Case Study: Does increasing online budget increase direct hotel bookings?
Overview
Our Objective
The Challenge
Process
To address this challenge, we decided to increase our budget for brand campaigns, particularly focusing on the Brand (IE) campaign, which was suffering the most due to a limited budget and high competitiveness.
Budget Increase: We raised the monthly paid search budget 57%
Campaign Focus: We allocated a significant portion of this increased budget to our brand campaigns, ensuring better visibility and competitiveness against online travel agents such as Booking.com.
Monitoring & Adjustments: We closely monitored the performance of our campaigns, making necessary adjustments to maximise our search impression share and conversions.
Results
Immediate results:
Search Impression Share: Within a month, our search impression share increased, leading to immediate improvements.
Conversion Value: There was a 30% increase in conversion value.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Our ROAS improved by 20%.
Sustained Success
Search Impression Share: By November 2023, we achieved a 75.15% search impression share, surpassing Booking.com’s 60.79%.
Conversions: Comparing November 2022 to November 2023, we saw a 35% increase in conversions.
Clicks & Impressions:
48% increase in clicks.
140% increase in impressions.
Continued Growth
Conversions: In January 2024, we experienced a 228% increase in conversions compared to January 2023 on our Brand Campaigns targeting the Irish market. Overall we had a 145% increase in conversions.
Clicks & Impressions:
94% increase in clicks.
134% increase in impressions.
Our strategic investment in increasing our brand campaign budget not only reclaimed our search impression share from Booking.com but also significantly boosted our overall digital marketing performance. Due to the success of this brand campaign strategy we are maintaining our position on our search impression share and still maintaining our direct bookings.
