HolidayInnExpress
Holiday Inn Express is a hotel brand known for it’s simple and cost effective stays. Designed for modern travellers offering quality accommodation. This marketing campaign targets UK based professionals. With the goal being to position Holiday Inn Express as the best choice for business travellers. Through digital marketing strategies the hope is to increase brand awareness and engagement.
Marketing Brief
With the aim of this campaign being to position Holiday Inn Express as the go-to hotel choice for business travellers, as a team we did research on the market and revealed that this demographic - Business travellers aged 35-54 were the best audience to target when going through with the marketing campaign.
To engage this audience, we as a team through effective communication designed a targeted digital marketing strategy. We created quality content including social media posts and a Video. As well as an SEO strategy for Holiday Inn Express to help improve visibility, ensuring they are able to effectively reach their target audience.
Market Research
To develop the marketing strategy for Holiday Inn Express, we as a team conducted market research to better understand our target audience and any secondary audience that the company may have. As a team we found that Michigan state university had done prior research on Holiday Inn Express revealing that their target audience is “men aged 35-54 who were business travellers and last minute bookers” Msu.edu. (2020).
Other than finding prior market research on Holiday Inn Express we utilized other research methods including Competitor analysis to identify any industry trends, Search trend analysis in order to see what potential customers search for when booking hotels, and social media analysis where we studied customer feedback on digital platforms to identify any queries or preferences.
Based on our finding we came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to create engaging content showcasing the ease and luxury that Holiday Inn Express has to offer, as well as make an optimized SEO strategy in order to improve search rankings.
This research-driven approach and effective communication ensured that our campaign would run as smoothly as possible and allow us to target the primary and secondary audiences effectively.
Social Media Content Strategy
For this campaign we made a series of quality social media images designed to engage our target audience, (Business travellers aged 35-54). The visuals of the posts highlight the brand’s convenience and efficiency.
For the content we created images that related to our target audience, with some shots of people working as well as showcasing the food and the fun that one can have while at the hotel. Our team carfully planned these images, ensuring they reflect a guest’s experience, while also having an element of unpredictable fun to them. Editing was applied to maintain Holiday Inn Express’s clean and modern aesthetic. The images also follow Holiday Inn Express’s signature blue and white colour scheme to ensure brand consistency and create a professional look.
These posts fit the campaign goal by showcasing real, relatable, and visually appealing moments to reinforce Holiday Inn Express as the go-to choice for business professionals. As well as this the visually appealing content is designed to have a posotive impact on socials encouraging engagement, likes, shares , and comments.
By aligning our social media images with the campaign aims, we ensure that every post will effectively target and engage our desired audience.
Promotional Video
We chose a video due to the content being highly engaging and effective at showcasing Holiday Inn Express’s key features and drawing in attention from potential customers. The video highlights essential amenities such as their being good comfortable bedrooms, high class breakfast, efficient and effective work environment for the business professional, and bars for people to wind down. The video was created using Canva. The goal of using this video was ultimately to increase brand awareness and drive booking from the desired target audience and anyone else looking at Holiday Inn Express.
SEO Strategy
In order to maximize visibility and reach to our target audience of business and short stay travellers who are aged 35-52, we implemented a SEO strategy. By optimizing our content with high-traffic relevant keywords, we aim to improve the search ranking for Holiday Inn Express on relevant keywords and as a result increase direct bookings and drive website traffic.
Our keyword implementation includes:
Last minute hotel deals - At this festive time of year, a large portion of customers will be searching for last minute hotel deals as Christmas is a busy time where customers struggle managing work and holiday/social plans and planning Christmas. This is a difficult keyword but a popular and one that will prove promising for the aims of this campaign. This would be used in sponsored social media advertisements.
Cheap hotels UK - As the target market is a smart traveller and stopover traveller they will be searching for convenience and value for money. Using this SEO keyword will help to reach the target customer. This is lower down the difficulty scale but still effective for the campaign aims. This would be used in google search ads.
Last minute hotels - This would be for the same reason as the first keyword and also because the target customer is looking for value at a busy expensive time of year. This would be used in social media advertisements.
Budget Hotels - As the Holiday Inn Express does focus on value for money it makes sense for us to use this keyword as this is one of the brand’s key selling points and appeals to the target market looking for value. This will be used in sponsored advertisements.
Booking.com - this is a very popular keyword but will help gain brand awareness and gain an advantage in the digital marketing sphere due to how popular this word is.
Campaign Summary
Overall this campaign aims to target business professionals and short-stay travellers aged 35 - 54 and aims to position Holiday Inn Express as that go-to choice for them to book. Through target market research we identified our target audience as well as their needs and what the competitors were doing. We created social media content made to increase visibility and engage our target audience. Additionally we implemented an SEO strategy using relevant keyword to drive traffic and bookings.
By combining these elements we believe that the campaign will effectively strengthen Holiday Inn Express’s online presence and drive traffic and bookings from the desired audience and others.