Google Ads For Whitewater Rafting Outfitters
Capitalizing on the Lack of Competition as the US Reopens
Almost all tour operators were hit hard by the COVID-19 global pandemic, forcing businesses of all sizes to conserve their cash by turning off their paid advertising. With the nation opening back up in phased rollouts, some tour operators have been able to begin running tours again.
The Climate is Right
One industry segment that is positioned fairly well for the rebound is whitewater rafting. The collective desire to have an exciting outdoor adventure in the fresh air while staying in relatively small groups is perfectly correlated to the experience that rafting provides. In mid-May we started to see travel demand increase and rafting trip bookings began climbing closer to what we would have expected prior to 2020. We compared Google Ads data from whitewater rafting operators for the last two weeks of May (5/19 – 6/1) to the same time period the previous year to better understand the PPC auction environment changes.
Our findings:
- Average cost per click is down 30%
- Click-through-rate is up 211%
- Conversion rate is up 355%
- Cost per conversion is down 56%
The 30% decrease in cost per click, and furthermore the 56% decrease in cost per conversion, clearly demonstrate the decrease of competitive bidding on whitewater rafting keywords in the specified timeframe.
Over this two week span, these whitewater rafting clients saw an average return on ad spend of 8.8x from online transactions alone. The return is going to be higher after factoring in the bookings from the 85 phone calls, 13 contact forms, and 5 emails attributed to Google Ads.
Next Steps
The pent up travel demand is real and we are seeing it in the data. Now is the time to take advantage of lower competitive PPC markets in the whitewater rafting industry and beyond.
Reach out to us if you have any questions regarding Google Ads advertising, what it may look like for you, and if we think it would be a good time for you to turn Google Ads on.
We would like to note that this is a relatively small sample size of our current whitewater rafting clients. The PPC market changes daily.
