The Guest Acquisition Playbook: Paid Media Strategy

The Complete Paid Media Playbook for Filling Tables, Rooms, and Diaries — Without Wasting Budget.

ABOUT THIS PLAYBOOK

Most hospitality operators waste 60–80% of their paid media budget. Wrong audiences, wrong creative, wrong objectives, wrong platforms. This playbook gives you the full system used by hospitality brands that consistently turn £1 of ad spend into £6–£12 of revenue. Built specifically for restaurants, bars, pubs, and hotels — not generic e-commerce. Every framework, audience strategy, and creative formula is hospitality-tested.

What You'll Learn:

• How to set up Meta Ads, Google Ads, and TikTok campaigns that actually drive bookings
• The audience targeting frameworks that consistently deliver 4–8x ROAS for hospitality
• Creative formulas for ads that convert browsers into bookers
• How to measure what matters — covers, room nights, and lifetime value, not vanity metrics
• The exact budget structures used by venues spending £500/month and venues spending £50,000/month
• How to reduce OTA dependency by driving direct bookings through paid channels

Who This Playbook Is For:

• Independent restaurant, bar, and pub operators running their own ads
• Boutique hotel marketers tired of OTA commission costs
• Marketing managers at hospitality groups managing in-house paid media
• Operators currently using an agency who want to know what good looks like
• Anyone whose paid media spend feels like a black box

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION 1: FOUNDATIONS

• 1. Why Most Hospitality Paid Media Fails
• 2. The Hospitality Customer Journey & Where Paid Media Fits
• 3. Setting Up for Success: Pixels, Tracking & Attribution
• 4. The Paid Media Strategy Framework

SECTION 2: META ADS (FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM)

• 5. Campaign Structure for Hospitality
• 6. Audience Strategy: Who to Target & How
• 7. Creative Formulas That Drive Bookings
• 8. Retargeting Frameworks for Restaurants & Hotels

SECTION 3: GOOGLE ADS

• 9. Search Ads for Hospitality (Bookings & Brand Defence)
• 10. Performance Max Done Right
• 11. YouTube Ads for Awareness & Consideration
• 12. Local Service Ads & Hotel Ads

SECTION 4: TIKTOK & EMERGING CHANNELS

• 13. TikTok Ads for Hospitality
• 14. The Creator-Led Ad Strategy
• 15. When to Test New Channels (And When Not To)

SECTION 5: CREATIVE & MESSAGING

• 16. The Hospitality Ad Creative Toolkit
• 17. Hooks, Offers & CTAs That Convert
• 18. UGC, Influencer Whitelisting & Social Proof Ads
• 19. Creative Testing Frameworks

SECTION 6: MEASUREMENT & OPTIMISATION

• 20. The Real Metrics: ROAS, Cost-Per-Cover, Cost-Per-Room-Night
• 21. Attribution Models for Hospitality
• 22. The Weekly Optimisation Checklist
• 23. Knowing When to Scale, Pause, or Kill a Campaign

SECTION 7: BUDGETS & SCALING

• 24. Budget Frameworks: £500 to £50,000 per Month
• 25. Seasonal Budgeting for Hospitality
• 26. Scaling Without Breaking Performance
• 27. Working With Agencies vs In-House

APPENDICES

• Appendix A: Campaign Setup Checklists (Meta, Google, TikTok)
• Appendix B: Creative Brief Templates
• Appendix C: Reporting Dashboard Templates
• Appendix D: Tools & Resources

FORMAT: Instant digital download. PDF playbook plus editable templates and checklists.