We are always looking for new ways to improve and expand the products and services we can offer our partner hotels. We have started using Google Signals for some of the larger hostels on the Umi system and wanted to share the benefits of integrating this technology into your hotel marketing strategy.
What is Google Signals?
Google signals is a product from Google that was launched to provide even more insight to your business using Google advertising features. The biggest focus of Google Signals was to enhance cross-device reporting and conversion tracking as we increasingly purchase and book things in a user journey that spans time and different devices. And don’t panic the technology is compliant with GDPR!
Here are a few of the cool ways that Google Signals can be useful in your hotel website and marketing strategy. This list focusses on the combination with Store Visits.
- Evaluate the number of times website users physically come to your hotel as guests
- Understand what channels (paid and organic) that drive the most guests to your hotel
- Better understand the digital user behaviour of guests who also visit your hotel’s physical location
- Make better decisions about your hotel marketing and advertising; managing creatives, spend and bids more effectively
How to set up Google Signals for Hotels?
Google Signals is applied to Properties within Google Analytics. This is so that you can theoretically track different properties within the same account. The first step is to head over to the admin area of Google Analytics and, under Property > Tracking Info > Data Collection > [Click Continue].
Once you have followed these steps you will be taken to a number of pages with information such as ‘Data Sharing Settings’ etc make sure to read all of these and when you are happy press continue. Before clicking the Activate button double-check you are applying Google Signals to the right property. As a standard Google sets this to ‘All Properties’ within your account.
- Ensure that your Data Sharing has been enabled within your settings otherwise, Google Signals will not work
- It is important to tell your users that you are now using this technology (Google will remind you to do this prior to activation). Remember to add this into your Cookie Policy.
Now click ‘Activate’ and you’re all done!
The Google Store visits data will come from location extensions that are linked from your Google My Business account to your Ads accounts, then from Ads to Google Analytics property.
The Requirements
- You will need Google Analytics, Google My Business and Google Ads accounts
- You need a physical address in the eligible countries
- High enough physical traffic to attribute to web visits.
For Store Visits:
- You need to have activated Google Signals
- Your Analytics property must be linked to at least one of your Google Ads accounts which contains location extensions in Google My Business
- Need to have 90% linked extensions to be verified in Google My Business
- Generally speaking, you will need around 100k visits per month for this to be reported on in the Store Visits.
What Happens Next?
What Google signals will now do is collection information using additional data sets from users that have enabled Ads Personalisation. This enhances the information collected in demographics and interest reports, advertising reporting features, remarketing audiences and enables Cross-Device reporting capabilities.
It’s important to note that this information is never personal, it is aggregated. The sample size also needs to be quite large in Analytics, typically around 250k visits for the selected date range.
Need some help?
If you’d like us to help out with the above, we would be delighted to assist. Just head over to our contact page and get in touch with one of our friendly team!