Why PPC Optimization Matters for Outdoor Brands
In the highly competitive outdoor industry, every marketing dollar counts. Outdoor brands, whether offering adventure tours, gear, or unique experiences, face the challenge of reaching the right customers at exactly the right moment—when they’re actively searching for their next outdoor adventure. This is where Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising comes into play. PPC campaigns offer outdoor brands the ability to connect with potential customers in real-time, capturing those last-minute bookings, seasonal shoppers, and adventure enthusiasts who are ready to convert.
But here’s the problem: many outdoor brands struggle to optimize their PPC campaigns. They pour money into ads without a clear strategy, leading to high costs per conversion, wasted ad spend, and ineffective targeting. Without proper optimization, even well-funded PPC campaigns can fail to deliver the results outdoor brands need.
That’s why PPC optimization is critical for outdoor brands looking to get the most out of their marketing budget. By conducting thorough audits, aligning campaigns with business goals, choosing the right bidding strategies, and tracking performance effectively, outdoor brands can drastically reduce their PPC costs while significantly boosting conversions.
Real-World Success
To illustrate this, let’s look at a real-world example. We worked with a Costa Rica-based adventure company offering outdoor activities like whitewater rafting and horseback riding. When we first audited their PPC account, we found major inefficiencies: their campaigns were poorly structured, conversion tracking was misaligned with actual bookings, and they were spending heavily on underperforming ads. Sound familiar?
Through a careful audit and strategic optimization, we reduced their cost per conversion by 60%—from $71 to $29. Not only that, but we also boosted their overall conversions by 60%, leading to a dramatic increase in bookings and ROI. This guide is based on the exact strategies we used to achieve these results.
What You’ll Learn in This Guide
In the sections that follow, we’ll walk you through the proven strategies that helped this outdoor adventure company transform their PPC performance. You’ll learn how to:
- Conduct a PPC audit to uncover hidden inefficiencies in your campaigns.
- Align your campaigns with the right conversions, such as bookings or lead generation, to ensure your ad spend is focused on business goals.
- Choose between manual and automated bidding strategies to optimize control and scalability.
- Write high-converting ad copy that resonates with outdoor enthusiasts, driving them to take action.
- Optimize your campaign budgets to focus on high-performing channels and cut underperforming ones.
- Set up proper conversion tracking to measure meaningful actions like bookings or completed leads.
By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap for optimizing your PPC campaigns, cutting costs, and boosting conversions. If you’re ready to see these strategies in action, download our full case study to get an in-depth look at how we helped an outdoor adventure brand slash their PPC costs and skyrocket their conversions.
Download our case study
Understanding PPC for Outdoor Brands
For outdoor brands, the stakes in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising are higher than most. Unlike traditional retail or service industries where customers have a long sales cycle, outdoor brands often cater to customers making last-minute decisions. Whether it’s a tourist booking a spontaneous rafting trip or a camper searching for new gear, these customers need fast, relevant information at the moment they’re ready to convert. PPC advertising offers outdoor brands the unique ability to capture these customers when their intent is highest, but only if campaigns are optimized correctly.
The Unique Challenges of PPC in the Outdoor Industry
While PPC campaigns can drive impressive results, outdoor brands face several unique challenges that require careful attention:
- Seasonal Demand and High Competition Outdoor activities are often seasonal, with peaks in interest tied to specific times of the year (e.g., summer for hiking gear or winter for skiing adventures). This creates fierce competition for keywords during peak seasons, driving up costs for ads targeting high-converting keywords like “best adventure tours” or “top camping gear.”
In this high-demand environment, it’s crucial for outdoor brands to adjust their bidding strategies and budgets based on seasonal trends. Failing to do so can result in wasted ad spend when demand is low and missed opportunities during peak seasons. - Last-Minute Bookings Outdoor brands, especially those offering services like tours, rentals, or experiences, frequently deal with short sales cycles. Unlike customers in other industries who may take days or weeks to decide, outdoor customers—especially tourists—often book activities with little notice. This makes it essential for brands to capture potential customers right as they are ready to convert. Effective PPC strategies for outdoor brands must focus on real-time targeting to capture these last-minute bookings. This requires fast, responsive campaigns that align ad copy, landing pages, and conversion goals with customer urgency.
