Paid search isn’t going anywhere. Having been around since the early 00’s, you may even remember seeing those first text ads that had the one spammy headline and a link to the advertiser website, ah how I miss those days in some weird nostalgic way…
Thankfully for your hotel, these early spammy looking links are now obsolete, giving way to far more helpful and diverse creative options, both for search users and advertisers.
In this blog, I’m going to share all the creative options that your hotel can utilise to increase your paid search ROI.
Text ads
Old but gold, text ads are still a great business tool for hotels. On one end of the spectrum, you can control the exact messaging with a responsive search ad on the other, you can hand all messaging over to Google to choose with dynamic search ads. Google is pushing advertisers towards the latter in the name of automation but with strict brand guidelines often being in place for brands, most hotels sit somewhere in the middle.
As a bonus to your text ads, it’s important to maximise your usage of ad extensions, which allow you to show a wide array of options, from regular sitelinks all the way to lead forms, perfect for picking up easy service enquiries.
Hotel Ads
Google is on a mission to put the OTAs out of business with their latest expansion of Google Hotel Ads, a tool that places your hotels’ inventory directly against the OTAs on Google’s meta search results. By connecting your booking engine to GHA, you can bypass the OTAs altogether, growing your direct bookings and reducing your cost per booking in the process.
To stress the point, if you’re still relying on OTAs to move your hotels inventory, integrating with GHA is a MUST. We’ve successfully connected 1000 hotels to GHA so, are happy to lend a hand if you like (shameless plus, I’m sorry!).
Shopping Ads
If your hotel is selling vouchers for an experience you offer, shopping ads could be a secret weapon. These are exactly as they say on the box; ads that show an e-commerce product and a price.
When someone searches for ‘hotel spa experience day’ or ‘gift voucher hotel’ in your local area, by showing a neat shopping ad, you can win the sale. And at the least, this will increase your exposure for a low cost, given the cost per click for shopping ads averages just £0.33 in 2020.
Display Ads
Display Ads are simply ads that show an image or video rather than text. The idea is that someone sees/watches the ad and clicks on it, leading them to your landing page (unless it’s brand awareness you’re after, then your goal may be someone visiting your website at a later date).
As with text ads, display Ads can come in many different shapes and sizes but to keep things simple, there are essentially 2 types – images and videos. Both can appear on anything linked to Google Ads, which includes many of the world’s websites, including the entertainment giant YouTube.
There are two main ways your hotel can use display Ads:
1. You may have noticed a display ad on a website that is coming from another website you’ve visited, this is display remarketing, a great tool to keep you front of mind amongst website visitors.
2. Prospecting display activity is great for brand awareness, allowing you to target a specific audience. This audience can be based on Google’s interest categories or, your own audience sources.