As one of the world’s leading online travel platforms, Booking.com has revolutionized the way travelers search, book, and experience accommodations worldwide.
With a powerful digital marketing strategy at its core, Booking.com has successfully positioned itself as a go-to platform for travelers. In this text, we’ll explore the digital marketing strategy of Booking.com, examining its key elements and strategy which have propelled the company’s success. Let’s dive right in!
Marketing Mix of Booking.com
The successful travel and accommodation platform should be doing something right, making it the world’s hottest website and go-to option for many who’d wish to explore the world of travel. Thus, we wish to deep dive into Booking.com’s marketing mix.
Booking.com marketing strategy is created to succeed in a big audience of potential clients and provides them the knowledge they should make informed decisions about their travel plans. The marketing mix of Booking.com is a mix of the P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the 4 P’s:
Product
The accommodation marketplace offered by Booking.com is its product. It provides a big selection of possibilities for accommodation, corresponding to hotels, apartments, villas, and more. Other travel-related services provided by Booking.com include tours, airport transfers, and vehicle rentals. The company positions itself as an all-inclusive platform for all the things its customers may require while they travel.
Price
Booking.com attracts customers with a spread of discounts and promotions along with its reasonable prices. Additionally, the business offers a Price Guarantee, ensuring that clients will receive the most cost-effective price for his or her accommodation. This is a necessary element of Booking.com’s marketing strategy since, despite being one of the world’s top platforms, there’s now more competition than ever before because of shifting consumer behavior and technological advancements and successful marketing strategy of Airbnb or other competitors like Expedia Group.
Place
There are over 229 countries and territories where Booking.com is obtainable. The company is well-established in each developed and emerging economies. Booking.com also has a powerful online presence, with a web site that is obtainable in over 43 languages.
Promotion
Booking.com advertises its services through a number of marketing channels. The company uses a spread of diverse marketing strategies, from SEM to content marketing, to succeed in potential customers. To promote its services, Booking.com collaborates with tour guides and travel agencies.
The company uses a mix of paid and organic marketing to spread its name, with a specific emphasis on social media, pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine marketing.
Social Media Strategy of Booking.com
Booking.com posts usually on all of its social media channels, using a spread of strategies to spice up its reach, corresponding to using hashtags, running contests, partnering with influencers, or creating hilarious posts. The important goal of the company is to make sure that its followers engage with its content, thus, Booking.com posts interesting and informative content. Another vital step they take is to incorporate links to its website in all of its social media posts, promoting special deals and discounts on its social media channels.
The company definitely has a powerful presence on social media platforms, using them to interact with users, showcase unique accommodations, and most significantly encourage travel. Booking.com shares visually appealing content, travel suggestions, and exclusive promotions, generating buzz and attracting latest users to the platform.
One of the series the company recently launched is its short reels which introduces destinations while promoting their very own brand. This series encourages people to book a 1-month stay in popular destinations to explore:
By partnering with popular travel bloggers, vloggers, and social media influencers, the company leverages its influence and engages with its dedicated followers, effectively expanding its reach and brand visibility.
As part of their social media strategy, Booking.com creates hashtag campaigns as well. One of the recent campaigns they launched is the #TravelGenius hashtag campaign. This campaign encourages people to share their travel experiences and posts using the #TravelGenius hashtag and if Booking.com reaches out to their followers to make use of their content on its social media platforms, the company guarantees to pay $500 to the owner of the post to book one other trip! This is a wonderful example of social media strategy for brief term rental business.
Booking.com has an account on every major social media platform, actively using the latest generation platforms like TikTok as well.
By combining photographs, reels, and carousels, they provide content that encourages and stimulates customers to make use of their services. Social media is primarily utilized by Booking.com for promotional and informative purposes.
search engine marketing Strategy of Booking.com
Booking.com’s search engine marketing strategy is arguably one of its most vital investments. The company makes significant investments in search engine marketing to extend its exposure in organic search results. By improving the website’s content, meta tags, and URLs with targeted keywords, Booking.com strategically improves its search engine rating. This makes it possible for the platform to attract in organic visitors and broaden brand awareness. The company’s search engine marketing strategy consists of content, links, and technical search engine marketing components, each of which improves the online presence of the company differently.
