Why Your Hotel Is Probably Running Too Many Facebook Ads

January 14, 2025 by Morgan Tuohy

One of the most overlooked factors that can make or break your hotel’s Facebook marketing campaigns is the number of ads you run at any given time. While on the surface, it may seem like it’s beneficial to always run more ads, offers, and campaigns than your competitors, a spray-and-pray approach will almost always bring worse results than an effective, controlled hotel ad campaign strategy.

What we’re talking about today has a lot to do with the conversation around ad frequency we posted earlier this year. We’d recommend giving that blog post a read first, but if you don’t have time, here’s a short synopsis:

In order for your hotel’s ad messaging to stick with your target audience, your audience has to see the same message between 2 and 10 times. Running too many hotel ad campaigns to a large audience ends up diluting your messaging, wasting ad dollars, and confusing your customers. It’s important to keep this frequency number in mind when planning your campaigns.

Why shouldn’t our hotel run as many offers/ads as possible?

On the surface, running more hotel offers and ads seems to make sense. On Facebook, we’re serving ads to diverse audiences, from retired people who can easily accommodate a weekday vacation to parents of young children on a long weekend to young professionals looking for a romantic date. Doesn’t it make sense to run offers for all of these groups and more?

This thinking often leads to diluted messaging, confused customers, and fewer conversions as a result. Read on to find out why.

What does a good hotel retargeting campaign strategy look like?

In a hotel retargeting campaign, we’re delivering ads to people who have previously shown interest in staying at your hotel or have recently visited your website. These are customers who probably already know who you are but need a push to be reminded why they should actually book a stay. When considering how many ads and offers to run in your hotel’s retargeting campaigns, we have a few guidelines we recommend:

Run six or fewer ads at a time

Running more than 6 ads at a time makes it hard for the Facebook algorithm to learn enough about your ads to deliver them effectively. Don’t believe us? Take it from them. We recommend having a daily budget of at least $5 per ad, if possible. If your daily budget is $15/day, it is probably wiser to run only 3-4 ads.

Run 3 or fewer offers of hotel messaging types

Now that you’re running six or fewer ads, we can talk about offers. We recommend not running more than 3 offers at any given time, giving room for around 2 ads per offer. For example, you might run 2 ads for a 20% savings offer, 2 ads for an extra night offer, and 2 evergreen ads that aren’t tied to offers at all.

This allows Facebook to deliver the same type of messaging to the same user in multiple ways instead of always having to deliver the same ad to a user that might resonate with a 20% savings offer, for example.

Allow your hotel’s Facebook campaigns to optimize before rotating offers

Once you’ve chosen an offer to run, we recommend running the offer for at least 2 weeks, but preferably longer. It can take days for Facebook to optimize a new ad type or offer, so rotating offers weekly only hinders your hotel’s Facebook campaign performance. Be wary of ad fatigue, though; refresh images and copy at least seasonally.

What does this look like?

Consider the following two hotel Facebook ad accounts (with identifying information removed) from September 2024. In the first screenshot, there are 9 individual hotel offers and one hotel press accolade, each with one ad. Note that the ad frequency for 8 of 10 ads is below 2, meaning on average, the target audience is exposed to each offer less than 2 times. This frequency isn’t high enough to drive a substantial number of bookings.

In the second screenshot, the hotel only runs one offer and a handful of evergreen ads. The two hotel offer ads see a frequency of 3.00 and 2.57. There’s some overlap here, so the number of times the average user is exposed to this offer each month across both ads is 3.62 times. Delivering this offer at a high frequency is driving more bookings for the hotel, specifically on the offer this hotel is prioritizing. In addition to our one hotel offer ad, 3 supplemental evergreen ads help to round out our hotel Facebook campaign, providing less sales-focused copy and reminding customers about the experience they’ll have on the property.

This strategy provides clarity for your hotel’s audience with a specific offer or set of offers, without having so many choices they get overwhelmed.

What does a good hotel prospecting campaign strategy look like?

