Adventure Kayak Outfitters

History

Frank Miller of Adventure Kayak Outfitters decided to open his own kayak tour business in the Sarasota and Anna Maria Island Florida areas. Because of his background in the industry he knew it would be extremely difficult to break into the market due to competition for tourism dollars in an already tight market. Frank knew he needed a sound, comprehensive internet strategy to get his business off the ground, so he approached Webtivity Design Solutions.

Challenge

When Frank came to us for assistance he didn’t even have a brand, so we needed to help him develop a full branding strategy that would separate him from his competitors. Some of Frank’s competitors had a long history behind their websites, social media campaigns and PPC campaigns so we had to be aggressive with our online strategies. Frank was starting with a brand new URL with no history behind it so it would take a solid campaign to get his website ranked. His competitors were also spending a moderate budget on their PPC campaigns. Since he was starting a brand new company he would need to establish trust with his online audience to convey a quality experience that was worth the price of admission.

Process

We first performed competitive reconnaissance to determine what Frank’s online competitors were doing well, as well as gaps in their strategies that would allow us to infiltrate and capitalize. We worked closely with Frank to learn what his audience would expect to see and learn when they arrive on a kayak tour website and researched other similar websites around the world.

From there our team designed his logo and identity. As soon as we had his branding in place we started working on his website, social media sites, PPC landing pages and PPC ads. Because Frank is an avid photographer we were able to leverage his camera skills as a value-add to his kayak tours. We advised Frank to take photos on his trips and upload them to Facebook at the end of the day so his customers could tag themselves in the photos. By doing this his customers were automatically sharing Frank’s Facebook page with their friends, giving Frank additional exposure to an audience he would not have had access to.

To supplement his online efforts we also designed accompanying rack cards Frank could distribute to local hotels, resorts and tourist attractions as well as water-proof business cards for his cross-media marketing efforts.

Results

Within 4 months of launch the Adventure Kayak Outfitters website had reached a page 1 ranking in Google and the website was receiving over 70 visitors a day. Approximately 10% of his traffic was coming from his social media sites, 25% coming from organic search, 35% coming from his PPC campaigns, and the Remaining 30% from referring sites and other Outbound Marketing. As his PPC campaign quality scores and landing pages were continually optimized, he saw his Cost Per Click decrease over a $1.00 per click even though he was still consistently placed above his competitors in the sponsored areas.

Over the next few months as his website continued to organically rank for more keywords and phrases his paid traffic decreased, but organic traffic increased, saving him budget on his PPC campaign. Frank plans on using these additional savings to eventually incorporate online booking into his website to help streamline the booking process for his clients and decrease no-shows.