By using keywords and phrases that individuals are prone to seek for, Booking.com’s content, for example, is optimized for serps. Additionally, the company builds links to its website from authoritative web sites, which helps to boost its domain authority and SERP rating. Last but not least, Booking.com ensures that its website is technically search engine optimized, making an allowance for elements like page speed, mobile friendliness, and keyword usage.
With a 2 to three times higher conversion rate than its competitors, Booking.com has raised the bar for everybody. The Senior Product Owner of Booking.com, Leonardo Saroni, feels that great search engine marketing, when done properly, pleases all three: customers, higher conversion rates, and web crawlers. However, search engine marketing is often carried out for technical reasons slightly than for the users.
It is equally vital to find out whether the visitors are coming back or do they proceed to booking flow etc. When conducting travel search engine marketing, you shouldn’t use traffic as your sole metric. Just as crucial is creating fascinating content. You should consider other metrics for search engine marketing success besides improved search engine rankings and traffic growth.
Saroni adds:
“If you’re doing search engine marketing it’s worthwhile to develop pages which are really interesting and interesting in your customer.”
Content Strategy of Booking.com
Booking.com encourages users to go away reviews and share their travel experiences on the platform. This user-generated content serves as social proof, constructing trust and credibility amongst potential travelers. Booking.com actively showcases positive reviews and responds to feedback, demonstrating its commitment to customer satisfaction.
Booking.com can also be specializing in other areas to spice up brand recognition and loyalty. As mentioned above while we were talking about their social media strategy, Booking.com has been working hard over the past few years to extend brand awareness amongst customers through content, social media channels, and TV promoting. The company publishes articles on its website to spark the interest of people arranging their next vacation and to supply crucial details and guidance to those that are about to book a spot. With all of its content from its Instagram account to its website’s blog posts, Booking.com focuses heavily on powerful storytelling techniques.
If you’re also in search of a powerful marketing strategy in your company, marketing agencies for the hospitality industry can make it easier to construct one!
Advertising Strategy of Booking.com
As one of the leading online travel agencies in the world, Booking.com’s promoting strategy is a combination of content promoting, pull promoting, and push promoting. We’ve already talked about the company’s content promoting and creation processes above so let’s speak about the other elements. Pull promoting involves creating ads which are designed to draw customers to Booking.com’s website. This type of promoting typically uses search engine marketing (SEM), social media promoting, and display promoting. The goal of pull promoting is to get potential customers to go to Booking.com’s website and begin the booking process.
Push marketing entails contacting potential travelers immediately with promoting messages. Email, SMS, or push notifications are all acceptable forms of this sort of promoting. Push marketing goals to remind prospective clients about Booking.com and persuade them to make a reservation.
Advertising Campaigns of Booking.com
Book Like an MVP
Booking.com is the official partner of Major League Baseball. This 15-second ad includes Baseball Outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. It’s one of the most up-to-date ads of Booking.com and a wonderful example of how the company uses famous faces of their ads.
The Big Game
The following ad includes world-famous actress Melissa McCarthy and is as entertaining as it may possibly be.
Sarah Jessica Parker Lists Her House on Booking.com
Sex and The City star, famous actress Sarah Jessica Parker partnered with Booking.com for an interesting collaboration. She listed her Hamptons Property on Booking.com for many who wish to travel to Hamptons and in search of a wonderful stay. Below the listing, there’s even a small note from the actress herself:
“I’m thrilled to welcome guests into this little home away from home by the beach, and hope the cozy space we’ve created in our Hamptons cottage is just what the doctor ordered.”
Sarah Jessica Parker
Idris Elba Sails into Summer
Without a doubt, Booking.com collaborates with amazing actors and actresses! The ad features Idris Elba, noting that he literally sails into summer with Booking.com.
Final Thoughts
Booking.com’s digital marketing strategy exemplifies the power of a user-focused approach, leveraging various channels and tactics to interact with travelers at every stage of their journey. By combining intuitive web site design, extensive search engine marketing effort, personalization, social media strategy, and more, Booking.com has established itself as a dominant player in the online travel industry.
If you’re thinking about reading more about the hospitality and travel industry marketing, make sure that to examine out our article on inspiring hotel marketing strategies!
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