Pay Per Click Archives | InterCoastal Net Designs Blog

Google Ads – Better Start Equals A Better Return on Investment

Nathan RoodOctober 18, 2019October 18, 2019Pay Per ClickGoogle Ads, PPC CampaignsLeave a comment

Google Ads can be a great source of revenue for your company as well as a better way to get your brand on top of the page. The downside of Google Ads is that if you do not approach it properly, you can end up investing more than you bring in. Just like anything you approach in the business world, the best approach is with a solid plan of attack. Read More...

The Absolute Best Digital Marketing Memes (and why they’re so funny!)

Paul HanakSeptember 27, 2019September 27, 2019Analytics, Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental MarketingLeave a comment

You can call us “techy”, or maybe even “nerdy” or “geeky”, but any way you slice it, we have digital marketing inside jokes that really only make sense to us marketers. I mean, let’s face it, SEO is a dark art. There are so many facets and changes that it’s not only hard to keep up with, but the learning curve takes YEARS to really master. Rather than just writing about SEO, SEM, Email and algorithm changes, lets bring out the funny! Read More...

How To Generate Direct Bookings

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffJune 30, 2017July 7, 2017Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Vacation Rental Marketing, Vacation Rental Website Design, VRMA CommunityLeave a comment

By Vanessa Humes

Recently HomeAway has let their customers know that they will be changing the way that leads communicate with companies and owners that list their properties on HomeAway.

As one of the last Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to email leads and allow direct communication with guests before booking, many Vacation Rental Managers are concerned that they are going to lose valuable lead information. Read More...

Gaining Real Estate With Your AdWords

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffDecember 4, 2014February 12, 2015Pay Per ClickLeave a comment

Looking to boost your Google AdWords presence? It doesn’t always have to come down to boosting your ad spend. Ad extensions are a great tool that can help draw in the attention of a potential customer by taking up more ad space than your competitors.

Beware The Poor Landing Page – Tips & Tricks On More Conversions With Paid Advertising

Paul HanakNovember 10, 2014December 11, 2014Pay Per ClickLeave a comment

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it.

A client is not interested in pay per click ads as a potential advertising channel. They’ll say:

But I’ve tried it before — the return was awful.

Of course, most of the time, the ad account did a poor job with:

Match types
Keyword grouping
Negative keywords
Poor quality score and ad placement

Along with a host of other problems.

Staggering Pay Per Click Results: A Vacation Rental Case Study

Paul HanakMay 29, 2014December 11, 2014Pay Per ClickLeave a comment

Here at ICND, we’re all about finding the path of least resistance for increasing profits. For some clients, that means that we’ll be working on content for their website, updating an old site with a fresh design or creating intelligent social media marketing campaigns.

It also means that we’re fans of well-spent paid advertising to produce a fantastic ROI. Today, I’m excited to share some pretty fantastic pay-per-click results we’re seeing with a client in the vacation rental industry.

Note: To protect our client’s privacy, we cannot share the location of the rentals.

This particular company has been running pay-per-click advertising for a few years, mostly with the intent of generating traffic to their website. With no revenue tracking in place, they weren’t sure what traffic was working the best. They came to us hoping for far better maximizing the spend on their AdWords dollars. The client had a basic understanding of how keyword bidding worked and an okay account structure, but was looking to maximize results.

Our first steps were analyzing the current AdWords setup with our comprehensive kickoff audit checklist. After this audit, we found a few glaring holes in the tracking and conversion departments. There was only goal-based tracking in place with no revenue tracking to truly nail down precise ROI on adspend. We fixed this immediately and began on improving the account structure, match types and ad copy through testing.

After adding conversion tracking we were able to find specific keywords that were generating fairly high click through rates and traffic, but no conversions. Sure, people were on the website and browsing around, but our ultimate goal is to get the best people who are likely to book with pay-per-click advertising. After dumping around 15-20 keywords that were sapping up a fair amount of adspend, we were better able to find keywords that convert into bookings. Finding these keywords has allowed us to spend time on keywords that convert and then breaking up those into separate ad groups for better quality scores. Given that in most of our accounts, we can only spend up to a certain fixed budget, dumping non-performing keywords can provide a huge lift to our ROI.

Our steps follow a similar pattern for most of our pay-per-click accounts in the vacation rental space.

Setup & run conversion tracking for Adwords to see campaign, ad group, ad copy and keyword level conversion data.

Create a really in depth negative keyword list for covering accidental impressions and wasted ad spend. We spend at least a few hours digging up negative keywords every month to add to our accounts to reduce waste.

Create a solid campaign & ad group structure that reflects the correct match types, topics, categories and landing pages for maximum quality score.

Constantly test elements like landing pages, ad copy and sitelinks to increase CTR.

The Pragmatic Approach for Targeting Vacationer Demographics

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffFebruary 11, 2014May 11, 2017Analytics, Email Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Vacation Rental MarketingLeave a comment

The vacation rental industry is an 85 billion dollar industry with virtually every demographic planning a dream vacation, year after year. A majority of vacation rental managers often realize too late about vacant inventory. Focused solely on families (or vice versa) this late realization leads to last minute price slashing with mixed results. Wouldn’t it be nice each year to be ahead of the curve and guarantee a larger percentage of bookings?

Studies have shown (Framingham Heart Study) that men who regularly vacation are 32% less likely to die of heart related illnesses compared to men who do not take a regular vacation. What’s worse is that women who don’t vacation twice a year are 8 times MORE likely to suffer from a heart related illness. These studies reinforce the notion that happier, healthier people across the board, know that rest and relaxation are vital to their health.

