Hotel Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per Click advertising is a platform that allows a hotel website owner to display simple text ads to a motivated audience looking for a hotel in your market. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective and accountable advertising techniques available today! The three main Pay per Click (PPC) platforms are provided by Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Yahoo and Bing have combined and are now on one platform. Hotel Industry specific platforms include Kayak and TravelAds by Expedia, and intent media for Orbitz and others.

Hotel Keyword Research

Pay per Click advertisers place bids on keywords or keyword phrases that were discovered in the keyword research phase. These are words the site owner thinks their target audience would use in a search field when looking for a hotel in your market. When a user types a search query into the field of a search engine that matches the advertiser’s keyword/keyword phrase, relevant PPC ads are displayed on the SERPs page. The PPC advertiser’s ad will be displayed based on the parameters defined by the site owner. The quality score also impacts cost per click. These parameters include the amount they will pay for a click (CPC or cost per click), Geo targeting, Time of Day targeting etc..In search engines, a PPC ad is generally just above or to the right of the natural search results where they can be easily seen.

Some of the benefits of using a Pay per Click ad campaign as part of your marketing strategy include:

• You are reaching customers when they looking for you.
• You can decide to run an ad in the morning and be in front of your customers that afternoon.
• It is measurable. You can measure your success in real time on the fly by defining and monitoring metrics that include, Cost per Click (CPC), Click through rate (CTR), Return on ad Spend (ROAS), Cost per action (CPA), Key performance Indicators (KPI), etc…
• It is flexible. You can design, run, or stop a campaign based on any parameters defined by the site owner.
• It is a cost effective alternative to traditional advertising media.
• You are in control. Ads can be modified on the fly. Ads can be stopped and started with a click of the mouse, etc…

Hotel PPC Setup

The mechanics of setting up a PPC campaign include setting up an account with the platform(s) of choice, more keyword research including synonyms, negative keywords research, related keywords, common misspellings of keywords, grouping of keywords in to ad groups of keyword list of twenty or less, writing ad copy for each keyword grouping, defining keyword bids, monitoring impressions and click through ratios (CTR) as well as other Key Performance Indicators (KEI), monitoring spend levels, campaign quality levels (which impact cost per click), the list just goes on.

Hotel PPC Monitoring

After setup PPC platform monitoring must be in place. To ensure success results must be initially reviewed daily for an extended period of time. After that monitoring levels can be modified. Monitoring will facilitate discovering any malfunctions with the campaign and allow for timely fix.

Hotel A/B Testing – Ads, Landing Pages

After a base line is established ad testing must begin. This testing is referred to as A/B testing. A/B testing can be preformed on the actual ad copy as well as landing pages. A/B testing is an ongoing process. Once there is a decided winner between A or B, a new test should begin challenging the winner of the previous test.

Ultimately, deciding to allocate budget and energy into this rapidly growing media is a wise one.  As discussed in the previous pages and paragraphs it also takes energy and time. All the tasks necessary are common sense approaches to internet marketing they do require intimate knowledge of this type of media/Platform. In most cases a business owner or website owner’s time is better spend with the core competencies with which the business was built and outsource Hotel Pay per Click functions to a PPC professional . It is important to note that as with any marketing action there are no guarantees of success. Actions must be relevant, logical, ethical, targeted, and in line with business goals.

Bottom-line is make an investment in your hotels internet marketing strategy. Prepare yourself for success. Take action to level the playing field with your competitors, or get a competitive advantage within your competitive set of hotels by implementing a hotel pay per click ad campaign.

Workman_HIMS is a cost effective and affordable hotel internet marketing service that can help you develop a Pay Per Click Ad campaign for your hotel. We can help you get that competitive edge in the competitive online distributions channel. Contact us today for information about a cost effective and affordable introductory hotel internet marketing solution offer for your hotel.