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Brand Defense: Austin

Objective

Defend See Sight Tours brand queries in the Austin market from OTA conquesting (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar marketplaces bidding on our own name to insert themselves between the guest and the tour operator that actually runs the tour). This campaign is defensive, not a growth lever. Success is measured by impression share and defended bookings, never by ROAS.

Campaign settings

Setting Value
Campaign type Search only
Search partners OFF
Display expansion OFF
Networks Google Search only, no Display, no partner sites
Geo targeting United States and Canada
Geo targeting method "Presence or interest" (default). Rationale: guests plan and book pre trip from home, often weeks or months before travel, so the person searching our brand name from Toronto or Chicago is a real future Austin guest, not someone to exclude. Do not switch to "Presence" only.
Language English
Bidding strategy Target Impression Share
Target impression share 90 to 95 percent, "Top of results page" location
Max CPC bid cap 3 USD to start, reviewed weekly against actual branded CPC
Budget 50 to 150 USD per month
AI Max OFF

Why AI Max is off: per docs/research/marketing/google-youtube.md:72, tested data shows AI Max underperforms traditional match types specifically on brand campaigns, with 35 percent lower ROAS and a 100.37 USD CPA versus 43.97 USD CPA in the cited comparison. Brand defense works because near perfect Quality Score keeps it cheap and precise. Handing bidding to AI Max on this campaign trades that precision away for no benefit, since the queries are already ours to win.

Keywords

Exact match only. Every keyword contains a brand token (see sight, seesight, or sea sight). No generic sightseeing keywords appear anywhere in this campaign.

Ad group: Brand Core

[see sight tours]
[seesight tours]
[sea sight tours]
[see sight tours austin]
[seesight tours austin]
[see sight tours reviews]
[see sight tours official site]
[see sight tours phone number]

Ad group: Brand + Austin

[see sight austin tours]
[see sight tours austin tx]
[seesight austin tours]
[seesight austin]
[see sight tours austin reviews]
[sea sight tours austin]

Negative keywords

Campaign level, applied across both ad groups.

Intent leakage (jobs, complaints, account access):

jobs
careers
hiring
salary
application
apply
login
sign in
complaint
complaints
refund
chargeback
lawsuit
class action

Close-variant leakage protection (exact match negatives for the generic sightseeing queries closest to our brand name):

[sightseeing tours]
[sightseeing tours austin]
[austin sightseeing]
[austin sightseeing tours]
[sightseeing tours in austin]
[best sightseeing tours austin]

Ads

One RSA per ad group.

Ad group: Brand Core

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "Book Direct, No Booking Fees"
  - "See Sight Tours Austin"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "No Booking Fees, Ever"
  - "We Run the Tour, Not a Site"
  - "Free Cancellation 24 Hrs"
  - "Small Groups, Never a Crowd"
  - "Direct Equals No Markup"
  - "Local Austin Guides"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour. No marketplace between you and us."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find, direct or on a marketplace."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour under our Change of Plans Guarantee."
  - "Rated 4.8/5 across 10,000+ reviews on Viator, TripAdvisor, Google and more."

Headlines 1 and 2 may be pinned to position 1 so every rotation leads with the "Official" and "book direct" claims, since those are the ones that most directly counter an OTA impersonating our listing.

Ad group: Brand + Austin

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "See Sight Tours Austin"
  - "Book Direct in Austin"
  - "Austin Tours, No Booking Fees"
  - "Local Austin Guides"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "Small Groups, Never a Crowd"
  - "Free Cancellation 24 Hrs"
  - "We Run the Tour, Not a Site"
  - "No Marketplace, No Markup"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour, right here in Austin."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find, direct or on a marketplace."
  - "A local guide who knows Austin, in a small group that never feels like a crowd."
  - "Rated 4.8/5 across 10,000+ reviews on Viator, TripAdvisor, Google and more."

Headlines 1 and 3 may be pinned to position 1 for the same reason as the Brand Core ad group: the "Official" and "book direct" framing is the load-bearing counter to conquesting.

Sitelinks

Display text Final URL
Austin Tours https://seesight-tours.com/austin-tours
Reviews https://seesight-tours.com/reviews
Contact Us https://seesight-tours.com/contact
Our Guides https://seesight-tours.com/guides

All display text is at or under 25 characters.

Final URLs and UTM

Landing page for all keywords in both ad groups:

https://seesight-tours.com/austin-tours?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand-defense-austin-tours
  • utm_source=google
  • utm_medium=cpc
  • utm_campaign=brand-defense-austin-tours

Note: gclid autotagging is on by default at the account level and needs no manual parameter here. The gclid carries through to the ss_attr first party attribution cookie and into Stripe metadata automatically, per lib/attribution/capture.ts. No additional tagging work is required for this campaign to be fully attributable end to end.

Launch checklist

  • Conversion feed live check in Meta or Google diagnostics: not required for launch. This campaign is defensive, not conversion optimized, so it can launch before that check clears.
  • Confirm AI Max is OFF on this campaign.
  • Confirm Search partners is OFF.
  • Confirm Display expansion is OFF.
  • Confirm geo targeting is set to "Presence or interest," United States and Canada.
  • Confirm bidding is Target Impression Share, 90 to 95 percent, "Top of results page," with the 3 USD max CPC cap in place.
  • Confirm every keyword in both ad groups is exact match and contains a brand token.
  • Confirm the close-variant negative list is applied at the campaign level.
  • Check the search terms report daily for the first 14 days after launch. Add any generic-query leakage found (queries without a brand token that are still triggering our ads) as new exact match negatives immediately.
  • Screenshot impression share weekly for the first month, then monthly.

Success metrics

  • Exact-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 (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar) displaced from the top positions on our brand terms in the Austin market.
  • Results are recorded in journal entry 003 (docs/marketing/journal/003-brand-defense-top-6-markets.md) under "Measured effect" once four weeks of data are available.