Welcome to the first edition of GCommunity – an e-Newsletter that will keep you informed about the latest trends in digital hospitality marketing and how GCommerce can help you harness the power of the World Wide Web!
TweetLaunching an ecommerce strategy for a new hotel with a unique guest experience requires several key ingredients for success. Beginning in January 2010, GCommerce’s primary goal was to leverage the Postcard Inn’s location and unique gust experience in order to drive awareness and trial of potential guests. From month to month the key focus has been to utilize a newly developed website as the face of the property. This first ingredient has been to entice potential guests to try out this new and unique property through fantastic visuals on a well designed and highly optimized website. Next, through a highly targeted paid search campaign, key media buys and constant search engine optimization GCommerce has represented the Postcard Inn across the web when consumers seek hotels in the St Pete Beach area. Then, in order to boost social awareness of the hotel, GCommerce has assisted the Postcard Inn team in optimizing their online presence through the use of a blog on the hotel’s website. Finally, with the help of our exclusive contracts and close relationships with the major online travel agencies (OTAs) we have focused on amplifying exposure of the new property and increasing revenue through a lower margin on the OTAs.
GCommerce strived to create a unique website to encapsulate the vision of the brand, accurately represent the property and function as an effective sales tool. The site launched in December of 2009; since that time the website has received approximately 235,000 visits and 650, 000 page/visits from more than 150,000 people. As a direct result of the creative approach, in both design and concept, the website was awarded a “Rocky” (an advertising award of excellence).
Through continual focus on website design optimization, among other traffic qualifying initiatives, GCommerce has effectively increased the website conversion rate by 191%, profoundly affecting website revenue production.
In addition to a developing a standard website, GCommerce implemented a mobile optimized site. This site was designed to act as the center of mobile marketing initiatives as well as effectively present the brand in a mobile environment. Since its inception, the mobile site has realized more than 8,000 visits, 60% of which are new. To support the success of the mobile website and contribute to incremental revenue, GCommerce implemented paid search mobile ads.
Perhaps one of the most significant driving forces in bolstering qualified traffic to the website has come through paid search. Within the first three months of engagement, GCommerce was able to generate an average ROI of 406%.
The culmination of all GCommerce’s efforts has translated into average monthly online revenues in excess of $65,000.
Basing the decision of where to place precious marketing dollars on a single metric like Return On Ad Spend without keeping the big picture in mind is fool's gold for several reasons. The current trend of focusing on ROAS makes some sense considering it details the amount of revenue directly attributable to a specific marketing effort, but taken out of context without bearing in mind other variables can lead to costly decisions.
Make the right marketing decisions and you gain market share; make the wrong decisions and you miss opportunity. GCommerce has one recent example of how ROAS tracking led to narrow thinking and loss of online revenue:
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As you prepare your 2011 marketing plan, I have a radical suggestion. Include the commissions you pay to Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) as a marketing expense and budget for it. Make sure to compare 2011 projected commissions to 2010 actual commissions, and a story will begin to emerge. Chances are OTA commissions are, and will continue to be, the single largest line item on your budget, and the revenue associated with the expense will dwarf that of any other marketing initiative. While I understand that ballooning your budget in 2011 by including commissions as a marketing expense might not be prudent, the exercise is worth thinking about.
I have consistently argued that OTA’s are customer acquisition vehicles. They are a marketplace of uncommitted travelers. Hotels and resorts battle to generate exposure with those travelers. How exactly is that different than, say, advertising to uncommitted travelers on Google? Shouldn’t costs associated with your customer acquisition efforts be considered marketing? The difference is perspective. By changing your perspective, you can become far more strategic in how your property approaches OTA’s.
CLICK HERE to read the rest of Scott's blog entry.
