Bed and breakfasts (more commonly known as B&B), which used to be a small lodging establishments in their initial, have evolved a lot in the past years.
Now, this is not limited to the impact of B&B marketing. In fact, the major cause behind this is changing guest expectations.
And you know it, as well as I do — that it’s not a new information.
Actually, starting from 2011 to now,
Nearly eight out of ten leisure travelers have considered booking a B&B instead of other accommodation options.
Nebraska BB
But when I said that bed and breakfasts have evolved, I don’t just mean about travelers’ preferences. Here, I’m also considering their market share in the industry, the number of new B&Bs coming up every day and various other factors over and above everything else.
So, sooner rather than later, if you own a B&B, this is the perfect time to do some GOOD advertising for your property.
Though, before we approach towards BnB marketing, let me shed some light on…
Why do travelers prefer B&Bs these days?
Well, today’s B&Bs are not limited to mere lodging and breakfast facilities. They also provide some basic yet important facilities like, WiFi, parking, concierge service, private bathrooms, collection of board games or bookshelf and so on.
In addition to this, plenty of B&Bs offer spa services, free referrals to nearby sights, wine tasting, and even guided tours and services.
Nevertheless, over these years, B&Bs have been able to maintain their charm through home-cooked meals (which believe me, are THE BEST). These meals give guests a chance to enjoy local cuisine with a personal touch.
Most of the B&Bs have their own kind of decor and ambience. Some may have an ancient touch, whereas some may reflect their country’s culture and tradition. Usually, each room in a bed and breakfast is decorated by keeping such aspects into consideration.
Nowadays, travelers want to have a deeper connection with a place they visit. And staying at a B&B gives them the exact experience.
You can’t have such experiences at a hotel. That’s why, B&Bs are winning against hotel and other accommodation providers.
Given that, the functioning and services of B&Bs are revamped to such a great extent, you definitely need to put additional efforts to promote your B&B.
Now you may think, with all these changing kinetics, how do I market my bed and breakfast? Here, I’ve penned down,
9 solid B&B marketing strategies
1. Define your target audience
2. Get a website
3. Highlight the unique experience you are providing
4. Make the most of Airbnb
5. Start social media marketing of B&B
6. Get connected to maximum OTAs
7. Run Promotions
8. Begin with online advertising
9. Involve content marketing
Let’s dig in depth of all these strategies.
1. Define your target audience
First things first, define your target audience. Since B&Bs are the choice of a wide range of travelers; be it millennials, groups or solo backpackers, you need to identify the segment your B&B fits the best.
Drill down your past data to define your target audience. Analyze that data and find out the type of travelers whom you catered the most in the last year.
Were they families, groups, honeymooners, or were recent college grads?
Based on the results, define your target audience.
2. Get a website
Well, having a website is the most basic thing that you should have as a business. In fact, it is an inseparable part of your bed and breakfast marketing plan. Today, not having a website is as good as not having a business.
It’s quite an obvious thing that your guests head to Google if they want to book their stay. So your website HAS to be there.
Besides, if they have come across your B&B through Google or any OTA, they are going to end up landing on your website, sooner or later. (B&B owners who don’t have a website, tell me where are you going to lead those visitors?)
You can share all the information about your B&B on your website. Through the website’s photos, videos, and content, you can give your probable guests a glimpse of how amazing their stay is going to be with you. You can also integrate a booking engine with your website to let your visitor book directly with you.
Check out a B&B in the following image. It has attractive images on the homepage as well as a ‘Book Now’ button to let the visitors book their stay easily.
Also, you have to ensure that your website is SEO-optimized.
Suffice to say, it plays a significant role in B&B marketing as well as having a strong online presence.
You can get your B&B website designed right away, if you don’t have one.
3. Highlight the unique experience you are providing
As I said, these days B&Bs are providing much more than a mere accommodation or lodging facility.
You see, travelers prefer accommodations that has a touch of that particular region’s culture.
You will be surprised to learn how there are B&Bs that were once plantation homes. In Morocco, you can stay in former palaces called riads and in France, you can stay in authentic chateaus.
If you don’t have all this great infrastructure, it’s fine! All you can do is provide some extras. If you are located near a scenic destination then you can offer a guided tour. If your B&B is known for the food, you can arrange a cooking class or you can take your guests to the free wine tasting.
