How Can Hotels Use LinkedIn to Maximize Their Marketing Reach

Following up with my recent article about 5 Ways the Hospitality Industry Can Take Advantage of LinkedIn, if you’ve been ignoring LinkedIn as a hospitality industry professional because of its B2B focus, think about it again. While hospitality is primarily a B2C industry, it has enough B2B aspects to warrant the use of LinkedIn.

For example, many hotels and restaurants have to work with vendors, and they benefit from meeting the space bookings and group business. So how can hotels use LinkedIn to maximize their marketing reach and generate leads? Let’s start with the basics:

Start Connecting with the Right People

If you’re using LinkedIn for B2B lead generation for your hotel, start connecting with the right people. Look for meeting planners who require banqueting venues, including wedding and event planners. If there was a beautiful wedding held at your site, post some pictures and showcase it on your Company Page. Connect with local vendors who provide products or services you need and see if you can start new business partnerships.

If you’re wondering how you’ll find all these people, the answer is LinkedIn hospitality industry groups. There are plenty of them to join and use as public forums for exchanging experiences and tips. You’re bound to meet other hospitality industry professionals there that you could turn into warm leads with enough interaction.

Use LinkedIn Pulse

Pulse is LinkedIn’s platform for publishing long-form content (just like this article). It’s not available for Company Pages, but you can still post from your profile and then share the post on your Company Page. These posts will appear in the newsfeed of your primary connections, and they’ll rank in Google. Pulse provides an excellent opportunity to increase your marketing reach by showcasing your expertise which will, in turn, raise your brand awareness. With a strong CTA (Call to Action,) and a link to your hotel’s website at the end, each post can generate new quality leads for you.

Hold Events

It might seem counter-intuitive for a hotel to hold an event for the locals, but it’s also one way of increasing your marketing reach. It gives you something to post about, and gets people in the door and starts the word-of-mouth marketing. Most importantly, it showcases your meeting space to local business people. And when pictures of the event you hosted are posted on your Company Page, it will reach your leads from other areas as well.

Use LinkedIn Tools

Hospitality industry professionals who want to take their marketing and lead generation to the next level should consider using various LinkedIn tools. The most comprehensive one is undoubtedly LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which makes searching for leads much more straightforward.

Advanced Search filters help you identify the contacts you’d want to work with and keep your sales team’s pipeline full. Sales Navigator Team and Enterprise licenses also offer access to PointDrive, an advanced presentation tool that could work wonderfully with the kind of presentation a hotel business can put together. There are many perks to using LinkedIn tools, so study them carefully or ask me about them.

Despite having a B2C focus, the hospitality industry can benefit from using LinkedIn to generate B2B leads. And hotels especially have a lot to offer to local vendors or other hospitality industry professionals such as meeting planners. However, if you feel like LinkedIn tools have a steep learning curve, hiring a professional to teach you or support you with your LinkedIn lead generation might be the solution you're looking for.

About the Author

Perry van Beek is a pioneer in social selling with LinkedIn. He founded Social.ONE and together with his team he has been helping organisations throughout the EMEA and America with LinkedIn positioning, lead generation, and social selling since 2009. His company's free LinkedIn Profile Cheat Sheet is a very popular resource to quickly help create powerful LinkedIn profiles. Perry conducts training and presents keynotes at sales conferences throughout the world. In August of this year his book LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Dummies will be published. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn with a personalized connection request.