How we generated €39,000 in revenue with an expenditure in ads of €4,211 to promote a trip organized by a tour operator
The company
The client is a tour operator offering a variety of organized trips in Italy and abroad.
- The first goal of the project was to generate online contacts who would request a travel quote and subsequently book;
- The second goal was to increase brand awareness online;
- The audience to which the customer interfaces is both B2C and B2B.
The client’s assets we focused on are as follows:
- Trips organized down to the smallest detail, with Italian-speaking guides, assistance always present before and during the trip;
- An agile and youthful platform that allows bookings of different trips in a few clicks (group, individual, multi-destination, flights + hotel);
- The service on which the client is strong is mainly group travel (both for families and seniors).
The challenge
We started collaborating in February 2022, and the account had a history of a few tested campaigns on Google Ads and Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram), mainly geared toward a B2B audience, whose main goal was to increase requests for travel quotes and possible collaboration with other travel agencies or schools.
Initially, in the Google account, we encountered a problem with conversion tracking, which was implemented incorrectly.
The “leads” tracked by the campaigns were not actually real contacts, but only visits to a page.
Solution
1. Tracking
If you don’t measure, you can’t improve. This is our mantra in PerformancePPC.
So the first thing we did was to fix all the tracking in Google Analytics and import it into Google Ads, so we tracked:
- Leads from travel info request form
- Leads from informative pdf downloads
- Leads from actual registration in the travel platform
and other micro conversions that would help us track user behavior on the site.
We started by sending traffic to the client’s official website with the goal of driving users to register on the online travel booking platform.
Situation of the website before and after the advertising campaigns began:
2. New Google campaigns
Immediately after fixing conversions, we created the first Google ads campaign structure as follows:
- Campaigns on B2C search network, for those interested in looking for tour operators or agencies organizing group travel, including bus tours and especially for seniors or families, one of the client’s core businesses.
- Campaigns on B2C search network to certain destinations on which the client is very competitive in terms of price and service.
- Performance Max campaigns which, through messages and graphic banners, positioned the ads online promoting the strengths of the tour operator.
The objective of these campaigns was to bring relevant traffic to the site and raise awareness of the platform with the aim of increasing the number of leads interested in downloading brochures and requesting quotes.
Moreover, we re-engaged website traffic through Display and YouTube remarketing campaigns, showcasing videos and banners encouraging platform registration.
It can be seen from the graph below how, from the time we activated google campaigns, the traffic and request for platform registration and quotes increased exponentially compared to the previous period.
3. New Meta campaigns.
On Facebook we immediately aimed to:
- Increase brand awareness and interactions with the client’s social profile (both FB and IG) by creating an editorial calendar consisting of weekly posts on certain topics such as Travel, Tourist Experiences, Travel Stories, etc.
- Increase platform registrations with campaigns that would lead to awareness of the various travel proposals through a carousel of images with links to the platform to register on in order to access the trip
While the ”evergreen” campaigns promoted constantly available trips on the platform where the client is very strong, aiming to attract new interested users who could become potential customers, with Lead Generation campaigns, focused on specific destinations, we increased the number of quotes and travel requests.
Specifically, in June we launched a Meta campaign toward the destination Turkey, offering 4 travel options to users, targeting bookings.
The target audience was predominantly a B2C audience who like to travel, look for flight and hotel solutions and tour operators, but mostly follow and have interest in pages on Turkey, Istanbul, Cappadocia; age 30 and up, all over Italy.
We also intercepted the already aware audience with a remarketing campaign inviting them to visit the page and find out about the travel program.
We created a landing page completely dedicated to the Turkey travel program using images, descriptions and the detailed travel schedule in a clear, simple and easy-to-navigate manner for the user (here is the landing https://go.acetour.it/turchia).
We have included the various travel deals from different departure airports and priced from, with links to the travel platform where you can register and book online.
Results
2,800 travel platform subscribers.
Thanks to the campaigns, we increased the number of new travel platform subscribers from 270 in 2021, to 2,800 in 2022.
Turkey trip sold out.
We received 19 bookings for 74 total people, for a turnover of €39,000, of which 9 bookings directly from the online platform for €11,000 while 10 offline, i.e., booking via phone call or contacting an operator after seeing the ad, for a total of €28,000.
Regarding the FB campaign below is the data:
- Invested €4,211
- Reached over 807,000 users
- Generated over 33,000 clicks
- Obtained nearly 20,000 users who visited the page for over 1 minute and showed interest
- 2,704 people clicked on the “find out more” button landing on the product page to book.
Against an investment in advertising campaigns of €4,211 and a turnover of €39,000, as a result of the 19 travel bookings, we generated a ROAS of 9.26.
Conclusion
With the actions taken and the ecosystem of Google and Meta campaigns that we created, the brand awareness work, the creation of an effective landing page and efficient advertising campaigns, we were therefore able to generate a positive result for the Tour Operator that brings home not only new customers in its CRM but also a high profit margin.
If you also want to get new clients for your travel agency with effective online campaigns, contact us from here: contact.performance-ppc.com
