Six Stats to Measure for a Successful Hotel Digital Marketing Strategy

When it comes to your hotel’s digital marketing strategy, your KPIs are the bedrock on which your success rests. We’re here to help. With these 6 essential KPIs, your digital marketing will have firm ground to stand on.  Metrics are different for eCommerce campaigns and non-eCommerce campaigns – are your metrics correct?

If your KPIs are constantly shifting, based on vanity metrics, or simply undefined, you’ll have no way of measure which of your campaigns are wins and which are flops. Put your focus on KPIs front and centre.

Vanity metrics, to give a quick refresher, are numbers that might make you feel good or look good on a report, but don’t translate to more guests or more return on your investment. One example is having tens of thousands of Facebook followers – but, because you got them through ‘like & share’ competitions, they aren’t really interested in your hotel and will never book a stay. It looks good to have that kind of social presence, but it doesn’t translate to revenue.

Two general areas to pay attention to are channel performance metrics and engagement rate, which are the most noteworthy areas to look at. These two sets of KPIs are complimentary. Channel performance metrics show you how each marketing channel is doing, and engagement rate metrics show you how engaged your audience is.

To look at the 6 most essential KPIs for your hotel’s digital marketing strategy, read on.

Channel Performance Metrics

Understanding the goals you want to achieve for each marketing channel lets you understand how your campaigns have performed.

Ecommerce campaigns can be calculated in terms of ROI and CPA. However, non-ecommerce campaigns should be assessed on conversion rates.

It’s important to remember these metrics will differ depending on what stage of the purchase funnel your campaign is targeting.

How does each marketing channel perform based on the following metrics?

1. Conversion Rate: What percentage of traffic from each channel converts into bookers?
2. Cost per Acquisition (CPA): What is the CPA for your ecommerce campaigns? This metric is important for hotels because it lets you see which channels are best to invest in. When driving direct bookings, it’s important to have a CPA benchmark.
3. Return On Investment (ROI): What return are you getting on your marketing spend? This should be applied only to ecommerce campaigns. If you’re not trying to sell rooms or packages specifically, ROI isn’t a reasonable metric.

Engagement Rate

Looking at metrics within your Google Analytics account can help you understand how engaged your audience is.

To gain a deeper understanding, we’d advise you to look at your engagement metrics (below) based on the following dimensions:

Device: Mobile, tablet and desktop

Traffic Source: Organic, social, paid, display, email

Geographic: Country, city

Demographic: Age, gender

Here are the key engagement metrics for you to consider when planning your marketing campaigns:

1. Average Time on Site: What is the average length of time visitors spend on your hotel website? Time on site is a key indicator of how successful your site is in attracting relevant visitors.
2. Average Pages Per Session: Examine the pages per session that the average user on your site views. This will give you a measure of how engaged they are with your hotel, and how compelling your site is.
3. Bounce Rates: Review bounce rates for key pages on your site on a regular basis Which pages are bounce rates highest for? Are these pages you would expect a high bounce rate for? If not, what can you do to improve engagement?

Conclusion

These six stats should give your digital marketing strategy quantifiable goals to achieve. Make sure you’re measuring KPIs that make sense for your hotel and for the campaign you’re running – ask an expert if you’re not sure where to start!