Background
Perth based Bluesky Experiences is a 700 acre outward bound corporate events and team building venue launched in 2001 by Suzie and James England. Initially, all Bluesky business came through word of mouth as the marketing techniques Bluesky used, including a website, press advertising and partnerships with local hotels, were expensive and largely ineffective.
Bluesky’s website was only getting 16 hits a week and these leads were not converting to sales. As with all SME’s with a limited marketing budget, it is crucial that return on investment is maximised. Bluesky identified internet marketing as a potential solution and its best route to market. It asked Ambergreen Internet Marketing to design and implement the strategy.
Now, having been proved right, 90% of the company’s marketing budget is spent on online marketing, delivering a 2000% return on investment.
Objectives Bluesky Experiences was an entirely unknown quantity and needed to establish a market presence within a short period of time. It needed to identify its market and reach that market swiftly, converting sales cost effectively. The stated targets of the marketing campaign were to increase website traffic by 25% and deliver high conversion rates with a minimum return on investment of 50%.
Ambergreen’s ultimate objective was to harness the power of the search engines. With 1.3 billion sites on the internet, around 256 million online searches are made every day. As 80% of first time visitors to a website arrive through search engines, achieving and maintaining a leading position in the search results is critical to the success of a company’s online presence.
Strategy and Plan
The strategy consisted of three elements, firstly market research, secondly search engine optimisation of the website and thirdly a pay per click campaign on key UK portals. It was essential at the outset to identify a market for Bluesky, and then build a website that would be found by that market.
The market research conducted by Ambergreen was arguably even more important than the actual campaign and gave the company a clear head start in the marketplace. Having identified the most popular key words and phrases, even mis-spellings, used to search for team building and corporate events venues, a website was built with these words at the heart of its architecture and subsequent content. For instance, team building events gets 38,000 searches per month, whereas team building events UK gets only 260 searches.
With over fifty areas of a website adding or detracting to its final search ranking, website architecture is the fundamental starting point for the success of a site and is often overlooked by web designers. The pages, frames and content were constructed for Bluesky to create a website that would literally ‘pull’ customers in. This technique is known as search engine optimisation.
Finally Ambergreen implemented a pay per click campaign because of the speed with which it could generate results for Bluesky. More effective than banner advertising, pay per click advertising is completely accountable and measurable: the ultimate direct response mechanism. By paying a pre-determined price, it takes less than five working days to see results come through. Optimal return on investment is guaranteed through professional management by specialist consultancies like Ambergreen, ensuring extremely low acquisition costs and high conversion rates.
Evaluation and results
The results of the Ambergreen campaign are spectacular. Within two days of starting, Bluesky Experiences witnessed fantastic increases in traffic, going from 16 to an average of one thousand unique users each week. Ambergreen was able to list Bluesky on leading sites across the internet like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista, Freeserve, MSN UK and AOL UK.
Ambergreen exceeded its campaign targets many times over, increasing website traffic by 1000%, delivering high conversion rates with a return on investment of 2000%. Bluesky has amassed a client portfolio of the UK’s leading organisations including Standard Life, Scottish Executive, BT and Diageo solely through internet enquiries. 90% of all business now comes through the Bluesky Experiences website and currently the company has a pipeline of new business which will deliver around 3000% ROI when it comes to fruition.
The client’s opinion
“The increase in traffic to the Bluesky website was phenomenal. In two months the site went from 16 to one thousand unique users each week, representing a staggering 2000% ROI. For every £1 we spent on marketing with Ambergreen we have received a return of £22.”
