Advertising has always been a tricky business to get the better of, but the advent of the internet made it easier for even the smallest of brands to get in front of their audiences and hopefully to compete with much larger companies.It also created a better platform for targeted advertising, which is well-known as being a much more effective technique than a scattergun approach in the hope of finding someone that wants your products or services.
The rise of targeted advertising Targeted advertising first sprang up online in the late 1990s, when tourist information websites might also carry Advertising Of Hotels or travel agencies, for example. However, it was in the early 2000s that ads got smarter and consumer behaviour could be collected for the first time to influence what ads were shown. If someone looked at hotels on an aggregator site, for example, they would typically find that cookies and other data collection tools meant adverts for similar properties fitting their criteria appeared on other websites they visited later.This is now really widespread and something we almost take for granted as we browse the internet on a day-to-day basis.
However, as a property owner, it’s important to remember that different advertisements must be created for different audiences, even if you are already using a targeted campaign in the ways mentioned above. People are not defined by the products or services they are looking for – in this case, hotel rooms – but by their ongoing interests. These have a big impact on what they eventually choose to purchase – and it is this that you can use as a hotel marketer to better target your would-be guests. For instance, someone who enjoys hiking holidays might be interested in your hotel if it is situated close to a popular walking trail. You can therefore create targeted ads that mention this prominently in the hope of capturing that particular segment of the travel audience.If you are delivering adverts that are tailored to someone’s actual behaviour or actions, then you are less likely to waste your marketing budget trying to sell romantic getaways to someone interested in conference venues.
How to create more targeted ads There are numerous tools out there to help you with the technological part of creating targeted ads, with Google stepping up as expected to provide its services. In fact, it once illustrated on its Think With Google blog how it had helped Loews Hotels & Resorts using Similar Audiences.This tool creates display ads that target potential customers based on their profiles being similar to others on remarketing lists. In this case, it used Google’s rich audience data alongside Loews’ remarketing lists – and achieved a nine per cent lift in bookings and a ten per cent revenue increase across all properties.It means that Loews can reach would-be guests who have not even visited the website or heard of the hotel chain yet, but are likely to be interested in it based on their personalities and preferences.Not only this, but the program develops over time to target people even more effectively and hopefully capture even more potential guests.
Another really useful tool for creating and sending out targeted ads is Facebook. We have talked in detail about this in a previous article, so do check our archives if you want an in-depth look at how it works. Facebook’s settings allow anyone with a business page to target people’s news feeds with ads carefully tailored for them – and it uses an enormous variety of parameters in order to do this. You can target people based on gender, parenthood status, location, marital status, education levels and many more different options so you know your ads are getting out to the audiences you specifically want them to.This is great for hotel owners and marketers because it means specific advertising campaigns can be created and changed about on a regular basis.
For instance, you could send out ads for romantic hotel getaways in advance of the anniversaries of couples, or special offers for craft enthusiasts on the eve of a popular craft exhibition close to your property. Better still, Facebook advertising is surprisingly cheap and budgets can be set for as little as £1 a day, so you can always give it a try and see how it works for you before investing large sums of money. Marking targeted ads convert Importantly, when you’re thinking of the creation of ads from a targeted point of view, you should always keep the eventual goal of conversion in mind. It’s no good having dazzling, perfectly worded ads sent out to the correct audience, only for your website to let them down when they click through. Follow up on your ads with relevant, good-quality landing pages and alluring calls to action to ensure you get the most from your strategy.
