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Brand Defense: Niagara Falls, USA

Objective

Defend our own brand queries in the Niagara Falls, USA market from OTA conquesting (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar marketplaces bidding on our name to intercept guests who already searched for us by name). This market has 24 live products (live CMS product counts, 2026-08-30, journal entry 003) and is distinct from the Canada side of the falls, so the ad copy and keywords carry USA side qualifiers ("usa", "new york", "ny") to keep the two markets separated in reporting and in the guest's mind.

Success is measured by impression share on exact brand terms and by defended bookings, never by ROAS. Brand spend is treated as pure defense, not a growth lever: geo lift testing on brand search has found this spend fully non incremental in tested cases, and OTA brand conquesting is exactly the scenario that makes defense necessary regardless of incrementality.

Campaign settings

  • Campaign type: Search only. No Display, no Shopping, no Video in this campaign.
  • Search partners: OFF.
  • Display expansion: OFF.
  • Geo targeting: United States and Canada. Targeting setting: "Presence or interest," left at the Google default. Rationale: guests plan and book a Niagara Falls trip from home, often weeks before travel, so a Toronto or Buffalo resident researching this tour from their kitchen table is a real prospective booker even though they are not physically at the falls when they search. Restricting to "Presence" only would exclude that pre-trip research behavior.
  • Language: English.
  • Bidding strategy: Target Impression Share, target range 90 to 95 percent, location setting "Top of results page." Max CPC cap: 3 USD to start, reviewed after the first two weeks of search-terms data.
  • Budget: 100 USD per month to start (roughly 3.30 USD per day), sized for a single defensive keyword set on a business this size. Revisit only if impression share holds below target at the CPC cap.
  • AI Max: OFF. Per docs/research/marketing/google-youtube.md:72, tested data shows AI Max underperforms traditional match types specifically on brand campaigns, with a cited comparison of 100.37 USD CPA under AI Max versus 43.97 USD CPA under standard exact match, a roughly 35 percent lower ROAS outcome. Brand queries already carry near-perfect intent and near-perfect Quality Score; AI Max's broad-match style expansion adds cost here without adding coverage we don't already have through tightly scoped exact match keywords.

Keywords

Exact match only. Every keyword contains a brand token ("see sight," "seesight," or "sea sight"). No generic sightseeing terms appear anywhere in this list; "sightseeing tours niagara falls" and similar phrases are non-brand queries and belong in a different campaign, not here.

Ad group 1: Brand Core

  • [see sight tours]
  • [seesight tours]
  • [sea sight tours]
  • [see sight tours reviews]
  • [seesight tours reviews]
  • [see sight tours coupon]
  • [see sight tours promo code]

Ad group 2: Brand + Niagara Falls USA

  • [see sight tours niagara falls usa]
  • [see sight tours niagara falls new york]
  • [see sight tours niagara falls]
  • [seesight tours niagara falls]
  • [see sight tours niagara falls ny]
  • [see sight tours niagara falls tours]
  • [sea sight tours niagara falls]

Negative keywords

Exact match negatives, applied at the campaign level.

Intent mismatch (jobs, complaints, account access):

  • [see sight tours jobs]
  • [see sight tours careers]
  • [see sight tours hiring]
  • [see sight tours salary]
  • [see sight tours application]
  • [see sight tours login]
  • [see sight tours sign in]
  • [see sight tours refund]
  • [see sight tours complaint]
  • [see sight tours scam]
  • [seesight tours jobs]
  • [seesight tours careers]
  • [seesight tours login]
  • [seesight tours refund]
  • [seesight tours complaint]

Close variant leakage protection (generic sightseeing queries nearest to our brand name):

  • [sightseeing tours]
  • [sightseeing tours niagara falls]
  • [niagara falls sightseeing]
  • [niagara falls sightseeing tours]
  • [sight tours niagara falls]
  • [sight tours]

Ads

One responsive search ad per ad group.

Ad group 1: Brand Core

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "Book Direct, No Fees"
  - "See Sight Tours Site"
  - "You Booked The Right Tour"
  - "No Marketplace, Just Us"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "Free Cancellation 24Hr"
  - "Small Groups, Never Crowded"
  - "Local Guides, Not Scripts"
  - "Rated 4.8/5, 10,000+ Reviews"
  - "Since 2006, 22 Cities"
  - "We Run The Tour"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour. No booking fees, ever."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour departs."
  - "Small groups, a local guide, and a company that's run tours since 2006."

Pin "Official See Sight Tours" at headline position 1. This is the searcher's own query confirmed back to them and it is the line most likely to stop a scroll toward an OTA listing.

Ad group 2: Brand + Niagara Falls USA

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "See Sight Tours USA"
  - "Niagara Falls, USA Side"
  - "Book Direct in Niagara Falls"
  - "No Booking Fees"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "Free Cancellation 24Hr"
  - "Small Groups, Never Crowded"
  - "Local Guides, NY Side Experts"
  - "Rated 4.8/5, 10,000+ Reviews"
  - "Since 2006, 22 Cities"
  - "We Run The Tour"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour. No booking fees, ever."
  - "Small groups with a local guide who knows Niagara Falls USA."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour departs."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find."

Pin "Official See Sight Tours" at headline position 1, same rationale as ad group 1.

Sitelinks

Display text Final URL
Niagara Falls USA Tours https://seesight-tours.com/niagara-falls-usa-tours
Reviews https://seesight-tours.com/reviews
Contact Us https://seesight-tours.com/contact
Our Local Guides https://seesight-tours.com/guides

All display text is 25 characters or fewer.

Final URLs and UTM

Final URL for the headline ad and the first sitelink: https://seesight-tours.com/niagara-falls-usa-tours

UTM parameters:

  • utm_source=google
  • utm_medium=cpc
  • utm_campaign=brand-defense-niagara-falls-usa-tours

Google's gclid autotagging carries through automatically once a click lands: gclid is captured on landing, and per lib/attribution/capture.ts it persists into the ss_attr cookie alongside the UTM set and rides through to Stripe metadata at checkout without any additional wiring needed in this campaign.

Launch checklist

  • Confirm AI Max is OFF at the campaign level before enabling.
  • Confirm Search partners is OFF.
  • Confirm Display expansion is OFF.
  • Confirm bidding is set to Target Impression Share, 90 to 95 percent, "Top of results page," with the 3 USD max CPC cap in place.
  • Confirm geo targeting is United States and Canada with "Presence or interest."
  • Confirm both ad groups' keyword lists are exact match only and every keyword contains a brand token.
  • Confirm the negative keyword list (intent mismatch and close variant) is applied at the campaign level.
  • Confirm both RSAs are approved and the pinned headline is in position 1 on each.
  • Confirm all four sitelinks resolve to live pages.
  • Confirm UTM parameters are present on every final URL.
  • No conversion feed diagnostics check is required before launch. This campaign is purely defensive (protecting existing brand demand from OTA interception), not a new acquisition channel, so a live conversion feed in Google or Meta diagnostics is not a launch blocker.
  • Check the search terms report daily for the first 14 days after launch. Add any generic sightseeing query that leaks through as a new exact match negative the same day it appears.
  • Screenshot exact match impression share weekly and log it against the 90 percent target.

Success metrics

  • Exact match brand impression share reaches 90 percent or higher within 4 weeks of launch.
  • Branded CPC stays under 1.50 USD.
  • Monthly cannibalization audit shows OTA ads displaced from our brand terms (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar no longer showing above or beside our ad on our own brand queries).
  • Journal entry 003 records the readout of this campaign's first full month.