The Drum Recommends: Commended - Filling 181 European hotels using paid advertising

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This case study and other interesting content can be found on Crafted's profile on The Drum Recommends.

Primary Goals:

• Drive online traffic
• Increase online bookings

Secondary Goals:

• Launch first European I Prefer member acquisition campaign
• Launch first European I Prefer App Install campaign
• Improve quality score and click-through rate

Background:

Preferred Hotels & Resorts has a diverse global portfolio of 650 hotels. The luxury hoteliers chose Crafted to drive bookings for its European resorts (181), using biddable campaigns.

What we did:

We created an integrated biddable media strategy across channels including paid social, PPC, display, and App marketplaces.

Working with Preferred’s marketing team we share audience insight data to improve the targeting of all campaigns.

Delivering prospects at scale

We acquire new customers and increase awareness by running prospecting campaigns via Quantcast-powered display, paid search (informational-based queries), YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. From custom-audience targeting based on several proven audience criteria to lookalike audiences modelled on existing bookers, campaigns are always relevant.

Capturing booking intent

Our PPC strategy considers multiple data points such as search query intent, country booking volume, length of stay and lead time between booking and check-in. Individual hotel campaigns allow us to highlight hotels USPs within ad copy and create more relevant ad extensions to drive a better click-through rate.

Re-engaging lapsed and non-converting customers

Through a mix of optimised remarketing lists for search ads and dynamic display remarketing including video, we convinced more people that they deserved the luxury of staying at a Preferred hotel.

Driving more than just bookings:

Individual campaigns consisting of search, display, Facebook and Gmail were created to target users looking for hotels under one of these groups:

• Ski & Mountain resorts
• City breaks
• Honeymoon hotels
• Family

We also ran campaigns to support iPrefer membership acquisitions. From driving member sign-ups to supporting ongoing engagement with an app install campaign across search, social, on-site content and display.

Results:

• Better campaigns.
• Minimum quality score of 8 across all keywords
• More attractive ads.
• CTR has increased by 18.69% (Q1 & Q2 vs Q3 & Q4)
• More visitors.
• European traffic increase 2017 32.50% (target: 20%)
• Better ROI.
• 76% above target for European bookings
• Cost-effective.
• Campaign exceeding targets at a 6.4% lower spend

Testimonial:

“The hospitality sector is extremely competitive. Working with Crafted, we’ve been able to not only compete but drive impressive growth from our biddable campaigns. With multiple hotels, varying budgets and international markets, Crafted has handled the complexities of our account with resounding success.”

To find out more about Crafted check out their profile on The Drum Recommends.