The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

Development

by

The Marketing Fundamentals for Marketing Your Hotel

A stunning lobby, enviable infinity pool and prime location can only take you so far in the competitive travel industry. To differentiate your product, it’s paradoxically not about your product at all. It’s about building your brand and delivering experiences that start before guests even check-in.

Whether you’re a boutique B&B or a luxury resort, mastering the fundamentals of hotel marketing is key to staying competitive in a saturated hospitality market. Here are the core pillars your hotel’s marketing strategy should stand on.

Branding That Goes Beyond the Logo

The right branding should evoke an emotional response. It’s the je ne sais quoi feeling guests get when they book a room, walk into your lobby or scroll through your Instagram feed.

To define your brand, you need to first understand your value proposition. What makes your hotel unique? From there, craft your message and create a cohesive tone, look and experience across all your marketing platforms. Consistency builds trust, and trust builds bookings.

A Website That Converts

Your website is your hotel’s virtual front desk. Make sure it is mobile-friendly, fast and optimized for SEO. Lean into your brand messaging as you craft compelling copy paired with high-quality images and clear calls to action for an easy booking experience.

Increased Visibility with SEO + Local Search

What good is a beautiful property if no one can find it online? Optimize your website for keywords travelers actually search (e.g., “best hotel near downtown [city]”). Be sure also to claim and update your Google Business Profile so that Google and potential customers know your business is legitimate. For more simple SEO fixes to optimize your hotel’s website, check out this post.

Social Media That Shows (and Sells) the Experience

Social platforms let you bring your story to life. Hotels must post consistently and with purpose. Respond to comments, share local insights and participate in relevant conversations. You might also consider using paid ads to boost visibility for special packages, seasonal events or to retarget past visitors.

Email Marketing That Actually Works

With the right strategy, email can drive bookings, encourage loyalty and keep your hotel top-of-mind, but your message has to resonate with readers. To be most effective with your email marketing, create segmented lists (i.e., families, solo travelers, business guests, repeat customers) and send targeted content based on your audience.

Contact Us for Help with Your Hotel Marketing

Marketing your hotel has always and will always be about getting the fundamentals right. Even as flashy trends come and go, when your brand is solid and you have a content marketing strategy dialed in, everything works together to fill rooms and build loyalty.

Contact us today to see how we can help you, just like we’ve helped hotels like Kamalame Cay and Kanopi House double their bookings and solidify their reputation in the travel industry. 

by

The Role of Data in Building a Successful Marketing Strategy: How to Use Analytics to Your Advantage

Data makes the world go round. Without it, your marketing strategy is, well, not a strategy at all. It’s more of a “throw things on the wall and see what sticks” kind of approach. Seeing what sticks is not a sustainable way to build your business. 

If you want to develop a successful marketing program, you need data. There’s just no way around it. The good thing is that data doesn’t have to be scary, and you don’t have to be a “numbers person” to understand what it means. Data is for everyone, and everyone needs data if they want to build a marketing strategy that truly delivers results. 

Understanding the Power of Data in Marketing

Data has never been more accessible. You no longer have to guess what your audience wants; you can knowby looking at what your data tells you about customer behaviors, preferences and trends. This not only allows you to target your messaging to match your readers’ interests, but it also eliminates wasted spending by directing resources toward strategies that yield measurable results.

How to Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Not all data is created equally. To make data work for you, you need to determine which metrics matter most for your business. The KPIs you choose to track will be tailored to your goals, but below are several general metrics many marketing pros find helpful:

  • Website traffic – How many people are visiting your site? Where are they coming from, and which pages are they landing on?
  • Conversion rates – How many of these visitors are turning into leads or customers?
  • Engagement metrics – How are people interacting with your content? How much time are they spending on your site?
  • Cost per lead (CPL) – How much are you spending to acquire a new customer? On the whole, you want to keep your CPL low. That means a lot of leads for not a lot of money.

By tracking these and other KPIs, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

One of the biggest advantages of marketing analytics is the ability to make informed decisions. Instead of relying on gut feelings, data allows you to identify which channels are driving the most engagement and adjust content strategies based on audience behavior. Data also gives you quick answers when testing different approaches – for example, when running an A/B test on your newsletter.

By continuously analyzing data and adjusting your strategy, you can ensure your marketing efforts align with what actually works. If you need help interpreting your data or are unsure whether what you’re doing is working, give us a call at The Found Gen. We can take a fresh look at your data and help you develop an effective marketing strategy going forward. 

by

How to Set Attainable Marketing Goals Next Year

Goal-setting season is upon us, and with it come big dreams and bold ambitions. And while yes, dreaming big is key to your business’s success, if those ambitions are not grounded in reality, you simply will not be able to attain them. 

No one wants to fall flat. So, don’t. Keep your goals and expectations aligned so you can realize success more quickly. 

To that end, here are some strategies to help you set attainable marketing goals in 2025.

Start Where You’re At

Goals only work when they’re meaningful and relevant to where you are and where you want to go. Plucking a random metric out of the air helps no one and will only result in failure. We’ve worked with clients who’ve said they want to generate 100 new leads per month. Ok, that’s great, but what’s the context behind this number? If said client is currently pulling in only a handful of leads per month, expecting to suddenly achieve 100 will only lead to frustration. 

Instead, review your current data. If you want to increase your email open rate, look at your numbers and consider industry averages so you have a baseline for setting new goals. 

