The power of pay-per-click hotel marketing

Directing traffic to a hotel's website can be an expensive business, but now help is at hand from an innovative marketing agency.

Plymouth-based Open Eye Marketing is the sole UK company concentrating entirely on pay-per-click (PPC) marketing - a form of promotion that means firms only have to pay when someone chooses them on an internet search engine.

PPC gives companies complete control over their marketing spend, and guarantees they will rank highly when certain terms are searched for.

Alternative methods like search engine optimisation (placing keywords on websites to improve results on internet searches) can be expensive and not necessarily produce any return on investment.

A variety of businesses have benefited from Open Eye's help, including hotels like Sampsons Farm in Newton Abbot.

It wanted to attract more business during quiet periods, and encourage more corporate bookings.

Open Eye Director Andy Maclean said: "Through extensive research, we have identified hundreds of relevant phrases that people might search for on sites like Google and Ask Jeeves, like 'Devon conference venue' and 'hotel in Newton Abbot'.

"Sampsons only pay when one of those searches leads to a visit to their website, so they can spend more in quiet periods to encourage more traffic.

"Likewise when they are busy they can cut down or switch it off altogether.

"In other words, they are in complete control of when they spend and how much.

"Sampsons only spends GBP3 to GBP5 per day, but it's their only major source of bookings".

Sampsons manager Nigel Bell said: "We don't spend money on any other form of advertising as we know our potential customers are online, so that's where we need to be found.

"Because we are paying per visitor [to our site] we really are getting value for money advertising; for example, if someone finds us on Google via the phrase 'restaurant in newton abbot' it only costs us 7p when they come to our website.

"So if just one visitor in a 100 books a table, we make a hefty return on our outlay".

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