Hoteliers often question whether or not to advertise their brand name in paid search.
Being that paid search accounts for nearly 2/3 of clicks via keyword searches on search engines – what are you waiting for? Learn how the paid search channel and dedicating budget on your brand name can deliver revenue generation and benefit your property.
Hotel Valencia Santana Row— Photo by Vizergy
Advantages of Paid Search
The hotel industry is a very competitive market in the search channel. Neglecting brand
terms in your paid search strategy will have drastic consequences with key performance metrics, as Google's algorithm puts a heavy weight on relevance across all aspects of an account. With brand terms as part of an account, a client has a much higher probability of seeing:
Without bidding on your brand terms, paid search will not provide the type of
performance desired.
It's all about Collaboration!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search efforts have always been a joint
affair. It's inaccurate to describe the relationship between paid and natural search results as a competition since they support one another.
For paid search, most individual properties have monthly budgets that don't approach
the potential spend, which limits your relevance. And in natural search, there's no guarantee a hotel will show in a brand search query too. A majority of the time, if SEO best practices are in place, both are shown on the same search results page. The benefits of utilizing both are more real estate, higher reach & retention, free advertising and revenue.
SEO-PPC— Photo by Vizergy
Real Estate
When both ads show in the same search result, brand awareness and the probability of
a clickthrough both rise. In paid search, ad extensions are utilized and seen if ads show at the top.
Reach & Retention
Opportunity appears in search results when maximizing the total possible relevant
search results for the brand name of a hotel property. Since most travelers who search brand terms already know the hotel property, it makes the search results a vehicle of brand retention.
Free Advertising
Paid search is a pay-per-click basis, so any ads that aren't clicked are a way of
free advertising for hotels. It's a branding mechanism that creates reach and awareness to potential guests that incoherently drives the brand message.
Revenue
This speaks for itself. More search real estate means more traffic and direct website
revenue.
New Devices – The Future
As mobile and tablet searches continually evolve, so does the question of which device
is more important to advertise on. Which contains the most potential for revenue, and at what stage during the conversion funnel are guests using these devices? The device doesn't dictate the stage of the search funnel process. It still lies within the search queries; brand search queries historically are at the end of the shopping and booking phase of online search activity for guests.
Casting a wide net on the array of devices paid search ads show on for your brand name
gives you numerous opportunities to increase direct paid search revenue. Placing further importance on this initiative is the fact that mobile searches are traditionally on the rise and are forecasted to surpass desktop searches by 2014. Maximizing exposure for the ads focused on your brand name has never been more pivotal to ensure profitable success. By expanding your investment portfolio of paid search on multiscreens, you maximize return on investment. In an ever evolving landscape of searches, it's survival of the fittest in digital travel marketing; you either evolve, or get left behind.
About Vizergy®
For more than 20 years, Vizergy has served the hospitality industry with leading marketing technologies, knowledgeable talent and exceptional service for clients worldwide. The company deploys complete travel life-cycle marketing solutions from conversion-optimized website design to award-winning digital marketing programs, reservation solutions, media planning and execution. Vizergy's platform is touted as the #1 digital marketing system – easy to use, turnkey and SMART, and continually enhanced with tools to help hotels compete and maximize revenue. At Vizergy, hospitality marketing is not only our mission, it's our sole focus.
