful not to just attract people that are looking for a freebie. You really look into trying to align with your ideal client still. But back then, I did Free Room Friday and it was a. It was a corporate hotel. We were dead at the weekends. We were absolutely dead. So I just did this thing, Free Room Friday. It was almost. If. If hashtag was a thing back then, it would have been hashtag Free Room Friday. But basically, I just say, tell me a joke. The one who gets the most likes wins a free room to be taken over the next six months on a Friday or Saturday night, for example. And it just grew and grew and people absolutely loved it. They literally were queuing up to come in on a Friday, waiting for the command on what would I. I'd ask them to do on a Friday, you know, and if it was Mother's Day, it'd be, tell me why your mum deserves a stay in our hotel, for example, you know, or Valentine's. Why. Why is your partner deserving of a. Of a meal with us next week? Kind of. That kind of thing. And it just grew. It was fantastic. So, yeah, I kind of don't do as much of that anymore. But I've certainly done some competitions. In the last hotel I ran, we were a spa hotel. So I talked about aligning with your, with your ideal audience. We were sort of doing it around spa breaks. So we were targeting say groups of ladies that perhaps will want a spa break rather than just trying to give away a freebie. So we're at the same time we're building our audience.

That's cool. And that definitely dives into first of all, you know, if you make enough noise, people are interested, they'll share it with friends and family and, and you know you're going to get more eyes on your business. And you mentioned you had sort of three or four thousand followers just in those, those early days, which is amazing. And then also focusing it then more for everybody listening on your target avatar. And I guess when you say target in those, those sauna type group, is it more so Facebook groups or spa groups and things like that. How did you target it more towards?

Yeah, it can be. I've used a bit of marks training with that. For example, when we had that chat to the chat bot that was very clever. And you know, I wanted to target one time couples that wanted a hot tub break and they had to type the word in hot tub to win. And I think that kind of aligned me with the people that would want to stay with us, you know. And you can then look at the demographics of your audience and target them more more closely on the on Facebook ads further down the line, can't you?

So that's really cool. And yeah, I mean there's a lot of industry knowledge there from those 32 years and also that digital marketing sort of stuff that I love.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rankings rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now the foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint and then for 101 marketing tactics that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon. Now just type in Book Direct Playbook or the book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

Is there any perceptions that have changed generally about hospitality during the time that you've been a in hospitality?

But I think most of your audience are str kind of hosts and I'm speaking from a hotelier background, which is slightly different. I've always worked in full service hotels, you know, carry the bags, afternoon tea, spa service, all the rest of it. I think we're going to see a divide in hospitality, certainly the service level side of hospitality. I think we're going to see more of the, I want to say the weather spoon type, the low service, you know, go in order on your app, the food comes from a microwave in the kitchen off a conveyor belt and you know, it's as cheap as it can be and there's no staff because we all know the cost is staff. At the other end of the scale. I think we're going to miss a lot of that middle market stuff. The pubs and the rural pubs and the community pubs are really going to struggle. But then the high end hotels, the traditional hotels that give the full service will be charging way, way, way, way more because they start paying properly and people appreciate having the knowledge of a sommelier, the knowledge of a doorman and a, you know, a porter and that sort of thing that can help them with their stay and the local knowledge and all that sort of stuff. So like I said, I think we're going to see that divide and more and more people are going to want, have that human connection and be willing to pay for it. So I think people need to start deciding now what they are. Are they full automation key is on their phone, they're just checking by Bluetooth, it's all automation, they don't touch a human being and that's it. Or they get full service, they're met at the door, they're given a welcome pack, they talked about the local things to do in the area, they're given a, a welcome basket of eggs and bacon for that, for their self catering accommodation. Yet they've got to decide because we got, I think we're going to see a split and you've got to be, you can't be one foot in each camp help.

No, I love that and I love the insight into that as well because I certainly, if I'm traveling for work, I'm that first category. I'm like, yeah, let's just, I'm happy to just get you know, into a place the kind of like say Weber spoons, McDonald's type model. But certainly if I'm taking my other half away I, you know, I want it to feel, feel great. You know, I want the entire experience to be sort of concierge services and things like that to really, and I don't mind paying for that. So I Can definitely see that camp where one is one, one is the other. So yeah, it's an interesting insight. So. So Craig, let's talk about the, what you're doing now. So you've moved From Hospitality those 32 years and only as we record this, only only a week ago you finished your hospitality sort of journey and you started your own digital marketing agency. So talk me through how that came about and what the plan is now.

