Paid ads that book sites, not just clicks.
Most campgrounds running Google Ads are paying for traffic that bounces. We rebuild the funnel: search ads tied to booking-window seasonality, Performance Max with the right asset feed, Meta retargeting that catches the 95% who left without reserving, and a single attribution model so you know which dollar produced which booking.
The case
Why "boost a Facebook post" is not a paid strategy
A campground paid ads program has three jobs. Capture commercial-intent searches the moment a traveler types "RV park near {your town}." Stay in front of researchers across YouTube, Meta, and the Google Display Network for the 6–14 days they spend deciding. And ruthlessly retarget the people who left your site without booking. Most parks do one of those three. That is why their CPL looks fine and their actual booking attribution is a disaster.
The common failure point is mismatched intent. A park runs a single broad-match Google Ads campaign for "campground" and pays $4 a click for tire-kickers from 800 miles away. Or worse, they boost a sunset photo on Facebook with no audience targeting, get 200 likes, and convince themselves social ads "do not work." Both are correct conclusions to the wrong experiment.
How most parks run ads vs how it should run
The structural difference between burning money and compounding bookings.
| Layer | How most parks run paid | Campground Management approach |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Broad-match "campground," national geo, no negative keywords. CPC $3.50, CTR 1.4%. | Tight match on "{rig type} {town}" + drive-market geo radius + 200+ negatives. CPC $1.10, CTR 6.8%. |
| Performance Max | No asset feed; Google auto-pulls a single logo + the homepage. | Curated asset feed, 20 photos, 5 video clips, every site type, audience signals from Google Analytics 4 audiences. |
| Retargeting | Single Facebook audience: anyone who visited the site in 90 days. | Five audience tiers by funnel stage (homepage / rates / booking-flow-abandoned / past-guest), creative rotation per tier. |
| Tracking | Standard Google Tag, no offline conversion import. | Offline conversion upload from the booking system every 24 hours. Google sees actual bookings, not button clicks. |
| Reporting | Generic Google Ads dashboard. Cost per click, no booking attribution. | Single 1-page weekly: cost per booking, ROAS by campaign, top creatives, what we changed, what we are testing. |
What's included
What we run, week in week out.
Google Search campaigns
Tight-geo, commercial-intent, single-keyword ad groups. Negative keyword library refreshed weekly. Quality Score targeted at 8+ to keep CPCs sane.
Performance Max with asset discipline
Real photos from your park (not stock), audience signals from your booking-page visitors, location asset extensions, exclusion of brand searches so we are not paying to rank for ourselves.
Meta retargeting + lookalikes
Funnel-stage audience tiers, creative rotation every 14 days, lookalike modeling against your booked-guest customer list (not raw page visitors, the difference matters).
YouTube + Connected TV layer
Optional. 6-second bumpers for awareness, 30s drive-market spots for conversion. Tied to the same conversion model as Search so the dollars compete on equal footing.
Conversion tracking that works
Offline conversion import from your booking system to Google Ads + Meta CAPI. This is what kills ghost bookings and gives the algorithms real signal.
Weekly optimization + reporting
A real human (not just an automated rule) reviews every campaign weekly. Monday optimization day, Friday reporting day. Same human stays on your account month after month.
If/then
Where to put the next ad dollar.
The right answer depends on which booking-funnel stage is leaking.
How the engagement runs
From kickoff to compounding results.
Account audit
We pull your last 90 days of Google + Meta data, identify wasted spend, missing conversions, and structural gaps. You get a 1-page diagnosis.
Rebuild + relaunch
New campaign architecture, asset feeds, conversion tracking, audience seeding. Migration without losing learnings.
Optimize on the data
Weekly Monday optimization. Negative keywords, audience exclusions, creative refresh, bid strategy tuning. No autopilot.
Quarterly strategy reset
Every 90 days we pull back and review channel mix, budget split, and seasonal flighting. Reallocate to whatever is winning.
Common questions
Common questions about running paid ads for a campground.
How much should I spend on ads each month? +
Do I own the ad account? +
Will this work if my booking system is clunky? +
Can you handle Bing / Microsoft Ads too? +
How do I know I am not getting fake clicks? +
Do you require a contract? +
25 years in Marketing & Advertising and 14-year RV industry veteran. Founder of RVParks.US and Campground Management.
See where your ad budget is leaking.
Free account audit, we will pull your last 90 days of Google + Meta data and identify wasted spend, missing conversions, and the 3 biggest opportunities. No pitch unless you ask for one.
"We're not trying to be the biggest. We're trying to be the best one for the family-owned park."
Sean Hakes, Founder · Read our story