- Geo-Targeting for Local Markets Many outdoor brands rely on geo-targeting to reach customers in specific locations. For example, an outdoor adventure company in Costa Rica may want to target tourists physically in the country, while a local outdoor gear shop may only want to advertise to customers within driving distance. Without proper geo-targeting, outdoor brands risk wasting budget on irrelevant clicks from customers outside their service area. An optimized PPC campaign for outdoor brands should include precise location-based targeting to ensure ads are only shown to the most relevant audience.
- Highly Visual Ads for Experience-Driven Consumers Outdoor enthusiasts and adventure seekers are visually motivated. They’re not just looking for gear or services—they’re looking for an experience. This makes the visual aspect of PPC campaigns especially important for outdoor brands.
Platforms like Google Display Network, Facebook, and Instagram offer visual ad formats that can showcase the excitement and adventure that outdoor brands provide. For outdoor brands, optimizing image-based ads is key to capturing the attention of potential customers and driving higher click-through rates (CTR).
The Benefits of PPC for Outdoor Brands
Despite these challenges, PPC remains one of the most effective channels for outdoor brands. When optimized correctly, PPC offers several key advantages:
- Immediate Visibility: PPC allows outdoor brands to immediately appear at the top of search results or on relevant websites. Whether a customer is searching for “last-minute adventure tours” or “best hiking gear,” PPC ensures your brand is seen when it matters most.
- Control Over Budget: Unlike traditional advertising, PPC offers complete control over budget. Brands can adjust spend based on seasonality, competition, and performance, ensuring that every dollar is being used effectively.
- Precise Targeting: PPC platforms like Google Ads and Meta Ads provide a range of targeting options, from location-based targeting to interests and behaviors. For outdoor brands, this means reaching the exact audience who is most likely to convert—whether they’re tourists in the area or adventure enthusiasts looking for new gear.
- Performance Tracking: With the right tracking setup (e.g., Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager), outdoor brands can measure the effectiveness of every ad dollar spent. From cost per conversion to return on ad spend (ROAS), brands have the data they need to continuously optimize their campaigns.
Ready to take advantage of these PPC benefits?
How to Audit Your PPC Campaigns for Better Performance
One of the most overlooked aspects of PPC management is the PPC audit—a detailed review of your campaigns to identify areas where performance can be improved, costs can be reduced, and conversions can be increased. Without regular audits, PPC campaigns can become inefficient, wasting budget on poorly targeted ads, misaligned conversion tracking, or irrelevant keywords.
An effective PPC audit ensures that every dollar spent is driving results aligned with your brand’s goals, making it essential for outdoor brands looking to maximize their ROI.
Why a PPC Audit is Critical for Outdoor Brands
For outdoor brands, PPC audits are particularly important because of the seasonal and highly competitive nature of the industry. A poorly optimized campaign can easily burn through a budget, especially during peak seasons when competition is fierce. Without regular audits, you could be missing out on potential customers and overpaying for ads that aren’t converting.
Auditing your PPC campaigns can uncover hidden opportunities to improve performance. Whether it’s discovering untapped keywords, fixing conversion tracking issues, or reallocating budgets to better-performing campaigns, audits provide a comprehensive view of how well your campaigns are running.
In our case study, a thorough PPC audit revealed major inefficiencies in a Costa Rica-based outdoor adventure company’s campaigns. Their conversion tracking was misaligned, meaning that their ads were optimizing for actions like phone calls and page views instead of actual bookings. Their budget was also spread too thin across underperforming campaigns, wasting money on Display ads that weren’t driving conversions. By addressing these issues through a structured audit, we helped them reduce costs by 60% and increase conversions by 60% in just a few months.
Steps to Perform an Effective PPC Audit
1. Review Campaign Structure
The first step in a PPC audit is to ensure that your campaign structure is logical and aligned with your business objectives. Campaigns should be organized by product or service type, target audience, or location.
- What to Look For:
- Are your campaigns segmented by ad type (Search, Display, Video)?
