Have you thought about your marketing for 2025?

Watch Video

2025 is shaping up to be a year filled with opportunities for South Australian hotels to capitalise on. Have you thought about your marketing though?

The AHA|SA will continue running a series of free Digital Marketing workshops throughout the first half of this year specific to the hospitality and tourism industry, run by Simone Douglas, proud publican and CEO of SA’s internationally recognised, Digital Marketing AOK.

With a wealth of knowledge to share, Simone is not only a Certified Practicing Marketer with the Australian Marketing Institute, but she also understands the challenges your businesses face every day and provides practical solutions.

• Measuring Marketing Performance

• The Marketing Ecosystem and Sales and Marketing Plans The Rise of AI and Reward Psychology

• Google Business, SEO Basics, and Community Footprint

Simone said, “One of the challenges for venues is that they tend to stick to traditional forms of marketing – things that we’ve seen forever including ‘parmi and pint deals’, point of sale posters, and even email marketing and social posts. The template doesn’t change much. The problem with that is we end up in a situation called ‘industrial blindness’ and customers stop seeing the messages because they’ve seen it so many times.

“One of the things that venues need to get really good at is using their staff and the characters in their pubs to tell stories which help with promotional pieces.

“The most effective thing that venues can do is start capturing those stories through videos or photos. You’ll get much better engagement on your social media and newsletters. If you put people front and centre rather than focusing solely on the products, customers develop an emotional attachment. You customers then start thinking more – I want to go to the pub to see my friends or the staff.”

“Pubs are about placemaking. We want to be the second lounge room for many families and the way we do that is by increasing engagement. The main way of doing that is through our social media channels. By having your customers sharing meaningful content about your venue, you increase the likelihood of brand recall and loyalty. That’s what you want.

“When the Duke of Brunswick took home the AHASA Best Marketed Hotel Award some time ago, we spent a very small amount of money to make that happen. It was all about content, engagement and reward psychology to trigger emotion first and action second.

“The mistake that we often make in the hotels industry is constantly trying to trigger that ‘action’ first –

Buy our stuff, here’s our deals, buy more things from us! People want to connect with the business on an emotional level though. People do business with others that they like, know, and trust.

“The people who work in my pubs are what I would call Social Media Superstars now and they know that’s part of their job. My staff have become the champions who send photos and videos to me to post on the company pages and it’s great for them and ultimately means more customers through the door who are connecting with staff.

“One of my managers said to me, we’re in the business of selling 90 minutes of lifestyle at a time, and it’s true. If we can foster that attitude in our hotel teams and empower them, that’s great. Often, we tell people to get off their phones though, so it is a juggling act, but finding a happy medium of creating content and getting every staff member involved somehow to capture moments is wonderful. Even if it’s things like sharing ‘Joe the local’ who comes in five days a week. Think, is Joe a character who tells funny jokes? Or is there a local sports celebrity in your pub who’s won a medal? That’s storytelling and it’s occurring in your venues.

“The workshops we’re running for the first half of this year are all about building on that footfall traffic and creating a strategic marketing plan that builds on that storytelling and integrates performance measurements, sales, artificial intelligence, Google Business and SEO. This all helps to increase your community footprint, Simone said.

Speaking about the upcoming workshops, Simone said,

“Our Measuring Marketing Performance workshop is all about looking into your social media and website analytics and gauging what success looks like.”

“The Marketing and Ecosystem, and Sales and Marketing Plans workshop will look at how far out you need to start looking at marketing and the elements of that ecosystem. It’s important so you know where to put resources into your marketing, and so your plan is informed by sales targets.

“Artificial Intelligence is empowering businesses to claim back time. When you get time back, you have room to think and be creative and enjoy your job. The Rise of AI and Reward Psychology workshop is all about creating triggers and reminders that keep people coming into your business and spending money they might not have otherwise spent.

“Lastly, our workshop on Google Business, SEO, and Community Footprint, will look at who the different people in your networks are and how use those networks to build your business footprint. It will also look at search engine optimization on your website and making Google Business work better for you.”

“One of the benefits of having a publican deliver these free workshops is you’ll get real world examples and practical tips that you can implement straight away.

“We’ll teach you technical and practical skills to implement things effectively, quickly, and in a way that drives results for your venue.

“This is a fantastic initiative and partnership between the AHA|SA and the Office for Small and Family Business. It’s fully funded by the government and it’s one of those rare opportunities where you can get your teams trained up for free with relevant content to hotels,” Simone said.

Register for the sessions here.

Watch our full 10-minute interview with Simone below to get more insights into the current landscape of hotel marketing and what the training will deliver for your team.

The AHA|SA’s Marketing Workshops, as part of the Small Business Fundamentals Program, are supported by the Government of South Australia’s Office for Small and Family Business and SA Small Business Strategy 2023 – 2030.

For more information, please contact Natarsha Stevenson, AHA|SA Manager – Policy and Industry Affairs: nstevenson@ahasa.asn.au