We’re willing to guess that your Google Ad strategy looks something like this: you bid on your own brand name, target a few generic keywords like “boutique hotel in [city],” and hope the right travelers find you before they find your competitors.
That’s a reasonable starting point based on general knowledge of the SEM space, but experts know it leaves one of the most effective SEM strategies completely untouched: conquesting.
Wait, What’s Conquesting?
Conquesting is the practice of bidding on your competitors’ brand names as keywords. When someone searches for a competing hotel in your market, your ad shows up alongside (or above) theirs.
Let’s say you’re a boutique hotel in Charleston and a traveler is actively searching for a competing property by name. If your SEM strategy includes conquesting, your hotel gets in front of your target audience at exactly the right moment: when they’re actively researching where to stay, in your market, at your price point. They already know what they want and this practice makes sure they know you exist before they reserve.
It might sound aggressive, but it isn’t. Conquesting is a standard SEM practice that’s widely used across almost every industry. Your competitors are probably already doing it to you.
Why Conquesting Works for Boutique Hotels
Boutique hotels are particularly well poised to leverage Conquesting to their advantage for a few reasons.
First, the audience is already qualified. Someone searching for a specific competing hotel isn’t browsing casually. They’re in research mode, which means they’re closer to a booking decision than most of the people you’re reaching through other channels. Getting in front of them at the researching moment is more valuable than reaching a broader audience earlier in the funnel.
Second, boutique hotels often compete in markets with a small number of comparable properties. If there are four or five hotels in your category in your city, conquesting those specific competitors means you’re reaching exactly the travelers you want: people who are looking for the kind of experience you offer, at a similar price point, in the same destination.
Third, competitor branded keywords tend to be less expensive than broad category keywords. “Boutique hotel Charleston” is a competitive and costly keyword. A specific competing hotel’s name often costs a fraction of that, with an audience that’s arguably more valuable.
What Conquesting Looks Like in Practice
The basics of a conquesting campaign are straightforward—it don’t require a large budget or a complex setup.
Start by identifying two or three competitors who are a similar size, at a similar price point, and have a similar guest profile. Then, bid on their brand names as keywords and write ad copy that highlights what makes your hotel a compelling alternative, without mentioning the competitor by name. (Google’s policies prohibit using a competitor’s trademarked name in your ad copy, though you can bid on it as a keyword.)
The copy is incredibly important. A conquesting ad is an invitation and something like, “Discover Charleston’s most intimate boutique hotel” works better than a generic headline because it gives the traveler a reason to click rather than continue down the page to the property they were already searching for.
Your landing page’s alignment matters too. If someone clicks your conquesting ad and lands on your generic homepage, you’ve lost the advantage. The landing page should speak directly to what makes you worth considering—your location, your experience, your differentiation—and makes it easy to check availability immediately.
A Note on Brand Protection
Now that you know about Conquesting, we’re sure you’re wondering, “is anyone doing this to me?”
If you haven’t checked, the answer is probably yes. Larger hotel chains and OTAs routinely bid on independent and boutique hotel names, which means travelers searching for you are being served ads for your competitors before they even see your link.
The first step in any conquesting strategy is to make sure you protect your own brand terms. Bidding on your own name ensures that you show up first when someone searches for you directly. It’s almost always the most cost-efficient campaign you can run. If you’re not doing this already, start there before you do anything else.
Is Conquesting Right All Hotels?
Conquesting isn’t a fit for every market or every budget. If you’re in a destination with limited direct competition, or if your SEM budget is very small, there may be higher-priority places to spend first.
But for boutique hotels in competitive urban or destination markets, conquesting is one of the few SEM tactics that lets you intercept a traveler who already chose a destination, is looking in your category, and actively weighing options. That’s a narrow—and an unusually valuable—window.
Your competition is already doing this. Don’t fall too far behind.
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