Influencer Marketing For Hospitality Industry

Okay, I want to talk to you about influencer marketing, micro influencers that can help get your property seen by a wider audience. It's a really new marketing technique that has probably sprung up since the turn of this decade, 2010 and it's become really popular over the last two to three years and it's still so new in the UK. A lot of companies and a lot of businesses out there have realized that traditional advertising and traditional marketing is just being ignored. And now if you want to get in front of the right people, you got to reach out to what's called influencers or micro influencers. So what is an influencer? An influencer is a social media person. It could be somebody with a blog or a Twitter or an Instagram or a Facebook account and somebody's got a large following. And an influencer is basically this could be you or me that started up a blog. It doesn't have to be a celebrity or a movie star or a radio personality. This is, you know, a normal person who has started up a blog, who started up a hobby and then has people follow their interests. And this is why it's become really popular and this is why it's become really beneficial for businesses, especially in hospitality because you can reach out to these influencers, you can reach out to these micro influencers. People have got a large, medium, even a small like really niche following and ask them to come and stay at your property for free in exchange for a write up or a video or social media tweets. Now I've been experimenting with this at the Grainery over the last few years and it has worked, always worked really, really well. And I'm going to show you examples of how and then I'm going to show you how to go about finding your own influencers and how you can reach out to them. So let's go and have a look at Eat, sleep, love, travel. I reached out to Chris and Vicky. This is them there 2016, so obviously last year. And I loved what they do. I've been following them for a while on, on Twitter and on, on the Facebook and their writing and their style exactly matched what we were all about. This is really important part before you start any of this is only reach out to people that, that you can relate to. Now it wouldn't have made sense for the granary being a farm stay property to reach out to people who head to Ibiza and have a really big weekend there because that's not the type of clientele we want to attract because obviously these influencers have got their audience and these audience has to be the type of people you want to come through the door. You got to think of it instead of you doing a marketing or an advertising campaign in the paper or whatever, you're going through influencers. Because when these guys tweet and when these guys post, they get eyes. And more often than not if they say go stay here, they will, the audience will go, stay there. You know, it's very much influential in the social media world. So I reached out to Chris and Vicky via Twitter probably at the start of 2016 and they had a very busy schedule. They came down to spend two days with us, we gave them a free room, they paid for the meals and at the end of it she went away and she wrote a really good blog and took some really good pictures and did a lot of good social media work. So it's a nice little write up. Now the benefits, number one is that this because they mention our website and there's a link to our website that is a backlink to thegrainery.co.uk. now what does that mean? A backlink means the more backlinks that you get to your website, so that's people mentioning your website on what's called recognized and respected websites by Google. The better your ranking in Google will be. So it means the higher you come in the search results. So the more backlinks that you get to your website, the better. That's a plus point. That's number one. Number two, we get lovely new pictures and obviously we got the okay from Chris and Vicky that we could reuse these on our Facebook and social media pages because at the end of the day bloggers make really good photographers. They just don't know it. And like I say, we've got some really good pictures so we could use them free. We found out, you know, they basically had a write up, it was a review. You know, it's good to know what other people think about us. Some great food shots, you know, the benefits were all there and then at the bottom we've got some lovely little comments down at the bottom there. Now this is, this is the cool bit. So this is their blog. Now anybody could be reading this, you know, they might be only going out to two or three people. Yeah, fair enough. But then you look at the stats. So we are Chris and Vicky, a married couple from Yorkshire. We like to eat, sleep, love and travel our way around the world. We've been traveling together for 10 years. In fact, when we were on our first date to Florence, Italy. Since then we visited over 70 countries and have visited some amazing unique places. Our job proves that you can have it all, blah, blah, blah. Facebook page over 2,000 fans. Twitter over 25,000. LinkedIn 650. Instagram over 12,000. They get over 12,000 people visiting their website on a month. 