Metasearch Marketing Optimization Techniques Webinar

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Earlier this year, GCommerce Solutions polled several thousand hoteliers and learned that very few were aware that metasearch advertising campaigns can be managed and optimized similarly to paid search campaigns. 

3 things attendees can expect to learn:

  • How to ensure your metasearch connections allow for strategy and optimization
  • Bid modifiers and how to use them
  • How to use custom audience on Google to enhance the targeting capabilities of your metasearch marketing campaigns

Watch the replay by submitting the form below.

Access Webinar

Metasearch is one of your best tools for increasing direct traffic and recapturing market share from OTA’s, but only if you’re optimizing your metasearch advertising campaigns. Learn how to harness the power of metasearch advertising to support your property’s unique needs.

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Your Guide To Facebook Ad’s "Learning Limited" & How To Beat It

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It seems like each week Facebook is releasing new updates to their ads platform, stronger guidelines to protect user privacy, and more optimization capabilities than ever before. If you are a fellow advertiser on Facebook, you are no stranger to A/B testing and the never-ending journey of finding the optimal targeting, ad copy, imagery, and headline combinations. 

However, the quest for continuous improvement could also be leading to the demise of your Facebook ad performance. Enter: the Facebook Learning Phase.

What is the Learning Phase In Facebook Ads?

The Facebook Learning Phase is the time period where Facebook is using its machine learning capabilities to optimize your results. This is achieved by Facebook showing your ads to different audiences, at different times of day, and within different ad placements to determine the optimal delivery system. 

Facebook has a lot to learn about new ads, and during this Learning Phase Facebook performance is not considered stable. It’s recommended that Facebook advertisers spend no more than 20% of their budget in the learning phase, as those ads usually encounter a higher CPA.

When Does the Facebook Learning Phase Occur and How Can You Exit?

The Facebook Learning Phase occurs whenever a new adset is created or a significant edit has been made. Edits that will force your ad sets into the Learning Phase are listed below.

Campaign

  • New campaign
  • Budget
  • Bid amount
  • Bid strategy

Ad sets

  • Targeting
  • Placement
  • Optimization event
  • Adding new creative
  • Bid strategy
  • Bid amount
  • Budget
  • Pausing for over 7 days

Ads

  • Any change (imagery, copy, URL, etc.)

When Will Your Ad Set Exit the Learning Phase In Facebook Ads?

Once your Facebook ad set performance is considered stable, you will exit the Learning Phase. Stable performance generally means that your ad set has received around 50 optimization events within a 7-day period. Your optimization event will depend on what you have set at the ad set level. This could be 50 purchases, 50 leads, 50 landing page views, 50 add-to-carts, etc. Whichever one you choose, your optimization event should be congruent with your performance goals.

If your Facebook ad sets don’t generate enough optimization events within that 7-day period they will be launched into the dreaded Learning Limited phase.

What Does it Mean to be Stuck in Facebook Ads’ Learning Limited?

When your Facebook ad sets are stuck in Learning Limited, it means you haven’t generated enough optimization events to exit the Learning Phase and become Active. For many advertisers, the Learning Limited Phase is a limbo that should be heavily avoided. Not only will your Facebook ads have a higher CPA, but they won’t be fully optimized toward the best-performing audiences and placements. When Facebook doesn’t have enough data, it can’t accurately predict the best ad placements and positioning which could make your performance suffer.

How To Fix Learning Limited in Facebook Ads

While the Learning Limited phase can be hard to exit, it’s not impossible. Facebook has outlined a few tips that could help catapult your ad sets into the active phase.

Tip 1 - Avoid Excessive Edits In Your Facebook Ads Campaigns

Making constant changes and edits to your Facebook Ads campaigns is easily the No. 1 mistake most advertisers make when it comes to being stuck in Learning Limited. Every time you make an edit, the system essentially has to start over. So while you think you are improving your campaigns by making optimizations, you are actually further delaying your exit from the Learning Phase and wasting valuable ad dollars.

However, this is not to say you should never optimize your Facebook campaigns and make edits. On the contrary, testing new creatives, ad copy, and targeting is how Facebook learns about your ad performance. Testing is essential to performance success. The key is to simply find the balance between making changes and letting your campaigns simmer. 

At GCommerce, we are constantly optimizing our ads and running A/B tests, but last year we found that we were stuck in Learning Limited a lot. We discovered that the main cause was excessive editing. At this discovery we implemented new procedures to only edit campaigns once per week (in most cases) and with this change we quickly saw that we were able to exit the learning phase quicker. 

Tip 2 - Combine Facebook Ad Sets

Are you running multiple ad sets within your Facebook Ads campaigns? This could be keeping you in Facebook’s Learning Limited. When too many ad sets are run at once they begin to take away from each other. This results in less deliveries for each ad set, longer time spent in the learning phase, and more budget spent on unstable ad sets.

