If you run any sort of hospitality business, you’ll need to invest in Horeca marketing. The phrase is actually written out as HoReCa, standing for hotel, restaurant, and catering. So you might spot it written with oddly seeming capitalization, too. It’s essentially a smart way to define all marketing efforts across the sector.
So much falls into this marketing strategy. It really encompasses all there is to know and do as a business. If you want to grow and garner better profits, it’s something to invest in. Learning Horeca, you focus on an immediate goal and specialty rather than trudging through the thousands of marketing strategies.
In this guide, we’ll give you all the information you need to understand this more specialized approach. Get ready for definitions, budgeting guidance, and ideas (that you’re more than welcome to steal). You’ll be a pro in under 10 minutes.
What Is the Horeca Marketing Meaning?
The Horeca marketing meaning is just hotel, restaurant, and catering. It’s easy to understand its hospitality focus just from that string of three words, isn’t it? That meaning is even more clearly portrayed as its true capitalized version (HoReCa).
While the hospitality industry is a niche within marketing, it’s certainly a big one. There are hundreds of ways to market a hotel or a restaurant. Horeca covers user-generated content on Instagram to encourage positive reviews on product quality. It really is an umbrella term, more specifically addressing the act of marketing for the hospitality and food industries themselves.
These are just a few ways that you could use marketing Horeca style to attract potential customers:
- Facebook ad marketing.
- Email marketing.
- SMS marketing.
- Instagram paid content.
- Reels on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
- Bannering and billboards.
Whether advertising staycation ideas or selling beer at a local pub, this is how you approach sales and growth. It’s like an ultimate guide to restaurant marketing or selling out your hotel rooms for a night. By acknowledging the industry niche, you can better target audiences and customers. We all know how important having a target customer is, after all.
Why Use a Horeca Marketing Plan?
There’s no denying the demand for hospitality services, but it’s equally a competitive market. You need to use a Horeca marketing plan so you can stand out from the crowd. It helps you to niche down your approach, specifically tailoring strategies to your exact target customers.
If you want restaurant marketing, you probably don’t want to take strategies from a video game store. Instead, you’d head to the most successful restaurant in town, wouldn’t you? The main benefit of the strategy is that efficiency. You’re heading straight to the most effective option.
On top of that, you get all the standard marketing benefits. There is a wide variety of strategies to suit all types of advertising budget. Because Horeca is an umbrella term, you have a range of free to budget-friendly and premium options.
You could open a Google My Business account for free and start collecting reviews. You could also pay a modest price for Facebook ads or invest in an email marketing freelancer. It’s entirely up to you. That cost flexibility is a huge plus of using a Horeca-inspired approach.
There are also growth opportunities galore, and it’s a fantastic way to scale your customer loyalty. Because you’re connecting with them directly, it allows you to flourish those connections quickly. You could use things like email newsletters advertising specific drinks or SMS messages with coffee discounts.
How useful is it for shaping your campaigns with niche details? In short, if you want success, this is the plan for you.
3 Horeca Marketing Ideas
It’s good to get practical. We’ve already established that there are thousands of Horeca marketing ideas out there. Let’s narrow things down and give you some food for thought. These are three ideas—feel free to pinch them or adapt them to suit your business.
1. In Person Events
Live event marketing is a fantastic way to advertise your business. It gets people over your doorstep, which is half the battle with hospitality businesses. Once you give people a reason to visit, it provides an opportunity to build rapport. And that’s on top of the revenue you can make from ticket sales and selling refreshments.
Events are lucrative endeavors. Make the most of having so many potential customers in one place. Having a conversion system in place is vital to turning visitors into returning customers.
A captive portal is a perfect solution for collecting customer details in exchange for WiFi access. You can also run competitions or host giveaways to collect email addresses or lock guests in for future visits.
2. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are great for Horeca businesses. Customers collect points with each purchase, which then tally up on their account. They can swap those points for experiences or free items.
Not only does this motivate customers to keep visiting, but it creates positive associations. They begin to associate your business with feeling excited and a sense of achievement and mastery. Positive brand associations are very powerful for long-term success.
With loyalty programs, you also get to collect contact details — a huge win. Once you have an email address or phone number, you can send out regular marketing content. All of this encourages repeat purchases and more profit. Bingo.
3. Reels
Videos are at the heart of all social media marketing content, so we’ve lumped them into one category. Reels are short videos with engaging or compelling content. They often follow trends and incorporate storytelling, music, aestheticism, or dance.
