Are you ready for Spring? Do you need a little help brainstorming another way to draw customers to your site and your property? We’ve got a few creative marketing ideas for property owners to start right away.
Why You Should Have Specials & Packages
Creating specials and packages for guests serves a wide range of purposes.
- It helps attract customers looking for an experience but are willing to pay someone else extra to plan their trip for them.
- It creates plenty of tools for creating “soft sales” while marketing. A soft sale is a campaign that uses a more subtle, casual, or friendly sales message. For example, one can sell a package or special to potential guests as a friendly recommendation to take advantage of a good deal or offer.
- It creates a good supply of content to push to your loyal brand followers on social media, email marketing campaigns, and on your website.
- Most importantly, it provides another source of revenue. Some property owners saw interest in their add-ons, specials, and similar packages leading to the majority of their revenue coming from specials. One property owner, after brainstorming a few specials, is now seeing 60% of their revenue coming from items other than just rooms at their bed and breakfast!
Offering specials and packages to potential guests is a huge way to boost both your following, and your revenue! The most intimidating aspect of this process is creating the specials in the first place.
The Types of Packages
After sifting through what property owners in the industry have found successful, we can offer a few guidelines to help with brainstorming packages. The goal is to have creative marketing ideas that are unique to your business and will help separate you from your competitors. Most fall into four categories: welcome packages, romance packages, experiential packages, and holiday packages.
1. Welcome Packages
First on the list is welcome packages, which are a great way to help guests feel pampered, even though they’re paying for that special treatment. Some good examples include:
- Creating a basket of snacks for guests who are late arrivals and may not arrive in town until after the local restaurants close.
- Having a bouquet of flowers ready on arrival for guests.
- A welcome basket with local goods and products for guests to enjoy during their stay and take home with them afterward.
2. Romantic Packages
While good for properties pursuing couples, it may not work for family-focused properties. Some good examples include:
- A movie night package, where the property owner provides a voucher for dinner at a local restaurant and tickets to see a movie afterward.
- A fairly standard romance getaway revolves around dinner (maybe a voucher at a local restaurant), champagne, a massage, or some combination.
A babymoon package is a great addition to the most standard honeymoon and general romance packages. A babymoon is a trip taken before a couple has a child, as a way to enjoy each other’s company before the crying and midnight feedings start. A babymoon package offers couples one last getaway before their new addition to the family. These specials generally center around catering to both parents.
3. Experiential Packages
Last but not least, experiential packages are the way to go. Experiential packages are more expensive for added revenue. People love them because they get to let someone else with more local knowledge plan their memorable experiences.
A lot of packages center around sport, an activity (hiking, fly fishing, horseback riding, etc), or a tour. The package often consists of:
- Tickets or passes to enjoy whatever activity the special focuses on
- A night or two (or more) stay
- Keepsakes to remember the guests’ trip
Another experiential package could be as simple as creating picnic baskets for guests to take with them on trips. The basket could be full of food or beverages tied to the area, such as Vermont cheese, Maine lobsters, or local craft brews.
4. Holiday Packages
There are also a ton of packages centered around holidays or events. Christmas, New Years, Spring getaways, Winter getaways, and more are all good sources for ideas.
Specials and Packages Are Very Creative Marketing Ideas
The only limit is creativity! As time goes on, be sure to keep track of what specials and packages are successful, and which are not. That way you can continue to improve upon them over the years.
If you’d like to learn more about our entire integrated marketing program, feel free to reach out to Matt Bare by email at matt@q4launch.com. If you’d like to learn more about blogging, especially the details on how blogging increases traffic to your website, sign-up for our free webinar on April 8th to learn this and more about blogging for your business!