Google Adwords/Pay Per Click - Has it worked for You?

[bananacake]

Has anyone tried with any success using PPC to generate enquiries and booking? Thanks!

[CSE]

I had a code for a trial via Iberia airlines mag late last year. Found it awful getting hits from useless places like China etc. In the end the voucher money ran out. I am not going to bother to compete for even one customer who but have clicked any more.

[revdev]

A friend of mine tried it for a couple of months I think. In the first week of both months his budget was used up with people clicking on the Ad, trying to sell him SEO stuff. Hopeless.

[stork]

I tried, utterly useless.

[Ju]

We had some success including a booking. The trick is to be very careful with your key words, use lots of them, and to turn off clicks from anywhere other than your main market (we lost a few days before we realised you could do lthis). Also turn off the option that puts the adds on other sites, so that it just goes onto the relevent google searches.

[Margaret]

Lots of hits but no enquiries and no bookings.

[Essar]

I have used it to generate interest in some special offers I did for "dangling days" that worked really well - I had them all booked in 2-weeks and it cost be £38.45 from my £50 voucher.
The trick with PPC is to be very specific with your keywords that target the potential customers. For instance, there's no point in using "self catering holidays" you'll get hundreds of clicks that cost you for absolutely nothing, be more specific like "self catering bournemouth", "holiday lets bournemouth", etc.
Your ad must have the come and get me's in the 3-lines of text along with your main keywords repeated:
"Bournemouth Self Catering Holiday Apartment - June Special Offers - FREE WiFi during your holiday let"
The ads will often appear in the top 3-ads on Google, not just the right-side ones.
Also, use Google Maps and set up your property details and link it to the PPC, it's free and you'll come up on the map at the top of the ads.
The biggest advantage of PPC is that you'll always be on the first page of Google.
Use a budget per day, set it low to start with say £5.00 and only bid on your keywords with small click prices - £0.25, Google will tell you if their worth more and you can select specifics that may cost more but generate better results.
You set up a campaign and add at least two different ads with different sets of keywords, Google rotates them based on their popularity, I had two one specific to "self catering" and one specific to "holiday rentals", the second one was more popular and I stopped the first after 4-days, each contained a set of keyword alternatives for the theme. If you have a specific selling point like a view or a pool then emphasize it in a seperate ad in the campaign.
As with all things seo it takes time to learn and manage - you have to work at it every day until you understand it and get it right, call Google one of their marketing people will help you, they really are very good - they want you to succeed.

[Essar]

I wouldn't turn off the non-google ads. Google supplies to dozens of search engines and directories, such as GumTree. Your referral click throughs from specific directory sites will generate better enquiries, as they are more travel/holiday targetted.
An alternative to Google is MSN/Bing they supply to lots of search engines and directories too including Yahoo and Yahoo Travel Directory.
The directories provide links back to your site that Google loves so do the ads.

[revdev]

Great post's Essar, thanks for sharing!

[bananacake]

only bid on your keywords with small click prices

ive gone on adwords and found that prices per click for relevant keywords start at US$1.20 per click!!

I cant seem to find relevant longtail keywords that are any cheaper... So for 100 paid clicks it would cost me US$120

At this stage perhaps it would be feasible if i best invested that amount in an upgrade on one of my paid listing sites?

[Essar]

bananacake
That seems very expensive.
Did you start a campaign and select keyword strings?
How did you get to $1.20?

I have just started a campaign using 2 ads for the half term holidays in October with a special offer. I'll run it for 5-days so will only spend £25. I limited my daily spend to £5 and max ppc at £0.50 for keywords. I listed 40 different keyword strings each with max of £0.50. The campaign went live about 3-hours ago. So far 356 impressions and just 2 clicks each £0.37.
The impression number tells me that I have got some of the keyword strings right, in a couple of days I'll disable the ones that aren't geting many impressions/clicks as they are a waste of time. Adwords are good for getting to the right customers, in this case small families with kids or grandparents with grandchildren (I also limited the ad to these demographics), 18-25 old singles aren't going to book for the school half-term.
No enquiries but I would expect about 3 per day from the campaign and want 2-bookings, one for each apartment. As soon as I get them I'll close the campaign, or the 5-days will just expire.
The advantage over an offer on a paid site like HL/HR is that I can target the audience better and get enquiries just for the half term holiday. Although, there is technically nothing stopping other enquirers just to follow the ad.

On Google enter "self catering apartment bournemouth" and look in the paid ads for www.selfcateringbournemouth.net - please don't click it on Google - click it here! Its a small 3-page site that links through to my 2 main apartment sites.

If you are having trouble with adwords do read the Google blurb it eventually made sense after a couple of duff tries.

Steve

[bananacake]

will look into that - thanks Essar!

[Essar]

Thought I'd keep you updated on the campaign so far:

I have 1 campaign with 2 ads, each is rotated by Google on the basis of keyword hits; Ad 1 is doing much better than Ad 2:

Ad1: Clicks=36
Ad2: Clicks=16
Total Clicks=52, cost=£21.01, average cost per click=£0.40

Of these 52 clicks, 30 came from people seeing the ad when doing a Google search, 22 came from people seeing the ad on Google Ads on other search networks. As you all probably know Google Ads pop-up everywhere, but they are targetted, so my ads appear on vacations rental free sites and other travel related sites.

The 52 clicks through to my website have resulted in 7 enquiry forms being completed and quotations returned, alas, no booking yet.

I'm happy with the results so far.
I'll probably drop Ad 2 tonight as all the enquiries came from Ad 1.
My ads have been displayed a total of 75,981 times when people have looked for a self catering break in Bournemouth, as they relate only to the October half-term the number of clicks reflects that my targetting is just about right, so I'm hopeful I'll get the result I want.
A lady from Google rang today (Sunday) and asked if I needed any help in getting better results, she made a good suggestion on the wording which I will implement in another campaign, as this ones nearly finished.

Steve

[bananacake]

Pretty impressive response rate!

[Hells Bells]

I am considering an Adword campaign for the end of August/early September which is when ski season bookings start to come in. But I don't really know where to start. I did use Adwords some time ago, but I don't think I had any success from it.