There’s nothing easier to sell through imagery than hospitable comforts, food, or drink. Using visual temptation is definitely a smart avenue to take. Why not flaunt that delicious burger with fries? Or the comfortable four-poster bed with countryside views?
Reels are about showing customers exactly what they could be having, directly or indirectly, through influencer content. They’re emotive and heavily visual, which ideally suits Horeca.
Google Marketing Horeca
Google Marketing Horeca-style is great if you want to utilize an SEO-inspired approach. It provides a toolbox of different software like Tag Manager, Campaign Manager, and Google Analytics. Google Marketing’s bread and butter is anything related to blogging or websites. The Google Analytics tool is especially revered.
Websites and blog posts are a great way to redirect people searching common queries about your business. For instance, directing someone looking up a fact about pizza to your pizza restaurant. It also establishes you as an expert in your industry.
Facebook Marketing Horeca
Facebook marketing Horeca businesses is a wonderful approach as it allows multiple strategies. The social media platform is popular among middle-aged demographics and has an international reach.
You can utilize reels, general photos, status posting, group advertising, and networking. Starting a page for brand visibility is totally free, so you won’t struggle for traction or creative outlets.
Since Facebook also offers “check-in” posts to users, it molds well with hospitality businesses. The platform hasn’t stagnated either, adapting to modern trends to focus on video-style content. You can even pay for ads through the Business Meta Suite. The best thing about those ads is that you can start campaigns for as little as $5; it’s incredibly reasonably priced.
You can see why Facebook is so popular with Horeca businesses. The platform is a form of online networking and hugely relies on location sharing and imagery.
Budgeting For Horeca Email Marketing
Budgeting for Horeca email marketing isn’t as hard as it sounds. When starting out as a small business, you can tackle it totally independently for free. But as a personal recommendation, we’d suggest investing in software at a minimum. Let’s break things down and see if you fit in this category.
Email marketing software starts at just $15 a month and will save you tons of time. How? Because it provides features like bulk sending. Bulk sending sends thousands of emails in one click, meaning you don’t have to individually message customers.
Software often offers templates so you can quickly create effective emails that really hit home with your customers. If you are new to email marketing, it’s a great way to get a bit of direction and professional hand-holding! You aren’t going it totally alone.
It also gives you an analysis dashboard, allowing you to track results and adjust strategies as necessary. This adds an extra efficient edge. Just by paying close attention, you are guaranteed faster results. Having everything organized in a single spot is a huge advantage.
But what about if you are short on time but have a more generous budget? If you really want to outsource entirely, you can hire an email marketer.
Hourly rates range from $25 to $100+. If you want 20 hours a week, that could quickly rack up to be an expensive ongoing bill. If you hire staff marketers, you’ll also be responsible for things like holiday pay. While this is — of course — tax deductible, it’s worth weighing up carefully.
FAQ
Before you rush off to make a start, it’s worth recapping the absolute essentials. These are the most commonly asked FAQ that you’ll come across. Memorize these answers.
What is HoReCa marketing?
HoReCa marketing advertises anything from the hospitality, restaurant, or catering industries. This involves anything from hotels to cafes and restaurants to pubs. It is an umbrella term that incorporates all types of marketing strategies, including social media and SMS. However, instead of taking a general approach, it niches down to industry-specific strategies.
Who are the customers of HoReCa?
HoReCa customers could be old ladies who visit cafes on a Tuesday morning or attend pub bingo. Or it could be young couples booking Valentine’s Day hotel stays. It’s totally flexible. HoReCa stands for hospitality, restaurant, and catering, targeting anyone who enjoys those industries.
Beambox: Steps After Choosing a Horeca Marketing Strategy
What should you do after choosing an ultimate Horeca marketing strategy today? The answer might shock you, but it’s time to take some backward steps. Reverse a bit and consider whether you’ll need to acquire a list of marketing contacts first. Will this strategy require you to have email addresses or phone numbers up your sleeve?
If so, it’s time to get creative in collecting customer details for a database. One way is to open a captive portal system (which we discussed early in relation to live event marketing).
When customers click on your WiFi network, it blocks instant access. Instead, it takes them to a pop-up web page requesting further details through a customizable form. Once the guests comply and input the details, they get full WiFi access. In short, you get marketing contacts, and they get an internet connection.
Since hospitality businesses rely on in-person customers, Horeca marketing thrives with captive portals. Start your Beambox free trial today and collect marketing contacts ready for your new strategies.
