Amy the traveler has over 419 digital moments researching her trip to Nashville over two months before she checks into a hotel, averaging five videos, 360 Web page visits and 34 searches.
NB: This is an article from Cendyn
Amy is looking for reasons to believe your hotel is the best property for the experience she wants in Nashville, but what is really being done to influence key milestones in her purchasing decision in the search and discovery phase?
Many hoteliers put faith in digital advertising at the brand level, but more local coverage is needed to compete in these spaces with relevant messaging and bring home the bookings.
Build on brand campaigns with a highly tactical, data-driven approach
Local hotels and management companies need a digital plan to build on brand advertising to lure in travelers and secure direct bookings.
If you’re not addressing the gap, OTAs will step in with budget to hit key relevant marketing opportunities and capture your potential guests. To compete effectively, franchises, local hotels and hotel management companies should run highly targeted campaigns based on data-driven approaches.
By using powerful CRM platforms and tools, hotels can directly target people they know have already stayed in their properties, taking into account actual spending levels and how often they book rooms. They can then use that very detailed data to target specific potential guests who look like them, getting advertisements in front of the people most likely to be interested in their properties.
Travel search funnel
The travel search funnel can be broken down into three main focus areas: awareness, consideration and intent. When building out your digital marketing strategy keep the following in mind to refine and target your spend.
Awareness
Example search term: “Hotels in Nashville”
Search strategy: Instead of competing for high-cost keywords, use tactics like remarketing lists for search ads to target top-of-funnel customers that already have knowledge of your hotel to maximize ROAS.
Consideration
Example search term: “Family-friendly hotels in Nashville”
Search strategy: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner and your own hotel reviews to find and bid on long-tail keywords that could drive more qualified prospects to your hotel website.
Intent
Example search term: “Hotel XYZ Nashville”
Search strategy: People searching for your hotel name shows a strong intent on buying, so you want to make smart bids on our hotel name to land the first spot on the search results page, which always gets the most clicks.
By leveraging the right channel to the right audience with the right message at the right time, hoteliers can reach their targets at a very reasonable marketing acquisition cost.
