In the UK, the first Saturday back to work after the holiday season has been christened Sunshine Saturday due to the number of holidays being booked, with travel companies often expecting to receive more than double their bookings.
This all comes down to how people are feeling, particularly if the weather is bad, people are back to work and they crave something to look forward to.
So, whether you’re planning your campaigns for the January peaks or the rush at the end of summer, here’s how you can engage with your consumers, tap into their mindset and most importantly make your travel advertising budgets work harder.
Cater for your customer’s mindset
If you know your potential customers are longing for a slice of sunshine, tap into this desire in the messaging with your display ads. What emotive language can you use? What’s the hook for your campaign?
It’s crucial to ensure your campaign is as agile as possible and your messaging is able to change in line with external events. What if the weather really takes a turn for the worse? If things are even bleaker at home weather wise than usual this can potentially increase the desire for sun, sand and sea. Those travel companies that refer to it in their ads and tap into how their audience is feeling with relevant ads will win at such a competitive time. Dynamic ads are essential to keep your ads super-relevant and high-performing.
Spend your budget wisely
During peaks competition between travel companies, holiday providers and booking agents is fierce.
That means that when you spend your budget, you’ll want to optimise your spend where you can, to ensure you have as much as possible to spend on your campaign activation and that all important customer engagement.
When it comes to the creation of your ads themselves, it’s vital to ensure that they best represent your brand, include the necessary imagery, can be formatted across multiple shapes and devices, and have a number of options for URLs to click through to. But, you won’t be able to compete if you waste a big chunk of your budget on getting your ads right when this could be better spent elsewhere. Our Ad Builder is vital to ensure your ads are optimised for high-performance, yet still cost-effective.
Get your retargeting right
During peaks the customer journey will be much quicker. Consumers can potentially go from research to conversion in a matter of days rather than weeks. To ensure that they ultimately convert with you, you need to get your approach to retargeting right.
That means segmenting your audience based on where they interact on your website. A user reading a blog post about hot destinations will be at the start of their journey, whereas one looking at specific hotels in one location will likely be close to booking. The ad you retarget them with must be relevant to this intent.
Crucially, it’s key to retarget at a product level. The user that looks at a specific hotel will be much more likely to convert if they’re retargeted with that exact same hotel. Product retargeting should be central to your strategy during peaks.
Keep your ads up to date
Things are likely to be changing quickly. Deals will be updated, prices will be slashed, new offers will come into play and inventory will sell out. That’s a lot to keep up to date with if you’re updating your ads manually. In fact, it will be impossible.
If a consumer sees an ad that is relevant to them focused on a destination they’ve been considering and for a hotel that ticks all their boxes, only to click through to find it’s already fully booked, they’ll likely be spending their holiday savings elsewhere.
The automation provided by feed ads will ensure that everything runs efficiently your end across all of your inventory saving you valuable time in this busy period. Your customers will always see ads that are up-to-date and relevant.
The Fluid Ads platform can help you to advertise to the right customers, at the right time with the most relevant ad. Book a demo today to learn how Fluid Ads can help revolutionise your digital advertising during peaks.