Demystify your marketing strategies the OYO way

Customers or I should say travelers and explorers of the current generation are justifying the saying, ‘The more you travel, the more you learn.’ Because of this, the hotel industry around the world and especially in the largest democratic nation is on a paradigm shift as several new-age companies are investing money as they see a bright present and an even brighter future in the hotel industry.

Keeping this into consideration, a 17 year old college dropout from India designed the concept to disrupt the hospitality business in India, just like Ola did in the car rental industry with the help of technology. This aggregator business model just like Uber is the largest branded network of hotels currently working in India and Malaysia. The most important aspect is that it has created ripples in the industry, wide enough to be well received by the majority audience – the common man. It has a certain unique characteristic that makes its marketing strategy a little different from its contemporaries.

The business model and the marketing strategy of OYO focuses mainly on the standardized supply of the services and the hotels giving the most immaculate customer experience. Business model here doesn’t have just the discoverability of partners as its priority but also takes into consideration the accountability of the service provided to the customers. In addition to this, the standards are audited at a regular interval of days so that the customers are always assured of the quality.

Thus, with such immaculate working methods, let us study the marketing strategies of OYO rooms and find out the perks that can be used by similar hotel apps to reach the pinnacle of their businesses just like OYO.

The story unfolds here!!

Prioritizing the Business Objectives

The hotel room providing apps should first and foremost focus on providing an unmatched user experience to the customers’ at the most affordable price. They should render several radiant services such as TV, refrigerator, free WiFi with an impeccable 24*7 customer service support. Besides this, the hotel apps must look to have a presence in the traveling or booking websites as well.

The business objective in the marketing strategies must also look to enhance their own brand value by employing simple standards of services. Just like OYO, the other apps of its kind shouldn’t look for owning the hotel, but to just invest in the marketing and management quality of the room and improving the caliber of the room under its fold. OYO provides a WIN-WIN situation to both the hotel owners and itself as they provide them a smart networking option according to their budget thus enhancing the number of footfalls in the hotel.

Also Read: Demystify your App Marketing Strategies the Uber way

The Art of Penetrating the market

The hotel room providing apps must look to rope in small business along with the big ones, besides getting listed on the travel and booking websites. The traction and the market coverage can be increased swiftly and also with the specified OTA’s the operators can also look for co-branding. The art of penetrating the market like OYO depends on how well the app marketers read the market conditions and adapt to the changing conditions. By tracking the small businesses and hotels, these apps can expand their horizon in a broader frame and will reach more customers. In addition to this, you need to have a strong and core social media team that will help you to analyze the condition of the market and will keep you updated with the mood of your customers as well. Social media can be the optimum for major lead generation and marketing the brand through a synchronized channel. It can also give you the edge over your most fierce competitors and keeps you afloat in this competitive business scenario.

Flagships and Other Benefits

It is important for the hotel room providing apps to look into the fact that in order to provide hotel rooms for less price to their partners, they should not burn their own pockets. Instead, the mobile apps must look in for leasing the hotel rooms where it has the full control of the day-to-day establishments. This type of flagship will make the mobile apps to make the shift from the existing Aggregator model and will also prove beneficial in improving the brand equity and making more loyal customers.

In addition to this, the hotel room providing mobile applications must look to provide fully furnished rooms so that it can be used for stays like internships, corporate meeting, etc. This marketing strategy will help the mobile apps to be a tinge ahead of their breed and provide them a unique identity. The rooms can be rented on single occupancy as well as twin sharing. Moreover, other benefits such as wedding functions, parties, seminars, etc. altogether could prove to be a vital armor in your marketing arsenal.

Market your app like OYO

The thing that separates OYO rooms and put it into an elite group is its app marketing strategy. Optimum usage of social media, branding the app according to the trend that appeals the youth preferably, etc. are some of the core things that OYO rooms apply in their app marketing strategy. Thus, the likewise apps should make it a point to create a social media community and encourage the customers to add their views in the community. By doing this, the company is more likely to get a complete idea about the pain points of the customers and also make sure if there are any existing loopholes in the product or not. Innovative campaigns such as #Hashtag campaign like OYO rooms will compel the prospect customers to look into your app and can also make it an instant hit. Thus, these kinds of out of the box app marketing strategies can make your app an eye candy for the customers, thus increasing app retention and engagement in the process.

Approach and Strategy

To retain their position and remain a touch above their competitors, the hotel room providing app should focus aggressively on the digital marketing strategies. This will help in an extensive lead generation, customer engagement and retention. These approaches will also intensify the social media marketing strategy by targeting the potential interest of the customer. A strong social media presence will compel the users to download the app in large number and will also have good ‘Word of mouth’ publicity of the product. Moreover, with campaigns on social media platforms, the mobile apps can get more attention from the customers thus tracking down their pain points will become easy.

Add-Ons

Let us look at some results achieved by OYO rooms by applying these immaculate marketing strategies.

• The social media presence of OYO has brought in over 2.7 lakh fans on Facebook and over 8000 followers on twitter.
• Their traction and market coverage horizon have exponentially increased by integrating with travel aggregators like MMT (Make My Trip), Clear Trip, etc.
• Launching innovative moves like OYO We and OYO Café has attracted travelers from different genres especially the women travelers.

Conclusion

The marketing strategies applied by OYO rooms have made itself into a bigger brand name and the pioneer for similar apps so that they can take inspiration from it and dream big. The immaculate collaboration and social marketing strategies will be instrumental in bringing in more people to the app thus helping in better market penetration.

Ashish Parmar

He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Prismetric . An enthusiastic entrepreneur, interested to discuss new app ideas, rich gadget tricks and trends, and admires signature tech business styles to readily embrace. He enjoys learning most modern app crafting methods, exploring smart technologies and passionate about writing his thoughts too. Inventions related to mobile and software technology inspire Ashish and he likes to inspire the like-minded community through the finesse of his work.