January 27, 2020
Catching the attention of travel shoppers can be a challenge in today’s increasingly saturated market. Whether it’s a prime location, stellar deal, or striking ambiance, you want your hotel’s unique appeal to stand out against the competition.
TravelAds is an easy-to-use yet sophisticated sponsored listing program that can help you achieve just that. By using advanced targeting capabilities, TravelAds helps your hotel increase visibility and connect with travelers during the path to purchase.
TravelAds marketing partners often ask us how to improve their ads and how to optimize their targeting, bids and budgets. I wrote the following checklist to address some frequent questions and to give you some inspiration to get started.
Step 1: Get going!
Place your bids and budgets: For your daily budget, think about how many room nights you’d like to fill and how many clicks it might take to generate enough conversions. In the TravelAds portal you can utilize competitive insights and adjust your cost per click (CPC) to determine how strong your bid is relative to others in your market.
Fund your account: TravelAds marketing partners can set up payment with either direct bill or a credit card. You also may want to sign up for auto-rebill to ensure your ads are always on when you want them. Both of these options are available under Account Settings > Automatic Funding.
Step 2: Get creative
Looking at the two listings above, which hotel would you prefer to book?
Optimize your TravelAds: Optimizing your content ensures that travelers not only see your ad – but that they click on it because they want to learn more about your property.
Whether you want to attract more family travelers or business travelers, develop your ad copy accordingly. To stand out, ads need to be vibrant, informative, and concise. Capture your audience’s attention by using:
- Unique ad imagery that captures the most compelling features of your property.
- Ad copy that highlights amenities, offers, and other key selling points.
Step 3: Measure, improve, and check-in
The most successful TravelAds marketing partners check in on their bids, targeting parameters, and ad creative at least once per week.
Review the Reports tab: Here you’ll find all insights available to you. The data you receive can help you gauge adjustments to:
- Bid strategy
- Ad parameters
- Creative
Schedule check-ins: Leveraging the expertise of your dedicated TravelAds expert, who understands your hotel’s specific needs and the market dynamics, can help bolster your campaign’s success. We recommend booking time to discuss strategies for fine-tuning your campaign and helping ensure your TravelAds investment has significant, lasting impact.
Seeking more in-depth guidance? Both the TravelAds Essentials Guide and the video “Getting Started with TravelAds” provide a variety of success strategies – from optimizing your ad images, to identifying your advertising goals and targeting a qualified audience.
