Advertising your product or services online is an extremely rewarding way of getting the word out about your business or promoting new and exciting things your organization has been working on. However, it can sometimes get tricky if your business is dependent on seasonal items or activities that fluctuate in demand in terms of periods of use. Some days your ad campaigns reports will bring plenty of successful returns and other days it will be dry as a bone when your area of occurrence is out of action.
A simple way to fix the issue and even out your average results across the yearly timeline is to implement Things to Do advertisements with the help of travel campaigns.
What Is Things to Do?
Things to Do type of advertisements shows up to people looking through the web for different activities, tourist attractions, local landscapes, area-exclusive experiences and so on. This type of advertising in Google Ads allows businesses to reach out to people who are yet to come into the designated location or are staying there for a relatively short period of time. The benefit of this type of advertisement is allowing businesses to capture the attention of a passing by customer who otherwise you would never be able to reach out to.
That being said, there are several key advantages of using Things to Do advertisements in Google Ads:
- Putting out your seasonal, traveling or other types of tourist-oriented activities across Google searches for those who have active interest in the topic;
- Spreading the word of your business or an organization across different areas outside of your regular location;
- Reaching out to potential customers that are planning to stay or visit the area or are already there for a limited amount of time;
- Showcasing your product or services in a wider segment of customers while also attracting potential interest beyond your typical search area;
- Saving management time after the initial setup by creating and updating Things to Do advertisements through the product feed.
So, how do Things to Do advertisements work? Things to Do ads will be triggered by a search of a user related to typical tourist activities, such as local attractions, pre-planned tours, historical and otherwise important to the area locations, exclusive activities and other. If your business provides products or services directly associated with the searches of a user, like hosting a musical event in a local historical park, the potential customer will see your advertisement along with their search for said park and its location. Your Google Ads advertisement will contain information on the product or service you’re offering, a number of photos along the way, your prices of mentioned products, your brand name and a way to reach out to you — for example, through a phone number or a link to your website. This way, your potential customer will get the results for their initial search along with an additional insert of your offer, related to their interest.
All in all, Things to Do advertisements in Google Ads act as a subtle suggestion to a potential buyer of your services on things they might be curious about based on their primary web-search. This type of ads proposes a more elegant and integrated way of marketing your products to an outside consumer.
How to Set Up Things to Do Ads
There are certain technical differences that make Things to Do advertisements stand out in comparison to your regular, more common types of ads. It’s necessary to provide Google Ads the information about your product or services in the form of a product feed through a Things to Do Center. Setting up this product feed is crucial to the success of your advertising, as it will be shown to your potential buyers when they search on Google for things they are initially interested in.
Google Ads suggest two ways to set up your product feed. The first one involves working with one of their connectivity providers – fully operating partners of Google – to have your Things to Do advertisements to show. This way simplifies the process , as you only need to pick the types of ad listings you’d like and then fill out the information needed.
The second one allows you to create Things to Do product feed yourself by following their tutorial guidelines. It’s up to you to choose the method, with the first option saving you time on setup and research. Setting up your product feed is not time-consuming or difficult, although it may seem that when you research it for the first time. The partnership path allows you to avoid a lot of potential mistakes, as creating your own product feed from scratch has many nuances and may seem daunting for those who are just getting started.
The ultimate goal of this step is creating your product feed – the only thing you really need to focus on.
When you have your product feed ready, remember to link together your Things to Do Center and Google Ads accounts for them to be able to share your data:
- While in your Google Ads account, go into the Admin settings;
- Follow into the Linked accounts and pick the Things to Do Center option in the From Google section;
- Enter your account ID to connect it to Google Ads;
- Once done, return to your Things to Do Center account and approve the connection in the settings;
- Finally, look for your Google Ads link and download the All properties CSV file in order to acquire your Products IDs.
NOTE: If you go down the partnership path, all the steps on the Things to Do Center side must be done by your connectivity partner, and this linking process should be done with them along the way.
After you’ve linked everything together successfully, go ahead and create a new Travel campaign to start using your new set of advertisements. Make sure your existing ad campaigns don’t contradict or prevent your new campaign from working properly.
What to Remember When Implementing Things to Do
Since Things to Do advertisements are a little different from your regular and more common ads, there are some things to keep in mind when you are just starting out and trying them in action. Below are some of those specialties you should remember about:
- Things to Do ads have a lot of restrictions and technical requirements that need to be met in order for them to pass, such as size, content, information details, images specifications and many others. Consult your connectivity partner or the Things to Do Center Help in order to see all the requirements each time you create or update your product feed;
- Using Things to Do ads puts certain limits upon your Travel campaigns as a whole, for example, the number of Google Ads accounts that can be linked to one Things to Do Center account or the overall number of campaigns ;
- Things to Do advertisements, although widely spread, are restricted to be used in certain areas across the world;
- Like most policy violations on Google Ads, the ones related to Things to Do ads are mostly detected automatically, so sometimes there might be situations when your advertising is flagged by mistake . Remember to always check for any violations in order to fix or dispute them in a timely manner.
Reporting Results for Things to Do Ads
Like any other types of advertisements run through Google Ads, after showcasing them for a while, it is important to review the results of your ad campaign and see if they meet your expectations or whether they need adjusting.
That being said, in order to get your hands on a Things to Do advertisements report, once you’re in your Google Ads account:
- Go into the Campaigns menu and follow down the Insights and reports section;
- From there, enter the Report editor and choose from one of the pre-made reports or create a custom version;
- Filter out your desired ad campaign and see on the right all the sum-ups of its run-time in the Activities section of the report.
Remember to regularly review your reports to make sure that your settings are delivering the desired results. If not, promptly adjust your product feed and refine the data you provided to improve performance.
In Conclusion
In a nutshell, Things to Do advertising in Travel campaigns allows business owners and marketing specialists to reach otherwise inaccessible consumers, save time on creating advertising, embed product offerings seamlessly into the lives of potential customers and make marketing strategies more efficient overall. Once the setup is complete, the process becomes largely autonomous and all you need to do is monitor the performance of Things to Do to track the results of your efforts.