Well, I've already said I sort of started doing digital marketing for hotels quite a lot of years ago and so Mark came into my life through a think it must have been a Facebook message. I can't remember how he got me in his funnel but I was sucked into his sales funnel about five or six years ago and it really resonated with me because I was already on that journey but I was self taught. I felt I needed a little bit more guidance and Boosie came along and it helped me accelerate that. So that was about five or six years ago and I implemented that at work and then went further still and I've then been doing my own Facebook do things Google do their own free courses. I've been absorbing all of those and learning, learning more. I think during lockdown, that was about when we were two years ago or so I set up my company in lockdown because I had a fear of not going back to work. I thought is the hotel even going to open? And where our hotel was based. I managed three hotels, sorry, two hotels, there's a third hotel next door that didn't reopen, it went into administration and it's still not a hotel now and I could foresee that could be an issue. And so I set up my marketing company, got some clients. I kind of my target audience at the time was digital marketing for hospitality. Now hospitality was closed so I probably wasn't very clever there. But actually I did get some clients and some were pivoting, doing different things like food production and that while they were closed. So I did get some clients in lockdown but I then had to kind of let some of them go when I went back to work which always gnawed away at me because I was wondering what could have been and how could I have succeeded. So yeah, back end of last year, quarter four I thought let's have a real effort to get some clients again with a view to having the clients in quarter 1, 20, 23 and if it works because I can manage the hotels and the clients at the same time, if I've got enough business I'll Let my salary go and go full time work for myself. So, you know, I just put myself out there and lo and behold, it happened very quickly. I was hoping perhaps to be by the end of March, but yeah, I finished at the end of January and here we are.

So. Well, congratulations.

Really excited. Thank you.

That's amazing. And you know what, I'm pleased about this couple of points which I want to pick up. But first of all that, you know, with Boostly's help as well, that has given you more confidence to dive further into digital marketing, which is amazing. It certainly did the same for me in my sort of journey. Then you also mentioned that, you know, during lockdown you pivoted, which there's a lot of businesses, a lot of people listening will remember that time very freshly. I certainly do. And how I was, I was like, do I need to go and get a job at Morrisons? You know, what do I need to go and do? Because that was pretty much the supermarkets was the only thing still, still running at the time. The great thing is that the side effect from that period of time where everyone had stopped for a while is, is they're able to do exactly what you've done there, which is pivot into awesome businesses and carve out journeys for themselves, which is amazing. So congratulations on the switch over to digital marketing SEO. So let's dive further into that. What should most of the people listening to this like say are going to be hospitality owners of some description? What should people be considering when it comes down to particularly search engine optimization? Because it's something which for me as a host, I always think of just going, ah, it's a lot of, you know, what's the, what's the benefit? How long is this going to take? How much money is this going to take? What would you say are some of the things that a host can start to do an action fairly fast, you know, after listening to this podcast.

Okay, the first thing I would say is that everyone wants a quick win. They want immediate gratification, they want some bit, they want to post something on Facebook and for the phone to ring within 10 minutes. Well, let's face it, it's not going to happen. You know, Facebook and social media, it's great, it gives your message out there. So you've got to think of social media as your kind of message that's going out regularly. It might bring you a short term booking. That's the same with Facebook ads and Google Ads. That will bring you your short term win. SEO is your long term win. That's your planting your trees for next year, the year after. That's really establishing your business. You're building a really good base and looking after your future.

Yeah.

So you, I kind of say to people, you've got to do both. So you've got to look after tomorrow to get a booking. That's your social media and you've got to look after your next year bookings. That's your SEO. And if you always think like that, I think you can build your business quite nicely. Now, the second part of your question was about what people can do. There are plenty of free tools out there. Ahrefs is one of them. Neilpatel.com They've all got introductory free offers where you can use it for three months or a basic freemium service. And it will tell you what's wrong with your website, even if just some of the things that are wrong with your website. Well, I can tell you now that most people are not doing it. I do SEO audits quite a lot. And on audit People websites Now, nine out of 10 people's audits, the score comes back of about 75%. Well, just by fixing some really basic things, you'll be at 85 or 90%. So I know you're going to be ahead of nine out of 10 of your competitors just by fixing some broken links, adding some more content to your page, getting your keywords right, and that will look after your future business. You'll then outrank the BNB down the road or your local competitor.