- Are there campaigns focused on specific geographic regions, especially for local or tourist-driven services?
- Are you grouping similar keywords together in ad groups to improve relevance?
- A well-structured campaign will allow you to better control ad spend and measure performance. For outdoor brands, this might mean having separate campaigns for different adventure types (rafting, hiking, kayaking) or even splitting campaigns by seasonality.
2. Analyze Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is the backbone of any successful PPC campaign. Without it, you won’t know which ads are leading to valuable actions, like bookings or form submissions. During an audit, it’s essential to review your Google Ads conversion tracking setup to ensure that you are tracking the most meaningful actions.
- What to Look For:
- Are your conversions properly aligned with your business goals (e.g., bookings, not just clicks or page views)?
- Are you using Google Tag Manager or other tracking tools to set up conversions accurately across all touchpoints (website, phone calls, form submissions)?
- Are there any conversions being counted multiple times or not firing at all?
- Case Study Highlight: In our case study, the client’s PPC campaigns were initially set up to prioritize less important conversions, like phone calls, over actual bookings. By restructuring conversion tracking to focus on bookings, we were able to optimize bids and ultimately cut the cost per conversion from $71 to $29.
3. Evaluate Budget Allocation
Budget allocation is another critical factor that can make or break a PPC campaign. During your audit, you’ll want to assess how your budget is being distributed across different campaigns and ad groups. Are you spending too much on campaigns that aren’t converting? Are your high-converting campaigns underfunded?
- What to Look For:
- Are your top-performing campaigns receiving the majority of your budget?
- Are there underperforming campaigns that should be paused or scaled back?
- Are seasonal fluctuations in demand reflected in your budget allocation?
Case Study Highlight: The outdoor adventure company in our case study was overspending on underperforming Display ads while neglecting their high-converting Search campaigns. By reallocating their budget to focus more on Search and Performance Max campaigns, we were able to dramatically improve their return on investment.
4. Assess Ad Performance and Targeting
Your ads are the heart of your PPC campaigns, and it’s essential to ensure they are performing at their best. This part of the audit focuses on the click-through rate (CTR), relevance score, and overall targeting accuracy of your ads.
- What to Look For:
- Are your ads optimized for high CTR with compelling headlines and descriptions?
- Are you targeting the right audiences based on geographic location, interest, and intent?
- Are your ads driving traffic to optimized landing pages that match the ad copy?
During the audit, we found that many of the client’s campaigns were poorly optimized. Some ads had been disapproved of using trademarked terms and hadn’t been running for a while, which severely impacted their performance. After cleaning up the ad copy, removing the trademarked terms, and ensuring the ads were approved and properly targeted, we saw significant improvements in visibility and conversions.
Interested in uncovering hidden inefficiencies in your PPC campaigns?
Aligning Conversions with Business Goals
One of the most common mistakes outdoor brands make in their PPC campaigns is focusing on metrics like page views or clicks, which are easy to track but don’t always lead to conversions such as bookings or purchases. These actions can inflate your campaign’s performance on paper, but they don’t necessarily translate into revenue. The key to success is aligning your PPC campaigns with primary conversions—the actions that directly contribute to your business goals.
Define Your Conversions
The first step in aligning your PPC campaigns is to define what a conversion means for your business. For outdoor brands, common primary conversions include:
- Bookings: When a user completes a booking for an adventure or tour.
- Purchases: When a customer buys outdoor gear or equipment.
- Lead Submissions: When a user fills out a form to inquire about services or activities.
Once you’ve defined these high-value conversions, you can set up your PPC campaigns to focus on driving them rather than low-value actions like page views.
Using Google Tag Manager for Conversion Tracking
To track these conversions across platforms, tools like Google Tag Manager (GTM) can make it easier to measure complex user interactions without manually updating your website’s code. GTM allows you to set up conversion tags for specific actions, such as a user completing a booking or reaching a “thank you” page after submitting a lead form. By linking GTM with your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, you can ensure that all conversion data is recorded accurately.
Primary vs. Secondary Conversions: Why the Distinction Matters
When setting up PPC campaigns, it’s essential to differentiate between primary and secondary conversions.
