Marketing Audits You Can Do During the Coronavirus Crisis

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Welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We are in season 8, episode 17 and today we're talking about really effective audits that you can be doing of your marketing during a downtime period. We go through eight different parts of your marketing to look at, including Google Search, including your website, including your social media, your listing sites, Google Business listing, Google Analytics, plus many more. What I'm going to be doing for the next month. So from April 7, which is day of recording, to May 7, I'm going to be opening up a little accountability Google Sheet that you can all go in, you can add what you're going to be doing to update your marketing for this month. And then what we're going to do on the 7th of May, we're going to come in, we're going to look at what everybody said they were going to do and what they've actually achieved because it's all well and good in a plan together. Or say you're going to be doing something, but then if you don't do it, then there's no point in actually saying you're going to do it. So we're going to keep each other accountable. We're going to see what we're going to say we're going to do and we're going to use that Google Sheet as to what we said we're going.

To do and what we've achieved.

I'm going to leave all of those links in the show, notes in the comments. Please do and go and check this out. If you are listening and tuning into this between the 7th of April and the May 7th, 2020, we come and join in, watch this podcast in full, go to the Google Sheet, leave yourself accountable and we'll check in on May 7th. This is the first of three podcasts this week where we're talking about marketing, about actionable advice that you can be doing to not only survive through this coronavirus crisis, but thrive at the other end of it. And the next two episodes after this, we're actually going to do marketing review live with two hospitality owners from around the world. So really, really looking forward to these next few episodes. Before you leave today, please do go and leave a review on Apple itunes. We are getting slowly and slowly and slowly further up the charts, which is amazing. And it's all down to the reviews and the amount of people that download this. So thank you and also as well just want to say a big thank you to the sponsors of this podcast, which is hostfully, hostfully designed, really cool digital guidebooks that you can take and you can show and share with your guests pre host and during a stay. The first guidebook is free.

Go to hostfully.com after that if you.

Want to upgrade and you want to get 2 months free, put Boostly 2M in the promo code. Enjoy this episode, make tons of notes, but most importantly, let's implement it. Let's put some changes into your business.

