58 Creative Marketing Ideas for Your B&B or Hotel

Download This Guide as a PDF: Download 58 Seasonal Marketing Ideas for Your B&B or Hotel

Just because leaves are dropping doesn’t mean your occupancy has to fall too! Fall is the perfect time to rethink your marketing efforts and try out new strategies to drive more traffic to your website and attract more bookings at your property. To inspire you, we’ve assembled a master list of Fall Marketing Ideas. Although fall might be considered your “off” or “shoulder” season, it provides many fun and unique opportunities to entice guests to your bed & breakfast or small hotel. Whether you choose to update the photos on your website to reflect the changing season or start a holiday-themed social media campaign, these ideas will help spice up your current marketing strategy and draw more guests to your property.

Re-Group and Re-Start After Your Busy Season

Take stock after the busy summer months and prepare for your fall marketing campaigns.

• Review your Reviews: Take a look at the reviews you received during your hectic summer months. You should include reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, email, Facebook, comment cards, or traditional face-to-face feedback. This will give you an opportunity to analyze what you are doing right and what needs improvement. It will also give you insight into the gap between guest expectations and guest experience. You can update your marketing messaging to better represent the type of experience guests have at your property.
• Use those Guest Reviews in Your Marketing: Post your best reviews to your social media accounts. You can take screenshots of reviews and post them as images to Facebook, Instagram, etc. Be sure to thank your guests and tag them if you can.

• Use User Generated Content: Share your guest’s photographs on your social media pages as well. If a guest posted a photo from their trip on Instagram or Facebook and tagged you or your property, re-share it with a comment like “Thanks for spending time with us this summer. Hope to see you next year!” Be sure to tag them in the post.
• Win any awards or receive any other noteworthy press or distinction? Use this in your marketing. Check out our handy guide to marketing your award here.

Offers, Seasonal Packages and Creative Specials

Entice guests to your property during a down season with a variety of fall-themed packages and deals.

• Define your Target Market: Take a look at guests from your past fall seasons and try to identify any common traits amongst the types of guests you get in the fall. We’re guessing it’s not families, since the kids are back in school. Is it baby boomers? Married couples with no kids? Business travelers? Recent college grads? Last-minute getaways? etc. Design specials and packages that cater to these types of guests.
• Create Special Packages: Promote those packages in social media, in your newsletter, and in any ad campaigns you’re running this fall. Some ideas for packages & specials:
  • Try offering off-season packages, such as a "Back to School" special or "End of Summer" special. You could even try "Special Deals on Last-Minute Fall Getaway”
  • Hold a flash sale, such as “Book within the next 48 hours and get 30% off!” or simply extend the length of time you allow Last Minute Bookings on your online booking engine to entice bookings for last-minute fall getaways.
• Connect with Local Events or Vendors: Try connecting with local events or vendors to offer special package deals for your guests. For example, you could offer a Pumpkin Patch and Hayride package, a Cider Tour package, or discounts off purchases of seasonal items at certain markets or shops. You could even sell local seasonal products at your gift shop or front desk.

TIP: If you partner with or sponsor an event, make sure links to your website are part of the arrangement

Update Your Web Presence to Feature Seasonal Content

Update your website and social media presence with fall-themed photos and content 

• Update Property Photos: With its blue skies, colorful trees, and charming seasonal decor, fall is perhaps the most photogenic season of them all. Change your home page hero/header image and other prominent photos on your website to reflect fall colors and other autumnal images. If you have a property with lots of trees, make sure you include photos that reflect their changing colors. You can also include photos of local fall events or attractions.

Click here for more information on how to update your header image using Odysys.

• Promote seasonal events, activities, or local products on your blog. For example, write posts on:
  • The best pumpkin patches, corn mazes, haunted houses, and other fall related activities in [Your Location]
  • Local Events like pumpkin carving competitions, cider or beer festivals, etc.
  • The most beautiful places to see fall foliage
  • The best hikes or bike trips to take before it gets too cold
  • Where to buy the best locally made fall sweaters, mittens, and more
  • The best fall farmers markets
  • Vineyard/Winery harvest or “crush” events
• Highlight Seasonal Recipes: If you’re a bed & breakfast, highlight any seasonal recipes you serve, either through photographs on your “Dining” page, a sample menu, or via blog post under your ‘Recipes’ category. Anything featuring butternut squash, apples, cranberries, or brussel sprouts should be front and center!
• Create an original Local “Fall Guide”: If you are following our advice, you are likely already writing timely fall-themed blog content. Your concierge or innkeeper is also likely sharing the best fall-related advice with your guests. Turn your recommendations into one comprehensive Fall Guide as a blog post or a series of blog posts that you put under a category of “Fall guide to [your area]”. The guide should include the best places to eat, shop, and visit during the fall season.
• Post photos on Facebook and Instagram of the beautiful fall colors on your property, any fall decorations you put up, or the autumn-inspired seasonal meals you cook your guests.

Celebrate Fall Holidays

Make use of opportunities to generate publicity and awareness for your property.

