PPC Optimisation 2008/09 Travel Technology Guide
The better the ad, the higher the rank, possibly at a lower cost than a competitor
listing.
3. Achieving a high click through rate
A Google ad has limited space for words. With only 25 characters for the title and
three more lines of up to 35 characters each, wording and layout requires careful
design. What the ad says, how it looks and its relevance to keywords are critical.
Plus ads have to conform to strict guidelines that Google will police!
The ad has to grab the visitor’s attention and entice them to click it. Google reports
on clickthrough rates (CTR).
4. Converting clickthroughs into bookings
This is probably the hardest bit, but the most important.
The first thing to bear in mind is the relevance of your website page to the ad. If the
ad is promoting “Holidays to Chania”, your landing page shouldn’t be featuring hill
walking in China.
Google can provide some help with conversion tracking. This involves a cookie from
the ad and a piece of code on a website page, such as the booking confirmation.
If the visitor clicks on the ad and then progresses through to booking, the browser will
send the cookie to the Google server. Although this will track a visitor’s progress on
the site, it doesn’t cater for those who phone to make a booking, use a different
computer or recommend the site to a friend.
But Google is no different to any other form of advertising and sales conversion has
to be related to the total acquisition cost. But for those who rely mostly on the
Internet, monitoring clickthrough conversion shouldn’t be overlooked.
5. Achieving a net profit per booking
Ad campaigns need to be managed and ads run at specific times of the day and week
and targeted at specific audiences.
Online advertising spend shouldn’t be measured solely on ad ranking and CTR. The
total cost of acquiring a booking must be related to the net profit per booking. It can
be so easy to look at online spend in isolation and then realise too late that the
business isn’t achieving an acceptable profit.
Managing Online Spend
Since search engines are an important part of online trading, one way or another online
marketing will incur costs, either through SEO or PPC. Although it’s conceivable that one
could manage these activities oneself, there’s still a cost in the directing resource away from
other tasks. There are many agencies offering SEO and PPC services so it’s not a task to
delegate to the office junior, though some have tried this.
Successful SEO and PPC agencies employ skilled practitioners and specialist software to
manage customer campaigns. Agencies know how to choose successful keywords and create
attractive ads and can report on performance. They use software to automatically turn ads on
and off to maximise visitor activity and can launch new campaigns quickly and efficiently. One
agency I know is currently managing over 4 million keywords for just one customer!
Some agencies automate ad creation using customer data feeds, such as holiday availability
from the reservation system. This ensures ads are relevant and are quoting current pricing
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