I think that's the important thing, isn't it? It's not just sticking their heads in the sand and just going, do you know what, I can ignore SEO or I can ignore digital marketing. And going back to your first point about, you know, it's not just a quick win. Somebody likened it once to, you wouldn't expect to just use a chat line and say, come on, let's you grab your coat. It just wouldn't work like that. And that's exactly the same, you know, we're building relationships, we're building a brand at the end of the day. So it's a case of social media especially. It's regular showing up and putting your message out there, isn't it? And then for search engine optimization is being found and growing those seeds, as you say. So how likely it is over a long period of time that you're going to be found with your services with quite.

And actually the best way of doing that is actually to really nail down what your niche is and your Sub niches. So let's say my customer avatar is retired people, but I particularly like retired people with docs. So you're niche and you're niching again and then writing content about those sub niches and you will then become the authority. So you might not be number one in Oxfordshire for B and B in Oxfordshire, because that's impossible to rank on, but you can be number one for dog friendly accessible room in Oxfordshire. Okay. And that's how you've got to think, you've got to be number one on your niche. I'll give you an example. We did Christmas break packages at the hotel I used to work in and we're in the Cotswolds. Cotswolds covers like five counties. Well, we were, I think, number two on natural searches for Christmas breaks in the Cotswolds. That takes a good couple of years to actually get the content up there and keep refreshing it, updating it regularly and over time then it builds.

That makes sense.

That's a niche.

Yeah. And that niching down is so important. I know there'll be lots of people listening to this going, oh, I don't know what my niche is. I know in the early days I certainly didn't know who I was serving or I didn't know necessarily a particular area. I was focused on all this sort of stuff where, and this is where, I mean, Mark has helped me with this, with the book Direct Playbook talks about who is your avatar, how can you niche down? And another one of my mentors says that when you niche down, what you need to do is, is go an inch wide but a mile deep. You know, really find that, you know, aim for one, one person, one age group, but really fulfill what that person needs thoroughly, you know, really thoroughly, certainly.

And think about that avatar at different times of year, all the week. Because your, your avatar in Sunday to Thursday might be different to Friday, Saturday, so that's okay. And it might be different in August to it is in December. So that gives you extra sort of pillars of authority that you can build on your website around.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world. Increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O o s t l y.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

How important is it for people listening to consider having. Well, first of all, I guess their own website, which Boostly can help with. But then once they've got their own website, blogs in particular, how important are blogs for SEO and in general for marketing?

Yeah, very important. Because if you've just got the website, what people tend to do is say, I built my website, tick, done, forget it. But that's not it. It's like saying, I've decorated my house and now I don't have to clean it. It doesn't work like that. You have to keep on top of it.

So.

So one of those things being blogs, that really gives you the opportunity to become the expert in your field. I know, for example, I'm smiling now, Liam, because I know that your website ranks very well for carp fishing in Norfolk. We're known for, and that's down to the blocks. So if anyone is looking for accommodation because they're going fishing, which is a great place to go fishing in Norfolk because of all the lakes and rivers, then your website is going to come very highly for the people traveling to the area to do that. And that's your niche and you do it well.

It's one of those things. That's one of the reasons how this, this conversation came about, isn't it? Because I'm looking at how we can rank for some of the stuff which is more applicable to my niche, which is, you know, we do get fishermen and people like that, but a lot of the time this is urban people coming to stay in, you know, for restaurants and that side of things, for leisure. But this is the great thing about this, this conversation is that to bring attention to people's websites, to, for people to understand that they can go and find out this stuff and then get help and services like yourself, Craig, that is so important that people do this. So they are planting those seeds to grow the opportunity of getting more people flanned on their website in years to come. And that's a great time to throw open to your services, Craig. So what is it that you can offer for hosts? So people listening, what sort of services can you offer? And is there any specific places that you cover? Is it worldwide? Is it UK only? What can people expect if they get in touch with you?

Okay, yes, worldwide. I've got Clark in Australia, America Italy, Scotland and the England. What do I offer? Yeah, so starts with a website audit. I can do a website audit for people which will just can just say this is what you need to do. If you're happy and comfortable, go off and do it yourself. You know, if you're confident to do so. Some people at that point just don't want the. Don't have the time to do it or don't want to learn how to do it. So I can implement those changes for them or it's just tying everything together. So there's not just on page SEO, that's your website and its structure, its speed, its content, but there's off page SEO. So that's all the rest of the web and how you can get your website or your business address listed on other places. So for example off page blogs or citations which are like directories, think of like yale.com and that sort of thing. There are hundreds and hundreds of directories and listings for businesses out there and you can get your business listed on them. So it's quite time consuming but that's what builds your authority, having those backlinks to your website. So there's some of the services I offer, obviously email marketing, social media, media marketing and general business advice as well if they need it.