- Primary Conversions: These are the actions that directly contribute to your business goals. For outdoor brands, primary conversions typically include bookings for adventure tours, purchases of outdoor gear, or form submissions for lead generation. These conversions should be the main focus of your PPC campaigns and what you optimize for.
- Secondary Conversions: These actions, while valuable, do not directly lead to immediate revenue. Examples include newsletter signups, or page views. While these actions can help build relationships or nurture leads, they shouldn’t be the primary measure of success for your PPC campaigns.
The Problem with Prioritizing Secondary Conversions
Many brands inadvertently focus on secondary conversions when setting up their campaigns. For example, a brand may run ads that optimize for clicks or page views because they are easy to track and often come at a lower cost. However, clicks and page views don’t always lead to conversions, such as bookings or sales, meaning the brand could be wasting budget on metrics that don’t reflect real business value. The risk here is that you optimize for the wrong actions, leading to inflated costs and missed opportunities for real growth by focusing on vanity metrics rather than revenue-driving goals.
How Aligning Conversions Boosted Results by 60%
In our case study, an outdoor adventure company was struggling with a similar issue. Their PPC campaigns were optimized for phone calls and page views, neither of which directly led to the company’s main goal: increasing bookings. While phone calls and page views were occurring, they weren’t translating into the results that mattered most.
The Solution: We restructured their conversion tracking to focus on actual bookings. By making this the primary conversion, their ads and bidding strategies began optimizing for bookings, significantly increasing the number of paying customers. This shift resulted in a 60% increase in conversions, as the campaigns were now aligned with business goals, targeting customers ready to book.
Steps to Align Conversions with Business Goals
- Identify Your Primary Conversion: The first step in aligning your PPC campaigns is to define what your primary conversion is. For most outdoor brands, this will be bookings, product purchases, or lead submissions. Focus your campaigns on these conversions to ensure your budget is driving the most valuable outcomes.
- Pros: Focusing on a primary conversion aligns ad spend with actual revenue, ensuring higher return on investment (ROI).
- Cons: It may take time to identify and set up accurate tracking for these conversions, especially if your business offers multiple services or products.
- Use Google Tag Manager for Accurate Conversion Tracking: Once you’ve identified your primary conversion, you need to ensure it’s accurately tracked. Using Google Tag Manager (GTM), you can set up conversion triggers for specific actions, such as completed bookings or purchases.
- Pros: GTM allows for precise tracking of complex actions, ensuring that you capture the right conversions across different platforms.
- Cons: GTM setup can be technically challenging, requiring expertise or third-party support to ensure it’s configured correctly.
- Set Up Secondary Conversions for Supporting Actions: While your campaigns should focus on primary conversions, you can also track secondary conversions to gain insights into customer behavior. These might include actions like clicking a call button, downloading a brochure, or visiting a key landing page. While secondary conversions are important, they should be used to complement primary goals, not replace them.
- Pros: Tracking secondary conversions provides valuable data on user engagement and the customer journey.
- Cons: Focusing too much on secondary conversions can lead to confusion over what’s truly driving value, resulting in misaligned campaign optimizations.
- Adjust Bidding Strategies to Optimize for Primary Conversions: Once your conversions are correctly set up, the next step is to choose the right bidding strategy to optimize for those conversions. If bookings are your primary conversion, for example, your goal should be to maximize those bookings, not just drive traffic to a page where a booking might happen. Typically, you’ll start with manual bidding to maintain control while testing the waters. After collecting around 30-50 conversions, you can switch to an automated bidding strategy, such as Maximize Conversions, to let the system optimize your campaign. Automated bid strategies work by analyzing the conversions you’ve already tracked and then seeking out more of the same. Over time, the system learns to target higher-quality conversions by continuously optimizing based on campaign performance. This process improves as you add better keywords, fine-tune audience targeting, and introduce negative keywords (or negative placements) to filter out irrelevant traffic.
- Pros: Switching to automated bidding helps the system identify and optimize for conversions that matter, ensuring your budget is focused on driving real revenue.
- Cons: This process takes time and requires ongoing optimization of keywords, targeting, and placements to refine results.
