As a hospitality-focused marketing agency partner, there are two questions we’ve been asked many times: What can we do in tandem with sales team efforts to drive more group business? How do we get our brand in front of the people responsible for planning meetings and other corporate events?Of course, a talented, dedicated sales staff is key to ensuring that group volume is maintained or increased year-over-year. But wouldn’t it be amazing to support that team with incoming leads and RFPs from new contacts as a result of a digital marketing awareness campaign?As marketers specialized in the digital space, we understand the science behind many types of guests, and where to target them online, thanks to innumerable data points. It’s group, business, and “bleisure” (adding a few leisure days onto that business trip) travelers that are often a moving target.On paper, LinkedIn seems like the perfect place to target the people planning corporate meetings and group events. You can build an audience using job titles, locations, seniority within a company, and other professional parameters. However, because the job title and seniority level of our elusive target vary so much by company and industry, it can be difficult to know that you’re reaching your target. Use LinkedIn to find out where they’re hiding.[caption id="attachment_5830" align="alignnone" width="900"]
Image Source: LinkedIn.com[/caption]We’ve put together a list of key considerations for any group-focused awareness campaign on LinkedIn:
Cast A Wide Net:
Those who manage group meetings and events often have different job titles, so it’s important to keep your initial potential audience as wide-open and inclusive as possible. This way, you’re not excluding anyone right out of the gate; narrow and optimize your audience based on the campaign data in real-time.Mini Case Study: One of our hotel partners was sure they had defined not only the industries but also the locations from which they could earn their group business. By leveraging the power of LinkedIn on their behalf, we targeted over one million LinkedIn users in major cities across the entire United States and Canada, with job titles ranging from CEO to Meeting Planner to Executive Assistant. The unexpected top performer? Construction! Our audience members who work within the construction industry accounted for 4% of the campaign’s nearly 17,000 impressions, and 5% of its 179 clicks.
Strategically Craft Messaging:
Marketers understand that LinkedIn is a business-focused channel, and thus requires B2B or business-minded messaging, more so than advertising on any other social network. Remember who you’re targeting (meeting planners!) and make sure your content is relevant and unique to their business interests in order to capture their attention and maximize your LinkedIn budget.Mini Case Study: Another partner of ours created rate codes specific to companies in their market and included the codes in the ad copy to draw attention in a personalized way. Of course, this also made resulting business conversions easily trackable. Even with a limited budget, that campaign saw click-through rates as high as 0.89% and engagement rates of up to 0.93%.
Prepare To Spend More For (seemingly) Less:
LinkedIn can require more investment than other social advertising channels such as Facebook or Instagram, since cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impressions (CPM) are typically higher on LinkedIn. Expect to spend more for a click than you do on your Facebook brand awareness and remarketing campaigns. You can use the LinkedIn ads platform for budget recommendations and estimates since the budget will vary based on your potential audience size.Remember the potential ROI: it’s risk vs. reward. While there’s no guarantee that your $7 click will bring in a group booking, sometimes all it takes is one contract to offset the cost of advertising on LinkedIn.
Speaking of spending…Keep in mind that the more you spend, the more you will learn. There are fantastic, detailed insights to be found on a LinkedIn Ads Manager dashboard, but you won’t be able to take full advantage of it if you have a limited data set. To ensure your data is reliable, we recommend spending enough to reach your goal (whether that’s form submissions, website sessions, or something else) and allowing the campaign to run for a few months.Continually optimize your campaigns by using all the new data you have gathered to refine your audience, your messaging, the information on your landing pages, and more. The learnings don’t stop with LinkedIn ads insights. Remember to pair those findings with what you’re seeing in Google Analytics to know what people are doing once they get to your website. Learn from how they’re engaging with the information you offer within your owned channels.If you’re willing to invest in LinkedIn as a brand awareness and leads generation channel for group business, you could find yourself with massive ROI. Or, at the very least, insights you can use to inform your group business marketing strategy.Have you tried running LinkedIn campaigns with the goal of driving group business? How did they perform compared to your goals and expectations? We’d love to hear about your experience and successes so please, feel free to connect.
