Brigitta Antonyi, Net Af finity

ANALYTICS UNLOCKED: HOW TO USE

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TO FIND YOUR PERFECT

CUSTOMER

In today’s presentation, we’ll be looking at: Why you need a Customer Persona How to use Google Analytics to get the right data Creating Personas with your data Creating a Targeted Strategy with your Persona

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

They’re the foundation for your hotel’s strategy

WHY YOU NEED A CUSTOMER PERSONA

A customer persona is:

“A fictional character created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way”

For hotels, this means using your data – from your booking

engine and Google Analytics – to find your ‘ideal’ guest.

A guest persona is the person most likely to come to your site & stay at your hotel, based on real data.

FIRST OF ALL, WHAT IS A PERSONA?

Is the backbone behind your strategy, from sales & marketing to website design

Helps build more

direct bookings by effective targeting

Lets you create a more gripping experience for guests by keeping them in the centre of your plans

CREATING A PERSONA….

It’s not as hard as you think!

HOW TO CREATE CUSTOMER PERSONAS

1. Gather and analyse data

2. Use the data to formulate personas

3. Use the persona to create a strong, targeted marketing and sales strategy

HOW TO CREATE CUSTOMER PERSONAS

WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL GUEST LOOK LIKE?

GATHER AND ANALYSE DATA Google Analytics gives a ‘5 star’ view of your website users and their interests, needs and desires. It also shows you sources they use to get to your site. This information plus your own knowledge & intuition gives you everything you need to make an ideal customer persona!

Make sure you have both e -commerce and demographics t racking enabled in Google Analyt ics . I f not , ta lk to your market ing team!

BEFORE YOU ANALYSE:

This report shows you age, gender & location– all segmented by visits, bounce rates, conversion and more. Use this info to find who your most profitable buyers are (e.g. females age 25-44) and your visitors with the highest conversion rate.

REPORT 1: USER DEMOGRAPHICS

Start building a few personas: For example, if females give you the most revenue but convert less often, build a female persona to drive them to book more frequently. For your male persona, you might focus on upgrades or packages to encourage more spend per booking. On the other hand, maybe your higher conversion rates on smaller bookings mean you have more guests travelling solo for business, and you should market towards a business persona. The bottom line? You need more data!

HOW TO USE USER DEMOGRAPHICS

It’s pretty much a no-brainer if you’re a hotel, so we can move on.

REPORT 2: INTEREST & IN-MARKET SEGMENT

Users in the given categories in this report often buy things in those categories. For hoteliers, travel or hotels & accommodation usually have the highest visits and revenue.

REPORT 3: SOURCE & MEDIUM

Now let’s look at the different channels (sources) your guests tend to use before they book on your site. For example, here’s what a female’s experience on a site might look like:

REPORT 3: SOURCE & MEDIUM

And here’s what a male’s experience might be:

You can also segment referral traffic by gender.

Okay, that’s a lot of data you’ve just collected … what

next?

You’re going to need online and of fline sources!

CREATE PERSONAS WITH YOUR DATA

Here’s a rule of thumb: 90% data, 10% knowledge Knowledge comes from your reservations manager and reception staff – they can personify the customers they deal with, both in person and over the phone. Use their experience to give your data an extra kick: are they generally impatient? Brusque? Are they there on business or pleasure?

USE ONLINE AND OFFLINE SOURCES

Analyse your BKE and PMS systems to discover what packages and room types are most often booked. This information plus your analytics and knowledge will form the basis of your customer personas. The amount of detail you use is up to you, but the more you know, well… the more you’ll know.

USE ONLINE AND OFFLINE SOURCES

Here’s an example using Hubspot’s handy persona builder. Give it a try yourself!

CREATE YOUR PERSONAS

TIPS WHEN CREATING PERSONAS

Give them a name. It will help you refer to them throughout your marketing plan, and make the process a little less impersonal

Hotels usually build 4-6 personas, but this

depends on needs and wants – there’s no minimum or maximum!

Share the personas with all key stakeholders in the hotel, so everyone’s on the same page

Here’s how to use all this info for more direct bookings

CREATE A TARGETED STRATEGY WITH YOUR

PERSONA

Identifying the demographics of valuable customers is useful when creating content for your website.

Is your content engaging with all your personas? Is it easy to find necessary information? Is your call to action prominent and engaging?

Here’s some advice on designing your site and crafting copy that you can tailor to your personas’ needs.

TAILOR YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT

Do you offer things your personas would buy? Do you have a range of offers and packages

available for each persona? Are your rates, packages and booking engines easy

to access and understand, and are you selling them effectively?

TAILOR YOUR PACKAGES

Make sure you’re targeting your personas through all relevant channels. On social media, make sure you’re engaging with the

demographics relevant to your key performing personas.

In your email marketing, create offers unique to your top performing personas. Ideally, you’d segment your database based on each persona and market different offers to each.

In your paid marketing efforts, tailor your campaigns to capture your top performing personas.

TAILOR YOUR MARKETING ACTIVITY

It’s vital to monitor & test your personas and user experience – they may change by the season!

If you need a l i t t le help , take a look at the Google analyt ics suppor t pages or get in touch with our exper ts .

GOOD LUCK!

Get in touch with us to give your hotel superpowers!

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW. GOOD LUCK BUILDING

YOUR PERSONAS!

Net Affinity is an international award-winning Technology, Design and Marketing Company

who work exclusively with hotels.

We drive more direct business to your hotel, and develop client relationships that allow us

to consistently cultivate and develop your business. Your success is our success!