Here’s How to Increase Your ROI in Tourism with Smart Marketing - CASE STUDY

Need a refresher? Revisit our blog post on how to build a collective marketing strategy.

We follow a collective marketing strategy to optimise our clients’ marketing budgets and increase their ROI with significant results. Here’s how our agency has done this with one of the top sustainable tourism groups in South Africa. 

Image credit: Isibindi Africa Lodges

The Isibindi group is a leader in the African eco-tourism space for good reason. With 4 different lodges scattered across serene and picturesque settings in South Africa and Zimbabwe, they came to us with this challenge: create content and ads that keep their lodges distinct while optimising budget and increasing ROI.

Our creative and technical teams got to work creating a digital marketing strategy that would showcase what made each lodge unique while reaping the benefits of a collective marketing strategy. The result? A significant increase in traffic and booking intent across the Isibindi group.

Results achieved with a collective marketing strategy for Isibindi Africa Lodges

How to enact an effective collective marketing strategy

The first step in any successful marketing strategy begins with a cohesive and compelling Brand Identity. Read about how to craft a brand story that reaps tangible ROI here. Once you have the creative aspects of your digital strategy down, you need to make it work online. Here's how our team of digital marketing specialists did that for the Isibindi group of lodges.

1. Keep an open communication channel with lodges on the ground to see which area or lodge needs bookings. For example: In peak season, we promote activities for people to do whilst on holiday in the area to easily increase revenue, whereas in low season, offering great discounted rates for the same luxury experience keeps cash flow sustained.

2. Identify the audiences for each lodge in the group. Are they similar or different, and in which specific ways? Can they share an audience on Google and social media? For example: A number of Isibindi lodges are Big 5 safari camps, meaning they can share an online audience, which optimises ad costs and ROI. 

3. Match the audience for the type of campaign created. For example:  Segment your traffic audience who showed intent and retarget them with a 'Book Now' campaign.

Hot tip: Users that previously engaged with content are always more likely to follow through and convert with bookings. Maximise your ad spend by only targeting previously engaged users with follow-up ads.

4. Split your ad spend budget across geo locations and target audiences for lodges based on historical performance.

5. Monitor user buyer cycle stages and create special offers and campaigns that match a specific audience's buyer stage. This ensures a favourable ROI by using the data to create effective campaign strategies across lodges and offerings.

Here’s why this collective strategy works:

• Budget spent to bring users to one site through great content and optimised Google ads flow from one lodge to another with internal links, leading to increased brand awareness and traffic across products
• Advanced tracking becomes possible as users navigate between the group and individual sites, giving a clearer picture of the user journey to inform future decisions
• As users are redirected to products that may need more attention within the group, they are likely already interested in the brand. This allows newer offerings to ‘piggy-back’ on the group’s brand identity and results in a higher rate of conversions 

Marketing for tourism is a skill that, once learned, can be wielded to create effective marketing strategies across your tourism offering. Inspired to increase your brand’s ROI with an optimised marketing budget? Follow the steps laid out in part 1 of our series on Increasing ROI in Tourism to start seeing results or reach out to our expert team to hear how we can help. 

Explore our other blogs on building an effective digital marketing strategy, including how to set up SEO for effective results.