Paid Search 101

How resorts can benefit from beefing up their search-engine ads.

Paid search is a form of web marketing in which brands place ads within a search engine’s sponsored results—typically appearing at the top of the page. Brands only get charged when the ad is clicked (pay-per-click) which can be very cost effective.

What’s the advantage? “The greatest attribute of paid search is its ability to put you in front of potential customers during their moment of need, based on the keyword they enter,” says Faith Aronow, director of digital marketing at RCI. For resorts, paid search can be especially beneficial because, unlike traditional online and print ads that may reach consumers regardless of their interest in the product, paid search targets consumers in market for a specific resort or destination.

If you’re looking to rev up your paid search campaign, consider testing the following tactics:

Ad Extensions

If you’re tight on space, ad extensions provide extra room under a listing. They can be used to call out a promotion, to highlight ratings and reviews or to add a simple call-to-action link such as a click-to-call phone number or a download link for an app.

Remarketing Lists

Remarketing means targeting people who have visited your website before, such as guests you’d like to have return to your resort. To reach these consumers, you first need to know who they are. Consider creating remarketing lists with Google Adwords or Bing Ads, which will add snippets of code to your website to track visitors. You can refine these lists by setting rules and remarket to those consumers via paid search. “This is useful when a prospect visits but doesn’t yet book and is still in the market for a vacation,” Aronow says.

Dynamic Search Ads

Just provide a landing-page URL for the product or offer that you are looking to promote, and Google will send traffic based on the keywords it determines are a good fit.

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