Believe me, these small gestures have a long-lasting impression and this unique stuff can promote your B&B in a way no other strategy can.
4. Make the most of Airbnb
Airbnb’s popularity proves that more travelers are looking for small, local and intimate places to stay when they visit a new destination. That is why Airbnb is not less than Google for bed and breakfasts.
Airbnb on a yearly basis drives 60 million guest bookings.
Str
Ergo, just having accurate profiling and listing your property with all the details can promote your B&B in the best way on this platform.
Moreover, you can have technology like a channel manager to manage your real-time inventory and distribution.
These days, Airbnb is recognizing technology providers as its preferred software partner. These providers have the best channel managers you’ll find in the market. You can check out one here.
5. Start social media marketing of B&B
It’s not a hidden fact that, for any business, especially for the hospitality industry, you NEED to be present where your end users are.
Here, end users obviously mean guests.
Needless to say, if you aren’t where your guests are, all your efforts behind promoting your B&B or even making it prettier than your competitors — will go in vain.
Right now, there are 3.1 billion people active on social media platforms.
Statista
A medium that was meant to socialize has become a great platform to promote your business as well. Social media has proved to be the most powerful force in the world of online marketing.
So, you need to start your B&B’s social media marketing if you haven’t done yet. Create profiles for your B&B on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (If you can invest enough time and resources, you can also give a try to Pinterest).
Keep your profiles updated with the latest pictures and videos. Engage with your audience by posting regular content. You can advertise special packages, discounts and other offers that you have at different times of the year.
By content, I mean QUALITY content.
For example: Place pictures of a successful breakfast dish, your pet, a surprise for the guests, or capture the autumn colors in your garden.
Here’s an Instagram account of one of the B&Bs. See how smartly they’ve posted a picture of their appealing breakfast. They’ve beautifully highlighted their location and guest reviews.
Additionally, you can start a hashtag conversation on Twitter that’s relevant to your business – this can be a great way to increase your guest engagement.
Here’s how you can do it with your B&B’s hashtag –
This Christmas, #StayAtJulesysBnB, and earn exciting gift hampers.
To which your guests, can further take ahead the conversation like – “What an amazing stay it was at GrandMama’s. If Amsterdam is your next travel destination, then you should definitely consider this B&B. #StayAtJulesysBnB”
You can also post funny anecdotes and special offers. Your ‘followers’ will become enthusiastic and they’ll want to spend the night at your B&B!
Make a head start to your bed and breakfast’s social media marketing through these templates.
6. Get connected to maximum OTAs
As facts stand,
OTAs control approximately 2/3rd of all online bookings.
Hospitality Net
All the travel websites, OTAs, vacation rentals, and metasearch engines like Kayak and TripAdvisor are giving B&Bs a much needed exposure. It’s basically a global market for travelers and hence is the best platform to promote your B&B.
You must be doing great on a few OTAs. But, do you think when a huge fragment of online bookings is controlled by OTA, limiting yourself to 2-3 OTAs is a good idea?
Therefore you should consider getting listed on maximum OTAs. As they increase your B&B’s credibility, promote it, and you can reach out to a wider audience.
Now you’d say, how to manage these many OTAs?
Well, simple though the channel manager!
Beyond that, you can also be a part of the promotions that OTAs run on their end. (Different types of OTAs have various techniques to get you bookings.)
#Protip: I don’t mean that you go and list on every other available OTA. Check the relevance as per your B&B's location and budget. For example B&Bfinder, Bedandbreakfast.com.
7. Run Promotions
Running promotions is an assured bed and breakfast marketing strategy. The reason being, there’s a whole lot different level of favoritism for the word – EXTRA! (Be it for you, me or your guests)
Now, I’ll tell you what different types of promotions you can run.
As you know, there’s a peak season and a weak season for your B&B. The best part is, you can run promotions in both the season and promote your B&B.
Let‘s say before Christmas, in November you can run some promotions and offer packages that attract your guests to book their stay.
For the weak seasons, you can run promotions by celebrating days or out of the box events like International Dance Day, Yoga day and such likes. Based on the day you are celebrating you can also organize a workshop for the same.
Perhaps you can host a wine tasting or a wildlife festival. Or, maybe a weekend-long cooking event.
