The Client
GooRVy rented campers, RVs and travel trailers from locations in Jacksonville, Florida, and central New Jersey. We built Google Ads campaigns for their Jacksonville market, which produced 75+ online reservation requests from 2019 to 2021, and cut the cost of each one from about $87 to about $17.
An RV rental is a planned purchase. People pick dates, compare rigs and prices across rental sites and peer-to-peer platforms, and often come back several times before they book. The ads have to show up when someone first searches "RV rental", and stay in front of them until they reserve.
"About $87 a reservation in 2019. About $17 in 2021."
The Challenge
Google Ads for a local RV rental company has some tough competition:
- National platforms dominate. Peer-to-peer RV rental sites and national chains bid on every "RV rental" search in every city.
- Long decision cycles. Travelers compare several options before they reserve, so a single ad click rarely books on the spot.
- Seasonal, uneven demand. Bookings cluster in the winter and spring travel season, so spend has to follow the calendar.
- A small budget. A single-location rental company can't outspend the national platforms, so every dollar has to land on a real renter.
What We Built
1. A Display Remarketing Campaign
Our first campaign, in March 2019, was a Display remarketing campaign to bring back visitors who had looked at GooRVy's fleet but hadn't reserved yet.
2. A Search and Remarketing Campaign
In November 2019 we launched Search & Remarketing, a Search campaign on the searches that book an RV: "rv rental", "rent RV", "rent RV florida", "RV for rent", "rv rental near me" and "camper rental", with remarketing audiences layered on so returning visitors were reached at the right moment. It produced every reservation request in this study.
3. Reservation Tracking
We set up a Reservations conversion that records when a visitor submits a reservation request on the website, and made it the campaign's goal, so bidding optimized toward bookings, not clicks. Directions and website visits from the Business Profile are not counted.
4. Jacksonville-Area Targeting
The Search campaign targeted the Jacksonville, Florida market, where GooRVy's Florida customers picked up their RVs, and its ads sent travelers to the home page and to individual rigs such as the Winnebago Revel.
5. Seasonal Pacing
The campaigns ran in the booking seasons, winter 2019 to 2020, fall 2020 and spring 2021, and were paused in between, so a small budget was never spread across the slow months.
6. Daily Optimization via Ad Campaign Concierge™
While the campaigns were live they were reviewed daily through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system: search terms, negatives, bids and budget pacing.
The Results
The numbers below cover our campaigns only, from the first campaign in 2019 to April 2021.
- 75+ online reservation requests from our campaigns, about $35 each.
- Cost per reservation fell every season: about $87 in late 2019, about $33 in 2020 and about $17 in spring 2021.
- Best month: January 2020, with 23 reservation requests.
- 62K+ impressions and 740+ clicks.
Reservation Requests by Month
Reservations Since Launch
Each season started from what the last one taught: which searches booked, which didn't, and which audiences came back. That is why the cost per reservation fell from season to season even though the budget stayed small.
Key Takeaways
- Bid on the searches that book. "RV rental" and "rent RV" brought the reservations. Broad travel and city searches brought clicks without bookings.
- Stay in front of the planners. RV trips are planned over weeks, so pairing search ads with remarketing kept GooRVy in the running while travelers compared options.
- Spend in season. Running the campaigns in winter and spring put a small budget where the bookings are.
- Every season should be cheaper than the last. With real reservation tracking, the cost per reservation fell from about $87 to about $17.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an RV rental reservation cost on Google Ads?
Across our campaigns for GooRVy, an online reservation request cost about $35. It fell every season: about $87 in late 2019, about $33 in 2020 and about $17 in spring 2021.
What do people search for when they want to rent an RV?
'RV rental' by far, then 'rent RV', 'rent RV Florida' and 'RV for rent'. 'RV rental' alone produced over 30 of GooRVy's reservation requests. Searches for cheaper alternatives like 'travel trailer rental' and city searches for Miami or Orlando produced few.
When do RV rentals get booked in Florida?
In GooRVy's account the strongest months were winter and spring. January 2020 brought 23 reservation requests, and March and April 2021 together brought over 25.
Does remarketing help an RV rental company?
RV trips are planned weeks ahead and compared across several rental sites. GooRVy's Search campaign combined search ads with remarketing audiences so the brand stayed in front of people who had already looked at the fleet.
About This Campaign
RV rental reservation campaigns on Google Ads, built with our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ optimization system.
Industry: Travel & Rentals (RV and Travel Trailer Rentals) Platforms: Google Ads (Search, Display Remarketing) Location: Jacksonville, Florida Account Duration: March 2019 to April 2021. The engagement has ended.
Reservation requests are counted conversions of the "Reservations" goal recorded in Google Ads for the campaigns we built, November 2019 to April 2021. The Display remarketing campaign of 2019 produced no counted reservations. Directions and website visits are excluded, as are the account's other campaigns. Cost per reservation is computed from the Search & Remarketing campaign. The campaigns did not run from March to August 2020 or from October 2020 to February 2021. All figures are rounded down and in US dollars.