Sailing Holidays

Introduction

Sailing Holidays is the largest British owned and operated sailing holiday company.

The business now has 178 beautiful yachts in Greece, all of which are run on flotilla and yacht charter sailing holidays around the Greek islands.

 

Key stats

-33% CPA

+220% Website Conversions

+33% PPC traffic

The problem

Sailing Holiday’s success is based its reputation for delivering unforgettable yacht charter and flotilla holidays.

The brand needed to improve its search presence, both through Google AdWords PPC and organic traffic (SEO).

The objectives were clear:

  • Decrease the cost-per-conversion
  • Generate more business through AdWords
  • Improve organic traffic and rankings
  • Increase online goals and bookings

The solution

Search marketing represents the most important marketing medium for the business.

When we took over the Google Ads PPC account we focused on bidding for the right keywords, with clear conversion intent, and ensuring that the right ads were served to the right people.

On the SEO side, we focused on links from contextually-relevant travel website with high Domain Authority and Trust Flow, to improve the visibility of the Sailing Holidays website to Google.

Impact

  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

    As a result of continual optimisation, we achieved:

    • Paid Search traffic up +33%
    • Click-through-rate increased from 1.24% to 14.45%
    • +59% increase in Google Ads conversions
    • -46% reduction in Google Ads spend (Saved £13,000 of wasted spend through AdWords in year 1)
    • Cost-Per-Click down by -10%

  • Through white-hat SEO, we achieved:

    • +25% increase in organic traffic
    • +27% increase in organic conversions
    • Domain authority – increased by 7 points

    And the following ranking improvements:

    • Yacht holidays (1st)
    • Flotilla holidays (2nd)
    • Flotilla holidays Greece (1st)
    • Learn to sail (2nd)
    • Sailing holidays Greece/Turkey (1st)
    • Bareboat charter (4th)

  • Social

    Facebook advertising has been utilised to push offers and prospect to new users.

    This has proved an effective was of selling last-minute boats, using very specific targeting to reach potential customers with both the interest and means to go on a sailing holiday.

    • +200% Enquiries through Facebook Ads