Other than this, you can run last-minute deals (AKA flash deals) and packages for short stays.
8. Begin with online advertising
Advertising is very important when it comes to B&B marketing. Well, advertising is a wide aspect. Let me classify into online and offline.
Online advertising is all about ads that are visible on search engines, social media platforms and so on.
The experts say that the key is not running maximum ads. It’s about running appealing ads. Ads that make your guests click. You can try your hands on the following types of online advertisements for your B&B.
Google AdWords – Begin with the search ads from Google Adwords. Google Ads will help you to receive direct bookings by reaching the right audiences, thereby maintaining your budget.
Remarketing ads – Now, did you ever search for something on Amazon, and then that search followed you everywhere? You know, with lower prices, some deals or something similar? Well, that’s called REMARKETING, which is also a beneficial way to promote your B&B. It helps your website visitors keep you in their mind, and leave an impact.
Facebook ads – Facebook provides this beautiful feature of Facebook Ads, using which you can easily promote your Facebook page and posts to the relevant audience. This increases your visibility and gives a boost to B&B promotion. Find the best Facebook Ad templates here.
Set aside a budget for this, and find the best place and way to run ad campaigns. Promote your B&B’s amenities, promotions, and packages online across all the platforms by making the most of the different ads.
Similar If it fits your budget you can give a try to Instagram and Youtube ads as well.
9. Involve content marketing
Do you know, content is the most POWERFUL aspect of your bed and breakfast marketing plan?
Let me tell you how.
Firstly, you should pay attention to your website content. It should be appealing and attractive.
For example: instead of writing that we provide the best quality of breakfast, write something like, “ Our breakfast is a true feast, with homemade strawberry jam, eggs from our own property and award-winning sandwiches”
Other than that, you can also write blogs and articles recommending popular tourist spots of your location, your regions’ tradition, culture and about a lot more things.
Many B&Bs are on historical sites or in older houses. You can write about your history and give out some travel tips as well.
You know what, when your guests want to book a stay while planning their itinerary, they are not just looking for the lodging facility. They are looking for a wholesome experience. They’d examine the entire city, its famous restaurants, bars, scenic destinations and so on.
So while your guests search for them, there are chances that they may land on your blog, then your website, and lastly at your door.
Publishing such content will help you rank higher in the search results as well. Thus is SEO optimized content is important and one of the most awesome bed and breakfast marketing ideas.
Well, these are some of the bed and breakfast marketing tactics. Before you try them, I’ll throw light on two necessary aspects of your B&B that are to be looked after. They aren’t sureshot promotional strategies but they’ll definitely affect your B&B marketing. They are:
1. Review Management
Whether it is you, me or your guests, whenever we want to purchase or invest in something, we usually look for others who have done so before. The case is no different with accommodation. Your guests like to hear about the experiences of other guests before they make a decision. They are one of the decisive parameters for the guests.
That’s why your B&B reviews must be handled with extreme care.
Henceforth, you should put effort into collecting reviews as a part of your bed and breakfast marketing strategy. Make it easy for them to do so by giving them a link directly on the guests’ smartphone.
And most importantly, do not miss out on responding to them. We’ve got ready to use review response templates to deal with every type of review viz. positive, negative or neutral. You can download them here.
#PROTIP: Employing an online reputation management software for this can help you handle and make the most of your online reviews effectively.
Promote the positive reviews on your website, social media platforms and spread the word around.
2. Guest experience
Needless to say, your satisfied guests are a powerful marketing tool.
A positive guest experience is one of the best ways to build your brand. They recommend your B&B to their family and friends.
Therefore, you should always walk the extra mile to enhance your guests’ experience.
Leave the first excellent impression by sending the best booking confirmation email. Then you can also engage them over emails and SMS until they finally visit your B&B. You can send them promotional emails, newsletters in which your content is there, reviews are there and so on.
Other than that, introduce personalization in your services. For example, welcoming them by addressing their name.
Believe me, these strong gestures will give you assured results in the long run.
In conclusion
Hereby, I wind up my effective B&B marketing tips. There may be many more ways to advertise your bed and breakfast. Not all may will work for you. So you should mix and match the strategies and be consistent in applying them. However, combining different methods will result in a highly effective marketing strategy.
Which methods do you use to advertise your B&B and why? Let us know by commenting below!
