Client: Leading Holiday Provider
Industry: Premium Travel & Tour Operations
Challenge: As a prestigious, independent tour operator, the client needed to stand out against larger OTAs (Online Travel Agents) in the fiercely competitive family and activity holiday market. Objectives were clear: achieve number one rank for all brand searches, increase high-intent traffic, and hit an aggressive target CPA of under £50 for both their ski and sun holiday segments.
Our In-Depth Approach & Strategy:
We treated the travel market not as a constant, but as a shifting landscape of intent, requiring a dynamic and multi-faceted strategy.
- Brand Defence & Aggressive Non-Brand Growth: We created a fortified “Brand” campaign to protect their most valuable asset—their name—ensuring 100% impression share for branded searches. Simultaneously, we built expansive thematic campaigns mirroring their website structure: “Luxury Ski Holidays in France,” “Family Beach Resorts in Greece,” “Watersports Holidays Sardinia.” This captured users early in the research phase.
- Peak-Season Amplification with RLSA: We leveraged Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) as a supercharger during peak booking seasons. We could bid on high-cost, generic terms like “all inclusive family holiday” or “best ski resorts” but only show ads to users who had previously visited the The client site. This allowed us to compete in aggressive auctions with a higher probability of conversion and an efficient CPA.
- Strategic Expansion to Bing Ads: We built a compelling business case and launched their first Bing Ads campaign. This unlocked a valuable, often older and more affluent, audience that was less contested than Google, driving an additional 32 conversions and 16,000 clicks at an average CPC of just £0.46.
- Data-Driven Promotions & Day-Parting: We worked closely with their marketing team to align PPC promotions with their commercial calendar. We increased bids aggressively in the weeks leading up to school holidays and utilised day-parting, raising bids on Mondays and Tuesdays—the peak days for holiday research and booking—while scaling back spend on weekends.
The Result:
Our holistic strategy delivered a step-change in performance, proving the value of a nuanced, data-led approach in the travel sector.
- Unprecedented Efficiency: Achieved a -65% reduction in CPA, smashing the £50 target.
- Volume & Quality: Drove a +224% increase in conversions while simultaneously improving the Conversion Rate by 258%.
- Total Market Dominance: Secured the coveted #1 Average Position on Google, cementing their premium status in the SERPs.
