B&B HOTELS C&NE has more than 210+ hotels across six countries.
With the ambition to grow (and to have the best digital experience on the market), they teamed up with DEPT® to develop a flexible growth strategy leveraging Google’s Search Ads 360.
Enhancing search strategy
Our main goal was to scale search while retaining local relevance. We also wanted to simplify campaign management so the team could be more strategic.
B&B HOTELS had been using SA360 but hadn’t fully unlocked its potential. So, we began with a full implementation, with automation being the most impactful change to existing accounts and ways of working. This set the foundation for further utilizing other product features and improving account performance.
Leveraging SA360 templates for automation
Leveraging templates is a key automation feature of SA360, so we crafted a structured blueprint to organize search campaigns around hotel markets. It allowed for more flexibility and efficiency when managing the campaigns.
To lay out which information was needed to create successful search campaigns at scale, we defined the main requirements:
- Hotels as central feed elements
- Localize keywords and ad content
Then, we created input for templates through a feed management tool. It uses data from B&B HOTELS CMS (address, description, and amenities) to build ad copy with specific keywords. For example, we built a headline combining a static call to action, “Book a hotel in,” with the dynamic city element from the feed, “Hamburg.” Then, the output feed gets sent to a template in SA360 to automatically build the search campaigns on the different engines.
Flexible infrastructure
In addition to local relevance, the launch of each new hotel, market, or language triggers a whole set of new campaigns based on our requirements. Thanks to automation, we built a flexible infrastructure to test, learn, and adapt quickly.
By implementing SA360, we made it possible to adjust the automation setup as markets grow and advertising strategies change. It also allows exceptions where needed, e.g., telling the template to use different campaign settings for certain markets.
With one automation, we could easily test different variations of each element.
This made it easy to adjust our campaign strategy according to B&B HOTELS’ business needs and immediately roll it out across six markets.
Performance insight
The framework used for automation helped us understand campaign performance.
Through Campaign Groups, we segmented the campaigns per market and could automatically determine to which market a campaign belonged. In the built-in Performance Centre of SA360, we could see all the different markets and how they performed compared to the targets we defined.
The setup automatically created budgets and bids based on targets we defined per campaign group. If targets were not met, concrete recommendations per market were provided. This was ideal for B&B HOTELS because they work with monthly budgets.
Bid strategies and floodlights
To efficiently manage all search accounts, we used bid strategies in SA360. They allowed us to:
- Manage spend when the budget is limited
- Set performance goals per campaign group
- Integrate with automated campaigns
Another advantage of using bid strategies in SA360 is using Floodlights to steer campaign performance, which is not possible in Google Ads.
Floodlights is a uniform conversion tracking system with advanced functionalities. For B&B HOTELS, we used it to deduplicate conversions that came from one person using Google and Bing. It also provided more details about conversions, e.g., how many nights were booked.
For B&B HOTELS, we built the structural foundation and are now ready to explore other Floodlights features to enhance the bidding signals and audience segmentation.
The implementation of SA360 automation yielded impressive results for B&B HOTELS. We launched automated campaigns for over 200 hotels in five languages, featuring tailored ad copies and market-specific settings.
The flexibility allowed for swift adaptation to market dynamics. With an established scalable setup with multilingual content, this increased the SEA revenue by 20% and added 35+ hotel openings in four markets.
200
hotels with automated campaigns
+20%
in SEA revenue
35
hotel openings launched
Questions?
Sr. Digital Marketing Consultant (Martech)
Annekatrin Molenaar
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