A good hotel prospecting campaign strategy follows similar rules to an optimal retargeting campaign strategy. The only modification for prospecting is instead of delivering different hotel offers, we recommend experimenting with different messaging points while introducing your hotel to new, unaware audiences. These are the guidelines we recommend:

Run six or fewer ads at a time

Just like with retargeting, we recommend running no more than 6 ads at a time. Again, if your hotel’s budget is less than $30/day, sticking to a rule of $5 per day, per ad is a good starting point when deciding how many ads to run.

Run 3 or fewer hotel messaging aypes

Prospecting is a great place to experiment with new ways to introduce your hotel to prospective guests. We see the most success with four main categories of prospecting ads:

Evergreen ads
- These ads mirror the imagery and language on your hotel’s website, how you’d describe the experience of staying at your hotel to a new guest.
Review ads
- Pulling reviews from Google & other websites gives prospective guests confidence they might enjoy their stay and click through to your hotel’s website to find out more.
Press ads
- Maybe Forbes or Travel & Leisure raved about a stay at your hotel. Quotes from reputable press outlets often provide guests with confidence about your hotel and drive interest, similar to review ads.
Offer ads
- Although we see the most success with offer ads in retargeting campaigns, sometimes they’re worth experimenting with, combined with softer, more prospecting-focused language.

What does this look like?

Consider the following screenshot (with identifying information removed) from a hotel experimenting with brand pillar ads, review ads, and evergreen ads. Monthly, this hotel rotates between different brand pillars & reviews, turning off ads that are less successful and testing new concepts to avoid ad fatigue. Although ad spend is concentrated between a few ads, all ads were served at least 2,500 times during the month, allowing Facebook to collect adequate data on what ads are driving the most qualified traffic to the website.

(TLDR) Too long; didn’t read

In short, managing your hotel’s ad volume is one of the most important things you can do to improve your Facebook performance. Here are a couple of tips to keep in mind:

Run 6 or fewer ads in any campaign to allow Facebook to best optimize your hotel’s ads
Run at least 2 ads for any offer or messaging type so your message can be delivered in multiple ways
Rotate ads often (but not too often!) to avoid ad fatigue

You deserve a partner in creating your hotel’s Facebook campaign strategies. Reach out to the experts at GCommerce Solutions to learn more about running highly effective campaigns that help drive more guests to your hotel.

Ad Frequency: Why It Matters and How You Can Control It

November 12, 2024 by Morgan Tuohy

It feels like the most common advertising trope always follows the same structure:

“Your customer needs to see your ads [4/5/6/7/146] times in order to [remember you/make a purchase/some other desired action]”.

This statement might make sense logically, but what does it actually mean and how do we control it?

The answer to these questions can be found by looking at this metric: Frequency.

Frequency is actually easy to understand and calculate. Frequency is the number of times a user has seen your ad or campaign in a certain period of time. In order to find frequency, you divide impressions by reach.

For example, let’s say your campaign had 100,000 impressions this month and reached 20,000 people. Your frequency is 5.00, meaning that the average person your campaign reached saw your marketing materials five times. Some may have seen it four times, while others may have had six exposures, but it all averages out to five.

Impressions/reach
- 100,000/20,000 = 5.00

What’s a good frequency?

A desirable frequency primarily depends on the goals of your campaign. For the purposes of this blog post, we’re going to focus on Meta advertising on Facebook and Instagram, but a lot of these concepts transfer over to other platforms you’re advertising on.

For a prospecting campaign where we’re hoping to drive website traffic or website engagement, a good frequency to target is 1 to 2.5.

In our campaigns, we’ve seen that a frequency higher than about 2.5 results in a reduced clickthrough rate and less website traffic that can be used to serve ads that drive bookings later.

If your frequency is approaching 2.5, it is a good sign that your prospecting targeting is too narrow for your budget; try targeting a larger geographic region, more age groups, or more interest groups in order to increase the reach of your campaign.

For a retargeting campaign where we’re driving conversions on a hotel’s booking engine, the range of a good frequency is a little broader, from 2.5 to 9.

