Create your own advertisements with Google Ads

September 2024

You’ve got your holiday home ready to go, and you’ve even posted it on a holiday rental portal, but the clicks just aren’t coming. What now? It’s time to look at marketing strategies, and one of the most effective of all is Google Ads.

What is Google Adwords, also known as Google Ads? It’s a very powerful advertising platform. If you can identify the right keywords, you can easily advertise a property on Google, getting your rental home right at the top of the search results.

Google Adwords for holiday rentals

There are lots of good reasons why Google Ads is considered one of the best tools for holiday rentals. You can precisely target your audience, which makes sure your ads are shown to the right people. You’ll also be able to control your budget effectively, paying only when users click on your ads —a great way to create an advertisement for holiday rentals on a shoestring. What’s more, you’ll have some amazing data to analyse as you look at your ads’ performance. That will help you finetune your future campaigns, getting better results each time.

There are several types of ads available on Google Ads, but the most common are Search Ads. These are short, punchy ads that appear at the top of Google’s search results in response to the specific keywords that users enter. For example, you might set up an ad that appears when someone searches “rent holiday flat London”. While other kinds of ads, such as videos that appear on YouTube or picture ads across the Google Display Network, are possible, these are the easiest ones for anyone just starting out.

How to use Google Adwords for maximum success

Before you plunge right in and start creating ads, it’s worth thinking about your campaign goals. The more specific you can be, the better results you’ll see.

What are you hoping to achieve from your ads? You might be looking to increase bookings during a particular time of year. In that case, consider adding month or season keywords to your campaign. Alternatively, you may be trying to target a specific audience —families with children, hen or stag parties, and so on. Then, you’ll need to find keywords that fit the targeted audience’s needs.

You might want to look at an Adwords tutorial to help you find the right target keywords for your campaign. Luckily, Google has a tool especially for this: Keyword Planner. This handy tool will show you keywords that get high search volumes, allowing you to target your ad at the exact sector you want to attract.

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Crafting a holiday rental ad on Google

Now it’s time to think about what your ad will say —and no, it’s not as easy as just entering “rent my holiday home” for the headline and hoping for the best! Again, you might want to use a tutorial for Google Adwords to ensure that everything looks right. The most important consideration here is character limit. Search Ads are designed to be short and sweet, so you’ll need to pack a serious punch in a small space.

Your text ad begins with a headline. More specifically, it begins with three headlines, each with a maximum of 30 characters. The three of them are separated with a vertical line | so you might see something like “London holiday flat | Ideal for families | Book your stay today” appear at the top of the screen.

Make sure your headline catches the eye! It will appear in larger font, as a clickable link, in attention-grabbing blue. People may skim over the body text, but they won’t miss the headline. It’s also important to put the key information in your first and second headline fields. On some devices, the third field won’t show.

After that, you can have up to two body fields, with a maximum of 90 characters each. This is where you can provide more information. Make sure you include a call to action (CTA), which will encourage people to do something. That might be “book now” or “check dates here” —the goal is to get viewers to click on your website and, ideally, book a stay.

Running Adwords for a holiday rental

Now, it’s time to consider your budget. Through Google Ads, you can choose either a daily or monthly budget. You’ll need to set a maximum bid amount. This is the amount of money you’re willing to pay if someone clicks on your ad. Of course, the higher you bid, the more likely you are to get better ad placements.

There are two options here: you can either choose automated bidding or manual bidding. The latter gives you complete control, letting you set your budget for your target ad groups and keywords. The former is simpler, as Google uses its own internal algorithms to bid —always sticking to your overall budget.

Check your performance regularly using the Google Ads platform. If you see that something is underperforming, then it’s back to the drawing board. How can you tweak it for better success? That might mean changing the copy of your ad or the keywords that you’re targeting. Luckily, it’s very quick and easy to do this with Google Ads. You should be prepared to experiment for a while when you first get your campaign up and running, as it may take some time to get it exactly right.

Consider your landing page

One final detail worth considering is your landing page. Many people spend all their time and energy getting the ad right, but you also have to think about where those clicks are going.

Your landing page will probably be your holiday rental website, so you want it to be as clear and straightforward as possible. There should be a simple route for potential customers to convert their clicks into sales. If people find that they click on your ad and end up on an irrelevant page, then they’ll probably leave quickly.

To prevent this, make sure your landing page has all the information that a guest could want, such as: 

• clear pictures of the property
• a thorough description
• a booking calendar to check availability
• a list of prices

You should also make sure you have an option for potential guests to contact you. Some people don’t want to make a booking right away. Instead, they may prefer to send you a message with questions before deciding.

Remember to get the landing page right. Otherwise, all your hard work on your ads could go up in smoke. If you’ve got it all working well, then ideally, you’ll soon start to see your bookings increase.

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