What I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to walk you through eight different steps that you can be doing right now to basically have a general overview of how you are marketing your property business, your hospitality business. Who knows, you may be able to uncover one or two ways you're able to amend when you're watching this live or if you're watching this back on the replay. All I want for you to do hospitality owners, let us know a little bit more about your property, where it is in the world and a little link to your website. So who knows, there may be somebody watching who could end up being your future guest. Put in the links to your website as well. And what I will do after this is I will go and have a look and I'll see if I can pick out any feedback from for you. This is the first of three episodes where I'm going to be doing marketing reviews. So tonight is going to be a general order on everybody that showing you signs on how you can do it. For the next two episodes I'm actually going to be picking two hospitality owners who I'm going to be doing a proper marketing review for and we're going to do it live so everybody can tune in. What I would love for everybody to do as well throughout the course of this, not only are you going to let us know your hospitality business, but just let us know what have you been doing this week to attract new direct booking. Let us know what proactive things you have been doing to try and whether it's going to be boosting your email list like we spoke about in the last episode with Janet Murray, whether it's about increasing the people that are coming onto your social media page or even better, how have you managed to increase your own direct bookings? What have you been doing? Whether you can take guests now or you're looking to take guests in the future. Number one is Google Search. It's the biggest, best place to start. Mentioned about this quite a lot of times now is the Google first page of search is starting to become your homepage. May sound a little bit crazy, but if you think about it, when somebody goes into the search engine and types in say your business name. That is the first impression now that a potential guest is getting of your business. So when we're talking about Google search, I'm talking about when somebody puts in your business name. So I'm not talking about a generic search term. So it could be BNBS in Scarborough for example, or places to stay in Yorkshire, or family friendly places in England. That's a very generic search term. I'm talking about a very unique search which is your business name. Me, I could have stayed at your property a couple of years ago and I'm coming back online to try and find you. So that could be a type of person that would be doing this search. Many are different people that would be running this type of search. And this is the first step that I recommend that you do. So open up a Google. A Google search doesn't matter whether you're using Safari or Chrome. What you're going to do is you're going to go to the menu button and you're going to go to file and you're going to go open a new incognito or private window. What that means is when you open up a private window, this doesn't store any of these cookies. Basically Google is treating you as a first time visitor. Now if you were just to run this in a normal search and I recommend doing this on your desktop, don't do this on your mobile. If you were to do it like a normal on a window, you would all already will have been on Google and maybe searching for your business in the past. You want this to be a search done like it's the first time, like it's a potential user doing it for the first time. A complicated way is clearing your cash or clearing your cookies, but a simple way is just to go in private mode. So that's the first step that I would recommend you taking. Go into private mode and just do a search for your business in the town where you're located. So when you run that search, what you are looking for, you're looking for a couple of things. Number one, what are the first few search results that come up? Now what you'll normally find is you'll see that it's Google Ads at the top, then you'll see a big map and then underneath that you'll get the organic search result. And as you will have known over time, so over the last few years Google are running more ads specifically on your search. Then they've got the map, the map is even bigger. Now the map pack and then you've got the organic listing. So you want to just be able to see what's appearing if you're running a bid on brand strategy. One of the main things that I teach everybody when they come into my world for the first time is how to do a Google bid on brand strategy. And hopefully your ad will be in the first of the ad searches and then you'll have the map pack where you'll have your Google Business listing. We'll talk about that in a second. And then you'll have the organic as well. What you want to achieve here is as many steps as possible in the ads, in the map and in the organic. You want to have a clear way that the user can go to your website. Now, unfortunately, what you will find is the big online travel agents. What they'll be doing is they'll be running ads on your brand name, but they'll also be ranking very highly for the organic ranking as well. There's nothing you can do about that. You just got to accept it. But what you've got to do is you've got to fight the fire with the fire and make sure that your listing is as visible as possible. So number one is the Google Search. See where you're coming. Another really cool tactic and tip that you can do as well is if you scroll right to the bottom of that Google first page, what you will see, and this is step number two is look at what your related searches are for your business name. The first audit that I would be doing would be on Google. Next would be your Google Business Listing. This is becoming even more popular and even more important every single week and month and year. Right now, the more that Google is trying to potentially turn itself into an ota. So what I would love for you to do in the comments, but it doesn't matter whether you're watching this live or whether you are watching this on the replay, let me know. Do you have a Google Business Listing? Just put yes or no to Google Business Listing and then as a follow up question, when was the last time you actually went in to have a look at your analytics? So you can go to business.google.com dashboard and it will actually take you into the analytics section of your Google Business listing. So in here you can change the pictures, you can check out your latest reviews, you can check out so much more than what people actually realize. The place that I would encourage you to go to is a section called Insights. In this section what you're able to do is you're able to See exactly what people are typing in on Google, what they're searching for to come up with your business and how your business is appearing in the map. More important than that, you can see how many people are running that search on Google. You can see how many people go from your business listing to your website. You can see how many people call you directly from your business listing. And you can also see as well how many people request directions to you. If you want to get more people searching on Google and seeing you higher in that map, one of the easiest ways of doing this would be to get people to leave more reviews on your Google Business listing and then just simply making sure that you respond to those reviews. The more active and the more content your Google Business listing has is when people are doing that search. When you do go into your Google Business listing and if you go into the information, you can actually amend the name. So when somebody is searching on Google, when they do a Google search and they type the granary farm stay what they've got underneath it is book direct for best rates. Really super clear with the link to the website next to it. And I say we get a ton of people come to our website and you can see our stats are super high from that. I have done a more extended video on Google Business listing, but you can go onto the YouTube page and you can find out a lot more about that. So if just go into YouTube, type in boostly Google Business listing, you can find it on there. The next step of your audit is once you've done the Google