PPC Marketing Ideal For The Travel Industry
With the global recession showing no apparent signs of slowing down soon travel agents are being forced to make their advertising work harder. Traditional high street travel agents are struggling as peoples holiday budgets dwindle and as increasingly Google et al increasingly is where holiday makers are researching and buying their holidays and flights. Because of this many travel agents increasingly are turning to their website and online marketing as an important way of generating new business.
Pay per click is fantastic for holiday and accommodation providers as the search engines are by far and away where most holiday/hotel bookings originate from.
Also as often the keywords are very niche.g. ‘holiday villa rental in nerja’ the conversion (lead/enquiry) rate can be very high and therefore cost per conversion low. Typical overseas holiday providers can expect usually expect to see a conversion rate of 3%-10% and cost per conversions of £4-£12. Pay per click enables advertisers to target specific locations and types of holidays based on their changing requirements. For example i October advertisers could spend 50% of budget on targeting, for example, Costa Brava villa holidays and 50% on Javea villa holidays and in June 30% Southern Spain 30% diving 40% Northern Spain. Similarly pay per click advertisers could promote last minute deals if they hadsurplus inventory or packages they may be looking to sell quickly. Also a pay per click campaign can be turned on or off, up or down to reflect seasonality.
Other key pay per click benefits to the holiday/travel industry include:
- Can target specific countries or regions
- Huge exposure on the most used search engines
- Clever reporting tools such as Google analytics and conversion tracking
- Helps capture potential customer data for other marketing methods i.e. mailshots
The most important Google pay per click advertising consideration to work on is the most influential variable affecting conversion (enquiry/sale) i.e. the website. Experience shows that online bookings are much less likely than sales via web based enquiries generated by a simple enquiry form and/or a holiday quote form or even a phone call or email. Therefore the site needs to be geared to make it very easy and likely for those enquiries to happen. Also if a strong call to action can be made applicable e.g. “fill in your details for free Spain holiday guide” (this can be an automated PDF or similar to keep costs down) it is a great way of capturing more potential buyers.