Out of an analysis of 80 retargeting campaigns during Q2 of this year, we identified some key insights:

19 retargeting campaigns were identified as high performers with a ROAS (return on ad spend) in excess of $50:1.
- Out of those 19 high-performing campaigns, 17 had frequencies between 2.5 and 7. The remaining 2 campaigns had frequencies of 9.8 and 10.7.

No campaigns with a frequency of less than 2.5 broke the $50:1 threshold to be identified as a high-performing campaign.

The remaining 20 retargeting campaigns with a frequency of less than 2.5.
- 10 were identified as low-performing campaigns with room to improve. 50% of campaigns in this frequency range falling in the bottom tier performance is higher than any other campaigns within a given frequency range.

For example, campaigns with a frequency above 2.5 had only 16% in the bottom tier of performance. Don’t let your frequency get too high, though; data indicates that frequencies above about 12 produce conversions at a much lower rate.

That said, a high frequency only unlocks the possibility of high performance; it doesn’t guarantee it. Successful campaigns still presented great offers, high performing individual ads, and followed our best practices for facebook ad optimization.

How do we manipulate frequency?

Now that we know what frequency in our conversion campaigns we want to target, we have to look at how to get there.

Increasing frequency
If your campaign’s frequency falls below 2.5, you likely aren’t reaching the same people often enough to drive them to convert. If that’s the case, we need to look at either increasing impressions while keeping reach static or decreasing reach while keeping impressions static.

In order to increase impressions, we can add additional budget while keeping our target audience the same. For example, if our current target audience has 20,000 users and we are only serving 40,000 impressions (a frequency of 2), an increase of 25% of impressions to 50,000 should let us reach our target frequency of 2.5.

Impressions/reach
- 40,000/20,000 = 2.00
Impressions/reach
- 50,000/20,000 = 2.5

If the budget is inflexible, we can look at decreasing reach. In order to do this, we’ll shorten the amount of time a website visitor remains on our retargeting lists, maybe from 30 days to 20 days. In the example above, we’d still maintain our 40,000 impressions since our budget is the same, but our reach could decrease to 14,000 (about ⅔), leading to a frequency of 2.8. Although you may be missing out on conversions from the 20-30 day audience, the data indicates that the increased frequency of ad delivery to recent website visitors outweighs these potential losses.

Decreasing frequency

If your campaign frequency falls above 12, you are likely reaching the same people too often and being less efficient than you could be with your ad spend. If that’s the case, we need to increase reach while keeping impressions static.

To decrease frequency and drive higher performance, we need to reach additional users by increasing the size of our retargeting lists. For example, we could push additional budget to prospecting campaigns to fill the top of the funnel more, increasing the size of our website visitor list. We could also begin to target past guests who haven’t visited our website recently, increasing our pool of potential guests to deliver ads to. Finally, we could increase the duration that users remain on our website visitor list.

At the end of the day, frequency is just one of the tools we have to optimize Facebook campaigns. While having a frequency in our recommended range might unlock higher performance, it’s still important to pay attention to the quality of your offers, imagery, and copy so that your additional impressions don’t go to waste.

Your hotel deserves an agency that looks at all the details of your campaigns. Get in touch with GCommerce to see where your campaigns can take you.

Mastering the Art of Crafting Revenue Generating Paid Search Ads for Hotels

January 16, 2024 by Danielle Allen

In today's digital era, paid search advertising has become an integral part of any successful hotel marketing campaign. With the right approach, paid search ads can effectively boost your hotel’s online visibility, attract highly targeted traffic, and drive conversions. However, to make the most of this advertising strategy, it's crucial to create compelling and captivating ads that entice users to click. In this blog, we'll uncover the key principles and techniques to write the best paid search ads that yield remarkable results.

Know Your Hotel’s Audience:

The foundation of any successful ad campaign lies in understanding your target audience. Take the time to research and analyze your ideal customers, including their demographics, preferences, and pain points. By knowing your audience, you can tailor your ad copy to resonate with their needs and desires, leading to higher engagement rates and conversions.

