Bidding on what a booking is worth

The situation

EverTrek sells guided treks online. Everest Base Camp is the main revenue line, and newer routes such as Kilimanjaro are where growth has to come from. When we started, every conversion in the account counted as one. A guide download for a walk and a booking worth several thousand pounds looked identical to the bidding, so Google’s automated bidding was chasing volume with no idea which actions made the business money.

What we did

• Rebuilt the goals around the bottom line. Each action now carries a value that reflects what it is worth to the business, from a guide download at the top of the funnel to a confirmed booking.
• Moved the account to value-based bidding, so the algorithms prioritise the customers and conversions that are profitable rather than treating every lead as equal.
• Fixed the conversion tracking so a booking can be traced back to the ad that started it, which gave the bidding something true to learn from.
• Expanded from search into further channels once the value signal was in place, so each new channel was judged on the same measure of return.
• Kept Everest Base Camp strong while building demand for the other treks.

How we measured it

By value, not by count. Google Ads reports conversions on its own terms, so we reconcile its numbers against EverTrek’s own complete booking data until the two agree, then judge every campaign and channel on the booking value it brought in. Reconciling the platform’s view with the ground truth is the core of the work, not a step before it.

The outcome

The bidding now knows what each action is worth, so budget follows the bookings that pay. Bookings have grown, Everest Base Camp has stayed strong, and the newer treks and channels are building.