Whatever product or service your business provides, knowing your target audience inside out is paramount. Since it’s impossible to reach everyone at once, narrowing your focus to the most likely target audience helps you to develop an effective marketing strategy.

In this case study, we’re discussing how we used data to help one of our clients, St Giles identify their target audiences and reach them with the correct messaging.

The Client

St Giles Hotel Group is one of the industry's leading hotel operators with hotels in major cities across four continents – including London, New York, Kuala Lumpur, and Sydney – catering to both business and leisure travellers.

The Opportunity

Prior to teaming up with us, St Giles’s website offered very minimal insights in terms of who their website visitors were and what they were searching for; and it’s not until visitors finalised their bookings that St Giles could access this information.

This meant that the team at St Giles had very little idea who their audiences were, which resulted in an unfocused marketing strategy. That’s not all, they also ran the risk of missing out on a huge proportion of visitors who could’ve converted had they received a more personalised experience.

This is where our data team spotted an opportunity to explore market segmentation in order to help St Giles better understand their customers' needs, attitudes, and behaviours, and ultimately, centre their marketing efforts.

The Strategy

Working collaboratively with St Giles, our data team customised the data layer to collect analytics data from their website and gain deeper insights into what visitors are doing on it, i.e. whether it’s an adult individual, a couple, a group, or a family searching in each location. This gives the marketing team an increased awareness of their current or potential market base on a broad spectrum.

By segmenting their target market into smaller, more defined segments, the team at St Giles can ideate marketing strategies that are informed by tangible data and plan campaigns that target customers with specific needs, interests, or preferences.

The Results

With segmentation securely in place, St Giles now has a more in-depth understanding of the proportion between searches and bookings for each location, which enables them to be more efficient in terms of time, money, and other resources.

This data-driven approach proved especially beneficial during COVID-19. The public’s attitude towards travelling changed, naturally, St Giles’s marketing strategy had to evolve alongside it to keep up with the demand.

As the bookings slowed, the data showed that search lead time was significantly shorter than booking lead time, which suggested that customers were interested but also reluctant to commit and complete their bookings. In other words, customers were still lacking confidence in the ability to travel due to travel restrictions.

Armed with this insight, St Giles was then able to adjust their marketing and promotions accordingly and decide whether to push promotions that convert short lead time searches or focus on reducing the booking lead time to move potential customers down the sales funnel.

Get to Know Your Customers Inside Out

Having a robust foundation for data gave St Giles a competitive advantage and empowered them to deliver the highest level of service they’re known for.

Want to know more about your customers? Get in touch via hello@digitalworkroom.co.uk.