Unsure about what remarketing is and how it works? Then we suggest you take a look at our previous post in which we explain the differences between Remarketing and Prospecting.
In simple terms, Remarketing, when applied to the hotel industry, allows your company to reach those users who have previously interacted with your website and re-engage them to return and turn your website visitors into customers.
Why is it useful? Well, let’s suppose that out of all the users who enter your website, 95% leave without booking, which means only 5% of those visiting end up staying at your hotel! Well, with Remarketing we can rethink these numbers and boost your sales figures, but before you set up a remarketing campaign, we recommend you to read this post to consider the different types of remarketing available.
Types of remarketing:
Remarketing actions can be carried out via different channels: from Email Remarketing to remarketing campaigns in Google Ads or on Social Media Platforms.
In this post, we will be focusing on Google, as it offers the most options when it comes to implementing a Remarketing strategy.
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Remarketing Display or Standard Remarketing:
is the most commonly used type. It works by impacting those users who have already visited your hotel’s website by showing them ads of your hotel, while they are browsing other websites within the Google Display Network.
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Dynamic Remarketing:
displays personalized dynamic ads of the products that your user has viewed on your website, such as specific rooms or exclusive services. However, for this type of remarketing, you need to first upload all your products or services to the ad feed in the Google Merchant Centre.
This is the most valuable step that you can make to impact those users who remain just one step away from making a reservation.
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Remarketing Search Network:
this type of remarketing does not use banners, instead you can customize text ads that appear to your visitors, when searching on Google Search Engine. However, for this type of Remarketing campaigns the bids are usually high.
For example, if a user abandons your website to return to their search engine and within your selection of keywords you have included the keyword “ urban hotels ” and the user writes these words in the search bar, your text ad will then appear and hopefully redirect them back to your page.
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Remarketing Video:
this type of remarketing differs from the rest in that the user doesn’t need to have visited your website as it will target visitors who have previously seen a video on your YouTube channel. The ads can appear on the channel itself, on other websites and apps.
You can focus on one type of Remarketing or use a mix, but the most important task for any Remarketing Campaign is the creation of lists. Remarketing lists are segmented user groups based on the user’s behaviour.
To optimize your campaigns to the fullest it is recommended you create several user lists. For example, you can create one list of users who have visited your website and only browsed for X time, another one for users who have visited certain pages that you are interested in promoting or another containing those who abandoned their shopping cart at the last minute.
Remember when creating campaigns, the traffic you have is of vital importance, for example, to configure a Search Remarketing Campaign, your user group list needs to contain the behaviour patterns of at least 1.000 users, while launching a Remarketing campaign in the mentioned display network your audience list only needs to contain 100 users.
Useful tips to optimize your Remarketing campaign:
- Exclude users who have already converted from your lists.
- Limit the campaign to avoid repeatedly impacting the same person. It is best to determine the frequency with which each user can be impacted per day, as well as indicating the campaign end date.
- Adapt the campaigns to the different audience lists you have created. A campaign will be different when targeting users who have seen your website to those who have already been close to converting.
- Create ad variants in the same campaign and perform A / B tests to compare relative performance.
In short, Remarketing is a great opportunity for the tourism sector, a one you should not miss out on. Your investment is aimed at those users who have shown interest in your hotel, so the probability of conversion is multiplied and as a result, your ROI improves.
This post is just a basic outline to introduce you to the world of Remarketing. But to be honest, the options offered by Google Ads to create and optimize your campaigns are virtually endless. However, it has to be said, that if you are not familiar with Google’s platform, it can give you a bit of a headache and is more complex than expected, plus it can take a lot of time to set up, which could be otherwise spent doing other valuable tasks. So, if you are unsure about using Google ads then use a professional, one who is guaranteed to make your job much easier!