A Quick Update About Adwords

A recent change in the Adwords System has made the creation of ReMarketing Campaigns much more complex than it ever was. (If anyone from Google wants to argue with us about this you know our number).

It just reinforced to us that setting up and maintaining Adwords is NOT for the average hotel Hotel Owner/Manager (unless you are moonlighting as a Digital Marketing Specialist) but deciding how it should be used MUST be under their control, an 'EXPERT' in Google Adwords may well have the skills to set up the campaigns but even the most non technical Hotel Owner/Manager MUST have the final say over what you are trying to achieve. Do not believe that it is too complex to get your head around. Remember the Orchestra Conductor does not know how to play all the instruments!

A 30 second Google Adwords overview might be useful at this point;

Principle - You are trying to display an advert at the top of Google when someone searches with particular words. ie You want your advert to be at the top of search results when someone searches for 'hotel near Birmingham train Station'.

So the areas you as a Hotel Owner Manager need to focus on;
A. Decide what searches you want your advert to display in.
B. Decide what attractive message you are going to have in your advert.
C. Make sure the page they go to when the customer clicks on the advert contains information relevant to what the customer is looking for,

ie
1.Staying with the example, if your hotel truly is near to Birmingham Train Station you would want your advert to display when people search for
'hotel near birmingham train station'
'cheap hotel close to birmingham train station'
'birmingham train station hotel'
etc, etc
2. The advert that displays says
'5 Minutes walk from Birmingham Train Station - Book Direct on our Website for Free Breakfast' etc, etc
3. The landing page on your website that people go to when they click on the ad has the following content;
A map showing how close the hotel is too Birmingham Train Station
Text that explains how to get to the hotel (Turn right when you come out of the station ...etc)
The Offer repeated 'Currently On Offer - Free Breakfast when you Book Direct'.

So what goes wrong?

Hotel Owners get lost trying to understand the technicalities of Google Adwords (Nearly impossible for a busy person).
Hotel Owners parcel adwords off to a specialist and have no further input into what they want to achieve with it.
The Ad itself is dull and contains no call to action ie 'Pineview Hotel is a popular hotel' (So What!!)
The Landing page that guests go too after clicking on the ad does not mention anything about how close they are to the station and contains no motivation why should book there and then.

All in all, as a Hotel Owner Manager, do not be afraid to stick your nose into what your Digital Marketing people are doing with Adwords. You dont need to understand the mechanics, but make sure you have some input into the type of searches you want to rank well with.

Hopefully this fictional conversation might help;

HOM (Hotel Owner/Manager)
DMC (Digital Marketing Company)

DMC - Point number 2 on the agenda, we have now set up an adwords campaign and targetting people who are looking for a hotel near to Holborn Tube Station
HOM - Great.......er whats Google Adwords?
DMC - Never mind its too technical, leave it to us!
HOM - Well not sure what thats all about, but we are actually closer to Euston Tube Station
DMC - Really. Oh......we better change that then.
HOM - Yes, in fact we get a lot of customers who come into Euston who are visiting relatives in St James Hospital.
DMC - Really we didnt know that, we better set up an advert for people looking for 'hotel close to st James Hospital'.
HOM - Not sure what you are talking about, but ok, these are often long term guests and we give them discounted rates.
DMC - You never mentioned this before!!!!!! We can put that in the Google ad and create a landing page that features your phone number to get them to call you for the discount.
HOM - Er ok. We wouldnt mind a bit of the spin off business from the new Amazon Offices that have opened last month, we have already done a deal to give them 10% off.
DMC - Is that right? Didnt know about that. Ok we can do ad that targets people looking for 'hotel close to Amazon Offices Holborn' and create a landing page with a 10% Promotion Code on it.

The moral of the story? To get best use out of Adwords the Hotel Owner/Manager really needs to work together with their Marketing Company.