SEM Case Study:

Treasure Island Resort

Treasure Island Resort is a long established, family-oriented resort in Fiji who, like most hoteliers and resorts in their category, was in need of identifying new direct channels and sources of traffic to their website.  Whilst a retained client, Cherryielding was engaged to identify and implement a 3 – month Paid Search campaign trial, with well-defined performance-based targets needing to be met in order for Google advertising to be established as a permanent part of Treasure Island’s online marketing mix.

The data-driven approach was focused on leveraging on all available elements of the advertising platform to maximise the cost-efficiency of the media investment.  Whereas often campaign management and optimisation is limited to daily budget’s management and bid adjustments, our view was that to make this work we needed to go the extra mile and use all options available to 1) make Treasure Island ads stand out, and 2) create the most frictionless possible experience for the user in order to minimise dropouts in the booking process, and so maximise conversion rates.  A constant review, not only of the keyword list (to expand on the long-tail terms, and refresh of the negatives to minimise costs for less relevant search queries), but also a frequent review and refresh of elements such as site links, callouts, and other ad extensions, allowed us to gradually and constantly increase performance and maximise ROI for the client.

The outcome of the three-month trial was a high volume of targeted, qualified traffic coming to the Treasure Island Resort website, with 60% being ‘new sessions’ and where the number of transactions per month increased on average by 400%.  With this, the actual CPA and ROI targets within the first 3 month trial period were all met.  Two months on, and the actual CPA and ROI targets are 80% above targeted levels, resulting in paid search marketing as a direct channel being firmly established.