How Hotels Can Best Fight Against OTAs with Paid Search Marketing

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July 9, 2021 by

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?

Download Template

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!

Should "Official Site" Be In Your Hotel's Paid Search Ad Copy?

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November 12, 2019 by

Often times on SERPs you will see "official site" next to a brand's site name. We wanted to know if this made a real difference, so we put it to the test with several of our clients. So far, we have seen various results. Some clients are in favor of using the phrase in their paid search ad copy and some had the opposite conclusion. My tests using the phrase “official site” within client paid search ad copy has made a positive impact on many of my clients' campaigns.

One of the first hotel client accounts I tested this on had a small budget in a heavily competitive market and was very seasonal. When tested with "official site," it resulted in an increase in conversions. The results of the test are below:

As we had expected, the experiment of using “official site” in the ad copy resulted in an increase in conversions along with a slight increase in CTR. What we also saw across most of the properties was the average CPC decreasing, which in return either lowered our costs or allowed us to drive more clicks to for the same budget.

Here are the results from two more tests that performed similarly:

While most of the tests resulted in positive increases, there were a few who didn’t see any major changes in conversions, positive or negative. They did, however, see the decreasing of the CPC and cost.

After our testing was done, we did decide we would implement “official site” language in the headlines in our branded terms campaigns across multiple hotels' paid search accounts.

GCommerce recently pulled our top converting ads from a sampling of our hotel client accounts across our entire portfolio. We found that a majority of them had “official site” within the title, once again confirming that having it in the ad copy can be effective for improving campaign performance and conversion rate optimization.

Conclusion

I recommend testing the inclusion of “official site” in your account’s ad copy to see if it has a positive impact before adding it in permanently. Still have questions about how you can test this in your hotel’s paid search account? Reach out to GCommerce today.

What Happens When You Stop Running PPC Ads?

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January 4, 2018 by

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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October 16, 2017 by

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!

Search Engine Marketing for Hotels

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September 28, 2017 by

AUDIENCE TARGETING AND ITS INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: As advertisers, we have the option to add specific audience targeting to paid search marketing campaigns. Google’s audience targeting was originally only available on display networks and YouTube campaigns, but in May 2017, Google expanded audience targeting to its paid search ad network. For advertisers in the hospitality industry, the in-market audience targeting options include demographics, such as age and gender.

AUDIENCE TARGETING FOR HOSPITALITY PPC: Age plays a vital part in marketing for the hotel and hospitality industry. The legal age to book a hotel room in the U.S. is 18 years old, but many hotels have the option to limit the booking age to guests who are 21 years and older. When evaluating previous traffic and booking behavior, we noticed a higher ratio of spending to revenue in people under the age of 25. Based on this information, we decided to focus our audience targeting for men and women above the age of 24. Currently, there are two different options for including audience targeting for hotels:

  • Focusing on specific demographics
  • Remarketing to the hotel’s returning guests

We focus on a few different types of remarketing. One type of remarketing is website targeting, which delivers ads to people who previously visited your website. Another form of remarketing through Google AdWords is audience retargeting to the hotel’s email distribution list. This is called Google AdWords Customer Match and includes any customer who stayed at the hotel or signed up for a newsletter. Targeting an audience that focuses on specific demographics requires an extensive knowledge of the property and the demographic groups that have the highest conversion rates. Google Analytics will track the conversions and separate each demographic group, based on age, gender, income, or location. Based on the information that we gathered for this hotel, we determined it would be most effective to target age demographics for our audiences.

THE LENOX HOTEL RESULTS: Our team at GCommerce Solutions ran a test for using audience demographic targeting within PPC campaigns for The Lenox Hotel in the Back Bay area of Boston. We completed the following bid adjustments:

  • Added negative bid adjustments of 90% to their audiences that had the lowest conversion rates (18-24 year-olds not searching for Name Terms)
  • Added positive bid adjustments of 25% to their audiences that had the highest conversion rates (45-54 and 55-65).

Our study includes data from June 11, 2017- July 20, 2017, compared to July 21, 2017-August 29, 2017. With changes in demographic targeting, we were able to better control our budget with a 5% decrease in cost per click and 7% decrease in total cost, while capturing a 4% increase in revenue for the property. The results of this test conclude that utilizing age/ demographic bid adjustments is a more accurate way to target the most qualified audience for this hotel, and allows us to increase our overall Return On Ad Spend. GCommerce recommends tracking data at the audience level to understand performance before implementing any bid adjustments. Specific adjustments and test parameters should be unique for your hotel, based on historical data. Please contact us if you have any questions about audience targeting and how you can better utilize this feature to improve performance.

Ready to increase your direct revenue and returns-on-ad-spend? Great! Click the button below and get started today.