Craft a Strong Value Proposition:

Your hotel’s paid search ads should highlight the unique value your product or service offers. Clearly communicate the benefits and advantages that set you apart from your competitors. Consider the specific problems your audience faces and how your solution solves them. Incorporate strong and compelling language to convey the value proposition effectively within the limited character count.

Utilize Persuasive Language About Your Hotel:

Every word in your ad matters. To grab attention and elicit action, employ persuasive language that triggers emotional responses in your audience. Use power words, action verbs, and vivid adjectives to evoke curiosity, excitement, or a sense of urgency. However, ensure that your claims are truthful and realistic to maintain credibility.

Focus on Relevance and Keyword Optimization:

Relevance is crucial in hotel paid search ads. Align your ad copy with the keywords you are targeting to ensure the highest Quality Score and ad rank. Incorporate relevant keywords in your headlines and ad descriptions while maintaining a natural flow. A well-optimized ad will not only attract your target audience but also improve your ad's performance and cost-effectiveness.

Employ Compelling Calls to Action (CTAs):

Guide your potential guests with clear and captivating prompts that steer them toward the desired actions. Whether it's enticing them to "Book Now," "Reserve Your Stay Today," "Discover More," or "Request a Complimentary Quote," make sure your CTAs are compelling.

To create a sense of urgency and excitement, consider incorporating phrases such as "Limited Time Exclusive" or "Only a Few Suites Remaining." These tactics make your CTAs more compelling, urging visitors to take immediate action and thereby boosting click-through and conversion rates.

Test, Analyze, and Optimize:

The journey to crafting exceptional paid search ads for hotels doesn't end with their creation. Continuous testing, analysis, and optimization are vital for maximizing your results. Experiment with different variations of ad copy, headlines, CTAs, and landing pages to identify what resonates best with your audience. Leverage A/B testing and tracking tools to measure performance metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Monitor Your Hotel’s Competitors’ Ads:

Keep an eye on your hotel’s competitors' paid search ads to gather insights and stay ahead of the curve. Analyze their ad copy, CTAs, and landing pages to understand their messaging and strategies. Identify gaps in their approach that you can leverage to differentiate yourself and gain a competitive edge. By staying informed about your competition, you can fine-tune your ads and maintain relevance in the market.

Crafting outstanding paid search ads for your hotel requires a combination of creativity, data analysis, and a deep understanding of your target audience. By implementing the principles outlined above and continuously refining your strategies, you can create high-performing ads that capture attention, engage users, and drive conversions.

Remember, success in paid search advertising is an ongoing journey that requires constant optimization and adaptation to stay ahead in the dynamic digital landscape. Let the seasoned team at GCommerce help!

The Evolving Landscape of Performance Marketing: Embracing Change for Success

October 2, 2023 by Danielle Allen

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the field of marketing has undergone significant transformations. Among these changes, performance marketing has emerged as a dominant force. This data-driven marketing approach has revolutionized how businesses reach and engage with their target audience, delivering tangible and measurable results.

However, performance marketing itself is not immune to change. It is constantly transforming and adapting to the ever-evolving marketing landscape.

Shift from Traditional to Digital Marketing Platforms

Performance marketing previously relied on channels such as print, television, and radio. However, with our new digital marketing platforms, the focus has shifted toward online channels like search engines, social media, and email marketing. These digital platforms offer greater targeting capabilities, allowing marketers to reach specific demographics and track the performance of their campaigns more effectively.

Rise of Marketing Data and Analytics

Data and analytics have become the backbone of performance marketing. With technological advancements, marketers now have access to unprecedented data, enabling them to make informed decisions and optimize their marketing strategies in real time. By leveraging data analytics, marketers can analyze consumer behavior, identify patterns, and personalize their marketing efforts for maximum impact.

To optimize your business's data most effectively, ensure you have transitioned to GA4.

Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have revolutionized performance marketing by enabling marketers to automate and optimize various processes. AI-powered algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data, identify trends, and deliver personalized consumer experiences. Moreover, machine learning algorithms can continually learn and adapt, enhancing campaign performance over time. Integrating AI and ML in performance marketing has significantly improved targeting precision and efficiency.

