Social Media Marketing ROI for Hotels: Part One

Trying to summarise the ROI of Social Media Marketing in a single article seems incredible at first glance. So I chose to include “part one”, as I have a feeling that several articles will be needed to do it reasonably well. Discussing the ROI of Social Media Marketing was the natural next step after addressing the need to invest in genuine SMM, but I think it would be best not to wait any longer. However, in order to avoid wasting the money invested, it is necessary to plan objectives and determine the variables by which we will measure their achievement. It would not make sense to give a generic lesson on metrics when each company is aware of its own needs and, consequently, of the objectives it needs to pursue. Taking a quick look at the possible objectives for a hotel company, or even a tourist destination, that could lead us to develop a Social Media Marketing strategy, we could cite the following examples:

• Manage Online Reputation for a hotel, hotel chain or resort, as I mentioned.
• Improve Search Engine Rankings.
• Build a brand, or establish a brand presence, consistently or within very specific segments through social media.
• Increase website traffic.
• Build a Community.
• Improve Service based on user feedback.
• Increase revenue, the number of bookings, etc.
• etc…

Let us be realistic: the need to talk about ROI arises from the need to measure the return on the investment made in tangible terms. However, if the defined objectives are intangible, it is logical to think that ROI in such cases will be based on intangibles and will not be financial in nature. In the marketing world, it is customary to assign values to activities in order to measure return on investment, but when objectives are based on Social Media Marketing interactions, the true return lies in the interactions themselves. If we can defend our strategy internally within our organisation using this same argument, without having to make an effort to quantify those intangibles that do not truly exist, I believe we will be able to do genuine Social Media Marketing. Of course, the final outcome of all intangibles ultimately gives us tangible results in the form of bookings, sales or fewer complaints, but we will never know to what extent our results have improved as a result of each individual action. Rather, we will be able to observe that, ultimately, we have managed to increase our revenue or the number of registered users. I will continue in another article with the ROI of Online Reputation Management.