Using Paid Search to Build Awareness for a New Branded Hotel Opening

For a new hotel opening, increasing awareness and driving traffic to the property’s website is critical. By leveraging Paid Search prospecting strategies, hotels can target potential guests based on their interests in the destination, attractions, and key selling features of the property, all while maintaining an efficient budget.

In this article, we’ll explore key points for a successful campaign with an example of a hotel opening project we recently had.

Channel Strategy:

Paid Search allows hotels to capture audiences searching for keywords related to the destination, its demand generators, or specific hotel features. The goal is not necessarily to rank first but to appear at the top of search results to ensure visibility. Selecting high-demand keywords with low competition is key to maximizing the campaign’s reach while keeping costs manageable.

When We Use:

• Prospecting for Awareness: Essential for driving traffic from people researching the market or destination.
• Local Exposure: Paid Search campaigns can raise awareness about the hotel’s proximity to key demand generators.
• Rebranding or Name Change: Effective for promoting a new identity while targeting users interested in the area.

What We Look For:

• Target Long-Tail Keywords: These often have lower search volumes but are less competitive and more cost-effective, attracting quality traffic.
• Monitor Impact on Traffic and Revenue: Ensure campaigns lead to increased website traffic and direct bookings.
• Balance Brand and Prospecting Paid Search: Typically, a 70/30 focus on prospecting vs. brand terms ensures more top-of-funnel traffic.

Campaign Guidelines:

• Minimum Budget: $500-$1,000 per month.
• Our Campaign Example: We utilized a budget of $1,800 per month, which allowed us to effectively balance between branded paid search and prospecting campaigns focused on local destination, demand generators, and the hotel’s unique selling propositions.

Here are the Cogwheel Marketing benchmarks we use to gauge campaign success and continually aim to reach:

• Impression Share: 10%-20%
• CTR: 3%-5%
• CPC: $1.50-$3.00
• ROAS: 2-3:1 for independent hotels

This budget allocation, combined with our benchmarks, helped ensure the campaign’s efficiency and effectiveness in driving traffic and revenue.

Final Results:

After a 6-month campaign for our hotel’s opening, we saw these statistics:

• Clicks: 16,500
• CTR: 18.3% (exceeding the 3%-5% benchmark)
• Impression Share: 10%
• CPC: $0.65 (well below the $1.50-$3.00 range)
• Revenue: Over $100,000 generated

While we launched this campaign upon the hotel’s opening, we typically recommend starting Paid Search efforts a few months before opening for better momentum and to push traffic for early awareness.

During this 6-month timeframe, we ran multiple campaigns in tandem, including branded paid search and campaigns targeting the local destination, demand generators, and the hotel’s unique selling propositions to build awareness and attract quality traffic.

This approach highlights the power of combining branded and non-branded strategies to boost visibility and drive significant revenue for a new hotel opening.

Contact: Stephanie Smith
CEO & Digital Matriarch

Cogwheel Analytics

540-239-1052

Cogwheel®️ Analytics is a hotel digital marketing reporting and business intelligence tool for hotel management companies and ownership groups of both branded and independent hotels. It aggregates data from multiple sources to allow companies to identify trends and opportunities, in both portfolio and individual hotel level views. It provides an online scorecard with benchmarks against other hotels to identify gaps in your total online presence, similar to a STAR report. With one-click reports, owners and operators can understand the efforts made towards gaining more exposure across the customer journey. Unlike most tools in the hospitality industry, Cogwheel Analytics primarily focuses on booked revenue, not consumed, to map the various data points up to the point of conversion. Sample data points include channel mix, website performance, social media and paid efforts including OTA Ads, MetaSearch and Google SEM.

Sales & Marketing