Goal
Attract visitors from across Russia to a brand new hotel with no reviews
Tools used:
- Search ads (Yandex.Direct)
- Ad networks (Yandex.Direct)
- Yandex.Metrica
Period: June — August 2012
Background
The Grand Cruise opened at the start of a very hot summer in 2012.
Opening its doors after peak season had already begun, the Grand Cruise had no time for traditional promotion tactics involving tour operators.
Most of the Grand Cruise’s competitors were already seeing occupancy rates higher than 90%.
For a completely new and unknown hotel, it would take a miracle for them to reach even 60% occupancy.
Step 1. Set goals in Yandex.Metrica
The hotel added a Yandex.Metrica counter to its site and set 4 goals:
- viewed 2 pages
- viewed 5 pages
- started booking
- completed booking (reservation form sent).
Step 2. Launch search campaign
Search ads were displayed to users throughout Russia.
The keyword groups initially selected were related to:
- Anapa vacations
- hotels and resorts in Anapa
- vacations in Dzhemet (the village where the hotel is located)
- hotels and resorts in Dzhemet
- Anapa + month
- Dzhemet + month
Step 3. Start ad networks campaign
The Grand Cruise ran campaigns in ad networks simultaneously with their search campaigns.
Ad networks include high-quality, high-traffic sites with an audience of over 74 million people, without significant overlap with Yandex search users.
The Grand Cruise disabled impressions on search partner sites, applied the Weekly Budget strategy for ad networks, and set a limit of 5,000 RUB to maximize the number of clicks.
Results
- The site drew an engaged audience: 70% of visitors viewed more than one page, with 13% viewing more than five pages.
- The hotel’s phones began ringing and their email inbox filled with reservations.
- The Grand Cruise developed and refined the campaign message and bid management strategy over three months.
- The number of reservation requests doubled with each passing month.
Ironing out wrinkles in the reservation process
The hotel management wondered why few visitors were completing the on-site reservation form, and instead enquired about prices by phone or email.
Then they had an idea what the problem could be. Not only did the form not show the price for the period selected, but it also required that users enter a CAPTCHA in order to send the application. As a result, only one in ten users actually finished the reservation process.
The Grand Cruise redesigned the reservation form based on their observations, and to good effect.