PPC - Pay Per Click Management

The last PPC campaign I analysed in the ‘Analyse A Real PPC Campaign’ was from Blue Host, who had a good search advert, and would have had a good landing page, if they had the call to action button above the fold of the page. If you choose to use a call to action landing page, it is important to the conversion rate of the page to have the button above the fold, and preferably a different color from the rest of the landing page.

With Covid-19 causing some severe disruptions to travel and the holiday sector, it would be interesting to see what appears for this market. With this in mind, here is an analysis of a PPC campaign from On the Beach.

To view On the Beach’s PPC search advert, I had to type into Google search UK, ‘holiday package’:
The first thing to take note is that the demand for this search phase is extremely low – typically, you would see the maximum of four adverts appearing. The fact only one advert is appearing suggests that many travel companies have pulled their campaigns, to save their budgets during a dry spell, caused by the coronavirus. On the Beach have decided to keep their campaign going, which could be interpreted as a good or bad move, depending on how the virus spreads:

• Since competition is low, the cost per click for On the Beach will be much less, so they can gain traffic from those still wanting to book holidays.
  • The virus won’t be likely disrupting holidays towards the end of the summer of 2020
• The disruption caused by the virus may still get worse, resulting in this campaign having a poor return on investment, if there are restrictions to holiday destinations.

Looking at the advert itself, the use of site link extensions will naturally help the click through rate. However, the effectiveness of the advert is hugely dependent on PESTEL factors: political, environmental, social, technological, economical and legislative.

After clicking on the above advert, I came to the following landing page:

As a landing page goes, this is a great example of one well optimized for the following reasons:

• The color scheme focuses around blue, providing the perception of a sea, complimenting the central picture.
• This is an example of a lead capture landing page, with the information that can be input at the top of the page.
• On the Beach have recognized the issue of coronavirus and have added a banner at the top to address this. This is a good move by the holiday company, as it has the potential to relieve stress around the virus, and potentially encourage web users to buy holidays if they can install confidence that the virus won’t affect holidays.
• The whole campaign is targeted towards Birmingham airport, which is the closest airport located to where I performed the search. It is effective to see On the Beach have followed through with a specific landing page, still continually targeting the closest airport to the web user.