In the case of our outdoor adventure company, realigning their campaigns to focus on bookings as the primary conversion resulted in a drastic improvement. Once the PPC campaigns began optimizing for the right actions, conversion rates soared, increasing by 60%. This simple shift—focusing on the business’s main revenue-driving action—made all the difference.
See how we helped an outdoor adventure brand restructure their conversions for massive growth
Crafting Ad Copy that Converts for Outdoor Brands
When it comes to PPC campaigns for outdoor brands, ad copy can make or break the performance of your ads. Unlike traditional e-commerce or service businesses, outdoor brands are marketing experiences, adventure, and lifestyle. Whether you’re promoting a thrilling rafting excursion, a serene camping trip, or high-performance hiking gear, your ad copy needs to speak directly to the emotions and motivations of your audience.
The right ad copy will not only attract clicks but also drive conversions by connecting with the adventurous spirit of your customers. For outdoor brands, compelling copy is essential in encouraging that final booking or purchase.
Why Ad Copy is Crucial for Outdoor Brands
For outdoor and active-lifestyle brands, the decision to book an adventure or purchase gear often hinges on emotion. Your customers are looking for experiences, and your ad copy needs to capture that excitement. With the fast pace of online searches and the competitive nature of PPC advertising, you have only a few words to grab your audience’s attention, communicate value, and drive them to take action.
What Makes High-Converting Ad Copy?
- Urgency and Action-Oriented Language Outdoor activities often involve time-sensitive decisions—whether it’s booking a last-minute tour or purchasing gear for an upcoming trip. Your ad copy should create a sense of urgency that encourages immediate action.
Examples:
- “Book Your Last-Minute Adventure Today”
- “Limited Spots Available—Reserve Now!”
- “Don’t Miss Out on This Weekend’s Adventure”
- These kinds of action-oriented headlines trigger the fear of missing out (FOMO), which can be especially effective for adventure-seekers planning spontaneous trips.
- Highlighting the Experience People don’t just book tours or buy gear—they buy into the experience. Your ad copy should focus on the emotions and experiences your brand offers, such as the thrill of a rafting trip, the beauty of a hiking trail, or the sense of freedom that comes with camping in the wilderness.
Examples:
- “Experience Costa Rica’s Most Thrilling Whitewater Rafting”
- “Explore the Outdoors with Our Top-Quality Hiking Gear”
- “Discover Untouched Trails and Breathtaking Views—Book Your Adventure Today”
- By focusing on the experience, you give potential customers a reason to engage with your ad and consider your offering.
- Clear Call-to-Action (CTA) Every piece of ad copy should end with a strong, clear call-to-action (CTA) that tells your audience exactly what to do next. Whether it’s “Book Now,” “Reserve Your Spot,” or “Shop the Collection,” the CTA should be direct and easy to understand.
Examples:
- “Book Your Next Adventure Now”
- “Shop Our Gear for Your Next Expedition”
- “Reserve Your Spot Before It’s Gone”
- A strong CTA removes ambiguity and gives potential customers a clear path to conversion, increasing the likelihood of clicks and bookings.
- Relevance to the Audience Your ad copy should be tailored to the specific audience you’re targeting. For example, if you’re targeting tourists looking for outdoor adventures, the messaging should reflect the excitement of travel. If you’re targeting local outdoor enthusiasts, you might focus on nearby experiences and convenience.
Examples:
- “Tour Costa Rica’s Best Outdoor Adventures—Book Your Experience Now” (Tourist-targeted)
- “Weekend Getaway? Explore Local Trails with Our Top Gear” (Local-targeted)
- Ensuring your messaging is relevant to the audience’s intent will improve your Quality Score and increase conversions.
A/B Testing Ad Copy for Better Performance
Even the best ad copy requires optimization to ensure it resonates with your audience. A/B testing different versions of your ad copy can help you determine which messaging works best for different segments of your audience.
What to Test:
- Headlines: Try different variations that emphasize urgency, experience, or special offers.
- Example: “Book Your Adventure Today” vs. “Discover Costa Rica’s Best Tours—Book Now.”
