PPC for Tourism: 5 Reasons to Rely on Paid Search

Creating an awesome marketing campaign for your travel business is not a summertime at all. Travel agents need tricks up their sleeves to rope in fresh leads and get them to book their dream vacations. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads will come in handy if you’re advertising travel and tourism services.

Think of your PPC campaign as a direct channel to connect with highly enthusiastic travelers and potential vacation planners. 59% of travelers start their journey by Googling their dream destinations before they hit the "book now" button. 

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Owing to precise targeting that PPC is famous for, your offer will be placed on the top of search engine results and will be noticed. This makes PPC travel ads a perfect fit for your travel biz.

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So, let's dive into the cool perks of PPC and discover how you can spice up your campaign for the travel and tourism crowd.

What is PPC advertising and How it Works for Tour Companies

PPC usually starts with a sponsored advertising campaign displayed on websites or in sponsored search engine results when users type in certain keywords related to your ad. Once a user clicks on your ad and visits your site, a little bit of your ad budget gets spent. This means that you won't pay for your ad to be seen by people, who don’t need your services at all. If someone  clicks, this means people are interested in your services, and all that’s left is to hook them with your unique selling proposition (USP), great user experience (UX) on your website, and special offers.

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Clicking on the link will typically bring a user to a contact form, landing page, or tour packages on your website. 

To make  this type of paid advertising work, a marketing professional will have to create ads, manage bids, create  landing pages, and  manage multiple ad campaigns for various objectives. The process takes research and monitoring to optimize the PPC budget.

The Benefits of Paid Ads for Tourism and Tour Companies

Many businesses use pay-per-click advertising to drive targeted website traffic. In 2023, typical click-through rate (CTA) for Google Ads stands at 6.11%. Travel industry, however, scores one of the highest  click-through rates of 10.03% compared to  other industries. 

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If you’ve never considered PPC ads for your tourism business, here are some of the top reasons to start using them.

🚀 PPC drives fast results

Methods like content marketing or SEO are incredibly effective for the industry, and we strongly suggest using them along with  PPC. However, they take time to produce results. The content that you produce today might take up to 6 months to rank and  impact on your page positively. With PPC, you can generate much faster results for your marketing goals.

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PPC campaigns also come with convenient digital performance analytics tools so you can track results shortly after your ads go live. As the analytics show plenty of data on the status of your advertising, you will soon see whether  your campaigns are doing well and if you should make any changes. 

🎛️ You have control over the campaign

As a travel agency seeking to promote services with top-notch travel ads and showcase the best tourism ads in the market, you’ll definitely want to get your message across . PPC advertising offers you full control over your advertising campaigns, much like a pilot steering a plane. You get to call the shots, decide your budget, and select the keywords that trigger your ads. 

With PPC, you have the power to tailor your travel ads to a platform like Meta, and reach potential travelers where they spend their time online. Facebook travel ads will precisely target your audience, whether they are honeymooners, adventure-seekers, or family vacation planners. 

💰Better budget controls

With a PPC campaign, you will only pay out of your advertising budget when a user clicks on your ad. You won’t pay for any impression cost. You can start a PPC advertising campaign with a minimal budget and manage your ad spend with each campaign.

PPC is one of the most budget-friendly options you can use for highly targeted users, and help you out during low-season months when you’ll need to scale your budget back. Keep a maximum budget in mind for each campaign and make adjustments as needed to optimize your budget. Even small businesses with a small marketing budget will see quality results from PPC over time providing they handle it professionally. For example, if you have a small budget you might want to consider running your ads on Bing instead of Google. Despite Google being more popular among the Internet surfers, your ads on Bing will see fewer competition, and the costs for popular keywords will be lesser.

🌟Putting your brand name out there

PPC ads are an excellent solution for brand awareness. If your page has been buried in search engine results for years and you’ve had difficulty reaching the top, you’ll want to  get your brand name out there. 

Users are much more likely to click on advertising from brand names they have heard of and trust. If you put your ads on the top of search engines they will get plenty of impressions. Even if your ads do not  get clicks, users will still recall them and consider your service next time.

🎣Capturing quality leads

Since you  pay for each click you get, you want those clicks from the people who are ready to make a purchase here and now. PPC visitors are excellent leads because they are following your advertising for a service or for information they have been looking for. That’s why it’s super important to put an  extra effort into keyword research. 

With highly-convertible keywords, you will find leads that are ready to contact you or sign up for a tour experience. PPC advertising will  help you gather contact information or get people to subscribe to your newsletter, and make them buy your services eventually. 

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Users generated by organic traffic are 50% less likely to complete a purchase or sign up with your company than the ones you target with PPC advertising. 

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Does this sound good? Learn more on the topic in our articles on how to begin with PPC and the PPC best practices.

Google Advertising for Hotels and Travel Industry

Google ads for the hotel and travel industry require keyword research. The way you phrase your ads will target the right parties and ensure that you have more customers willing to book your service. Advertising keywords need to be researched based on the destinations you commonly book for, the hotels you would commonly book with, and other information about your travel packages. 

With an in-depth keyword research, make sure that the customers who are later in the process of searching for a trip and are ready to make a purchase decision are the ones who are following your ad to book with your service. 

Google ads for hotels and travel agents can be a competitive business, and you might often have to spend hours doing competitor research to find keywords specific to your business or ready to promote your services or products in the hospitality industry. 

The Bottom Line

PPC ads are definitely worth a try! Whether you have a small business or a big agency, you will benefit from running targeted ads. If you still doubt  allocating your budget to this channel, consider the fact that businesses earn $2 for every $1 they invest in PPC. 

When you’re running travel agency ads, you're providing  adventure seekers precisely with what they're looking for. Remember, people who will stumble upon your ads will want you craft their lifetime experiences .

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