Over the last few years, the big players like Google and Facebook have been warning that they will be moving to a cookieless world. And really, we are already living in a cookieless world when you consider the deprecation of 3rd party cookies on Mozilla and Safari as well as Apple’s iOS updates.
The way we measure performance has already changed to support the cookieless world. GCommerce has tested the difference between Google Analytics 4 and Google Analytics Universal in how it captures data, and on average Google Analytics Universal is missing about 40% of revenue data. This shows that the cookieless world is already here.
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Expand Your Restaurant’s Reach with Google My Business Posts | GCommerce
Posts on Google My Business is an off-site local search engine optimization feature that is free and allows you to highlight your business and connect with existing & potential customers. Think of them like a social media post but located on your Google My Business page and visible within your business’ knowledge panel in the search results. Google My Business posts can be a very powerful tactic to improve your business’ local search optimization and reach but it is only available for specific industry types. Sorry hotels, this is one feature Google doesn’t provide to your type of business. (Probably because they are too busy monetizing this space with Google Hotel Ads).
How Can Restaurants Utilize Google My Business Posts?
Restaurants can promote their specials and any updates to their menus, COVID- 19 policies, and more. When created, Google can display up to eight of your business’ most recent posts. Posts, for the most part, are visible for seven days and then are removed. This does vary depending on the type of Google My Business post used.
What Are The Different Types Of Google My Business Posts?
There are Four types of Google My Business Posts that can be used:
COVID-19 Update – The newest type of Google My Business post due to the pandemic allows you to set up a post that lets customers know about any changes made due to COVID-19. Such as a change in hours, updates to safety and hygiene, whether you provide curbside pick-up or takeaway are a few examples.
Special Offers – Best used to announce limited-time promotions. With this type of Google My Business post, you can load a video or photo to support & draw attention to the time-sensitive event. You can also designate whether redemption can be done online or with a coupon code for in-store visits. This post also requires a timeframe to be provided.
Events – An easy & free way to promote an event. Events require a time frame like offers, a title, and the event's time. Google will default to 24 hours if a specific time is not included. This post type can also include photos, videos, descriptions, and an action button.
What’s New – This type of Google My Business post allows a business to provide general information with photos, videos, descriptions, and an action button. A restaurant could use this to promote new menu items.
Products – This type of Google My Business post allows you to feature multiple products you have available at your business. However, a Product tab will need to be set up before using products. These posts are also not shareable.
What Are Best Practices For Google My Business Posts?
When using Google My Business posts, keep these best practices in mind:
Use high-quality images & videos. Image Size: min: 400 wide x 300 pixels tall, 10kb | max: 10,000 x10,000 pixels, 25 MB. Videos: File Size Max 1000MB.
Keep posts in the 150–300-character range. Generally, the first 7-8 words will show. Hashtags are unnecessary in Posts.
Include a CTA & Landing page depending on the post type.
Use UTM parameters so you can view the traffic generated from the posts.
Keep it strictly business.
Google can and will ding business for misspellings & poor-quality content so use preview before posting.
Obey Google Posting Rules. Stay away from offensive content and anything that violates a person’s or location’s privacy.
Don’t Disregard This Free Google My Business Service
It’s simple and doesn’t take a long time to create and it’s free. So, begin posting, and continue to expand your customer base. Unsure of what your first post should be? How about your specials, grand opening, new menu item or just a friendly Welcome? Need more suggestions or do you have questions, reach out to us, GCommerce Solutions, we are always happy to assist!
Posts on Google My Business is an off-site local search engine optimization feature that is free and allows you to highlight your business and connect with existing & potential customers. Think of them like a social media post but located on your Google My Business page and visible within your business’ knowledge panel in the search results. Google My Business posts can be a very powerful tactic to improve your business’ local search optimization and reach but it is only available for specific industry types. Sorry hotels, this is one feature Google doesn’t provide to your type of business. (Probably because they are too busy monetizing this space with Google Hotel Ads).
How Can Restaurants Utilize Google My Business Posts?
Restaurants can promote their specials and any updates to their menus, COVID- 19 policies, and more. When created, Google can display up to eight of your business’ most recent posts. Posts, for the most part, are visible for seven days and then are removed. This does vary depending on the type of Google My Business post used.
What Are The Different Types Of Google My Business Posts?
There are Four types of Google My Business Posts that can be used:
COVID-19 Update – The newest type of Google My Business post due to the pandemic allows you to set up a post that lets customers know about any changes made due to COVID-19. Such as a change in hours, updates to safety and hygiene, whether you provide curbside pick-up or takeaway are a few examples.
