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NOVASOL – Driving domestic performance during the pandemic

Paid search

Precis helped NOVASOL focus on high-impact marketing efforts and make intelligent advertising investments to generate home-market growth during the tourism industry’s massive corona downturn.

Over the past few years, the holiday home rental industry has been riding a wave of growth that, according to forecasts, would continue to rise. But the good prospects were quickly shattered when the pandemic reached Europe in early 2020 which shut down both borders and countries.

Following an unpredictable summer where online performance was very much demand-driven with week-to-week changes in European restrictions, Precis and NOVASOL entered the fall intending to take back control. To do so, the following goals were set for their paid search strategy:

  1. To hedge the cost of potential cancellations Precis aimed to increase in non-brand profit-ROAS compared to 2019 figures.
  2.  Find new target audiences and take advantage of industry-wide decreases in brand preference by increasing non-brand bookings compared to 2019.

Objectives

To meet these goals, the following initiatives were planned in paid search for Q4 2020:

  1. Real-time import of net revenue from a custom Google Cloud Project to Google Ads (referred to as “Profit bidding”).
  2. Complete search account restructuring so traditional single-keyword ad groups (SKAG) were replaced by a landing page-first strategy.
  3. Higher focus on short-term, domestic bookings in Denmark, NOVASOL’s home market.

Using a well-established ROAS setup that was carried out at the beginning of 2020 Precis was able to see that a new trend emerged during the lockdown.

moving-away-from-SKAG-landing-pages

After many months of working from home and poor prospects for holidays abroad, Danes began to book holiday homes in Denmark. In the past, most holiday home bookings came from customers who searched specifically for NOVASOL with a well-established brand preference, but now there was a large increase in bookings from people who were directed to NOVASOL’s website via searches for “holiday homes” and “weekend stays” – a type of search query also called non-brand searches.

Increase in non-brand bookings

152%

For the Danish market Q4 2019 to Q4 2020.

Increase in non-brand net revenue

148%

For the Danish market Q4 2019 to Q4 2020.

Increase in net ROAS

79%

Non-brand net revenue per booking remained stable Y.o.Y.

  • Precis has been an indispensable digital sparring partner for us for many years. They continuously challenge us in the things we do and have always been ambitious in helping us find the solutions that are best for NOVASOL. There should be no doubt that their ability to advise us and monitor the comings and goings in a market that was suddenly disrupted has been a key part of steering through a very turbulent 2020.

    Jannick Christensen Precis Novasol
    Jannick Christensen
    EMEA Traffic Manager NOVASOL

Key initiatives

1. Keyword composition

In contrast to previously, the new travellers in the market had little to no brand preference, and Precis saw an opportunity to meet the younger and less experienced audience in particular and expand NOVASOL’s non-brand coverage.

2. Landing page selection

More inspirational landing pages were used to recognise the new audiences. Depending on how far in the decision-making process the potential customer was, landing pages were adjusted dynamically in combination with bidding, to make sure all browsers received content relevant at the given point in time. The account structure now revolved around matching customer intent and content and instead of keywords and landing pages.

3. Ad copy variants

Finally, Precis created new ad copy variants, each specifically addressing needs and potential concerns associated with travelling in a year of uncertainty, along with messaging addressing the reduced climate impact of domestic travel.

Expected the unexpected.

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