5,400 unique visitors, which means individual people, that's views. So you could say that these people go on at least twice a month. They've got over 28,000 subscribers to their email list. Now just compare it to what your current stats are at the moment. It could be you've got 200 fans, you could be 100, you might even not even be on Instagram, you may not have that reach. These guys do. And then they write about you, they, they then post about you in their email. On their social media you can see the sort of numbers and the areas that they go. A large part of their following is from uk, usa, Australia, everywhere. So you can slowly but very quickly start to understand the power of influencers. And this is just one. Now over the course of the last four years I've worked with five different bloggers and social influencers and all it's done is cost me a room for two nights in five years time. This except deal, I'd be paying them to come and stay here and I could be paying them a lot of money because the return of investment from this alone has been, has been huge. And I can, I can track this, you can track this for a few certain ways that we can talk about later. But just by getting out there and just by getting, working with these guys, it works so well. Alright, so that's the benefits. Now you're thinking, okay, sounds good. How do I go about getting mine? How do I go about getting my influencer? So first things first, start a Google search. Now what would you type? Now in the hospitality world, we're looking for travel bloggers or you know, if you're catered for families, family bloggers. Try and find people in your target area. Now obviously the granary is based in Scarborough. We know that the majority of our people, our guests come from say Leeds or Yorkshire. Okay, so I would type in travel bloggers Yorkshire or family bloggers Yorkshire. You know, try and figure out. Now I always say start off with a list of 10, but for this I'm just going to go into one. So I found this here, Yorkshire wonder. So I just go in and have a look at the blog, quite simply, have a read. Now it'll probably take an Hour to do all of this reading, making notes, etc. But it'll be an hour well spent. So just go in and find out a little bit more about them, what they do, family days out, who work with us. You know, obviously they are. They are used to working with people. So my name is Nikki. I write Yorkshire W as a traveling travel blog. I'm a mum to two children and my daughter. And of course there's the lovely Mr. Wonders. We live on the Yorkshire near Pockington in a rural area. On weekends, in school holidays, we like to get out as much as possible, blah, blah, blah. All right, so my blog is growing 44,000 views in August, got 8,900 followers on Instagram, 2600 on the Twitter and 2,700 on Facebook. Yorkshire Wonders is currently number 54 on trips. That's a blogging bit. Prior to starting, I worked an IT consultant, blah, blah, blah. So good one. So what I would do is I would take her email, I'd obviously have a quick read of her account of a website just to get more about it. So I would obviously go and have a look. Now this, this is a really important thing. It's not just the numbers because anybody can buy Facebook following, you want to be looking for engagement and this is the key. So when, when they post, you know, nearly 9,000 fans when they post, are they getting good interaction? So it's not all about the likes you're looking for, you're looking for the comments. So I. But yeah, we're getting a lot of likes, good engagements, not the best, but it's okay on the Facebook. Okay, So this has had a real good one, real good engagement on there. Real, real good engagement on there. So, yeah, okay, you know, not the best, not the worst, I'd say medium, but a good start. I think they, they said that they weren't the most followed on here. So, yeah, not a bad, not a bad start at all. They've got 44,000 views of the website on the blog, which is, you know, which is great. You can sort of see days out in Yorkshire, family travel, see where they've stayed, so get an idea of what they write. So obviously being to Butlins Skegness and these all won't be. These might be just her going to visit places. They may not be like blogger exchanges, etc. But some of them might have been. So it's good to see like what they write about. Pictures. Nice, you know, so I personally speaking from, with my granary head on, I would definitely reach out to this lady and see if she'd like to work. So what I would do, get an Excel document, Microsoft Excel where you can, where you can control all of that. When it loads up I would then go in Nikki Yorkshire Wonders. So Yorkshire wonders Nikki and just get down all of the details, email address. And I also want her website URL. And that is literally what I would take. And then I would just call this influencers. List in the desktop save. Right. And then I would just go again. I'll just go down that list and get as many as I could do. If you find lists like this, they always help Yorkshire's top 20 bloggers. This is pretty outdated 2014 but good place to start. Let's see what else we got here. Honest mom online lifestyle magazine and blog. This looks interesting to me. Hi, I'm Vicki, a multi award winning blogger, vlogger, TV director, filmmaker and former university lecturer. I am Style for Honest Moment, an online magazine. I said I've been doing, I haven't pop into my dvd. I'm a massive ambassador for Herbal Essence and I'm blown away now I can see just from looking down here. Yeah not so much traveling, more just. I think this is probably a bit of the high end. I don't think that we would be right fit. So you know what just taking on. Obviously I'm doing this for a test for the marketing course but if I would look in a bit more back and I'm pretty good now at spotting influences that get us and which ones wouldn't the other family yet Yorkshire dad. So I know this guy just from the Twitter world and whatnot. He's really good. I have reached out to