Hospitality technology marketers often get so caught up in day-to-day tasks they lose sight of long-term strategy.

While likes from social media posts may provide a quick rush of dopamine, the real payoffs come from creating long-form, evergreen content.

According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, creating content that generates high levels of engagement, website traffic, and leads is one of the top challenges marketers face today.

One of the most effective ways to achieve these objectives is through what I call flagship content.

What is Flagship Content?

Derived from a nautical term for a country’s biggest, fastest ship leading its fleet into battle, flagship content is a brand’s best and most important content.

This can be a report, white paper, or guide that takes a deep dive into a key topic related to your core business, providing timely information about the latest trends, data, tips, and best practices.

Flagship content works best as part of an annual or quarterly series, becoming your company’s signature resource, anticipated and relied upon by clients, prospects, and the hospitality community.

Benefits of Flagship Content for Hospitality Tech Companies

Flagship content brings advantages that short-form content cannot deliver:

> Build awareness. Quality flagship content positions a company as a thought leader and trusted source of information in the hotel industry. It may also lead to invitations for company executives to speak at conferences, events, podcasts, and webinars.

> Build engagement. Reaching prospects through cold calls, email, and advertising is cost-prohibitive and virtually impossible these days. However, they might be more receptive to reading a report or guide if it helps them stay updated on trends and be more effective in their work life.

> Generate website traffic. Google and other search engines prioritize high-quality, helpful, and popular content. When well-optimized, flagship content can increase your visibility in search and social media, driving qualified traffic to your website.

> Generate sales leads. If the content is gated behind a sign-up form, it can generate qualified leads for the sales department. Even if it’s ungated, it can be promoted on a landing page to boost SEO and nurture prospects along the sales funnel.

How to Create Effective Flagship Content

Creating high-quality flagship content requires time and effort, but the payoffs can be significant. Here are a few tips for getting started.

> Plan ahead. Pulling together the required team of a talented writer, designer, subject matter experts, and marketers necessitates advance planning, a clear vision, and effective project management.

> Choose the right topic. Focus on a topic that is relevant to your target audience and aligns with your company’s overall marketing goals. This could be industry challenges, emerging trends, a data dive, or areas where your expertise shines.

> Create value. The content can build a case for a company’s products, but it shouldn’t promote them directly. Rather, it should be educational and meticulously researched, with valuable insights and data.

> Use a variety of media formats. Don’t just rely on text to tell your story. Use a variety of media formats, such as infographics, graphs, imagery, and case studies, to make your content more engaging and visually appealing. 

> Fast-track the process. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can assist with research, ideas, an outline, the first draft, and editing. But it’s up to you to make the content original, authentic, and on-brand.

> Make it AI-friendly. Generative AI is capturing search market share. By infusing your content with expert quotes, statistics, and an authoritative tone, you will increase the likelihood of being cited by these apps, according to a recent study.

> Promote it. Once you’ve created your flagship content, don’t just sit back and hope people will find it. Promote it through social media, email marketing, and other channels.

> Repurpose the materials. To maximize its reach and shelf-life, remix the materials into other formats such as presentations, articles, blog posts, a short video, a webinar, or a podcast.

With 50 percent of marketers planning to increase their investment in content marketing this year, now is the perfect time to launch your company’s flagship content and set sail for success.

Check out examples of recent flagship content produced by Reknown Marketing in collaboration with our hospitality tech partners.