The Key to Effective Digital Marketing: Delivering Great Content

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March 2, 2017 by

“Content” is the trendy new word that’s been sweeping the digital marketing space for the last few years. Hundreds of webinars and thousands of blog posts have mentioned the topic, continually hitting home on how important it is to not only deliver good content but deliver great content. But to understand how to deliver great content, it’s important to understand what “content” is.

Content is every post, picture, piece of copy, or story you are trying to tell through your marketing efforts, it is everything you share with your audience. Rebecca Lieb likened content to the “atomic particle of marketing.” There is no marketing without content, regardless of channel. Creating effective and engaging content is the best digital marketing strategy you can adopt and is the foundation for digital marketing success.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

Perhaps the first and most important thing to understand about delivering great content is this: it’s not about you. Content marketing is about your audience. In another post, we talked about boosting engagement with email marketing campaigns. One of the suggested steps is to ask yourself “Who am I targeting and what interests them?” This applies to any form of content marketing. If you aren’t considering who you are trying to market to and what they want, your content is going to fall flat. That being said, it’s still important to maintain your voice.

In a webinar from Skyword, one of their first steps to good content marketing is understanding your “why?” When we say “why”, we are referring to why you’re creating content in the first place. What do you want to give people? What do you want them to know about you? Why do you want them to read your content? One of the best content marketing campaigns of 2016 belonged to Deadpool. Everything from pre-release to post-release was crafted with the singular purpose of conveying to the reader that Deadpool was in no way, shape, or form, your regular superhero movie experience. Below is one of the many movie posters created for the box office hit.

Deadpool was, at its core, a satirical superhero movie with heart. In a world inundated with superhero after superhero, audiences were clamoring for something different and that’s exactly what Marvel gave them with Deadpool and it was their “why” for their content marketing strategy. Understanding your why is key to developing good, actionable content because it serves as a constant reminder of what you want your audience to know about and learn from you while still keeping them at the heart of your campaign.

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LEVERAGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT: DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL

So now that you know why you’re delivering content, how do you create or find it? There is a multitude of ways to create engaging content, but perhaps one of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is through leveraging your environment, both digital and physical. The 1888 Hotel in Sydney, Australia rebranded itself as an “Instagram hotel” using its creative and eye-catching interior to develop Instagram devoted spaces and using the Instagram photos and experiences of its guests to adorn its walls, website and social media feeds. Here is one of its website homepage modules promoting Instagram-worthy interiors:

Blog_GreatContent_Image_3

Utilizing hashtags, trending topics or even local and world news and events are all fair game for delivering great content. Find out what your audience is talking about and join the discussion. But remember that content isn’t just external, your guests, employees, and property-at-large are having unique experiences every day.

In 2014, The Lenox Hotel in Boston welcomed 120,000 new tenants to their property: bees. Yes, you read that correctly, they welcomed a colony of bees. The bees were brought in to produce honey that would be used for signature drinks and dishes created at The Lenox’s restaurant and lounge. Rather than just put up notices, GCommerce and The Lenox teamed up to rally behind the bees, creating bee-themed stay packages and content campaigns to generate buzz about the hotel’s unique news. This not only won them a Silver Award at the 2014 Adrian Awards but significantly increased their following and engagement for their email and social channels.

Blog_GreatContent_Image_4

This goes to show that great content is located all around you, both digitally and physically. To hear more about what’s going on around you, think about installing a suggestion box, creating an email account, or reminding guests and employees to share their stories as they interact with your brand.

CREATE STRONG HEADLINES

People definitely judge books by their cover, at least when it comes to content marketing. We’ve talked before about how important email subject lines are to email marketing campaigns and that extends to just about every piece of content marketing you do. Copyblogger released the following statistics about content headlines and what they mean for engagement:

  • 80% of people will read your headline
  • 20% of these people will read the rest of your content

With statistics like that, it’s clear that your headlines matter. So what can you do to make sure that you are creating strong headlines? Studies showthat headlines should stay in the 8-12 word range and be specific without being too gimmicky or sensational. In a world where clickbait is becoming increasingly popular and infamous, don’t deceive the reader with your headline, but don’t give it all away either. Try and utilize keywords as well, optimizing for SEO and social.

MEASURE, MEASURE, MEASURE

Digital marketing is all about generating actionable data and this should be no different in your content marketing strategy. One of the ways to do this is through conducting a content audit. This audit can be everything from metrics across content marketing campaigns to the quality of individual posts. Which campaigns or posts are seeing the most engagement and why? Is your content accurate and trustworthy? Is it linking to authoritative sources? Is it fresh? These are all questions that you should be asking yourself about your content. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” So remember your content, why it did or did not perform, and understand how you can use that data in the future.

SUMMARY

Effective content marketing is the key to digital marketing success. Content affects everything from your search rankings and engagement to brand awareness and repeat conversions. Understanding your “why” and your audience sets the stage while leveraging your environment can provide fun, informative and engaging content for those following your brand. Just be sure to audit your content to obtain actionable data about the health of your content marketing program.

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