Case study
One language. Four very different travel markets.
Time To Backpack helps German-speaking travellers book campervans and travel experiences across Oceania, but its Google Ads account treated that audience too much like one market. A traveller researching from Germany behaved differently from one in Austria, and German speakers already in Australia or New Zealand brought another kind of intent again.
The challenge
Time To Backpack's niche is unusually specific. The customer needs to be German-speaking, interested in travel across Australia, New Zealand and the wider region, at the right stage of trip planning, and located in one of several very different source markets. Previous campaigns were trying to handle that complexity inside one undifferentiated structure.
The problem was not that the audience was too niche. The account simply was not reflecting how that niche actually behaved.
The complexity was real. The account was hiding it.
- Ad and landing-page language inconsistent across touchpoints
- Geographic performance blended together in one structure
- Negative-keyword coverage weak in both German and English
- Cost per lead too high to scale into peak booking periods
The result
Lead volume grew because the account stopped averaging different markets together.
Paid leads and cost per lead are year-on-year measures. 507 is the peak month, against roughly four conversions a month before the 2023 rebuild, so it describes a peak, not an annual uplift. Scaling came after the programme became more specific: market, language and search intent.
- +196%
- Paid leads Year on year
- −53%
- Cost per lead Year on year
- 507
- Paid conversions in the peak month April 2026
- 4
- Geographic markets Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand
The insight
Speaking the same language did not make them the same market.
Germany produced the largest volume. Austria was smaller but converted differently. German speakers already in Australia and New Zealand were more niche audiences with their own intent. Once those groups were separated, each market could have its own budget, bidding approach, audience settings, query mix and performance expectations.
At the same time, German needed to stay consistent from the first impression to the booking experience. Language connected the audience. Geography changed the economics.
The strategy
Separate the markets. Remove the language friction. Tighten the intent.
- Give each market its own campaign economics.Germany, Austria, Australia and New Zealand were split into separate campaign structures rather than being averaged together. Budget and bidding could then respond to each market independently, so stronger markets could scale without weaker ones distorting the decision.
- Make the experience German from click to conversion.Ads were rewritten in German, landing pages were rebuilt in German, and negative-keyword lists were developed across both German and English because irrelevant queries could enter from either language. A German-language ad leading into an inconsistent experience creates friction in a purchase that already requires significant trust and planning.
- Concentrate spend around travel intent.Keyword targeting was rebuilt around higher-intent German travel-planning behaviour, including campervan rental, tour-package and route-planning searches. Different search contexts were matched to landing experiences designed around the booking decision rather than one generic path.
The markets
Same language. Four markets. Four sets of economics.
Germany
- Largest source market
Austria
- Lower volume
- Different conversion behaviour
Australia
- German speakers already in-market
New Zealand
- German speakers already in-market
Each market with its own budget, bids, audiences and query mix. One consistent German experience across all four, from search to ad to landing page to booking.
New bookings they never had before. That's the Firewire effect. Brogan and the team have delivered dramatic SEO growth, a Google Ads campaign that converts, and results that have genuinely taken this business to the next level. We can very highly recommend.
What we did
Market architecture. Separated Germany, Austria, Australia and New Zealand into individual campaign structures, with budget rebalanced according to each market's conversion performance.
German-language experience. Rebuilt ad copy and landing pages in German and developed negative-keyword controls in both German and English to reduce irrelevant traffic.
Intent targeting. Mapped higher-intent German travel searches across campervan rentals, tour packages and route planning, then matched those queries to more relevant landing experiences.
Ongoing market optimisation. Allowed each geographic programme to evolve according to its own performance rather than forcing one optimisation decision across all German-speaking travellers.
The takeaway
Multilingual paid search was not the problem. Inconsistency was.
Time To Backpack operates in a genuinely complex search environment: one language, several geographic markets, different planning contexts and different conversion behaviour. The original programme hid too much of that complexity inside one structure. We separated the markets, made the customer experience consistently German and let each programme optimise against its own economics.
The complexity became manageable once the account stopped pretending it was one audience.
More work
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