• Celebrate the Big Holidays: Fall is the time of Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Spice up your marketing by celebrating these holidays on your website and social media accounts.
• Host special events for these holidays at your property. Some ideas for this could be:
  • Costume contests
  • Pumpkin carving workshops
  • Fall cooking classes with wine tastings
• Explore Unusual Holidays: Take advantage of the other unusual holidays of fall. A quick Google search reveals all of the weird and lesser known holidays that you can celebrate in September, October, and November: Better Breakfast Month (B&B owners - this is your holiday!), International Bacon Day, Homemade Cookie Day, National Golf Day, National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day, Take A Hike Day, National Seafood Month, French Toast Day, and Square Dance Day. You can certainly pick a few of these holidays and promote them on your property or at least on your blog and in your social media accounts. If you haven’t found one that works for you and your property, simply Google “unusual holidays” and we guarantee that you will quickly find one that fits.

Involve Yourself in the Local Community

...and earn valuable links to your website to boot.

• Donate to Local Auctions: Fall is a huge fundraising season, so donate stays at your hotel or B&B to local auctions. You can raise awareness about your property while also doing good.
• Sponsor a Team: Fall is also a new sports season. Consider sponsoring a local team.
• Team up with local businesses to host events or offer promotions
• Lend your space: Reach out to a favorite local charity, like an animal shelter, and offer them your space for a fundraising event.

TIP: If you partner with or sponsor an event - make sure links to your website are part of the arrangement

Kickstart a Social Media Marketing Campaign

Fall is a great time to kickstart a new social media marketing campaign. Here are some ideas:

• Update your Facebook cover photo with a fall theme. Use a free tool like canva.com to create a new cover photo

• Get more followers for your Facebook page 
• Review our list of 50 things to post to your social media account and schedule some posts
• Host an Instagram photo contest. Urge guests to take their best fall photos or pictures of them doing their favorite fall activities in the area and then have them post to Instagram. Come up with a hashtag that they will then use in their posts.

Fall Tune-Up

Looking forward to taking a breather after the summer high season? Don’t kick your feet up just yet. Fall is the perfect time for a web tune-up.

Local SEO

Take some time to review and update your business listing in Google:

• Login to Google MyBusiness to manage your business listing
• Respond to reviews
• Post fall pictures
• Google likely has pending updates about your business listing they’d like you to review/approve
• Check out new features like Messaging

Guest Emails

Take a look at the transactional emails you are sending to your guests.

• Review your confirmation, pre-stay and post-stay emails for content and accuracy
• Confirm that you are asking for reviews on Google in your post-stay email. Add a link to your Google business listing to make it as easy as possible. Here’s how to get a link to share with your guests. 

TIP: Regularly getting reviews on Google will improve your website’s ability to compete for a ranking in the 3-pack of local results. More tips for reviews; more tips for local SEO 

Mobile Friendly & Fast

• Make sure your website is mobile friendly and fast 

Email

Did you know? 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed. Studies show that email is a powerful marketing channel. If you aren’t sending an email newsletter, you should be. Email is a great channel for driving direct bookings. Anecdotally, the Odysys customers that are serious about sending out a monthly email are more successful at driving direct bookings than the ones that aren’t.

• Do you have a form on your website so visitors can sign up for email newsletters? (Psst - Odysys has one built right in - just turn it on)
• Send your email list your new fall specials
• Target loyal customers: If you can segment your email list to past guests, send them a special “loyal customer discount” offer good for fall dates.
• Include your latest fall blog posts or the new fall guide you’ve created.

TIP: to send email newsletters - there are plenty of great services out there. We like mailchimp.com 

Rev Up Your Content Marketing Efforts

The easiest way to start is with a blog.

• Start creating posts that will help with your SEO and appeal to potential guests.  (see our recommendation for the “Fall Guide” above)
• Start with some of our “35 B&B/Hotel Blog Post Ideas”
• Also check out tools like http://answerthepublic.com/. Try typing in your city name to see how it works. You should see plenty of ideas for blog post topics.
• Improve or update some of your old posts and market them again for more rankings & traffic
• Add a title image to your blog posts

TIP: Blogging is a long term play, but it does help improve your website’s overall ability to rank in Google search results over time. Companies that blog regularly attract more links and social media attention, which improves your SEO signals to search engines. Adding depth and breadth of relevant content about your area to potential guests makes your site more attractive as well. If you’re an Odysys customer, we can help with your blog post writing.

Check Up on Your Branded Search Results Page

With some extra time on your hands, fall is the ideal time to focus on getting your hotel a high ranking on the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP. The higher you rank on the SERP, the more visible you will be to searchers and the more clicks you will get to your site. Check out our post 4 Ways to Make Your Property’s Brand Search Results Superb for a more detailed overview.

A couple of tips from that article:

• Advertise for your own brand name via Google AdWords
• Get or update your property’s “knowledge panel” in Google search results
• Optimize your title tags and meta descriptions
• Get your website some “sitelinks”

Advertising

Fall may be a great time to revisit or launch an ad campaign.

• Google AdWords - Great for capturing direct bookings as people are searching for a place to stay or even for your own brand name (see above).
• Retargeting ads - Great for improving your conversion rate by bringing site visitors who didn’t book back to your website. Update your ads to feature your fall specials.
• Facebook ads - Got a big customer list? Upload their emails to Facebook Ads and market your specials to them. Facebook ads are a perfect compliment to your email marketing campaigns.

Note to Odysys customers - ask us about our professional services for help with AdWords, Facebook ads, your Local Business Listing, and more. 

Don’t fall into a marketing slump come September. Though temperatures may be dropping, fall is the ideal time to heat up your marketing efforts. By implementing just a few of these strategies, you can spice up your marketing to bring more traffic to your site and attract more guests to your property.