- Example: “Book Your Adventure Today” vs. “Discover Costa Rica’s Best Tours—Book Now.”
- CTAs: Experiment with different calls to action to see which one drives the most conversions.
- Example: “Book Now” vs. “Reserve Your Spot Today.”
- Example: “Book Now” vs. “Reserve Your Spot Today.”
- Benefits: Test ad copy that emphasizes different value propositions, such as “Top-rated tours” vs. “Best value for thrill-seekers.”
In our case study, the outdoor adventure company was initially running ads with generic ad copy that didn’t capture the excitement of their tours. We implemented A/B testing with headlines and CTAs that focused on the experience and urgency of booking their adventures. The results were immediate: the ads with experience-driven copy generated a significantly higher click-through rate (CTR), and after optimizing further, these changes led to a 60% increase in conversions.
Crafting Ad Copy That Converts: A Step-by-Step Guide
Here’s a step-by-step approach to creating ad copy that converts for your outdoor brand:
- Focus on the Experience: Use imagery and language that highlight the unique experiences your brand offers, whether it’s a thrilling adventure or top-tier outdoor gear.
- Create Urgency: Encourage immediate action with time-sensitive offers or limited availability.
- Use Clear and Direct CTAs: Make it easy for your audience to take the next step by using clear, action-oriented CTAs.
- Tailor Your Messaging: Adjust your copy to match the specific needs and desires of your audience, whether they are tourists, locals, or adventure enthusiasts.
- Test and Optimize: Regularly A/B test your ad copy to find the best-performing headlines, CTAs, and value propositions.
Fixing Broken URLs and Ad Approval Issues
Once you’ve crafted a compelling ad copy, it’s critical to ensure that your ads are properly approved and that they lead customers to the correct landing pages. Broken URLs or disapproved ads can significantly impact your campaign’s performance, wasting ad budget and missing potential conversions.
In our audit of the Costa Rica adventure company’s PPC campaigns, we found several issues with disapproved ads due to the use of trademarked terms like “Tripadvisor.” Additionally, some ads were directing users to broken URLs, which led to a high bounce rate and lost conversions. These technical issues were dragging down performance despite the quality of the ad copy.
After resolving these issues—cleaning up disapproved ads and fixing broken URLs—the client saw an immediate improvement in conversion rate and click-through rate (CTR). This contributed significantly to the overall success of the campaign.
Want to see how optimized ad copy can transform your PPC performance?
Optimizing Campaign Budgets for Maximum ROI
Maximizing the return on investment (ROI) from your PPC campaigns isn’t just about creating great ads—it’s also about allocating your budget effectively. Whether you’re working with a large or small budget, knowing where to direct your ad spend is critical to driving conversions and lowering costs.
For outdoor brands, budget optimization is especially important. The outdoor industry often deals with seasonal demand and fluctuating customer interest, which means that your PPC budget needs to be flexible and responsive to changes in market conditions. A poorly allocated budget can result in wasted ad spend on underperforming campaigns, while top-performing campaigns may not receive enough support to reach their full potential.
Why Budget Optimization Matters for Outdoor Brands
Outdoor brands face unique challenges when it comes to managing their PPC budgets. These include:
- Seasonal Demand Variations: Outdoor activities and gear purchases tend to peak during specific seasons. For example, camping gear sees a spike in summer, while ski and snowboard gear peaks in winter. Budgeting effectively means increasing spend during high-demand periods and scaling back during off-seasons to avoid wasting money.
- Competition Fluctuations: The cost of bidding on popular outdoor-related keywords can rise dramatically during peak seasons due to high competition. Brands that don’t adjust their budgets accordingly may find themselves overspending on clicks that don’t convert.
- Diverse Campaign Types: Outdoor brands often run various types of campaigns, including Search, Display, and Performance Max. Each campaign type serves a different purpose, and not all will perform equally. It’s critical to allocate budget based on which campaign types are driving the most conversions.
By continuously auditing and reallocating your budget, you can ensure that every dollar is being spent wisely and driving real business results.