Special Offers – Best used to announce limited-time promotions. With this type of Google My Business post, you can load a video or photo to support & draw attention to the time-sensitive event. You can also designate whether redemption can be done online or with a coupon code for in-store visits. This post also requires a timeframe to be provided.
Events – An easy & free way to promote an event. Events require a time frame like offers, a title, and the event's time. Google will default to 24 hours if a specific time is not included. This post type can also include photos, videos, descriptions, and an action button.
What’s New – This type of Google My Business post allows a business to provide general information with photos, videos, descriptions, and an action button. A restaurant could use this to promote new menu items.
Products – This type of Google My Business post allows you to feature multiple products you have available at your business. However, a Product tab will need to be set up before using products. These posts are also not shareable.
What Are Best Practices For Google My Business Posts?
When using Google My Business posts, keep these best practices in mind:
Use high-quality images & videos. Image Size: min: 400 wide x 300 pixels tall, 10kb | max: 10,000 x10,000 pixels, 25 MB. Videos: File Size Max 1000MB.
Keep posts in the 150–300-character range. Generally, the first 7-8 words will show. Hashtags are unnecessary in Posts.
Include a CTA & Landing page depending on the post type.
Use UTM parameters so you can view the traffic generated from the posts.
Keep it strictly business.
Google can and will ding business for misspellings & poor-quality content so use preview before posting.
Obey Google Posting Rules. Stay away from offensive content and anything that violates a person’s or location’s privacy.
Don’t Disregard This Free Google My Business Service
It’s simple and doesn’t take a long time to create and it’s free. So, begin posting, and continue to expand your customer base. Unsure of what your first post should be? How about your specials, grand opening, new menu item or just a friendly Welcome? Need more suggestions or do you have questions, reach out to us, GCommerces Solutions, we are always happy to assist!
We’ve recently written about Google’s latest iteration of Analytics and important things hotel’s should know about Google Analytics 4 (GA4). In this post, we will go into a bit more detail on how the change to cookieless tracking might impact your hotel’s digital marketing efforts.
What are Cookies and Why Do They Matter?
Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your computer by the web browser. What they aren’t isn’t so important as to what they are used for, which is to track individual users. By dropping a unique cookie or pixel onto your browser, a website can then track behavior outside of your website.
Are Cookies An Invasion of Privacy?
This is the big debate currently being waged and many people would say yes. Legislations like Europe’s GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act, recent updates to Apple’s IOS to block more 3rd party tracking are all efforts to protect user’s individual privacy by making it harder to identify those individuals. At the heart of this debate is cookieless tracking. While cookies are not banned nor illegal, a lot of browsers, plug-ins and software help to block cookies and there is evidence the cookies are becoming a less viable way to track users.
What does this mean for Google’s Universal Analytics?
Google’s current and most popular iteration of Analytics, Universal Analytics, uses first-party cookies to determine a number of variables within their tracking. Already, digital marketers are reporting gaps in data based on people that are actively blocking cookies and tracking. Within our own data, we have noticed certain instances where traffic from California has decreased, while traffic from locations not tracked has increased. This change is very likely indicative that California’s privacy laws are having an impact on our ability to track.
Why is Google Analytics 4 A Solution To A Cookiless World?
Despite what the name suggests, GA4 isn’t actually more robust tracking, it is actually less tracking on individual users. This is because GA4 is not tracking every pageview. Rather than rely on cookies and javascript variables to track every pageview, GA4 is tracking based on specific events that are built and established. Google then applies advanced models to fill out data for traffic and behavior. What Google Analytics 4 lacks in individual tracking it makes up for with the robust tools of their machine learning algorithms. The need for something like GA4 comes from the new privacy laws and public awareness around data collection.
What Should Your Hotel Do About Google Analytics 4?
As we discussed above, changes to the way users view their privacy will make Universal Analytics less and less reliable as time goes on. The earlier that your hotel starts to utilize GA4, get familiar with it and start to utilize data from it, the further ahead of the curve your hotel will be when Universal Analytics comes to a point it is no longer recommended to utilize. Also, your historical data will not automatically carry over from Universal Analytics. Your historical data will only go as far back as the 1st day that you start using GA4.
How To Get Started With Google Analytics 4?
After my father got a debilitating injury trying to build a retention wall in our backyard at the ripe-young age of 56, he decided it might be better to trust the experts. In this situation, we would also recommend utilizing an expert to help install GA4 for your hotel’s website. The truth is, GA4 is a completely novel way of tracking that does not rely exclusively on individual user data. Instead, it relies on event signals that are built and established based on the functionality and goals of your website.
