Boost Your Boutique Hotel’s Online Presence with Paid Search Marketing 🚀
Paid search marketing is a game-changer for your hotel's online presence, harnessing the power of search engines to reach billions of potential customers.
In this blog, we’ll break down what paid search marketing is, how it works, and explore the key benefits and challenges for boutique hotels.
What Is Paid Search Marketing?
Paid search marketing is where you pay to show your ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) and other spaces within paid search networks. The big player here is Google Ads and the small (quite insignificant player) is Microsoft Ads.
One of the most popular forms is pay-per-click (PPC) marketing – you only pay when someone clicks your ad. PPC ads include both search and display ads. Search ads pop up when someone searches for a relevant term, while display ads appear whenever users are browsing online. Traditionally search ads can be either text ads (similar to organic results) or shopping ads (showing images and details of products). But when you get Glow on board to run your ads whilst you will hear about PPC you’ll also hear about Performance Max, Youtube and Demand Gen (but that’s far too nerdy to go into now).
How Does Paid Search Marketing Work?
So, how does paid search advertising work for your boutique hotel? While display ads target pre-selected audiences, search ads follow this process:
Campaign Creation: You create a campaign of ads targeting specific keywords.
Ad Serving: When a potential guest searches for a query, they’re served a relevant paid search ad.
User Interaction: The potential guest clicks on the ad and lands on a URL you specify. (You’re then charged for each click.)
The Foundations of Paid Search
Taking a closer look at the mechanics of paid search marketing, there are five key pillars:
Keywords: Do your homework. Find out what your potential guests are searching for. Target these keywords with your ads – the more relevant your ads are, the better your chances in the auction.
Auctions and Bids: Wondering how search engines pick which ads to show? It’s all about the auction. You set a bid strategy that determines how much you’re willing to spend on each keyword. The search engine algorithms then decide the winner based on the highest ad rank.
Ad Rank: Your ad rank depends on several factors like bid amount, ad quality, search context, asset quality, ad format, and competition. Optimise your ads for quality and relevance to get the best results.
Ads: Build your ads with a mix of copy and ‘assets’ like sitelinks, images, contact details, and promotions. Make sure your ad is relevant to the user’s query, has clear CTAs, and lands on a concise landing page to improve ad quality.
Budgets: Set your bids at the ad group or keyword level, and your daily budgets at the campaign level. Your daily ad spend might exceed your daily budget, but it will balance out over the month.
Benefits of Paid Search Marketing for Hotels
Now that you know how paid search advertising works, let’s explore the benefits for your boutique hotel:
Immediate Results: Effective paid search campaigns can deliver immediate results in traffic and conversions. These results are easily measurable, with platforms tracking metrics like CTR, conversion rate, cost per result, and search impression share.
Cost Effective: With granular control over budgets and bid strategies, you can manage ad spend closely. PPC advertising tends to generate a high return on investment.
Reach High-Intent Audiences: Your ads are served to users actively searching for your hotel or services, increasing the chances of conversion.
Greater Visibility: Like SEO, the goal of paid search ads is to get your hotel’s ads shown first on the SERP. PPC ads will always appear before organic results, giving you greater visibility from the start.
Cost VS Reward
Of course, paid search marketing has its challenges. Increasing competition means average CPCs are rising year on year, often requiring annual budget increases to stay ahead of competitors.
Despite these challenges, paid search marketing can be a cost-effective way to deliver immediate results for your boutique hotel. Whether your goals are building brand awareness, increasing traffic, or driving conversions, paid search can complement your SEO strategy. The most effective hotel digital marketing strategy will leverage both channels.
Don’t wait. Shake up your adverts, save money, and watch the bookings roll in. Get in touch with Glow Digital Marketing and let’s make it happen.
