The value of social media marketing in the hospitality industry can’t be overstated. With a social media campaign, you can spread brand awareness, maintain customer loyalty, and create engagement with your guests, all while showing off your properties in vibrant and dynamic ways.
That doesn’t mean everyone can afford a hotel social media manager. Hiring someone to run your social media campaigns simply might not be in the budget right now.
No worries if this is the case. You can always outsource the work instead. To better understand the value of doing so, consider these key points:
Why Outsourcing May be Smarter than Hiring a Hotel Social Media Manager
Saving Money
This is obviously one of the greatest benefits of outsourcing social media marketing tasks. Instead of hiring a full-time employee, you can pay an agency or freelancer. This is typically less costly than paying an employee (especially when you consider average base pay for social media managers is approximately $55,199/year).
After all, your social media marketing needs might not be that great right now. While some brands have multiple properties to promote aggressively, maybe you’re just marketing a single hotel. If so, it’s unlikely you’ll need someone working on social media campaigns full-time.
Instead, hire someone who can work for you on an as-needed basis. This is a scalable solution that makes more financial sense than hiring a worker you don’t truly need.
Saving Time
Hiring a social media manager can also be a time-consuming process. You need to make sure you’ve identified the strongest possible candidate who possesses the relevant skills and experience necessary for achieving your goals.
That’s not necessarily the case when you outsource the work. While you will want to take some time to evaluate your options when considering agencies and freelancers, they’ll typically have extensive portfolios and client testimonials to share with you. This makes it easier to quickly determine if you’ve found the right fit. It also gives you the peace of mind that comes from knowing your hotel’s social media campaigns are in the hands of experts with proven track records.
Staying Abreast of Changes
Social media marketing best practices are constantly changing. Tactics that may work one year might not be as effective the next. In order for your campaigns to deliver the strongest possible return-on-investment, it’s important that the person handling your social media campaigns stay on top of these changes.
When you outsource the work, that’s typically not something you need to worry about. Agencies offering social media marketing services can’t stay in business very long if they fail to deliver a strong ROI for their clients. Thus, their own success relies on staying abreast of new trends. That’s why they actively research relevant changes, accounting for them as they develop and implement campaigns.
Expanding
Again, you may want to outsource your social media marketing work now because your needs may be fairly minimal. However, as your brand grows, so too may your social media marketing needs.
This is another good reason to outsource the work, instead of hiring a hotel social media manager. An agency will likely be able to keep pace with your growth. You can simply amend your agreement, paying for additional services as-needed.
With a full-time employee, this is difficult. You’d likely need to hire more staff to keep up. Once more, this costs both time and money. In both the short and long run, it could simply make more sense to outsource these tasks.
