Online Advertising

Online Advertsing is simply a way of generating more, targeted traffic to your website. It's not about the volume of visits, but the quality of those who are referred. Please remember however, that your website is key in converting these visits to bookings.

There are many opportunities within Online Advertising. Some of which are highlighted here:

1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Google Adwords, Yahoo! Gemini and Bing Ads are three of the major players, with Google Adwords being by far the most used in the UK. As the name suggests, you can allocate a budget and simply pay a certain amount for each click to your website. You decide what Keywords (search phrases) you'd like your adverts to appear for - this is key to getting the right kind of clicks which are more likely to convert into bookings. You can set a maximum budget and a maximum daily spend, so you don't end with big bills.

PPC can be a great tactical marketing tool for increasing targeted traffic to your website during quieter periods. If set up correctly, you can even track if people go on to book after clicking through from an advert.

2. Banner Advertising

This is like old-fashioned display advertising in newspapers, except in an online environment. Essentially you are allocated a position on a particular web page which will relate to a defined advert size (usually designated in pixels). This advert will be clickable (linked to a specific page on your website), but is unlikely to be charged on a 'per click' basis. Usually, banner advertising is measured on 'impressions', which is the number of times your advert is shown (though like a newspaper advert, not everyone will look at it). Click rates are very low for banner advertising so are generally used for 'awareness raising' purposes. Note that choosing which websites (or which pages on those websites) to adertise on is very important to generating targeted traffic.

3. Directory Advertising

There are many free and paid-for directries in the tourism and hospitality sector. Getting listed can be time-consuming, but important, both in terms of boosting your positions in search engine listings, but also to generate 'referrals' - this is where people click from a directory advert (usually a standard format advert held within a database) through to your own website.

4. Social Media Advertising

On Facebook, there is a sophisticated advertising platform which allows you to push clickable ads out to profiled customers. For example, it is possible to target them geographically, by age and 'Interest'. For example, a wedding venue could target 'engaged' females in cities close to that venue. Facebook also offers the opportunity to 'promote a post' - to guarantee that your post gets to all your 'likes', you'll have to pay. You can also target 'friends' of 'likes' with your posts, which can work well for businesses. Again, you have full control of the budgeting, so there is no nasty bills hitting your inbox. You can also advertise on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Yelp.

We can handle your Online Advertising for you. Costs vary depending on budget, but typically where there was a monthly online budget of £1,000 we'd charge 15% (£150+vat).