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As a hospitality-focused marketing agency partner, there are two questions we’ve been asked many times: What can we do in tandem with sales team efforts to drive more group business? How do we get our brand in front of the people responsible for planning meetings and other corporate events?Of course, a talented, dedicated sales staff is key to ensuring that group volume is maintained or increased year-over-year. But wouldn’t it be amazing to support that team with incoming leads and RFPs from new contacts as a result of a digital marketing awareness campaign?As marketers specialized in the digital space, we understand the science behind many types of guests, and where to target them online, thanks to innumerable data points. It’s group, business, and “bleisure” (adding a few leisure days onto that business trip) travelers that are often a moving target.On paper, LinkedIn seems like the perfect place to target the people planning corporate meetings and group events. You can build an audience using job titles, locations, seniority within a company, and other professional parameters. However, because the job title and seniority level of our elusive target vary so much by company and industry, it can be difficult to know that you’re reaching your target. Use LinkedIn to find out where they’re hiding.[caption id="attachment_5830" align="alignnone" width="900"]
Image Source: LinkedIn.com[/caption]We’ve put together a list of key considerations for any group-focused awareness campaign on LinkedIn:
Cast A Wide Net:
Those who manage group meetings and events often have different job titles, so it’s important to keep your initial potential audience as wide-open and inclusive as possible. This way, you’re not excluding anyone right out of the gate; narrow and optimize your audience based on the campaign data in real-time.Mini Case Study: One of our hotel partners was sure they had defined not only the industries but also the locations from which they could earn their group business. By leveraging the power of LinkedIn on their behalf, we targeted over one million LinkedIn users in major cities across the entire United States and Canada, with job titles ranging from CEO to Meeting Planner to Executive Assistant. The unexpected top performer? Construction! Our audience members who work within the construction industry accounted for 4% of the campaign’s nearly 17,000 impressions, and 5% of its 179 clicks.
Strategically Craft Messaging:
Marketers understand that LinkedIn is a business-focused channel, and thus requires B2B or business-minded messaging, more so than advertising on any other social network. Remember who you’re targeting (meeting planners!) and make sure your content is relevant and unique to their business interests in order to capture their attention and maximize your LinkedIn budget.Mini Case Study: Another partner of ours created rate codes specific to companies in their market and included the codes in the ad copy to draw attention in a personalized way. Of course, this also made resulting business conversions easily trackable. Even with a limited budget, that campaign saw click-through rates as high as 0.89% and engagement rates of up to 0.93%.
Prepare To Spend More For (seemingly) Less:
LinkedIn can require more investment than other social advertising channels such as Facebook or Instagram, since cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impressions (CPM) are typically higher on LinkedIn. Expect to spend more for a click than you do on your Facebook brand awareness and remarketing campaigns. You can use the LinkedIn ads platform for budget recommendations and estimates since the budget will vary based on your potential audience size.Remember the potential ROI: it’s risk vs. reward. While there’s no guarantee that your $7 click will bring in a group booking, sometimes all it takes is one contract to offset the cost of advertising on LinkedIn.
Speaking of spending…Keep in mind that the more you spend, the more you will learn. There are fantastic, detailed insights to be found on a LinkedIn Ads Manager dashboard, but you won’t be able to take full advantage of it if you have a limited data set. To ensure your data is reliable, we recommend spending enough to reach your goal (whether that’s form submissions, website sessions, or something else) and allowing the campaign to run for a few months.Continually optimize your campaigns by using all the new data you have gathered to refine your audience, your messaging, the information on your landing pages, and more. The learnings don’t stop with LinkedIn ads insights. Remember to pair those findings with what you’re seeing in Google Analytics to know what people are doing once they get to your website. Learn from how they’re engaging with the information you offer within your owned channels.If you’re willing to invest in LinkedIn as a brand awareness and leads generation channel for group business, you could find yourself with massive ROI. Or, at the very least, insights you can use to inform your group business marketing strategy.Have you tried running LinkedIn campaigns with the goal of driving group business? How did they perform compared to your goals and expectations? We’d love to hear about your experience and successes so please, feel free to connect.
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