When should your AdWords campaign be generating the best value leads?

PPC advertising holds plenty of potential for hotel managers keen to boost their reach and connect with consumers looking to make a booking. But, as with all marketing strategies, weighing up the impact and discovering the best course of action can be a time consuming process. Fortunately, we can help you unlock your full potential using AdWords.

AdWords offers businesses access to plenty of leads when used correctly. Over 3.5 billion searches are conducted every day via Google, demonstrating exactly why AdWords should form part of your hotel marketing strategy.

For those that have yet to deploy the tool, AdWords can be a very effective method for boosting online marketing campaigns. It’s essentially a PPC form of marketing that puts your advert at the top of Google results when consumers search for terms that you’ve set out. The ability to target highly segmented audiences gives you the opportunity to capture the interest of consumers that you’re interested in at the exact moment they are searching for a hotel.

You place bids on the search terms you’re interested in through AdWords, with generally short-tail keywords being more competitive. For example, you should expect to pay substantially more to appear at the top for ‘London Hotel’ when compared to ‘4 star hotel near Convent Garden London’. Once you’ve bid, you’ll begin appearing in the searches of your target market when they enter your keywords. You only pay when a consumer clicks your ad, meaning AdWords is a cost effective strategy for driving traffic to your website.
However, you still need to convert that traffic into paying customers with enticing deals and excellent landing pages.

The time your AdWords campaign should be generating the most leads

Understanding when your AdWords campaign should be generating the most leads means you’re better able to evaluate your online marketing campaign.

If you find that your results aren’t matching industry standards, it could suggest that it’s time to rethink your current methods, including your keywords, budget, and audience segment.

Research indicates that AdWords results for the travel industry pick up throughout the day. You should be seeing your AdWords results slowly improve from late morning through until early evening. Between 6pm and 7pm is the time that consumers are most likely to be searching for their next hotel stay. It’s also during this hour when you’re most likely to see clicks become high value conversions, meaning that the money you spend on your AdWords hotel marketing strategy delivers you the greatest value during this time.
The results are consistent with what you would expect – people are heading home after work to research and make their travel plans.

Interestingly, there’s also a peak for converting clicks into sales in the morning between 8am and 9am, giving you an opportunity to create leads as they journey to work.

Why do AdWords patterns matter to your hotel marketing strategy?

When AdWords is most likely to generate leads isn’t only important for measuring how well your ad is performing, it could indicate that you’re missing out on a big portion of traffic.

AdWords allows you to set a daily budget, a useful feature for managing your marketing spend. But if you find that you’re regularly reaching your daily cap before the early evening, you could be failing to use the tool when it’s most likely to lead to high value conversions.