Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog

Feel free to download this chart to help you with your hotel PPC campaign.

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50 years ago, it would have been impossible to launch a nation-wide advertising campaign with just $50. Now, you can not only do that, but also rigorously test your message for effectiveness - and only show ads to people actively looking for a hotel like yours.

The technology making this possible is pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.  The concept was pioneered by Jeffrey Brewer and Bill Gross of Goto.com in 1998, but only started gaining popularity in 2002, allowing advertisers to show ads inside search engine results pages.  The premise is powerful: people that view your ad are already searching for what you offer.

Because of this, pay-for-performance advertising brings several very strong advantages to your promotional toolkit:

1) You only pay for results. Your investment is directly tied to the number of visitors to your website. This greatly reduces the risk of running an expensive campaign and getting no results.

2) Your campaign goes live quickly (often with 15 minutes). You can open an AdWords account to quickly test an idea or concept in the market. By bypassing the traditional ad campaign development cycle, you can enjoy first-mover advantage.

3) It’s easy to test for results. Pay-per-click marketing is very analytical.  You can track and test a number of important benchmarks and see which message performs best.

4) You can start on a small scale. With $50 (or less), you can launch a pilot campaign to determine if the format works for you.

5) You can target specific demographics or regions.  AdWords and other PPC platforms make it easy to only show ads to a highly targeted group of people or places. This accuracy helps you deliver your message to the right people.

Pay-per-click marketing should be part of a two-part search marketing strategy that includes organic optimization.  For more information, take a moment to read the differences between the two tactics.

To make smart marketing decisions, you need solid information. Of course, this is true in any economic climate, but with a possible slowdown ahead in the travel industry, the stakes are even higher.  All marketing expenditures must be justified by results.

If you’ve been marketing for a while, you undoubtedly know some metrics that work for traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.  However, the rules of the game change once you begin marketing online and encounter a wide variety of new media options.

What metrics should you use to measure the effectiveness of your digital hotel marketing campaign?  Let’s start off by putting aside a couple web marketing metrics that have been used in the past, but aren’t really that helpful anymore.

• Number of ad views – in the early days of the web, it was common to purchase advertising based on the number of ad impressions or views.  Now, there are other more effective ways (such as pay-per-click).
• Website visitors – the number of people that visit your website might have little correlation to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Should you track these?  Absolutely.  They just don’t provide enough insight.  So let’s move on to some more helpful metrics.

1. Conversion rate – what percentage of website visitors are booking a room?
2. Cost per booking - actually, you should be tracking a wide variety of “cost-per” actions for any advertising campaign. How much does each click, visitor, and lead cost? Spending must be tied to revenue gains.
3. Referral source type – knowing the type of websites that provide the most visitors can help you decide the direction of your marketing campaign
4. Search engine rank – How high do you rank in search results for each important keyword phrases?  Search is still the #1 way people find websites, so you need to list high for key phrases.
5. Social media mentions – How many bloggers and social travel networking websites are talking about your hotel?

Those are the core metrics that are important for anyone doing hospitality marketing.  Other metrics that could be useful in your situation include:

• Percentage of positive mentions in social media – this statistic is a little harder to generate, but the results are more insightful.  What is the overall consensus on your facility?
• Average time on site – how long do people stay on your site?
• Bounce rate – how many people leave your website without visiting any other pages (the lower this number, the better)
• Reservation abandonment rates – you need to know when and where potential guests are giving up in your booking system
• Top referral keywords – which phrases do people use to find your website?
• Number of inbound links – your goal should be to increase the quantity and quality of inbound links each month
• Google Pagerank – Google’s measure of website authority

Whatever combination of indicators you plan to use, the important thing is that you track and save this information.  You can only make efficient marketing decisions by looking at historical data, and then focusing your marketing resources on what works.

Let me ask you this: What metrics do you use for digital marketing?

Industry studies show that search engines account for the large majority of traffic to most hotel websites.  Of course, this is hardly surprising.  Search engines are the most popular way for internet users to find information.

With this in mind, how can you position your hotel to capture a larger share of search engine traffic?  There are two broad approaches to search engine marketing (SEM), which I’ll explain in this post.

1. Natural (Organic) Optimization

All search engines will include your hotel website somewhere in their results pages - it’s just a question of how far from the top.  The natural approach to ranking high involves optimizing your website, and getting other popular sites to link to you.

The advantages of organic optimization:

• Getting visitors from natural searches is totally free for you
• The people coming from search engines will be actively looking for you
• A higher placement conveys authority for the term searched for

The disadvantages of organic optimization:

• It can take a while to reach the top for your core keywords
• In some markets, the competition can be very intense (lengthening this time even more)

2. Paid Placement

It is possible to pay to appear in search engine result pages.  Usually, this is accomplished by using pay-per-click services such as Google AdWords.

The advantages of paid placement:

• It’s possible to instantly appear at the top of search results
• It can potentially be a very cost-effective way to attract guests (usually under $1 for each visitor)
• The ability to measure campaign success (more than any other advertising medium)

The disadvantages of paid placement:

• Your campaign can cost a relatively large amount (depending on the strategy you use)
• Ongoing management of your campaign is needed

In future posts, I’ll discuss in greater detail how to design and launch a campaign using both of these types of search engine marketing.  Stay tuned!

Let me ask you this: Which search marketing strategy does your hotel focus on?