Attention all hotels!! The holiday season is upon us, and retail marketers are not the only one’s that should be fine-tuning their search marketing campaigns. Seasonal keywords for the travel industry are often overlooked during keyword research, but they can be a crucial and powerful tool in your online marketing strategy.
Let’s take a look at some examples from one of the most competitive markets in online marketing: New York City Travel.
Typically, to run a paid search campaign in NYC would take a healthy budget. Broad competitive keywords can be costly due to high search volume and heavy competition from major brands. However, take a look at these seasonal searches:
My first observation is that there is only 1 independent hotel advertising on this set of keyword phrases. No major brands, no other independent hotels, not even the discount sites Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are bidding on these seasonal terms.
For an independent hotel, this is huge. As you can see from the stats below, provided by the Google Keyword Tool, there are over 11,100 searches just for those 3 terms, with the majority of those searches happening during late October, November and December.
Not only that, but the average cost per click for these terms is only $0.44. These are unbelievable numbers for such a competitive vertical!Pair this style of seasonal search marketing with a solid revenue management program that actively creates seasonal packages and discounts, and you will have a rock star search marketing program.