Google Analytics 4 Tracking From GCommerce
If you’re interested in having the experts at GCommerce help establish GA4 tracking and reporting for your hotel website, contact us today!
Last week, (May 27th) Google had their Marketing Live event. For those that are unfamiliar with the event, these generally feature some updates from Google that are worthwhile to pay attention to. Here, we will review some of the top takeaways for hotels from Google Marketing Live 2021.
Google Hotel Ads Shared with Text Ad Feeds
This was probably the announcement from Marketing Live that will have the most impact for hotels. Prior to this update, Google Hotel Ads (ads you see with the ability to adjust dates stayed) and Text Ads (ads you see on the results page of Google) were entirely separate. Now, Hotel Ads can be featured within Text Ads. This is a clear signal that Google is investing more into Hotel Ads and attempting to increase exposure and visibility for this channel. If your hotel is not currently using Google Hotel Ads, you could be missing out on an opportunity where OTAs will capture the valuable direct bookings in this space.
What Does Google Hotel Ads in Text Ads Mean for Hotels?
There are many things to speculate about in terms of competition, ad volume and performance. For example, if you are not on Google Hotel Ads, will that impact your quality score or CTR if you are not sharing pricing data with Google text ads? Will this increase in price data impact CTRs for hotels? Will it increase search volume as more people “price shop”? Will it decrease volume on actual Google Hotel Ad searches as more people find pricing info directly in their search results?
While there is a lot that we can guess, the obvious reason for Google putting Hotel Ad data in Text Ad results to promote bookings through that channel. We are not entirely sure how this new feature will work yet, but generally with more exposure comes higher potentials for costs. GCommerce will certainly be evaluating this feature for our metasearch clients. Stay tuned to our blog as we should be posting updates on these changes from Google and impacts we are seeing from these announcements.
Vacation Rentals Now Showing in Google Hotel Ad Results
Google has previously had different filtering options where you could see results based on hotels, vacation rentals, etc. With this new update, Google is now including vacation rentals right in the results for Google Hotel Ads. In the past, generally when we have seen the competition within a given channel increase, either the cost of that channel increases or we lose the ability to capture as much of the market share as we previously could. By adding in vacation rentals to Google Hotel Ads, this could increase the volume and competition that hotels are competing against. The good news is that 68% of Business Travelers still prefer hotels along with 40% of Leisure Travelers, so perhaps this addition will allow users that do not wish to stay at vacation rentals to more easily hone their searches to the types of hotels they are searching for. This development means that it will be important for hotels to be more savvy with their ad targeting to ensure they are capturing the most qualified audiences.
Expansion of 1st Party Customer Match Data
For those that are unfamiliar with Customer Match, this allows you to upload customer email lists and then remarket to those audiences within Google’s suite of ad services. If you have been following the changes with 3rd party cookies/data and the discussion around data privacy, this one will seem like a natural progression. Google is expanding the rules around uploading 1st party data, making it easier for advertisers to target these users. 1st party data is different from 3rd party data as it is information that you are collecting directly from your customers (email, website, forms, etc) rather than from a 3rd party service (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
Google Ads Insights Page Now Includes Demand Forecast
This could be helpful for hotels looking at when to increase or decrease their advertising based on demand; Google now offers a demand forecast with their Insights Trends. As we discussed above, increased demand generally either means increases in costs or less visibility. Knowing when these demand increases are likely to happen can help you plan and forecast spend for better returns.
Google Ads Image Extensions
Google Ads image extensions were previously in Beta for most customers and GCommerce has been testing these with our clients where they are available. Initial results show that Image Extensions have higher CTRs than any other extensions other than Location Extensions. After the Google Marketing Live announcement, Image Extensions will be rolling out for all accounts.
Target Return on Ad Spend Bid Strategy Now Available For Google Video Ads
As advertising becomes more reliant on Artificial Intelligence and data modeling, it is important to be able to test these robust tools to see which ones are most effective at improving your marketing. We have been regularly testing different bid strategies for hotel marketing and having another one for us to test with Video Ads is another tool in the kit that we can utilize to drive improved results for clients.
Focus On The Authenticity of Your Brand Story
This seemed to be a major theme throughout the Marketing Live event. With keynote speakers that included Immanuel Acho (best selling author) and Alicia Keys (award winning musician), there was a big emphasis on how to prepare yourself for a future of commerce that includes displaying your brand story. When evaluating the increased travel demand and how hotels can market to Gen Z, we really saw this come to life. With an increased adoption of smart devices, Gen Z has an expectation that they will be able to share the experiences of their travels with their friends, family and followers. In evaluating a potential hotel, the experience that a guest can expect to have is one of the best ways that a hotel can connect with that potential customer. While there are many options in building your Brand Story, connecting the travel experience of your hotel with your guests has proven to be very effective.