The question is: are you capturing every demographic the correct way?

Today’s marketing tools make it easier than ever to target specific demographics:

Facebook Targeted Ads– Facebook ads have come a long way in terms of targeting. Users of Facebook today are revealing more and more information within their own profiles that Facebook has tactfully gained access to who each user is. If one bedroom condos are a large part of your inventory still in stock, the ability to create an ad specifically toward those in relationships with less than 2 children as well as including the unmarried and married with less than 2 children, ensures that those in your target segment are the only ones who are viewing such an ad.

Facebook Post Targeting– Did you know you can cater a post to specific demographics? Much like Facebook ads, specific post targeting allows you to display certain posts to current fans that you wish to capture. Suppose there are a number of units you’d like to see booked for an upcoming weekend. Depending on your vacation rental price points, wouldn’t it make sense to target to those solely within a day’s drive? Creating a targeted post highlighting this facet has the potential to yield higher results.

Segmented E-mails Read More...

ICND Spring 2013 Online Marketing Workshop Success!

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffMarch 21, 2013May 11, 2017Analytics, Email Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Support Tips, Team News, Vacation Rental Marketing, Web DesignLeave a comment

If you didn’t go to our Spring 2013 Online Marketing Workshop in Myrtle Beach, SC, you missed out on a great time! The workshop was held at the ITT Technical Institute of Myrtle Beach where we found the space plentiful and staff very helpful. A big thanks to Courtney DePaul for her support of our workshop. We opened up the event with friendly registration by Summer Adams as she gave everyone an itinerary and USB key of all the presentations to take home.

Before entering the room, we invited our guests to participate in a fun photo booth prepared by our designer and photographer, Chris Campbell. Team ICND had fun with the photo booth as well. For more photos and fun check out our Facebook album and be sure to “Like Us”. As the sessions took place, we had great one-on-one interaction with our guests and speakers. It was a collaborative effort of presentations and Q&A. We hope to do more follow-up on the topics: SEO, PPC, Social Media, Email Marketing, and Responsive Web Design with additional whitepapers for download on our website. For more information, please visit our website www.icoastalnet.com or contact your Account Manager. by: Vanessa Humes

Clarion Hotel Pairs Up With ICND for Internet Marketing Campaign

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffMarch 8, 2013September 17, 2014Analytics, Email Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Social MediaLeave a comment

When it comes to online marketing, having a strategy is key. However, if you’re not an internet marketing specialist it can be an overwhelming task. InterCoastal Net Designs is excited to announce their new partnership with the Clarion Hotel of Myrtle Beach. We recently launched not just one campaign for this well-reknowned hotel, but three! Clarion chose Pay Per Click, Social Media Marketing and a kick-off social media contest to stay at the top of mind of their client base.

We often tell our clients, if you want quick results, then PPC is the way to go! Our PPC specialists are experienced in managing accounts that result in ROI and high quality scores, and in the long run a projected lower Cost Per Click.

And if you’re still in the dark on social media, it’s safe to say your company is dropping the ball! We are excited to take over Clarion’s social media marketing and foster brand awareness and client engagement for our new client! ICND is also handling the ins and outs of a social media contest for Clarion. We recently saw one of our client’s company pages grow from around 1,500 fans to 40,000 in the span of a week! With Facebook’s current algorithm in place, this kind of growth ensures that your brand will be all over the Facebook newsfeeds of your potential clients. When it comes to the vacation rental industry, fans are engaged with scenic photographs and the promise of the perfect getaway and Facebook is the place to start dreaming! We can’t wait to see the results of the Clarion Myrtle Beach contest.

If you feel like your company isn’t getting the online attention it deserves, it’s time to nail down an online marketing strategy. Any combination of our services from SEO to social media will increase the visibility of your brand and the combination of campaigns is sure to bring home the bacon.

Thanks Clarion, ICND is thrilled to start this partnership which is sure to be a success!

ICND Attends CCAR Affiliate Expo

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffOctober 11, 2010Pay Per ClickLeave a comment

Thanks to all who stopped by booth #105 at the Fall Affiliate Expo for CCAR. ICND has been servicing real estate clients for more than 10 years along the coast of North and South Carolina and as far as the West-Indies.

Today's expo was a fun way to meet with real estate agents and find out what they were looking for in a website, how the market was doing, and the struggles they were having with online marketing. ICND was able to tell them about our Octoberfest Starter Website that new client can sign on with us for one low price and get a discount on their monthly hosting if they sign on with us before October 31st. Contact Emily Hardesty at Ehardesty@icoastalnet.com or 1-910-575-6095 x 4.

Some Samples of our work:

www.HiltonHeadHomes.com
www.CarolinaJoe.com
www.HiltonHeadPremiumProperties.com
www.SurfsideRealty.com
www.carolinaresortsrealty.com/mls/
www.LookAtMyrtleBeach.com

In addition, ICND talked about with the amount of competition out there, it's more important than ever to have a custom website that appeals to your target market, brands your company, and brings a social and interactive aspect like pictures, videos and MLS IDX.

Speaking of MLS integrations, ICND has just pre-released it's MLS 3.0 and we're offering demos to clients. Our first site to display the system should be ready within the next month. It offers a more user-friendly, interactive approach taking all the good things of MLS 2.0 and adding some new. Contact us for your own personal demo.

Last but not least, if you have a website or don't, sign up for a basic SEO package and get 3 FREE months. Offer ends Oct. 31st and is valid on new customers only. For more information about SEO or other online marketing services or ideas, please contact us today and we'll schedule a meeting.

Thanks again to all who attended!