PPC Marketing (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing)

[Hostels]

Are there any hostels using pay-per-click (PPC) marketing like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing?

If you are using PPC advertising, do you track conversions?

I wrote an introduction to using Google AdWords for hostels -- what I am most interested in is whether people are using conversion tracking to monitor how much money it costs to acquire each booking through Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

For example, I've seen hostels that spend between $2 and $80 to acquire each booking through PPC ads. If the hostel is spending $80 to acquire one booking then it's not cost effective. Conversion tracking can help avoid that problem, but it seems difficult to implement conversion tracking with some of the booking engines.

If you are using PPC are you using conversion tracking, and how are you implementing conversion tracking?

[lasagna]

Before opening the hostel, I felt like using Adwords to promote it. my thought was that no other hostels here in sao paulo were doing it, and I was the new guy so I needed to promote myself. I didnt even had any reviews on hostelworld, so we thought people wouldnt come because of that...

Turns out completely different. Not having reviews brought lots of people here, because they knew it was a new hostel. Maybe the name helped aswell (its the coolest hostel name in the city).

But then during Carnaval time I decided to use Facebook Ads. I got US$ 100 from Visa for free to use for ads on facebook.

I put specifically for people IN brazil and that speaks english, because that was my target audience. Foreigners that was already in the country and I wanted to make them come to Sao Paulo after carnaval.

I spent all that money and a little extra, and didnt see any results. Many people clicked on the link, but not a single person came because of the ad itself.

So i gave up on that! And word of mouth is a lot more effective!

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by lasagna

And word of mouth is a lot more effective!

My speech!

[Hostels]

Word of mouth is better, but I think AdWords can still useful for filling leftover beds or to rapidly fill a new hostel before it has the word of mouth effect.

The difference between AdWords and Facebook ads is that with AdWords people are actively searching for something and you target your landing page to their search. Many of the people who see a Facebook Ad probably aren't anywhere near ready to book a hostel -- so there won't be any conversions in those cases.

If someone would create a booking system that hostels could plugin to their websites that would provide full ecommerce tracking from AdSense click to booking confirmation it would be extremely useful.

Even if you don't want to use AdWords, this capability would still be very useful. It would allow hostels to track exactly where their bookings originated, down to the exact keyword or referring website.

For example, you could say, "the keyword x hostels generated $12,345 from Google and $1,234 from Yahoo, while website y sent me visitors that generated $5,432 through my own site."

A hostel could then say, "I will pay $200 to advertise on website x which will move me higher on the page." Then the hostel could see how much return that $200 investment made.

The way it works now is that a hostel can only track its visitors up to the point where they click off a hostel's website to bookhostels.com, powerhostels.com or another external booking site. The hostel gets the bookings but has no idea where the booking originated. The "source" of the booking is the hostel's own website, but how did the guest arrive at the hostel's website? Which sources send visitors to the website who make bookings?

[Scotch Argus]

I used adwords last year. I did find it hard to track genuine conversions - i.e. People who made paid bookings. I could track them to my booking landing page, but not further, as that's outside my site. I'd say to be very careful with adwords, as it can become a bottomless pit. They encourage you to spread your net wide with lots of keywords, but you need to know that people who are clicking on your link are interested in your hostel.

It might be different with a internet or mail order business, where you can sell to anyone around the world who might click on your ad, but when you are selling hostel beds, the clicker has to actually be interested in coming to your area. It's tempting because each click seems cheap, but they very soon add up. If you trya nd be specific too, so as not to attract a lot of non useful clicks, your click through ratio diminishes, and your neccessary bid seems to go up. (I have to say I don't really understand this). Also don't discount the possibility of malicious clicks.

I'd consider using it for specific targetted campaigns - e.g. trying to attract a New Year group booking at the last minute, but not sure if I'd use it again for general marketing - as already said, word or mouth is best. Also concentrate on getting higher in the organic rankings if possible - people use them much more than paid links.

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by Scotch Argus

I'd say to be very careful with adwords, as it can become a bottomless pit. They encourage you to spread your net wide with lots of keywords, but you need to know that people who are clicking on your link are interested in your hostel.

I've put some AdWords tips in the Member's Chat area.
(The page is only viewable to people who have made over 50 posts in the forums here.)