Jacada Travel's efforts to drive PPC growth explained
Jacada Travel and StrategiQ Digital won the PPC for B2C category at The Drum Awards for Search. Here is the award-winning case study.
A Jacada holiday in the outback
As a luxury travel provider, Jacada Travel creates bespoke and authentic travel experiences for destinations across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America for customers primarily based in North America. After a turbulent couple of years, the business was beginning to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it to the brink of collapse. Jacada was now in a position to propel the business forward and regain market share of the increasing demand for travel.
Objectives: Generate deals to achieve ambitious but agreed revenue targets, with the support of PPC via Google and Microsoft Ads.
Time Period: Sept 2022 - July 2023
Management Fees: Paid Media and Performance services attributed at a ratio of 3:1
Strategy: PPC has been a fundamental channel for Jacada, but with the demand for travel increasing along with rising competition levels, the focus was on how we could continue to grow the channel to support the growth of the business in a cost-effective and sustainable way.
In order for this to happen, it was important that the team had a deeper understanding of the business impact of the paid search results that were being generated within the management platforms. As a result, we set out to develop a custom-built attribution report that joined up marketing activity with CRM data. This would culminate in an interactive dashboard that attributes deals and revenue back to the user journey where analysis takes place across the funnel to influence how PPC campaigns are optimized.
Implementation:
Understanding Destination Performance: As one of the most significant variables of success and revenue, understanding destination performance was key. With significant variances between keyword competition levels across each travel region, the first step was to create a view of close probability across regions, where historical data was used to calculate the percentage of deals won.
More Granular Campaign Structure: Restructured all campaigns across Europe with a greater focus on specific keyword variants. For example, having individual ad groups across Italy for Trips, Tours, Vacations, Itineraries, etc. This allowed for more specific ad headlines to increase ad relevancy scores.
Niche Keyword Targeting: Identified additional keywords with lower competition levels, such as targeting niche trip types. Created a list of key activities within specific destinations, e.g., "vineyard vacations Italy" or "cooking holidays Italy," and crafted specific ad copy to boost quality scores.
Targeted Bid Adjustments: Due to the high ticket price of Jacada’s offering, adjusted bids to target higher-value users. Up-weighted bids for users interested in luxury goods and down-weighted bids for users interested in budget shopping.
Landing Page Experimentation: Improved landing page user experience to increase conversion rates. Recorded a 35% uplift in conversion rate from all traffic sources year-on-year and a 40% increase in conversion rate from all paid media sources year-on-year.
Results:
Jacada surpassed its business objectives, exceeding the revenue target by 34%, which was a 91% increase from the previous year.
Revenue targets were surpassed by 45%, resulting in ROAS levels at 2,882%.
Landing page optimization led to a 35% uplift in conversion rate from all traffic sources year-on-year and a 40% increase in conversion rate from all paid media sources year-on-year.
Conclusion: The impact of the strategy implemented and ongoing optimization work is clear in Jacada’s business and revenue achievements. The landing page optimization work, in particular, demonstrated significant performance uplifts. The comprehensive understanding of the overall business performance, incorporating qualitative insights from the Jacada sales team, allowed for effective management of paid search activity, rebuilding a brand that was once on the brink of collapse. Jacada now has the confidence to push the business even harder, aiming for a revenue target twice as high for 2024 and incorporating additional channels, including customer experience, into their marketing strategy.