What is PPC?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a digital marketing method used to advertise websites, services and products online (usually through a website such as Google). It showcases your website, in the form of an ad, in more prominent places in search engine results.
PPC is a powerful digital marketing channel that can be highly beneficial to hotels and hospitality businesses, putting your website directly in front of many potential customers, and right amongst the OTA’s.
How can PPC help hotels?
Having a presence on these search engine results pages through PPC advertising is invaluable for many reasons and can massively impact your hotel’s digital marketing results. We’ve identified some of the key benefits for the hospitality sector below.
Increase brand awareness
PPC is a great way to increase your hotel’s awareness by getting more eyes on your official website, rather than any other potential booking route.
Usually, it’s likely OTAs may be bidding on search terms that include your hotel’s name to encourage searchers to book with them. However, if you choose to run a brand campaign, you can get more eyes on your official site.
Drive direct bookings
More direct bookings, it’s what all hotels want, right? OTAs are great, but if you had the chance to cut down the amount of commission you’re paying, you’d probably jump at the opportunity.
That’s where PPC comes in – it’s an efficient way to drive more direct bookings. PPC allows you to get in and amongst the OTAs and encourage more people directly to your website, therefore cutting down the amount going through OTAs.
However, it’s important to ensure you’re offering is more enticing!
Generate high-quality leads
Similar to driving more direct bookings, PPC is a great way to generate high-quality, relevant leads. If your hotel offers a variety of other services (weddings, corporate, event hire etc.), you can use PPC to get more leads.
By targeting specific, high-intent keywords, you can attract searchers that are far more likely to convert, because you know exactly what they’re looking for.
Increase website traffic
Reaching the vast number of people searching Google every day is naturally going to increase the amount of traffic coming to your website.
Whilst it’s great to see numbers going up, just ensure this traffic is still relevant!
Why it’s important to get the most out of your budget?
PPC can be very effective, but it’s important to use your budget wisely. After all, no marketing budget is unlimited. It’s vital to ensure you’re squeezing out the maximum performance from your campaigns.
After all, your goal should be to get a better ROI (return on investment) than you’d get from simply paying commission to OTAs.
Below, we’ve identified a few tips that can help your hotel’s PPC budget go a little bit further.
How to make your hotel’s PPC budget go further
Set clear goals and objectives
Setting clear goals is essential. It’s important to know what you want to achieve and then you can tailor your campaigns accordingly.
Are you driving bookings, enquiries or awareness? What does success look like? What is your target ROI? How many conversions are you expecting? These are the questions you need to ask yourself before launching any campaigns.
Ensure tracking is working
Ensuring your tracking and conversion tracking is working accurately can have a big impact on the performance of your campaigns.
If you’re using automated bidding strategies, Google uses your conversion data to better target your ads to users that are more likely to convert.
Also, to measure success, you’ll need to be able to define and attribute where your conversions are coming from, and what your return on investment is.
Choose the right keywords
The keywords you select will have a big impact on the performance and the cost of your campaign.
Different keywords carry different costs which can depend on several factors such as relevance and competitiveness.
It’s important to choose relevant keywords that you’re confident will drive conversions.
It’s also important to remember the match type, make sure you’re using the right match type to avoid any unwanted search terms showing your ads. For example, a broad match keyword is highly likely to show ads for some irrelevant terms, potentially wasting precious budget.
Create effective ad copy
Effective ad copy is what is going to convince people to click on your ads rather than competitors.
It’s important to ensure your copy is clear, concise and includes an obvious call to action.
It’s also important to be as descriptive as possible. Remember, if someone clicks on your ad, you’re paying for that, no matter how long they stay on your site. So make sure the ads give them a heads up on what they can expect if they click. Don’t just fill it with empty promises that’ll leave them disappointed after clicking.
Use location targeting
Location targeting is extremely important to make the most out of your budget.
Defining a specific area for where your ads show ensures you’re only showing ads to your specific target audience and not wasting valuable time and budget on locations that won’t convert.
Use negative keywords
By using negative keywords, you can determine when your ads do not show. This can help you to save money and improve the relevance of your campaigns.
Here, you can identify specific words and phrases using the match types mentioned above to ensure your ads don’t show up.
For example, if you’re a luxury hotel in Manchester, you may want to add the negative keyword ‘cheap’ as you can be fairly confident that someone searching for a cheap hotel isn’t the right type of customer for you.
Use extensions
Ad extensions can increase the likelihood of people clicking on your ads.
Google offers a variety of ad extension offerings to approve the attractiveness of your ads. Here, you can add things such as promotions, location, phone numbers etc, all to make your ad stand out amongst the crowd.
Optimise your website
Is your website completely optimised? A well-optimised website helps to improve your conversion rate and the likelihood people that who visit your website will make a booking.
Ensuring that your website contains the keywords you’re targeting also helps with the overall quality score of your ads, helping to reduce costs. A higher quality score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful.
Monitor results and optimise accordingly
It’s essential to regularly monitor the results of your campaigns and to optimise and edit them according to the results.
It’s a great way to identify what’s working and what’s not, and then if necessary, you can move your budget around a little, focusing on the best-performing campaigns.
Conclusion
In conclusion, PPC can be a very effective way to reach new customers and drive direct bookings for your hotels, in time, cutting down the commission you’re paying to OTAs.
However, it’s important to use your budget wisely and ensure that your campaigns are well-optimised to give the best return on investment.
If you follow the tips in this guide, you’ll get the most out of your PPC budget. However, if you’re looking for some extra help, get in touch with the team today! We’re hotel marketing experts.