Using Search Marketing to Help Local Campers Find You

In an effort to support franchisees and marketing of their individual campgrounds, without directly competing against themselves and corporate’s national advertising, we offer a paid search marketing program. By partnering with Generator Media + Analytics, KOA’s national advertising agency, we are able to minimize internally driven competition in bidding on search results, increase brand exposure on search results pages, and mitigate risks for non-participating franchisees. This program will empower the franchisees who may not be well-versed in marketing.

To participate, please email Erik Evensen at [email protected]. There is a minimum spend of $500/month per location. This includes the 12.5% and $100 monthly management fee (which KOA will cover the $100 monthly management fee and campaign setup fee). Campaigns will run for a minimum of three months. Franchisees may pause their campaigns at any point. During the time Generator is managing the franchisee’s search campaigns, the campground will be required to cease any promotional efforts running on their end.

Google Adwords & Site Listings

Through our own Google Adwords buys at the corporate level as well as our powerful standing with Google when people search camping-related terms, we’re driving tremendous traffic to KOA.com — and, as a result, to your campground’s landing page on the site. However, there are ways you can augment your visibility with campers searching the internet to bring even more of them your way.

Google Adwords

Google AdWords is the system by which sponsored advertising appears on the Google network. When a potential customer is searching for something on Google, the ads that appear on the top and right side of the results page in colored boxes are “sponsored” listings delivered by AdWords. Advertisers pay a fee that ranges from $0.05 to $50.00 for each “click” on their ads.

Google AdWords can drive additional qualified traffic to your landing page on KOA.com when you optimize for specific terms related to your campground (i.e., “family camping Portland, Oregon”). Google AdWords will drive traffic to your website from potential customers who are already looking for the type of camping you offer. You can quickly measure performance and adjust your campaign to improve profitability.

Optimizing Other Site Listings 

Delivering search results to people that are customized to their location is one of Google’s major priorities. Because of this, it’s important to optimize your business listing with Google, as well as the other local-search sites like Yelp. Luckily, most of that work is done automatically using KOA’s partnership with SOCi – where the data that you set in the Content Management System (CMS) for your campground landing page is regularly pushed out to the major online directories through SOCi. With the way people search, a customer’s first interaction with your campground online today could be a local-search site, such as Yelp, and not your landing page on KOA.com or your own website. In addition to the automatic connection between the CMS and SOCi, we would encourage to you claim your campground on any online directory that allows it, and fully flesh out the profiles.

Get your campground in front of more potential customers and drive business by utilizing a combination of on-site search engine optimization for your campground landing page, and making sure the data (such as name, address, phone, email, hours of operation, descriptions, etc…) is correct in your CMS so it can be synced with SOCi and the major online directories.