The travel industry is just one of those sectors that is feeling the economic pressure from tighter budgets. With more and more travelers seeking the best last-minute deals, travel businesses are left in limbo about their projected takings. That’s where PPC agencies can encourage healthier figures by attracting more visitors and, hopefully, converting them into vacation bookers.
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What is Paid Advertising?
Understanding paid advertising and the benefits it offers a travel agency facing low booking numbers is the first step. Paid advertising encompasses any content that directly targets a specific audience. This is most commonly seen through digital channels such as Google Ads and paid social media promotions, like Facebook and Instagram ads.
Unlike organic methods, where promotion of a service or product occurs naturally and at no cost, paid advertising requires payment in exchange for promotion. With paid advertisement, businesses experience more control over who sees their promotions and can also measure performance. This provides an opportunity to tweak paid ad configurations to achieve the most profitable results.
Paid Advertising Tactics to Use to Attract More Visitors
When entering the world of paid advertisements it’s important to understand the tactics and how to use them to best effect. Here are a few pointers to push your efforts in the right direction.
Define your target audience
First of all, who is your target audience? Not understanding who you are selling to is a rookie mistake. By getting inside the heads of your customers, you will be able to encourage more bookings. This step allows you to understand the obstacles they may face in booking and provides you with an opportunity to counteract their concerns.
Use Google Ads
Head to the search engines for step two. Where do people searching for their dream vacation go when they need answers? Most likely, they will start a Google search. Therefore, you need to know what your prospective customers are searching for in order to direct them to your site. By paying for Google Ads, you can capture the attention of potential holiday-makers who are ready and willing to click ‘book now’.
Retarget visitors who didn’t complete their booking
There are also those individuals who were on the precipice of completing a booking but didn’t quite get there. Through paid advertising and other means such as email marketing, these almost-bookers can be retargeted rather than abandoned.
Promote seasonal offers
Paid advertising works particularly effectively with seasonal promotions and one-time offers. Especially concerning the travel industry, which is itself a highly seasonal sector. Summer vacations or winter escapes can be alluring to those with children in school or who receive set time off during the year.
Cohesive landing pages and ads
Nothing can put potential customers off quite like broken links and paid advertisements that lead to landing pages that don’t make sense. This gives off a feeling of distrust. Vacationers will not want to part with their hard-earned dollars if they suspect a travel site is a scam. Therefore, it is essential that landing pages and their paid ads match up. Cohesion reinforces customer trust.
Set a realistic budget
Understand your business and the actual budget you have to work with before you set out on creating paid advertisements. If you are just starting out and don’t have any paid ad experts to guide you through the process, make sure you monitor your efforts as you go. Keep an eye on click-through rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversion rates, cost per booking, and return on ad spend (ROAS). Then, depending on performance, you can amend the budget.
Other Marketing Channels to Combine With Paid Advertising
Don’t miss a trick by relying solely on paid advertising and disregarding other useful marketing tools. The beauty of partnering with a professional marketing consultant is that they can advise you on other profitable avenues to pursue.
SEO services
A mix of organic and paid advertising covers all bases. Paid ads give your travel business immediate visibility. However, organic traffic through a well-planned SEO strategy can build reliability and a long-term, sustained presence.
Influencer marketing
It’s one of the newer types of marketing, but no less successful. The general public is turning to influencers as their guide to where to travel and who to travel with. Vacations are expensive, and so making the right decision counts. If a trusted influencer gives a travel business the green light, then this could mean more bookings.
Email marketing
As mentioned before, email marketing can pick up visitors who may have signed up to the mailing list but have yet to make a booking. An email can serve as a useful reminder to a vacation planner who is still hesitant about booking or can provide a tempting money-off discount that persuades them to complete their booking.
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