Instead, if you are running multiple ad sets with similar targeting or audiences, Facebook recommends combining these into one ad set with a larger budget and audience to deliver to. Larger audiences will give Facebook more options for delivery which can help you exit the learning phase and Learning Limited much quicker.

If you are unable to combine ad sets, try increasing your current audience size by adding in more interests, geographical locations, or other targeting capabilities or taking away harsh parameters that might be restricting your deliverability.

Tip 3 - Increase Facebook Ad Campaign Budget

While this option is certainly not always an option, the number one recommendation to remove your ad sets from the Learning Limited phase is to increase your Facebook budgets by at least 25%. Most advertisers don’t have the ability to increase budgets at whim, but if you are able to this can help with exiting the Learning Limited phase.

Tip 4 - Change The Facebook Ads Campaign Optimization Event

If you’ve tried all the tips above, you could consider changing the event you are optimizing for altogether. If you are optimizing for purchases, but can’t get 50 purchases in a 7-day period, try changing that event to something higher up in the funnel like initiates check-out or add-to-cart. The further down the booking funnel you go, the lower your conversion events will be. Changing to a higher-funnel event will allow you to generate enough events to exit the Learning Limited phase. Note that you cannot change the optimization event on a published Facebook ad set, you will need to duplicate your existing ad set for this.

Final Takeaways on Facebook’s Learning Phase & Learning Limited

We’ve covered a lot in this blog post, and managing the Facebook Learning Phase and Learning Limited can be overwhelming for a lot of advertisers. There is no right way to create success with your Facebook campaigns. Ultimately you need to evaluate your own campaign performance and define what success means to you. It’s important to also take these Facebook phases with a grain of salt; you might be stuck in  Learning Limited, but maybe your performance is the best it’s ever been and you are showing a high ROAS. It’s very possible to maintain successful campaigns without being fully optimized and stable. 

Let the experts at GCommerce help get your Facebook advertising to where it needs to be. Connect with us today for more information!

How Hotels Can Best Fight Against OTAs with Paid Search Marketing

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Coming out of the pandemic, many hotels are seeing a huge surge in demand, booking and travel interest to their markets. This can be a great thing for many properties that experienced difficulties during the pandemic. However, hotels should be very cautious about how they are acquiring guests and at what cost. Many hotel’s marketing efforts and general customer acquisition were disrupted during the pandemic. Having better control on direct bookings while lowering the cost-per-acquisition for your hotel is going to become very important as demand and markets start to get back to a new normal.

From March through May of 2020 all but a few of our partner hotels discontinued their marketing. This made sense as many hotels were completely shut down, travel was restricted, and demand was at historic lows. As the world began opening, depending on the market, some hotels started to advertise again. But it was difficult to gauge demand, cancellations were regular and spending money on acquiring guests that might not actually stay in the hotel was a difficult decision for many hotels. A worthwhile strategy for many hotels was to decrease their upfront marketing costs while increasing their contribution of bookings from OTAs. This helped mitigate some of the issues with cancellations and with decreased demand, paying commissions on booked rooms helped some hotels stay afloat without having the upfront costs of marketing.

Thankfully, it seems that we are past the worst of the pandemic. Many areas are lifting restrictions, domestic travel is seeing some all-time highs and people are looking to make up for vacations lost to quarantines. So, what about hotel’s that were attaining more guests through OTAs, should they continue that strategy?

Should Your Hotel Continue To Get Guests Through OTAs?

This is a question one of our partner hotels had. This hotel was in a destination market that was incredibly limited due to the pandemic and did not allow normal capacity until May of 2021. During the worst of the shut-downs, they relied heavily on OTA contributions to make up for a lack of demand that impacted their ability to advertise for their hotel. In coming out of the pandemic, they evaluated the costs between running Paid Search Marketing with GCommerce vs paying commissions to OTAs. Their findings are based on a few assumptions:

  1. We know that we bid for pay-per-click (PPC) against the OTAs for our name on Google.
  2. We can take the Room Nights (RNs) and Revenue from Jan. 2020 and deduct the commission at the approximate commission rate to see how much OTA commission the hotel might pay.
  3. We can then assume different percentages of sales that might come from PPC. If 20% of the sales are derived from the OTAs display of our name on Google, then paying $1,000 per month to GCommerce for the PPC Marketing is much more profitable for this hotel than paying commissions.
  4. Even if we were to assume only 5% of OTA sales are derived from PPC, the hotel would still come out ahead by several hundred dollars:
Screenshot of commissions paid to OTAs versus paid search ad dollars

Save Thousands of Dollars per Month with Paid Search Marketing for Hotels

As you can see above, this hotel is likely saving thousands of dollars each month by advertising on Paid Search Marketing. With a budget of less than $1,000 per month, GCommerce Solutions can capture a significant share of the Impressions for this hotel’s brand terms. That drives thousands of clicks directly to the website instead of to an OTA. By capturing just 1/5th of the people that were previously booking through an OTA, this hotel could be saving over $6,000 each month. That is budget that could go towards other initiatives for the hotel rather than in commissions to an OTA, not to mention all of the other benefits that come with someone booking direct (loyalty, membership programs, email/1st party data, etc.)