Shift towards Personalization in Marketing

Today's consumers expect personalized experiences from brands. Performance marketing has responded to this demand by delivering highly targeted and personalized messages. By leveraging consumer data, marketers can create tailored campaigns that resonate with individuals on a deeper level. Personalization not only enhances customer engagement but also improves conversion rates and customer loyalty.

Check out the power of community marketing in our latest webinar on specific ways to showcase this personalization for your property.

Emphasis on Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has emerged as a powerful tool within performance marketing. Consumers increasingly value recommendations from trusted individuals over traditional advertising. Influencers, with their loyal and engaged audiences, can drive brand awareness, generate leads, and boost conversions. Performance marketers are now partnering with influencers to leverage their reach and credibility, effectively reaching new and niche markets.

The Growing Significance of User Experience

User experience (UX) has become a critical factor in performance marketing. Businesses are realizing that providing a seamless and intuitive experience across all touchpoints is essential for success. Every aspect of the user journey affects performance, from website design to landing pages and mobile optimization. Performance marketers are investing in UX optimization to ensure a positive user experience that translates into higher engagement and conversion rates.

Performance marketing is undergoing a profound transformation driven by technological evolution and consumer expectations. Digital platforms, data analytics, AI, personalization, influencer marketing, and user experience are just some of the factors shaping the future of this dynamic field.

By embracing these changes and staying agile, businesses can leverage the power of performance marketing to drive growth, connect with their audience on a deeper level, and achieve measurable results in an ever-changing marketing landscape.

How Your Hotel Can Be Found on TikTok Search: TikTok’s New Search Ads Toggle

September 20, 2023 by Stephanie Lutz

As TikTok continues solidifying its position as one of the most popular social media platforms globally, it's no surprise that the company is constantly innovating to provide advertisers with more effective ways to engage their audience. The addition of Search Ads promises to be a game-changer, offering businesses a unique opportunity to tap into the immense potential of TikTok's user base like never before.

We dove into the exciting world of TikTok's new Search Ads feature, exploring its potential impact on the advertising landscape, how it works, and why brands should be eager to incorporate it into their marketing strategies.

What Is TikTok?

TikTok is a social media platform that skyrocketed in popularity by offering a unique space where users share short-form video formats and engage with bite-sized, entertaining content. What sets TikTok apart is its unparalleled ability to capture users' attention through engaging, user-generated videos and creative challenges.

Why Should Hotels Use TikTok?

This platform's viral nature enables brands to tap into a massive and highly engaged global community, making it an exceptional avenue for advertising. By harnessing the power of TikTok's immersive content and innovative ad formats, businesses can reach a broad audience and foster authentic connections, driving brand awareness and pushing engagement to new heights.

For more information on getting started on TikTok, check out our [E-Book] A Crash Course To TikTok Ads.

What Is the TikTok Search Ads Toggle and How Does It Work?

TikTok has announced a new feature to their advertising offers. The new Search Ads Toggle allows a brand's ads to be shown on the search results page in the app. It utilizes the creative content from advertisers' existing In-Feed Ads, enabling them to display their ads in conjunction with organic search results that align with user queries.

Once the Search Ad Toggle is activated, it triggers the automatic generation of ads using the advertiser's pre-existing ad content. These ads are then displayed alongside organic search results that match users' queries. Identified as "Sponsored" content, they occupy different positions on the results page, determined by factors such as relevance, user intent, and insights drawn from broader user interactions.

Why You Should Consider Using the Search Ads Toggle

The introduction of the Search Ads Toggle presents a distinctive avenue to deliver valuable, contextually appropriate information and engagements to TikTok’s user base. TikTok users frequently employ the search feature for various purposes, including discovering fresh content, rediscovering past posts, and exploring the latest trending topics and concepts. The Search Ads Toggle represents an innovative means for advertisers to contribute to and elevate this user experience.

Furthermore, its impact is quantifiable. TikTok's internal research indicates that enabling the Search Ads Toggle leads to enhanced performance for approximately 70% of ad groups, resulting in more efficient conversions originating from search ads.