Steps to Optimize Your PPC Budget for Maximum ROI
- Identify Top-Performing Campaigns
The first step in budget optimization is to identify your top-performing campaigns. These are the campaigns that consistently drive the most valuable conversions, whether that’s bookings, sales, or leads.
- What to Look For:
- Which campaigns have the lowest cost per conversion?
- Which campaigns generate the highest return on ad spend (ROAS)?
- Are there specific ad groups or keywords driving most of your conversions?
Once you’ve identified your best-performing campaigns, allocate a larger portion of your budget to them to scale their success.
- Reallocate Budget from Underperforming Campaigns
If some of your campaigns are underperforming—meaning they’re spending a lot of money without delivering meaningful results—consider reallocating that budget to higher-performing campaigns.
- What to Look For:
- Campaigns with a high cost per conversion but low conversion rates.
- Campaigns that have failed to generate significant traffic or engagement.
- Display campaigns that are draining your budget but not leading to bookings or sales.
Case Study Highlight:
In our case study, the outdoor adventure company was overspending on Display ads that were not generating the desired conversions. At the same time, their Search campaigns were performing well but were underfunded. By shifting their budget away from underperforming Display ads and investing more in top-performing Search campaigns, we were able to significantly improve their return on investment. This reallocation resulted in a 60% reduction in PPC costs and a sharp increase in bookings.
- Adjust Budget Based on Seasonality
For outdoor brands, seasonality plays a big role in determining budget allocation. During peak seasons, demand is higher, and so is the competition for ad placements. As such, it’s wise to increase your ad spend during high-demand periods when your customers are most likely to convert.
- What to Look For:
- High-demand keywords that spike during specific seasons (e.g., “ski equipment” in winter, “camping gear” in summer).
- Use historical data to determine when demand for your products or services peaks, and plan to increase budget during those times.
On the flip side, during the off-season, it’s wise to reduce spend on campaigns that might be less effective. Instead, focus on building awareness or generating leads for future sales.
- Use Automated Rules to Manage Budget Allocation
To make the most of your PPC budget, you can set up automated rules in platforms like Google Ads. These rules allow you to automatically increase or decrease your budget based on specific conditions, such as low conversion rates, high click-through rates (CTR), or changes in ROAS.
- Examples of Automated Rules:
- Automatically increase spend on campaigns when the conversion rate exceeds a set threshold.
- Pause campaigns that exceed a specified cost per conversion to avoid overspending.
- Adjust bids dynamically based on real-time performance metrics.
By setting up these rules, you can ensure that your budget is being used efficiently without needing to monitor your campaigns constantly.
- Test and Refine Your Budget Allocation
Optimizing your PPC budget is not a one-time process. To truly maximize ROI, you’ll need to continuously test, monitor, and refine your budget allocation.
- What to Test:
- Increase budget on high-converting keywords and monitor their performance.
- Test different budget splits between Search, Display, and Performance Max campaigns to find the right balance.
- Monitor how seasonal changes affect conversion rates and adjust your budget accordingly.
How Budget Reallocation Improved ROI
In the case study, the Costa Rica-based outdoor adventure company was initially spreading its budget too thin across multiple campaign types, including Display ads that were generating clicks but not conversions. After performing a budget audit, we reallocated their ad spend towards high-performing Search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns. This strategic reallocation led to a 60% decrease in PPC costs and a corresponding increase in conversions by 60%. By focusing their budget on the campaigns that were driving bookings, the company saw a significant improvement in ROI.
Want to see how strategic budget allocation can improve your PPC results?
Tracking and Measuring PPC Performance
No matter how well your PPC campaigns are structured, optimized, or budgeted, you won’t be able to achieve consistent success without accurate tracking and performance measurement. Tracking key metrics helps ensure your ad spend is generating meaningful results, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions that can boost your return on investment (ROI).
For outdoor brands, conversion tracking is particularly important. Whether you’re driving bookings for tours, generating leads for outdoor services, or selling gear online, knowing what actions users are taking after they click on your ads is critical for optimizing your campaigns.
Why Conversion Tracking is Essential
Conversion tracking tells you which of your ads are turning clicks into actual revenue-driving actions, such as bookings, form submissions, or purchases. Without proper tracking, you’re essentially flying blind—optimizing your campaigns based on incomplete or irrelevant data.