How Can Your Hotel Calculate If Paid Search Is A Better Return Than OTA Commissions?

By using this methodology, your hotel can take a sampling of room nights and revenue and then use the commission from OTAs to calculate how much that fee would be. Download our free template above and simply input:

  1. Room Nights into cells C5 and C7
  2. Revenue into cells D5 and D7
  3. OTA Commission into C2
  4. PPC Budget into F2

The Savings calculated in F9 will be your hotel’s monthly savings by getting direct bookings from Paid Search rather than from OTA contributions.

Contact GCommerce Solutions Today To Lower Your Hotel’s Cost-per-Acquisition

If you’re ready to start running paid search marketing for your hotel in order to lower your cost-per-acquisition and take back commissions currently being paid to OTAs, contact us today!

How GCommerce's Programmatic Bidding Strategies Benefit Our Hotel Clients

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If there is one thing that is absolute in the hospitality internet marketing world, it’s that we must constantly be testing, analyzing, implementing changes (or not) based on test data, and testing some more.

GCommerce utilizes programmatic bid optimization for paid search marketing, which is now a must in a world of constant changes and bid management. Programmatic bidding allows bid adjustments throughout the day and uses data based on previous days data. For an individual to be able to delve into the performance and history of a specific keyword would take hours to be able to optimize an account of 100+ keywords, multiply this by 10 or more clients a day and there is now no time for other important client optimizations.

Programmatic bidding is not just a set-and-forget machine learning tool. If you use programmatic bid optimization you must make sure that you are making the most of it and getting the best results possible for clients. How do you do this? Test. Analyze. Implement (or not). Test Again.

Earlier this year, I ran a test on a sample of clients using a different bid strategy model to see if client performance could benefit from it. It wasn’t that the current automated bid strategy wasn’t working, it was based on the idea that we always want to improve our results, therefore we test different theories and strategies.

This particular test yielded some pretty significant results:

Due to the seasonality of our clients, the best data to gather is to compare year over year with a significant amount of time. Using a date range of 6 months of data, here is what we found:

  • Average CPC’s increased 1%
  • Reservations increased 89%
  • Revenue increased 100%

When comparing to GCommerce’s entire hospitality paid search marketing portfolio, here is what we found:

  • Average CPC’s increased at a much lower rate
  • Reservations increased at a much higher rate
  • Revenue also increased at a much higher rate
Programmatic bidding strategies performance

Rising CPC’s are a constant battle in the paid search marketing world. At GCommerce Solutions, our hospitality internet marketing teams are constantly optimizing paid search campaigns to help decrease this metric as best as we can. After reviewing performance across GCommerce’s entire portfolio, I found that, on average, GCommerce clients experienced an increase of 4% in average CPC’s during the same time period. This leads to a conclusion that our clients and the hotel industry continue to see ever-increasing rise in CPC’s across the board in order to compete in the SERP. But the fact that we have been able to slow it down while ramping up reservations and revenue is a huge win.

After pulling all of the data and seeing such clear results, it was obvious that it was in our clients’ best interest to switch gears on our overall strategy to best reach our KPI (key performance indicator) goals and maximize their spend. So we did.

What Happens When You Stop Running PPC Ads?

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Paid search has become a cornerstone of digital marketing for hotels. It quickly rose to popularity and has remained one of, if not the largest line item on most hotels’ marketing plan budgets. Its popularity is repeatedly justified as it proves its success in driving qualified sessions and substantial revenue for hotels online. But what happens when you turn your paid search off completely? There’s always been the argument of bidding on brand terms (if you were wondering, you should be) but what about turning it all off? Top of funnel campaigns, bottom of funnel campaigns and campaigns to re-engage your audiences?

Has the thought entered your mind? Do you ever wonder if paid search advertising on Google is worth the cost?  With rising cost-per-clicks and more competition entering the marketplace daily, the question is: is it worth it?

This wasn’t a test we planned on purpose. A client was recently forced with the decision to pause all of their paid search campaigns. We knew there would be a negative impact, but how much? We took this opportunity to study the direct impact that turning off paid search campaigns had on the client’s website performance. Let’s take a look at what happens when a business stops running their paid search campaigns.

THE RESULTS:

Overall website sessions dropped 20%

New users dropped 20%

Revenue dropped 30%

Effects-of-Paused-PPC-Ads

One theory we wanted to analyze is: WILL MY ORGANIC REVENUE AND TRAFFIC INCREASE WITHOUT PAID SEARCH? The simple answer is yes.

