Google Ad Words

Digital marketing without Google AdWords, would be very difficult if not impossible. It is a smarter way to work, and if you do the research it is an invaluable tool.

I currently have an Ad Word campaign running for Cottage Linens, so I took this as an opportunity to try some A/B market testing.
My current campaign has been running since July 2017, this Ad focuses on people searching for a vacation rental in and around Southern Maine beaches.  This is a screenshot of only two days in October, which is, not peak vacation season in Maine. The Ad had 361 impressions resulted in 15 clicks and CTR of 4.16%. 

The most shown Cottage Linen Ad on Google AdWords campaign.

Using my previous experience and new found knowledge of Google AdWords our team put together a new Ad Campaign. Below is a screenshot of our teams' new Ad.

Using the main keywords of travel, Maine, Beaches, we created a new A campaign. I also created a new landing page to go with the new Ad.

I made only a few simple changes, The word travel, instead of vacation, the color orange instead of yellow, and finally the call to action button has "for more information" instead of "order now" Finally I added the Social Media share buttons at the bottom. I know that it best to only make one simple change, however, I really need to create a larger Social Media Footprint.

Once our ad had run the three days, I looked at the information and took some screenshots of the data.
Our original Ad we labeled Travel, had 23 impressions with 1 click.
Leaving us with a 4.55% CTR.

On Tuesday, October 24 we created a new AdWords Ad labeled Travel B. I wasn't happy with the one click so I looked at the Cottage Linens data on Google Analytics. I discovered our demographic was primarily, more men than woman and the age group was 25-34. This information was a driving factor for our new campaign, we moved away from moms looking for vacation convenience, and began thinking about men and women in age group 25-24.  Through brainstorming and local observations of men and women aged 25-34 in Southern Maine we determined what they may be interested in. We narrowed it to outdoor adventure. I recalled encountering many cyclists in Kennebunk and the surrounding towns. Through research, we realized there is a well-advertised route through Southern Maine for cyclists. We then decided to focus on the cycling community in Maine. 

  

Using this information we created the Ad seen below. We used a more masculine approach of "Explore Maine" yet followed it up with "Vacation Convenience Delivered". We hoped this combination of, words would possibly catch the male populations' eye but the convenience delivered could also appeal to the female user persona.

It has only been running for a few hours, and hopefully, it will get some clicks!

 I received an email from Google about the Ad Campaign, I called and spoke with a customer service representative. We went through the ad together and I made some changes. I added negative keywords like, poor, bad, table linens, napkins, and anything Cottage Linens doesn't want to be associated with. I also added + before and after each set keyword phrases.

As of October 27th, our new Campaign has had 249 impressions and 0 clicks.  This could be primarily due to the summer travel season is ending and people are closing up their beach houses, and most visitors are staying in hotels. I also know that this time of year seems to be popular for cruise ships in Portland that bus people down to Kennebunk and Kennebunkport area just for the day, so there is no overnight, accommodations to be made.