Here’s why conversion tracking is essential for outdoor brands:
- Identify High-Performing Ads and Keywords
Conversion tracking allows you to pinpoint exactly which ads, ad groups, or keywords are driving the most conversions. For outdoor brands, this could be specific keywords related to activities (e.g., “rafting trips in Costa Rica”) or gear (e.g., “best camping gear for winter”). - Optimize Bids and Budgets
Once you know which ads are driving conversions, you can optimize your bids and budget allocation to focus more on what’s working and cut back on what’s not. - Track ROI
Conversion tracking helps you calculate your return on investment by showing you the revenue or value generated from your PPC campaigns. - Set and Monitor Goals
By tracking conversions, you can set specific performance goals (e.g., a target cost per conversion or a desired number of bookings) and adjust your strategy if you’re not meeting them.
Key PPC Metrics to Track for Outdoor Brands
Once your conversion tracking is set up, it’s important to regularly monitor the key performance metrics that will help you optimize your campaigns. For outdoor brands, the most important metrics include:
- Cost Per Conversion
This metric tells you how much you’re paying for each conversion (e.g., booking or lead). It’s crucial to keep your cost per conversion in line with your profit margins. For example, if your cost per booking is higher than the revenue generated from that booking, you’re overspending on ads.
- Goal: Lower your cost per conversion by improving ad relevance, refining targeting, and optimizing bids.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR measures how often users click on your ad after seeing it. A high CTR indicates that your ad copy and targeting are resonating with your audience.
- Goal: Increase your CTR by using compelling ad copy, strong calls to action, and relevant keywords.
- Conversion Rate
This metric tells you the percentage of users who clicked on your ad and then completed a conversion. A low conversion rate may indicate that your landing page isn’t effectively convincing users to take the next step.
- Goal: Improve your conversion rate by optimizing landing pages, speeding up load times, and ensuring the landing page aligns with your ad copy.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS tells you how much revenue you’re generating for each dollar spent on ads. It’s one of the best metrics for determining the overall effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.
- Goal: Aim to increase ROAS by focusing on high-performing campaigns and minimizing wasteful spend on low-converting keywords or ads.
- Bounce Rate
The bounce rate shows how many users click on your ad but leave the landing page without taking any further action. A high bounce rate could indicate that your landing page isn’t aligned with the user’s expectations or that it loads too slowly.
- Goal: Lower your bounce rate by ensuring your landing page matches the messaging in your ad, is fast to load, and has a clear call to action.
Tracking and Measuring to Reduce Costs
In our case study, the outdoor adventure company initially struggled with high costs per conversion and inconsistent tracking. Their PPC campaigns were tracking low-value actions like page views and phone calls instead of bookings. Once we restructured their conversion tracking to focus on bookings as the primary conversion, and implemented accurate tracking with Google Tag Manager, their performance drastically improved.
This led to a 60% reduction in cost per conversion, dropping from $71 to $29. By tracking the right metrics and measuring campaign performance in real-time, we were able to continuously optimize their campaigns, resulting in a 60% increase in bookings.
Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns for Outdoor Brands
Optimizing your PPC campaigns is essential for outdoor brands looking to maximize their marketing efforts, especially in a competitive and fast-moving industry. From conducting thorough audits to aligning conversions with business goals, choosing the right bidding strategy, and optimizing your budget, every part of your PPC process can significantly impact your ROI.
In this guide, we’ve covered:
- Auditing PPC campaigns to uncover hidden inefficiencies and ensure every dollar is driving results.
- Aligning conversions with your business goals so your ads focus on what truly matters—bookings, leads, and sales.
- Choosing the right bidding strategy to control costs and scale campaigns efficiently, balancing manual and automated approaches.
- Crafting ad copy that converts, by speaking directly to the motivations of outdoor adventure seekers and using urgency and action-oriented language.
- Optimizing your campaign budgets to focus on high-performing campaigns and avoid overspending on underperforming ones.
- Tracking and measuring performance with precision, using tools like Google Tag Manager to ensure that every important action is tracked and monitored.