How to Get Started Using the TikTok Search Ads Toggle

When setting up an In-Feed Ads campaign on the platform, navigate to the Edit section of the ad group under "select placements" (specifically the TikTok section). The Search Ads Toggle is automatically set to "on". When the toggle is set to "on," search result ads are generated automatically, utilizing the advertiser's existing In-Feed Ad content and targeting criteria. These ads are then displayed alongside organic video results, aligning with relevant user queries. Advertisers have the flexibility to activate the Search Ads Toggle either during campaign setup or while a campaign is already running.

If needed, advertisers can opt-out by switching it "off" during campaign creation. It's important to note that activating the Search Ads Toggle midway through a campaign will not restart the learning phase for that campaign. The Search Ads Toggle also cannot be added to an existing ad group, so advertisers would need to create a new ad group or duplicate an existing ad group in order to begin using this feature.

Final Takeaways on TikTok's Search Ads Toggle

Thanks to the Search Ads Toggle, brands have the opportunity to appear alongside content that aligns with their business, product, or service, all while delivering users a tailor-made advertising encounter.

Let the experts at GCommerce help get you started on TikTok! Connect with us today for more information!

Paid Search Test: Google Ads For Hotel Restaurants

July 31, 2023 by Alex Scharpf

Most upscale hotels offer on-site dining options, but only some have a dedicated marketing strategy. Dining brings in extra revenue from guests, locals, and even tourists, so why aren’t marketing campaigns more common for hotel bars and restaurants?

In this paid search test, we set out to determine whether it’s worth the time and money to use Google Ads for hotel restaurants. Are dining campaigns an underutilized gem? Or do hotels skip them for a reason?

The Paid Search Test

This test collected data from Quarter 1 (Jan 1 - Mar 31, 2023), covering five restaurants across the United States. Each restaurant was managed by and located on-site at a different upscale boutique hotel, with previous brand awareness varying between locations. With the exception of Property 4, each restaurant also contained a bar area, and these campaigns targeted bar-related searches along with restaurant-focused keywords.

During this paid search test, each property ran two separate dining campaigns: Brand Terms and Market Terms (Non-Brand Terms). These campaigns were single keyword ad groups, with Brand Terms focusing on the name of the restaurant and Market Terms focusing on its location or features (e.g. “Restaurant In Park City, UT” and “Rooftop Bar Near Me”).

The primary goal of each Brand Terms campaign was to promote business by increasing table reservations, while Market Terms was more focused on creating awareness and driving clicks.

Each campaign in this test started on Jan 1, 2023, and this freshness means that the data below does not reflect well-established and optimized campaigns. While some minor adjustments were made each month, the success of these campaigns does not rely on hours, weeks, or months of fine-tuning and management.

The Results

Brand Terms saw a Clickthrough Rate of around 40-50%, and Market Terms saw just under 10%.

While total monthly budgets varied, the average Cost Per Click was under $2 for all Market Terms campaigns, with the exception of Property 3, well under $1 for Brand Terms.

Table Reservation Rates varied by property, which could be caused by factors such as table availability, restaurant hours, and local competition. However, most properties saw Table Reservation Rates around the 5% range for both Brand and Market Terms.

See the below for full results.

Takeaways

Paid search dining campaigns are an effective and relatively cheap way to increase table reservations and generate awareness for your hotel’s restaurant.

While we are unable to measure how many times these campaigns influenced someone to visit the restaurant without reserving a table online, the data we do have is still incredibly promising. Metrics like Cost Per Reservation and Reservation Rate varied, but each campaign in our test saw an overall Revenue gain based on the average bill amount at each location.

Start with something small if you’re not ready to commit a large portion of your paid search budget to dining campaigns. With Cost Per Click hovering around $1, your potential for success is high even with a very limited budget. Property 5 spent less than $1,000/month on their dining campaigns and still managed to bring in over 3,500 clicks and 250 table reservations in their first quarter.

Overall, we highly recommend giving paid search dining campaigns a try. If you’re ready to start or just looking for more information, contact GCommerce Solutions.