As digital marketers, we’re always analyzing the metrics associated with our customers’ Google Ads campaigns. We recently tested a new approach to one of our customers’ digital advertising initiatives and achieved strong results. It’s a good case study on the importance of observing, analyzing, and using data to drive marketing decisions—the hallmark of Dashboard Interactive Marketing’s services.
A Case Study: Focusing on Campaign Goals
We’re going to keep the client information anonymous, but the facts of this case study remain the same.
The client runs multiple travel and tourism websites, each focused on specialized tour packages. Each tour package focuses on a unique destination, such as touring historic sites in a specific country or city.
The group travel sector has seen a volatile decline in international attendance, primarily driven by higher travel costs, stricter border policies, and lingering geopolitical tensions. While domestic group and corporate meetings reamin resilient, international inbound volume has notably softened. This led to a decline in website traffic and leads. They asked us to help improve website traffic, leads, and sales of tour packages.
For a long time, the client’s ads focused on specific destinations. Keyword phrases such as “London historic tours” and “German wine-tasting tours” were thought to drive traffic to specific tour packages. The client ran multiple campaigns around their biggest tour destinations, focusing the digital advertising and search campaigns heavily on location-type tours.
Enter The Shift to Brand Building
We’re constantly on the lookout for new tools and platforms that will drive more efficient lead generation for our customers. As a result of our long-standing relationship with Google, we have access to new tools and data that can help drive leads and conversions.
Performance Max is an AI-enabled platform that automates much of the manual ad and keyword testing previously handled by humans. Instead of managing multiple keyword-based campaigns across different channels, Performance Max manages it all through a single outcome- or goal-based campaign.
We set up a goal-based campaign to test this fresh approach against the client’s longstanding, highly specific location-based approach. The data gathered from this test continually informed our approach, ensuring we focused on what was working to increase traffic and retiring techniques that didn’t support the campaign goals.
The Results: New Approach and Campaigns Outperforming Legacy Ads
We are data-based marketers, and the data showed us something extraordinary: branding campaigns, in this instance, far outperformed location-based campaigns!
Taking a branding-first approach and leveraging AI-enabled tools such as Performance Max, we discovered that campaigns focused on their brand outperformed highly specific location-based ad campaigns, and this was a brand that had been around for a significant amount of time.
This was an important discovery, as it’s changing how the client thinks about their digital advertising and, indeed, how they understand the way in which customers search for and find them online.
They had assumed that customers searched for tours and travel arrangements for very specific destinations, and some still do. We’ve found that more search on broad categories—”river cruise companies” or “wine-tasting tours of Europe,” for example—rather than destinations or specific activities.
We could track web searcher activitiy on the client’s site after they clicked through the ads and discovered that the general ads drove more traffic and generated more traffic and conversations. Once people visited the site, they stayed longer, explored the company’s many unique tour offerings, and returned.
Data-Driven Marketing Improves Sales
The data supported a major change in how the comapny markets its services via Google. Now, instead of focusing primarily on very specific offerings, they’re working on building a digital brand for broader search terms. The Performance Max and Search campaign data support this approach, and the data-driven marketing success is like compound interest, building more and more search traffic and improving leads and sales.
It’s a great example of how a data-driven approach to advertising can radically improve clicks, leads, and sales.
Digital Ad Campaign Setup, Support, and Management
Dashboard Interactive Marketing drives leads and sales to businesses through focused digital marketing. This includes digital ad campaign setup, support, and management. Please call us at 763-242-2454 for more information.