A new post at Think with Google describes a month-long marketing campaign run earlier this year by Hawaiian Airlines that used Google Ads to get the airline's name in front of prospects, then followed up with 15- and 30-second YouTube ads containing links to landing pages with location-specific flight and pricing information, and from which flights could be booked.

Data from Hawaiian Airlines and YouTube analytics show the campaign produced an increase of 185% in flight bookings, and a 69% reduction in cost to acquire a customer.

How the campaign worked:

• The airline geotargeted consumers in Los Angeles and the Northern California Bay area with search ads using both branded and non-branded keywords, to build awareness.
• It then analyzed results of the search campaign to identify the keywords that worked best, and ported those to YouTube.
• It then created video ads in YouTube's TrueView for Action direct-response format that invited viewers to click through to See fares.
• These video ads were served only to people who had "raised their hands" in response to the search ads.
• Those who clicked through from the video ads were sent to a landing page with flights and prices relevant to their area, from which they could then click through to a booking page.

Based on what they learned from Hawaiian Airlines' experience, Google analysts make these recommendations for others wanting to try a direct-response video campaign:

• Use a soft call to action like "Shop Now" or "View Details" to get video ad viewers to click through to your landing page.
• Run a "traditional" campaign in parallel with the direct-response campaign, as a control. See which does better.
• Use smart bidding to optimize for conversions.

Go here for instructions on how to create a TrueView for Action campaign.

So many Google features, so little time...