search, once you've seen how your business comes up is you want to go and you want to check out your website. Goal of this is to have an open eye and an open view and try and put you in the picture of somebody coming onto your website for the first time. A potential guest or a user with your website is you want to make sure that it takes the right boxes. Okay, so what do I mean by this? Number one, your website in 2020 and beyond should be built for mobile first. Okay, we're in it. We're in an age now where the majority of web traffic is on a mobile device. The simplest way to check that is to open up your mobile, open up your tablet, if you've got one, and just load up your website and have a good look at it and just be honest with yourself. This website that you can see is basically one of the stock websites that we have for boostleaf. So obviously we've designed websites, we help hospitality owners with their website design. Some of the most important thing that you need to do. And if you just come in to your website and even if you're going to do this on desktop and you grab it and you just drag it and you can minimize it, as you can see as I'm dragging it down, the screen amends instantly. And this is exactly what your website should. The next thing, what your website needs to be, it needs to have a full screen. There needs to be no borders on the sides here. I still see so many websites that have got borders. And also as well, what you want is you want this first image here. You want to make sure that this first image is your key selling photo, your unique selling photo. Top right hand corner. This is the action zone, this is the buy in zone. And if you aren't doing this, please make sure it's one of the first things that you do in your audit and how you change your website around. So you want to make it really simple for your potential guest to book, call or email you. And that's why it needs to be in the top right hand corner. Everybody should have a booking engine in 2020. A booking engine is basically something that's linked to your pms, your property management software. Again, other things that you need to be looking for with your website, make sure you've got the social proof, make sure you've got the reviews, make sure that you tell your story, tell a little bit about you that personalizes you, make sure that you've got property highlight icons. The one of the most recent things that we've noticed that Google is looking for, and this is something called rich snippet text, is you've got to have a frequently asked questions section. So please get an FAQ into your website. They are proven to be super important not only for the user experience, but for Google search as well. If you want to find out more about how we're helping, go to boostly.co.uk website. There's two different packages that we do. One where you just grab this copy here, you just switch out the photos you can add in the words, off you go. Number two is where we do it all for you. And if you're struggling to see how good your website is and you can't do it yourself, user testing.com I've used it a ton. Super effective. You can actually hire totally neutral members. You pick the type of customer that you want to come onto your website. So you've got a criteria to pick from. It cost between forty and a hundred dollars. You get to have a Couple of people check out your website, you give them an action that you want to make, that is make a booking, they will do it, they will record their screen and they will comment every step of the way to let them know what they think about your website. Google Analytics can tell you this information. It can tell you the demographics, it can tell you the countries, it can tell you from. When they land on your homepage, where do they go next? Do they go to your accommodation page? Do they click on your about us page? Do they go to your booking page? And they can give you all of this information for free. The problem is, is that people don't know this or they don't use it. But even, even worse than this is that the website designer that they hired to create their website has never set this up for them. Now if you are somebody that has had a website done for you but has never had Google Analytics set up for you, then you need to be changing your website designer tomorrow. Plain and simply being is because he doesn't care about yo and your marketing. So you need to be making sure that you get a website that has got Google Analytics set up. Now if you haven't got it set up, it's not the end of the world. It's super simple to do. If you've got access to where you can make changes in the back end of your website, you can go and get a plugin, you can go and set it up. It'll take five to 10 minutes to do. And again, if you need the advice and the support on how to do so, I've got a full video on YouTube, just go into, into YouTube, type in boostly, Google Analytics. It shows you how to get going, how to set it up, but most importantly how to find those sections that I was just talking about. Final audit One of the really important audit that you need to be doing is of your social media. First place that I would go to would be your Facebook business page. Now one of the things that I love about the Facebook business page is that you can click a little button and on that button it will show you your Facebook business page from the eyes of a viewer of a visitor. So not admin. And again, this is really important because when that page loads up and it scrolls down, it will show you how your pictures are presented. So what are the latest pictures that are showing? Are they a true representation of you and your business right now? Is that the content that you want them to see first? Again, first impressions are everything. What are the videos that are showing? What are the first posts have you set up your online shop on your Facebook business page. That online shop, which is basically the shop window where you can put your properties or your rooms on there that will link to your website. Once you've done your website, once you've done your social media, once you've done your Google search, then the final place is obviously going to be any third party websites that you're listed on. So you're going to start with the Online travel agents, booking.com, airbnb, Expedia, HomeAware, you know, all of those. And you're going to go TripAdvisor, trivago, and then any smaller niche little listing sites. And again, you want to make sure that all of your photos are up to date. You want to make sure that the text and the copy is all up to date. You don't want any old pictures that don't represent you and your brand anymore. Ideally, you want that first picture, that unique selling photo that I spoke about with the website, to be the same on each listing site. So you've got that brand recognition going through and as where and when you can try and sneak in as much as possible about the book direct message, about the benefits of when you book direct. That's the full audit that you should be doing. The eight simple steps that you can be doing is that you've got the time on your hands now you're in lockdown, you can't go anywhere. Why not be productive, Set out, you know, a good few hours to do it and you can spread it out for the course of the next two to three days, over the course of the next couple of episodes, do marketing, review lives. I'm going to dig in, I'm going to share my screen. We're going to look at the two episodes, the hospitality owners that we're going to work with, we're going to look at their website, we're going to look at their social media, we're going to look at the Google search, we're going to point out ways and means on what they can do to fix it. We're going to hold them accountable and we can hold you accountable and we can check in in a month's time and see what they've done and if it's had any impact. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Boost hospitality podcast. Like I said, this is season eight. We're in episode 17. If you've enjoyed this episode, if you think there should be people, hospitality owners out there that need to see it as well. Share this video into a group, any Facebook group that you're a part of, or simply tag in a person that you know who needs to be seeing this. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you rate, review and subscribe wherever you are tuning in from and I will be back very soon for another episode.