4 WAYS YOU CAN USE YOUR OWNED MEDIA CHANNELS TO DRIVE APP DOWNLOADS

The media mix is made up of three primary channels;

• Owned media – such as your website, blog and social media

• Earned media – including reviews and press coverage

• Paid media – sponsored posts and advertising

The distribution of budget amongst these three channels will depend on how much cash you have to spend marketing your hotel, what activities you plan to base your marketing around and what your overall marketing strategy is. Most great strategies will include some element of all three channels – with owned media being easily under your own control. Earned media taking time to build up and therefore something that you want to do consistently and paid media, which while useful and immediate, shouldn’t be relied on entirely to drive your hotel mobile app’s visibility and downloads.

Your owned media channels are one of the greatest tools in any hotel marketer’s toolkit, offering chances to gain complete control over your output and drive downloads of any new materials, including apps, your hotel has developed. Getting your prospects to download your hotel mobile apps is one of the most difficult elements of any marketing strategy, so here are four tried and tested ways of using owned media channels to encourage those all-important downloads:

Before devising your strategy, it’s important to carefully consider which media channels are most applicable to your hotel’s audience. It goes without saying that some channels are better suited to app promotion than others so you’ll need to weigh up which of your owned media channels is best. While an app will likely gather a certain number of organic downloads once added into the App Store or Google Play, there are many different activities that can help drive this activity long before the app touches down, giving you a good chance at building some positive word of mouth. You could use your social media to create pre-launch excitement, offer a sneak peak of the app, push a discount for bookings made via your app or, encourage user generated content in the form for reviews and comments.

Encouraging some social sharing and brand advocacy amongst your app users is a great way to fuel downloads, as it helps to spread the word about your hotel app far and wide. Posting links to relevant content on your social media channels helps to increase the reach of your mobile app but you can take it further and actually invite engagement. Ask questions and encourage your fans to share their experiences of the app.

3. Promote Via Your Website

It’s essential to ensure all visitors to your website know there is an app available, and where they can download it. This could be a simple link to a download area on your website embedded on the homepage. You could also publish blog posts outlining the precise benefits of your app over similar hotel industry apps. Your website is one of the first (and last destinations) to be visited by potential customers, so make the most of this opportunity.

A clever e-mail marketing campaign will help promote your hotel mobile apps amongst those who already have a vested interest in your offering. Creating attractive e-mail marketing campaigns that showcase the benefits of your hotel app helps to fuel future downloads when accompanied by a solid call to action and a link to a download page where your app can be obtained.