him, we've tried to get him to stay at the granary a few times. We've just never been able to make it work. But yeah, I know that these. This guy is really funny, really good and I think he would definitely get the granary. So that's a good way. So start with Google, get a list together. Other ways you can do so you can go into Instagram and again type in what you're looking for. Go to see what the most popular posts are. So then you can go into wellies and wonder and you can go find in that way. So if you don't want to go in through to Google when I try something else go into Instagram just in the search but you can do this on your computer like I'm doing type in you know, Yorkshire blogger, etc. Now save it. You're not in Yorkshire, save it. Somewhere else in the world, save it. You want to look for some, just look for your niche. So if you are a holiday cottage which has caters for the disabled industry, so just put disable blogger, see what comes up. This is something I have done for a client of mine. You know, we reached out to a load and you know, just go there and start to see which ones are the ones that will fit you, ones that are based, you know, obviously you don't want to be reaching out to. If you are in the UK and there's one in America that's going to get expensive so you don't have to. I won't go for down that, you know, doing that but obviously just type it in, have a little look and then go from there. Also as well there's the world of Twitter. Go into Twitter, type in Yorkshire blogger and then all of the people come up and you can just see, you know, you can quickly see by just going onto the account, you know, how many people follow them and blah, blah, blah. So we're going to michelle466 now don't always think, look at a low number and think ah, that's crap because she might have a really good niche. Now it's not this the, the amount, it's the is the group of people that are following her. So if this blogger here, Michelle has got 444 followers but whenever she sends a message out, whenever she sends an email, she has 399of them are always replying, opening, clicking on links. That is an engaged list. So it's not all about the size, it's about the engagement that is the most important thing to do here as you are looking for your influencers. So there's plenty of ways to go about it. Google, Instagram, Twitter. You know, once you work with one influencer you can then ask them, just say, listen, we had a great time working with you. Who else would you recommend that we work with that are like you? You know, when you start to get into this world that you, you can, you will not, not be able to see them, if you know what I mean. So it's a good place to start. So how would I approach them? Would simply start with an email. So I've got their email address in my Excel sheet. I would also start with a message on Instagram and Facebook just to send the same thing. Just reach out and just say hey, love your work, introduce you, just say so I'd say hey Nicky, have had a quick look at your blog, mention one of the blogs Read one. Actually read a blog and mention why you liked it. So if it was Yorkshire Wonders, let me go back into here because I did like that blog. I do love this picture of a dog, by the way, but I'm gonna stop you looking at that for a second. So I'd go back into the Yorkshire Wonders blog piece. Where's Travel uk? There's a really cool one that I was quickly flying through. So Ullswater. As I say, just read your blog on Ullswater. I liked it because of X reason. My name is Mark Simpson. I run a farmstay property in Scarborough and I would love to work with you in some capacity, blah, blah, blah, you know, just go down that sort of route. Just say, are you free for a chat? And just get them on a call. Don't sell them there in the first pitch. Just, just get them on a phone call, have a chat with them, explain, you know, that, that you want them to come down to the property and you want them to have a free stay for two nights if it's traveling from a distance or for two nights if they're just coming down the road, do one night. But two nights is about right because then they get to do the day travel, they get to have breakfast and they get to go out, explore, do whatever and then come back and stay another night. Get to know them, you know, treat them like friends coming home. Just, just like you do with any guest, treat them normally. Don't go out your way to make it extra special. Just treat them like normal and ask for a review in return for social media posts. If they do YouTube videos, ask for, you know, YouTube video in return. Just ask and see what you can get out of it. Because end of the day, they want content. The reason why they love doing this is that they get free places to stay. And a lot of the times, you know, I've never had anybody ask with me for money. If you do, then just, just work out what a rate would be. That makes sense to you because end of the day they've got a large audience, then it makes sense. It's a different way of marketing. It's a different way of advertising. And at the end of the day, if you just, you know, say that you have to pay them £100, but you get two bookings on the back of it, you've doubled your investment. It's as simple as that. So this is the world of influencer marketing. It's new, it's different. In about five, 10 years time, we'll look back and be like, yeah, this is just the norm now, but right now it's the perfect, perfect time to get involved. So go find your influencers, go find your bloggers. If you've got any further questions, you know I am. Good luck and we'll speak soon.