Who are Cornwalls Cottages?
Cornwalls Cottages offer holiday cottages and self catering accommodation in Cornwall and the surrounding areas. They are unique in the market place as they do not offer brochures as part of their marketing activities, relying solely on their fantastic website to promote their properties.
The company launched with just three properties and now has around 400 on its books, all managed by just seven staff members! Being part of the tourism trade in Cornwall, Cornwalls Cottages is a seasonally focused business with their busiest times being the Spring and Summer months.
The Situation
Being a young, small business, the Cornwalls Cottages team had a lot of demands on their time. Their Google AdWords account was a key area where a lot of time was being spent, but also one they knew could be done better. As Google AdWords was one of the main sources of traffic for their website, our challenge was to increase sales and profitability, driving more clicks for the same budget.
Despite never having tried Facebook Ads before, Cornwalls Cottages did have a healthy community already, growing their presence on the platform with regular delivery of picturesque views of Cornwall's finest beaches and beauty spots, along with helpful tips for potential holiday goers.
With Google already covered, our attention turned to leveraging the Facebook platform, as well as this large existing community to drive additional bookings.
Our Solution
Google AdWords Optimization
The team at Cornwalls Cottages had already set up their account and done some work on it. What was left for Digital Gearbox was to optimise and improve on the existing account. Working with Cornwalls Cottages' web developers, we added tracking code to their website. These codes allowed us to track bookings and enquiries, enabling us to concentrate budget into the best performing areas of the account.
Next we expanded the account to ensure all geographical areas were covered, ensuring that clicks were not being missed. We also restructured the campaigns, ad groups and keywords to make the account more targeted.
With the account fully set up within the first month, the next aim was to focus on continually optimising the ongoing activity. Ongoing optimisation of a Google AdWords Keywords account is essential to keep the account running at a profitable level. This includes refining keywords and ad text as well as managing bids and budgets to achieve the optimum level of traffic for the budget spend available.
Facebook Ads Strategy
Remarketing, one of our favourite tactics for any campaign, was marked as a priority piece of our larger strategy. Firstly, because this should be an important component of any consideration service or product, and secondly because we already had plenty of data from our existing Google Ads campaigns pointing to audiences being receptive to ads within 7 days following the initial touchpoint. We also targeted those who had already liked the page, offering this audience different content from what they were already seeing.
Utilising Facebook's variety of ad style options, we were able to create engaging ads that would really appeal to those with specific holiday desires. By showcasing their various property types such as dog-friendly properties and cottages with a hot hub through engaging carousel ads and video ads, this helped to really set Cornwalls Cottages apart from the mass competition out there.
As the pandemic took hold and essentially shut down the tourism industry we adjusted the tone and content of our ads to prompt our target audience to think ahead, as well as offering attractive cancellation guarantees that have become commonplace in our "new normal".
As soon as we got the Remarketing campaigns working effectively, our focus then moved to building our remarketing lists by running some low-cost new customer acquisition campaigns to attract both new page followers, and to draw audiences that have an affinity with Cornwall or were showing intent to holiday in the UK to their website.
The Results
Our comprehensive multi-channel strategy delivered impressive results across all key performance metrics:
Google AdWords Performance
- 42% Increase in paid traffic
- 33% Reduction in cost per click
Facebook Ads Performance
Immediate Impact
In 2019 we generated 492 bookings via Facebook with the average cost per acquisition coming in just under Cornwalls Cottages' £50 per booking target.
Improvements Despite Pandemic
2020, as we all know, was a very difficult year for the tourism industry. Despite the challenges, we were able to overcome this with our aforementioned adjustments, scaling operations, and generating 835 bookings at a reduced cost per acquisition of £45.
Overall Business Impact
Through strategic restructuring and ongoing optimization, we transformed their advertising accounts from time-consuming burdens into streamlined, profitable marketing channels that required minimal ongoing management.
What The Client Had To Say
"Digital Gearbox helped us through a difficult period, equipping us with a new source of bookings in addition to the one they've successfully managed for years. Their technical expertise, agility, and creativity has been invaluable in helping us to successfully scale up our advertising at a critical time, whilst keeping our acquisition costs low"
David Mathewson, Co-Owner of Cornwalls Cottages
