Upcoming PPC trends expected in the travel industry

Upcoming PPC trends expected in the travel industry

A pay-per-click specialist has outlined the trends that it forecasts will play a big role in the travel sector this year. Circus PPC says portals, tour operator and hotels must keep on top of paid search activity with changes such as those to Google’s … Continue reading

A pay-per-click specialist has outlined the trends that it forecasts will play a big role in the travel sector this year.

Circus PPC says portals, tour operator and hotels must keep on top of paid search activity with changes such as those to Google’s AdWords dashboard and the rise of voice search.

 

It has broken down its predictions for Travolution below:

Increased focus on Audience

“Ensuring that you correctly target your audience is vital for the success of your PPC campaigns. Targeting the wrong demographics will result in your campaign falling flat, but correctly targeting your audience and you could see a significant click-through rate (CTR) from your ads, and a considerable return on investment (ROI) in terms of customer retention, bookings and enquiries.

“It’s likely that we’ll see more focus being shifted towards audience targeting this year, and by using similar and in-market audiences, as well as retargeting based on integrated data from search, display and video, you’re more likely to serve ads which are relevant to the end user.”

Keywords

“Keywords will always be king but the key to a good keyword strategy, aside from that all-important keyword research, is recognising inferred intent. In simple terms, what does the user want from their search?

“Is the user simply researching ‘the best four star hotels in London’ or are they looking to book at that time as well? When they search ‘all inclusive holidays’, does the user want to book an all-inclusive holiday at that moment, or are they simply looking for all-inclusive destinations?

“By really understanding the end user intent, you’re more likely to be able to provide better ad copy, and in turn more relevant ads, and a greater CTR.”

Further Mobile Growth

“In 2017, we saw another increase in the number of mobile searches being made, and 2018 is likely to continue down this path.

“With this in mind, it’s important that the basics are done right – for example ensuring that the landing pages of your adverts are mobile friendly, and that the site has good mobile load speed. Although this is strictly more an SEO problem than a PPC one, it does have an effect on your paid search activity.

“The travel industry is one of the most competitive, and so if you’re bidding on terms such as ‘cheap flights’ or ‘all inclusive holidays’ you’ll need to make sure that your investment isn’t being wasted because of a poor mobile website experience.”

Automation

“Automation is likely to play a part in your PPC strategy for 2018, with Google already moving away from manager control, instead bringing in automated ad rotation and even creating ads for you. We prefer to give the accounts we manage the human touch, and have people monitoring them and looking for ways to improve them at all times. The danger with automation is falling into the trap of letting the account run itself, which can potentially pose problems. Of course, automation has its advantages, but having a PPC manager giving it a more human touch is much more likely to see the account run smoothly.”

Voice Search

“It’s no secret that voice search is on the rise, with Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices becoming increasingly common in peoples’ homes, and Siri, Bixby or Cortana found on nearly every smartphone.

“The question is: how will this affect PPC campaigns? The behaviour from a voice search is likely to be very different to that of a typical mobile user and so your strategy will need to change to try and capture traffic from voice search. Unfortunately, at this stage, it’s not possible to differentiate between voice searches and more traditional searches, neither is it possible to serve ads specifically to voice searches only. Having said this, it’s likely to only be a matter of time before we can ask our smart speakers and assistants to find particular flights, or the best package holidays.”