You want your hotel to make money, right? At least that is usually the main goal when it comes to most hotel digital marketing campaigns.
NB: This is an article from gcommerce
What if we told you that the secret to driving more revenue and building your audiences up was by prospecting and targeting top-of-funnel users?
We all know that retargeting campaigns, or campaigns serving ads to users already familiar with your brand or hotel, are the main money makers of the marketing world. However, those digital marketing campaigns would quickly run out of gas without the continued support of prospecting. While we don’t typically see a hefty number of conversions through prospecting campaigns (although a strong campaign can still see results), they are a key player when it comes to success with any digital marketing campaign.
Here are the top reasons why you should be running prospecting marketing campaigns for your hotel.
- Audience Refresh. The continued use of prospecting (or brand awareness) campaigns will help refresh your retargeting audiences by consistently bringing in new users. Most retargeting windows are within 30-90 days of being onsite, but if you aren’t refreshing this audience regularly, it will quickly decrease. This in turn will cause whatever users are left to be shown your ads in excess which can lead to ad fatigue, higher bounce rates, lower CTRs, more spam reports and of course, less revenue.
- Discover New Audience Targeting Segments. Many people shy away from prospecting because they think they already know their target audience. We argue that there’s always potential to expand into new markets, geographics, demographics, and more! After all, there’s no way to see if a new targeting segment is viable if you never try it out. By steering away from the traditional targeting segments into new geographic locations or interests, we’ve often found new, responsive audiences that were previously unconsidered and thus expanding our reach and driving more revenue.
- Increased Traffic to Your Hotel Website. Aside from building up the run of site list, getting users to your site is a major benefit of prospecting campaigns. Our clients are always seeking out new ways to increase their site traffic with qualified visitors. Prospecting is one of the most cost-effective ways to do this, especially if you use Display and Facebook advertising as they traditionally see much lower CPCs and can run on a smaller budget compared to other channels, such as paid search.
- Increased Brand Awareness. Prospecting isn’t only for supporting retargeting campaigns. In fact, most people will think of prospecting in digital marketing as a tool to build brand awareness and high visibility across the web. This is especially important if you are launching a new brand or starting out on a new channel for the first time. Whenever we launch a new client, we tend to focus on their prospecting campaigns first so that we can build up our retargeting lists as quickly as possible and increase brand visibility at the same time.
- Drive More Wedding, Meeting & Event Lead Submissions. That’s right, prospecting campaigns are also great for eliciting onsite leads or on-Facebook leads. Unlike using retargeting lists, which are normally limited in size, prospecting marketing campaigns can be specifically targeted to drive quality traffic to your onsite lead form. Facebook also has great lead generation ability and allows you to re-create your form in the Facebook ad itself, allowing the user to engage with your hotel’s ad and complete the form in with less clicks. As a bonus, you can also add the users who filled out your form to your retargeting lists (win-win).
Utilizing prospecting marketing campaigns for your hotel is always important and will always be encouraged by marketing experts. It’s especially important to use them right now as we’re learning how to cope with COVID-19’s impact on the industry. If you’ve had your marketing channels paused during this time and are now getting back to you regular advertising schedule, prospecting will be pertinent to your hotel’s digital marketing campaign success.
Most likely, your retargeting lists are depleted and your normal target audiences have shifted to the drive market or similar markets. Pushing your marketing dollars toward prospecting over retargeting first will help to build up your run of site and serve your ads to the most qualified audiences rather than wasting it on an audience who isn’t looking to travel to your location or is no longer interested in your brand.