Organic traffic experienced a 43% increase and organic revenue increased 20% compared to the previous period when paid ads were running. The increase, however, was not enough to make up the difference of the lost revenue from paid search alone. So while it definitely helped to bridge the gap, overall there was a sharp decline in our website KPIs across the board.

Since all other channels remained flat in sessions and revenue, it painted a clear picture that the decline in performance was a direct result of the lack of paid search traffic.

So if you were ever wondering if it was worth paying to play on the search engine results page (SERPS) and theorized that paid search ads were essentially just pulling away from your organic traffic and revenue, this case study should give you some conclusive evidence. While paid search campaigns do cannibalize some traffic and revenue that would have come through organically, overall it exponentially drives sessions and revenue that goes above and beyond what would have come through organically.

Although we can’t say with certainty, another theory related to the impact of turning these paid search campaigns off is that the their competitors traffic went up and their cost-per clicks went down as one less advertiser was competing for those keywords, which probably helped them to pocket more revenue then normal.

So, if you’ve ever contemplated just turning off your paid search campaigns and letting organic pick up the slack, you should probably rethink your decision. Paid search is a key component in your hotel’s digital marketing strategy and proves it’s worth time and again as one of the most powerful ways to drive qualified sessions and revenue. It is definitely worth the extra budget to compete.

How Much Should I Spend on Paid Search for my Hotel?

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We get this question all the time from prospective clients and new clients and it’s also something we revisit at least once (or more) every year for current clients. The truth is, there’s a lot more to it than picking a number based on the hotel’s location. It’s a complex answer that can only be determined by deep discovery and understanding of the hotel and its goals, the market the property is located within and historical data from the hotel. At GCommerce, every client’s budget recommendations are customized based on the hotel’s specific goals, historical performance and competitive landscape coupled with data from tools provided by Google, Bing and Doubleclick Ad Services.

7 Key Steps to Determining Paid Search Budget Recommendations for your Hotel

  1. Hotel Discovery & Determining Competitive Advantages - this guides our keyword research which helps us determine the estimated cost per click for qualified keywords. We seek answers to questions such as, What adjectives describe the hotel? What are the nearby attractions that drive visitors to the market? What are the top business drivers for the hotel? What are the hotel’s top competitors? What special amenities, services or events does the hotel support? Then we utilize keyword planner tools from Google and Bing to determine keyword CPC and traffic estimates.
  1. Establish business goals - we work closely with the client to determine their top priorities. Do they have a revenue goal they need to achieve? Does the client want to focus on driving more wedding or meeting business? Are they competing with OTAs to capture reservations? What are some of their biggest challenges and how might paid search help them overcome those hurdles?
  1. Complete Competitive Research - paid search pay per click costs are based on a bidding model. Competitive research factors in how many other advertisers are bidding on the same keywords, whether or not other advertisers are bidding on your brand name and also provides an understanding of highly valuable keywords we should be including in our campaigns.
  1. Analyze Historical Performance - the best way to estimate how specific budget recommendations will impact your bottom line or other business goals is to understand historical performance. GCommerce deep dives into website data, looking back multiple years, to gain insight into traffic, production, conversions, seasonality and other performance trends by month.
  2. Market Research - where is the hotel located? does the market experience any seasonality? We gather information from the client directly and utilize Google Trends to follow keyword popularity trends over time. It is important to allocate budgets as it correlates to business goals and seasonality in the market.
  1. Future Predictions - with a solid understanding of the hotel’s market and their previous performance, we can predict with a degree of confidence how much a specific budget might impact a hotel’s paid search marketing efforts. If they previously spent $Y and saw a return of $X, what kind of results would we expect if we increased or decreased their budget? Using this predictive modeling, we can find the optimal budget to ensure each has a healthy budget that reflects a positive Return On Ad Spend within their stated goals.
  2. Finalization of Target Keywords and Presentation to Client - last, we will prioritize these keywords based on relative competition, traffic, and the hotel’s goals. We will work closely with the client to ensure that all keywords are relevant to their business and end goals. Organizing these keywords into the most relevant Adgroups based on what is most likely to convert provides us with the best opportunity for success in starting with a new budget.


At GCommerce, we believe in a customized approach for every client. This is true for all aspects of the overall marketing strategy and is how we approach each client’s budget recommendations. We utilize the vast amount of historical data and experience we have from working with clients in markets all over the country and combine that with a custom analysis to provide the best hotel paid search budget recommendations possible.

If you’re interested in learning what you should spend on paid search for your hotel, please reach out to your Account Executive or Account Manager today. Not a GCommerce client? Not a problem. Contact us and we can help you get started with strategic paid search marketing solutions today!

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