Identify Your Marketing Objectives

Similarly, your marketing goals should align with your overall business objectives. Make them meaningful. Consider your organization-wide priorities, and then develop new marketing goals that are relevant to these objectives.

Train for a Marathon and the Sprint

Breaking down larger goals to include several short-term milestones can help you knock out wins more quickly. An effective goal-setting strategy generally includes both short- and long-term marketing goals. 

Short-term goals are achievable within 3-6 months. They help drive immediate results that build momentum. Long-term goals usually span 6 months to several years. They focus on sustained growth, such as building brand authority, achieving market share or developing a loyal customer base. A healthy mix of both goal types helps focus your efforts, so you start seeing results faster.

Make Your Goals SMART

Lastly, you’ve heard this before, but that’s because it works! A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Using a goal-setting framework like SMART helps you stay focused on your mission while establishing clear and timely parameters for completion. An example of a SMART marketing goal might be: “Grow organic web traffic by 50% in 12 months by optimizing content for SEO and targeting relevant keywords.”Setting attainable goals drives success, but it takes work to develop them. It requires reflection and foresight, but when done well, it can help accelerate your marketing efforts. To learn more about setting goals and building a successful marketing program, contact our team at The Found Gen today. 

by

Do More Followers Lead to More Business?

The math is simple in theory: more followers = more business. Right? Not so fast. 

An equation usually has two or more parts, and we’re missing a few here. It’s something more along the lines of “followers + engagement + brand loyalty = more business.” 

Yes, follower numbers are front and center, so it’s easy to get caught up in how big or small your audience is. However, your follower count doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the engagement to back it up. Engagement (such as likes, shares and comments) may be considered the most important metric for evaluating the success of a social media strategy. Nowadays, there are more bots and fake accounts than ever, which don’t contribute to your engagement. 

The good news is that, with the right strategy, building trust with social media marketing is not only possible, but a key component of your campaign that dramatically reduces your cost per lead and increases your conversion rate.

When it comes to doing social media marketing right, it’s not about reaching “everyone”, it’s about reaching the right audience and creating engaging content. The goal of your social media marketing strategy should be helping, informing, and listening to your audience, not accumulating the “most” followers. 

At The Found Gen, we understand the importance of creating quality content marketing that helps for potential customers to find you, get to know, trust you, and purchase your products. If you are looking for a team to manage your social media presence for your property or business, get in touch today.

by

Which Data Points Are Worth Tracking and Which Are Not?

We hear it all the time from businesses embarking on their social media marketing journey, “how can we get more followers?” And while large follower counts might look impressive, they’re all but irrelevant if they’re the wrong audience or not engaged. It can be easy to get lost in the appearance of big numbers, but what really matters is data that tracks your impact with impressions, clicks and click-through rates

There’s a ton of KPIs out there, but here’s the ones we recommend looking closely at:

  • Impressions
  • Email Engagement
  • Spend
  • Clicks
  • Social Media Engagement
  • Webpage Views
  • Sales (unit/dollar volume)
  • Cost per Client
  • Cost per Lead
  • Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS)
  • Return on Investment (ROI)

Analyzing these metrics will tell you how successful your strategy is, and they’ll help you craft even better content for even better results. They can help you understand your traffic performance, readership engagement, and lead generation.  After all, the more you know, the better you can target and reach the people that really matter to your business needs.

Despite how overwhelming it can feel to track, manage, and interpret, data can guide some pretty big and important decisions when it comes to who you target, how you target them, and the most effective ways to continue to engage them.

If you’re ready, we can help ensure that your metrics and marketing stay perfectly aligned for growing your business. Take the next step today by getting in touch with us at The Found Gen.

by

Can Too Much Data Analysis Hinder Your Marketing Strategy?

Data analysis is the living heartbeat of a smart digital marketing campaign. If you’re sending out a bunch of content without measuring its effects, you’re going to be missing out on A LOT of important insights. Analytics can help you understand your traffic performance, readership engagement, and lead generation. 

So, with that being said, what data should you actually be tracking in your digital marketing campaign?

It’s not uncommon for businesses to opt to view success through their amount of followers on social media, website clicks, and other metrics. However, those metrics only paint half the picture.

At the end of the day, the success of your marketing campaign isn’t whether you get more followers on social media or more traffic to your website. A smart digital marketing campaign drives leads that convert into clients. 

For us, the most important two metrics are your cost-per-lead and your cost-per-client (aka Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC). If you are seeing your cost-per-lead and your cost-per-client go down, your marketing is working. 

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t check your engagement rate based on time of day and type of post, nor to say tracking the change month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year isn’t worth your time. It absolutely is. We look for seasonal swings that can inform our strategy to drive more quality traffic to you and build better relationships with human beings.

But if those improvements in your engagement rate on social (or reducing your bounce rate on your website) don’t improve your cost-per-lead or your cost-per-client, something isn’t working properly. 

Why we say this: it’s easy to manipulate the data – you can post something controversial on social and see engagement skyrocket or stuff links into your highest trafficked pages to see your bounce rate go down. But if it doesn’t lead to more revenue, you’re still at the same point you were before the change. 

In short: you want to focus on the right data instead of spending time on the fluff. Analyzing the right data will tell you how successful your strategy is, and they’ll help you craft even better content for even better results. Learning how to analyze marketing data is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of running a successful marketing campaign.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by data analysis, give us a call  – we’ll take a look at your data at no cost and let you know what we think.