Google Ads for Travel Agents: How to Setup An Exceptional Campaign

Google Ads advertising can be a challenge for travel agents. There are many keywords and searches to target, which number in the millions and so it can often be difficult to know which ones to target and when.

There is also the seasonality of the industry as a whole and that requires regular updates to the ads and campaigns. You may have to update the campaigns regularly throughout the year, something which other industries do less frequently.

Added to that are the new offers and discounts that you need to update on your ads and your landing pages. So you see, there is a ton of work to do and some will have to be updated manually. But Google provides some powerful automated tools that update your ads quickly as you release new offers and update your website and landing pages.

Here I’ll take you through some key features to update as you setup a Google Ads campaign for your travel agency.

 

Campaign objective

One of the first things you’ll do when setting up a Google Ads campaign for your travel agency is to pick an objective. This sets out what you want to achieve in your campaign, whether that’s to get sales, leads or traffic or to raise brand awareness or others.

The objective you choose will determine the campaign types you’ll have, the bid strategies that you can implement and many other controls and features.

For travel agents using Google Ads, the Leads objective is usually the best to use. It will help you to reach your goals more effectively.

 

Campaign type

Next, you’ll need to pick the campaign type that you want to run. For travel agents, a Google Ads Search campaign is usually the best to start with. And this helps you to target people that are searching for flights, travel information and so on, on Google.

So, you’ll need to create some Responsive search ads and then add keywords that are closely related to these, so you can target the best search terms. And you’ll add your ads and keywords in closely related ad groups to be able to achieve high quality scores.

 

Budget

Your advertising budget is the maximum amount you want to spend on a daily basis. And if you have a monthly budget you can divide that by the average number of days in a month if you want to run it on all days. The average number of days in a month is 30.4.

When you’re just starting it’s not always easy to know what budget to start with. For a travel agency, it’s a good idea to start with £750 or $900 per month and then increase it as performance improves.

Also carrying out some keyword research will help you to know the best budget amount to set. The keywords you select will help you determine this.

 

Bidding

You’ll need to pick a bid strategy that’s most relevant for your new campaign. As a new campaign you’ll have four objectives to pick from and they are Clicks, Conversions, Impressions and Conversion Value. Each of these has its own related bid strategy.

As a new campaign for a travel agency, I recommend focusing on Clicks because that will use the Maximise Clicks bid strategy that will try to get you as many clicks as possible for your budget.

And later you can pick another bid strategy like target cost per action (tCPA) when you’ve had a good number of conversions and know what CPA you want to reach.

Keywords

Next, you’ll work on the first ad group of your campaign. And the first thing you’ll need to do is carry out some keyword research. And there is a tool in the campaign that will help you carry out the research using a URL or some keyword ideas that you have.

However, it’s also a good idea to carry out keyword research with the Keyword Planner tool before you create your campaign. This will help you with deciding on the budget you should set and the ads you should write and so on. You can find it in Tools & Settings in your account.

 

Text ads

Text ads are also a key part of your ad groups. And you should create at least one Responsive search ad in each ad group with as much information as you can add. These ads give you up to 15 headlines and four description lines, so they give you a lot of space to include benefits and features that are important for your travel agency.

 

Ad schedule

When to show your travel agency ads on Google is an important factor to consider. It’s usually best to run them on all days and hours when you’re launching a new campaign. And the Ad schedule feature is what you’ll use to set the times when to run your ads.

People search for travel services, holidays and flights at all times and so it’s recommended to just keep running them with the default settings. However, your Segments reports will show you when you get the best performance and you can choose to bid higher when you’re getting the most conversions.

 

Get in Touch

Need help setting up a Google Ads campaign for your travel agency? I’m a Google Ads consultant and PPC specialist and I’d be happy to help. Get in touch with me below to discuss your requirements.