Marketing Budget Planning for Independent Hoteliers - Part 1

Welcome back! Hopefully, you are all settled back into work and the Christmas break now feels like a distant memory. 🥲

Today we are going to have a look over an important topic.

Although it is easy to ignore or overlook…

That is effectively planning your marketing budget for your hotel. This article is going to cover the challenge from the perspective of an independent hotel and how I would recommend doing this.

If a perspective from a small group or brand is of interest, respond to this and let me know. 📧 

Table of Contents

• Before we get started

• What to expect from these guides?

• Defining channels

  • Fixed costs

  • Performance marketing

  • Paid brand channels

  • Owned channels

• A key cost that hasn’t been covered

Before we get started

When I say planning your budget for the year, I mean effectively spending what the business has set as the marketing budget.

Hopefully, you already know the total amount to spend for the year.

The year has already started so this should already be set in stone (pretty much).

That being said, I am going to push you to think about some of your marketing budgets in a different way than you may do currently.

So at this stage, you should know:

• What budget do you have to spend for the year (or whatever budget calendar you work to)

What to expect from these guides?

There is a lot to cover here so I am going to break it down into a few logical parts.

• Part 1: grouping your expenses (this article) – we are going to put your different marketing expenses into different groups. It is key that we are clear on the understanding so we can focus on optimising how it is spent. (The essential bit)

• Part 2: performance marketing excellence – this will be a deep dive into how you should be managing the budget of your performance marketing channels. (The potential gaming changing bit)

• Part 3: planning your marketing budget for maximum returns – determine how to spend your marketing budget over the year to ensure you get the highest returns. (The clear path to spend your budget effectively)