That's cool, that's cool. And we're going to be sharing shortly how people can get in touch with you. But before we do, we love to do a couple of just quick fire fun questions, Craig. And so one thing I'd love to know is now you've got potentially some extra time, are you going to be booking any holidays away and if so, where is the travel destination that you'd most like to visit?

Okay, well we always go away at Easter with some, some friends and we've actually booked some hives to. We've got three, three luxury caravans, two of which are dog friendly because we have dogs with us. And that's raised the question from my three teenagers, well, where are we going to go in the summer? Dad? And my wife pipes up Mexico. So it looks like we're going there. I need to get some more clients first.

Nice. Yeah. Mexico's meant to be lovely. I've not been myself but St. Ives I know is beautiful. What is one either gadget or one piece of software which you really love and think everybody listening should, should go and check out.

Okay. I use Neil Patel Digital. He has a tool called ubersuggest and that would do a free scan on your website, give the basics of what you Need I like that. We were just talking, Liam, just before this podcast about WhatsApp, which I didn't realize you can have WhatsApp on your laptop. And the amount of times I used to get WhatsApp picture sent to me that I then emailed from my phone to my laptop to then use from my laptop and I can simply save it straight from my laptop on WhatsApp now. So WhatsApp on my laptop, love it.

And do you know what? A little trick with that, which was given to me by another host, was create a WhatsApp group with you and one of a person and then delete the other person out of that group and you've got your own WhatsApp group. You can then anytime you want to transfer, like you say things from the computer, and that's exactly what I now do, is I've got a WhatsApp group called Liam's Notes with just me in and any pitches, any notes, anything I want to transfer text from, including, you know, some of the notes, even that I think of questions whenever I'm out and about, I'll just put it into my WhatsApp group, my notes, and then when I'm back on my desktop, I can just copy it across and put it where it needs to be.

I literally needed that this morning. Thank you. Thank you. I was trying to find a workaround and that is it.

It's a really. Once you do that and all of a sudden that now becomes what I do all the time. I just, you know, it's one of those things. So, yeah, and we come towards the end, we love to ask, is there any mantras or sayings that that really resonate with you or things which has impacted your life?

Okay. I think the last few years I've become more of a spiritual person. Certainly not in dogmatic way. Just feel more aligned with myself, which is part of my journey from changing my job. And I kind of live by the rule that you are where your attention is. So if you're in the comments section on Facebook, looking at all the negative people, things people write, that's where you are. That's where your attention is. That's where your mind is. And I've learned to just to switch all that stuff off. I've deleted my BBC app. I don't get any of those notifications anymore. And I just live in a happy place. If I feel distracted or upset, I learn to move my attention back to positive thinking. So that's it. Yeah, you are where your attention is. And that's What I kind of live by now me and I don't.

It is so true. And I definitely one that resonates with me 100%. Craig. I mean deleting news apps is something which when I was in retail I used to read like the news every lunchtime and I'd wonder why I used to have bad days because if you're just taking in all that negativity and all that stuff, the minute that I realized that actually it's having negative effect, I deleted literally all of that and you just, you just feel better about yourself. You know they do say yeah, where you put your, you know, attention. Exactly. That is is the results that you'll get. So I really like that one. Thank you, Greg. How can everybody listening come and get in touch with you or give you a follow?

Well, my company is called web marketing 2B's as per my name. My email is craigbmarketing.info I don't particularly have any social channels set up yet, but I do have a website needs an update. Webmarketing.info info.

Cool. Cool. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of, a lot of hosts that reach out to you and certainly I'm one of them. So this is how this conversation came about. Speaking to, to Craig about services and loving the, the information that I've, that I've got that audit is amazing as well. So definitely do get in touch with Craig. If it is something that you're seriously considering for your business to get some search engine optimization or some digital marketing services, Craig is the person to reach out to. So thank you. If you're listening in on the Boostly podcast or if you're watching on the YouTube channel, we know there's a lot of places that you can put your attention and I really appreciate you putting it with Boostly. That's it for this episode and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Craig, was there any last moment questions or anything I missed or comments?

No, I don't think so. Just thank you to you and Mark for everything you do. Thank you.

Thanks very much buddy. Bye for now.