Other Announcements
There were certainly other announcements and for anyone passionate about marketing with Google we certainly encourage you to watch the entire two hour event, but in our opinion, the above details are the major takeaways for hotels. While the other announcements such as increases to Product Feeds and Local Inventory Ads had us on the edge of our seats, they probably aren’t pertinent to hotels so we will skip them for this write up.
What Does All This Mean, What Should Hotels Do Now?
In all of our years in the hotel space, this is certainly the most interesting time we can remember. Never have we seen a global event that has impacted travel as we have in the last 15 months. The Covid-19 pandemic was also different in that the world has never seen such a fast potential recovery to health and the economy as we are seeing with the rapid deployment of vaccines. Already a large percentage of the United States population is fully vaccinated and very unlikely to contract or spread the virus, according to the CDC. The rebound for travel is expected to be swift and immense. The summer of 2021 is likely to see demand that we have not seen since before the pandemic and global travel could recover to levels higher than before the pandemic as early as 2023.
As we discussed above, this increase in demand is also usually accompanied by an increase in competition and costs. While it is great to see people booking, the real question is what are hotels able to pay to acquire those bookings? As we see an inevitable return to travel, we are also likely to see a squeeze in the market and an increase in travel costs. If hotels think that their advertising costs will be exempt from those price increases, they are likely in for a different reality.
Now more than ever, hotels need to be incredibly strategic with their marketing dollars. While it is easier than ever to reach an audience that is primed to book travel digitally, being strategic with those advertising dollars will ensure that you are able to continue to stay ahead of the competition and make up for much needed lost revenue.
Contact GCommerce Solutions today to better understand your hotel’s digital marketing strategies after these updates from Google Marketing Live 2021.
Google My Business Reviews Directly Correlate to Your Hotel’s Conversion Rate
It should be no surprise in today’s world of marketing how important reviews are for your hotel. For a little refresher: 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and 95% of consumers say that online reviews influence their buying decisions.
Your hotel has reviews, so you are golden, right? Not so fast. There is probably more that you should be doing to ensure your maximizing benefits from guest reviews. Uberall did a study from analyzing 64,000 GMB (Google My Business) profiles in 4 countries to find out what turns consumers into customers.
We all want the best reviews possible and a perfect score is the ultimate goal. What people don't realize is that even a review star rating increase of just 0.1 could increase the conversion rates of a business location by 25%, one study finds. The sweet spot for star ratings is 4.4 (Growth Jump 3 in the diagram below). The study found that there is less competition at this mark and is where the conversion rates start to dramatically increase.
Conversion rates peak when they have attained a 4.9-star rating, but when businesses improved from 3.5 stars one year to 3.7 stars the following, they saw an almost 120% increase in conversions, which is the highest percentage growth jump from any star rating.
The chart below shows growth across SMBs (small to medium size businesses), enterprise locations and global brands. As you can see, across the board, conversion growth peaked between the 3.5 to 3.7-star mark.
Reviews Across Industries
Reviews are allowing SMBs to compete with enterprise businesses and global brands and they should definitely take note. SMBs across the board are achieving higher star ratings allowing them to achieve higher conversion rates up until the 4.4-star rating mark.
Replying to Your Hotel’s Reviews Is Just as Important
So, your hotel has a substantial number of reviews and a great star rating, now what? Reply! Enterprise businesses are hovering around a 10% reply rate. Understandably, they have more locations and thousands of reviews and it can be time-consuming. It is also estimated that 75% of small businesses don’t respond to their reviews at all, though they do reply more on average than enterprise businesses.
Looking at the chart, you will find that SMB and enterprise conversion rates intersect at just about the same point. When the reply rate starts to increase to the 20-30% range, you will start to see the conversion rate really climb for enterprise companies.
“According to this data, enterprise locations that reply to an average of 32% of reviews will have an 80% higher conversion rate than enterprise and SMB locations that reply to 10% of reviews and 40% higher than SMBs that also reply to 32%” the study finds.
While enterprise locations will outperform SMBs at certain review star ratings and reply rates, most brands are not currently adapting to the reputation management revolution to achieve growth rates that they are capable of.
Next time you think you can’t compete against your local small competition, let alone the big brands in the hotel market, think again. Early adaption is key to get ahead and to maintain market share and position once you get there.
GCommerce offers solutions to help you adapt and maintain your hotel’s market share and local position. Reach out to your Account Executive for more information!
