How to Increase Travel Website Traffic? – The Ultimate Adwords Checklist
Online Marketing • September 30, 2016 • Saurabh Nanda
Google AdWords is a powerful tool for driving footfall to your travel website. It’s a vital travel website marketing requirement. So, we’ve compiled a checklist to help you maximize its impact and grow your online travel business.
- Are you differentiating separate campaigns and ad groups?
- Have you targeted your campaign properly?
- Are you using the most effective keywords?
- Have you added money to your Adwords account?
- Have you developed an effective billing strategy?
- Does your ad display ALL relevant information?
- Does your ad fall into any keyword traps?
- Does your ad have a clear call to action?
How does AdWords increase travel website traffic?
Google AdWords is a data-driven, highly targeted form of advertising that’s helped many tour operators break into the digital marketplace. If done well, the digital marketing for travel website will drive ideal travellers right to your travel website. If done poorly, the digital marketing for travel website can drain your marketing budget quickly and not increase travel website traffic. For this reason, online travel businesses should always focus on scaling up their campaign only after achieving results.
This blog on travel website marketing is divided into three sections: input, financial and output checklists.
#1 The Input Checklist
Is your campaign clean and cohesive to your online travel business?
Are you using the same login for Adwords, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to manage your travel website? Doing so lets you completely streamline your campaign. If all accounts are properly linked, your online travel business can benefit by using relevant data from other Google tools during your travel website marketing campaign.
Are you differentiating separate campaigns and ad groups?
Distinguishing campaigns based on different types of travellers viz. weekend traveller, vacationer, sightseer, globetrotter, explorer or backpacker lets you discover which approach helps increase traffic to your travel website. By tracking different metrics and employing A/B testing, you can pinpoint which strategy (or strategies) is most effective. Always plan in terms of the bigger picture for your online travel business.
Have you targeted your campaign properly?
Who is the ideal travel customer? AdWords lets you target your campaign for your travel website marketing according to demographic, location and behaviour so you can hand-pick your travel customers. The better you target, the more travellers you get, and the less you spend.
Are you using the most effective keywords for your online travel business?
Have you selected the optimal keywords for your campaign? AdWords provides excellent tools to help you answer this question. For example, often using lower ranking keywords lets you separate yourself from the competing businesses. You attract niche travel customers and reduce the chance that you’re paying for the same keywords that other online travel businesses are using—it’s a win-win situation.
#2 Financial Checklist
Have you added money to your Adwords account?
Adding money to your account is the final step to make it live. Remember, to begin the campaign with a limited budget to first ensure it’s effectively helping you increase travel website traffic. Consider setting up a daily budget limit. As time passes, you can see what’s really working for your online travel business and optimize your campaign. When you achieve this, add more money for better ROI.
Pro Tip: Google offers the best deals to first-time users. Search for promotional codes to use before you launch your first AdWords campaign.
Have you developed an effective billing strategy?
No need to set one strategy and stick to it right away. Experiment with bidding to diagnose what works best, then build a promising strategy for your online travel business. We recommend starting at 60-70% of the suggested bidding cost, then slowly increasing your bid as your campaign goes on.
#3 Output Checklist
Does your ad display all relevant information about your travel website?
Preview your ad before it goes live. Make sure that your potential travel customers are getting all of the information they need to click through to your site. In addition, make sure you preview your ad on multiple devices to ensure your mobile and web-based advertising is equally effective.
Does your ad fall into any keyword traps?
Do your research to avoid low-quality keywords—keywords that mislead your customer and therefore don’t lead to conversion. You want to increase travel website traffic but not with the wrong kind of people. It’s a waste of your resources. The keywords that you don’t want your customers to see are just as important as those you do. Quite often, you don’t want job seekers to click on your ads; negative keywords can help in this regard. Remember, bidding too much for an otherwise effective keyword is another potential keyword trap.
Does your ad have a clear call to action?
A clear call to action (eg. Book Now) creates a sense of urgency, attracting the most motivated travel customers. Effective calls to actions translate to higher rates of conversion. On a similar note, make sure information like your business name, address and phone number is visible. Therefore these are essential to ensure the success of digital marketing for travel websites. People tend to distrust ads that don’t include these basics.
A Summary: Why Optimization is Key
As a tour operator, it’s critical that you set up AdWords funnel tracking properly. Doing so lets you analyze important conversion metrics, then make adjustments accordingly to get better results for your travel website marketing.
At the core of achieving great cost-per-conversion is constantly adjusting your campaign to find the optimal bid rate for each keyword. It’s a trial-and-error process that should evolve along with your online travel business. And remember, AdWords isn’t the only way to harness the power of search engines to increase your bookings—learn about increasing your organic reach. Like many things in life, you should master the basics, then strive for excellence. If you follow this brief checklist, you’ll be well on your way to success.
