Google Adwords Can Still Work For Leisure Marketing

By Author: Jason john
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Whether you are a visitor attraction, farm park, theme park or indoor play provider, Google Adwords should still form part of your online marketing strategy, however, with increased competition and a global downturn in click through rates, you need to ensure you are using the right strategies!

For those new to Google Adwords, these are are the sponsored adverts at the top of Google and down the right hand side. They enable you to get onto the first page of Google for pennies and are charged on a cost per click basis.

At Agility Marketing, we manage campaigns for all our clients and want to share with you our top top seven tips!

1.Use geographical targeting
Most of people searching on Google may start searching without geographic parameters (eg. Days Out), however, will end up by narrowing their search with a county or town name (eg. Days Out South London)

You only want to reach those who live nearby (there's no point your ads appearing outside your catchment area) and should use your nearby county/town phrases alongside the general keywords.

In addition, you should use the Google ...
... Adwords geographic targeting tool that enabling you to select the regions you wish your adverts to appear. In the UK is it currently 50-70% effective, which is why you need to do both geo targeting strategies to maximise your reach.

2.Create a long list of relevant keyphrases
Google adwords works on a bidding system. The more you are willing to pay for the keyword, the higher the top you will reach. You are only charged when people click on your ad, but if your ad isn't near the top, people won't see it.

The most obvious keyphrases are the most expensive. To reach the top of Google Adwords for the least amount of money, you need to brainstorm less obvious but still highly targeted keyphrases. For example, in addition to ‘indoor playcentre' you should select ‘indoor playground' and even better ‘kids indoor playground'.

You still need to target the more common terms but extend your list with the less obvious.

3.Target your advert copy
The more targeted your adverts are, the more click throughs you will obtain . For example, if you are targeting ‘days out' keyphrases, an advert with ‘days out' in the headline will deliver more click throughs. Google allows you to set up different adgroups for this purpose.

4.Review your adverts regularly
Once set up you should review your campaign every 2 weeks. You should set up 3-4 different adverts per ad group and then see what works. This is time consuming, however, vital to improve click through rates. Google will suggest improvement to your campaign for you, which does save you time, but review their recommendations; you'll find some recommendations from Google are not relevant.

5.Target your competitors brand names
Through Google Adwords you can target your competitors brand name. Click throughs will be low, but you are getting your brand right in front of your target audience. Fantastic!

6.Use negative keywords
You can also select keywords that ensure your advert won't appear. For example if you wanted your ads to appear on ‘days out' but not ‘free days out', you can select ‘free' as a negative keyword.

7.Use bounce rates & google goals to optimise keywords
An effective way to identify which keywords are stronger than others is to review the bounce rate in google analytics, this is google's free tracking tool. A bounce is when somebody visits your site and doesn't go further than the page they land on. Essentially they have decided the site isn't what they wanted. Overtime trends will appear on keywords that are better quality and don't bounce . Similarly you can set up google goals that tracks an enquiry or ecommerce sale.

8.Use google search over content
Ok, I did say 7 top tips, but here is a bonus one!

You can have your ads appearing on the Google Search Network and the Google Content Network. The content network is when google ads appear on other websites not owned by google; we find the content network generally poor quality and always recommend you focus on the search network.

However, the content network is an effective tool for google remarketing, which allows you to push adverts out to your web visitors after they leave your site. A great online tool and definitely the focus for another article.

At Agility Marketing, leisure marketing is our business. We are leisure consultants working with theme parks, farm parks, wildlife attrractions and indoor play providers across the full marketing mix. Online marketing is a particular area of expertise.

Agility's MD, Anita Waddell has worked in visitor attraction marketing for over 20 years, regularly speaks at industry events and writes for the UK leisure press.