In 2019, Scenic Hotel Group came to Fastrack to boost their brand awareness toward their target audience.
Project Start
Deliverables:
2019 - Ongoing
Project Start
Deliverables:
2019 - Ongoing
Despite the remarkable success in the corporate accommodation market, Scenic suffered from a low brand awareness in the consumer market and generated a low direct booking revenue on the website.
In 2019, Kim McLenaghen, the Marketing Manager of Scenic Hotel, came to Fastrack to seek advice on search marketing to boost their brand awareness toward the target audience. Fastrack hence conducted an in-depth discovery session to gain a thorough understanding of each property to create a comprehensive search marketing (SEO & SEM) campaign strategy.
We quickly realised that both SEO & SEM channels were underperforming compared to industry benchmarks based on Fastrack data. Together with the Scenic marketing team we designed an approach to add structure to the channels and guide the team towards a higher performing workflow.
A key challenge was to merge and organise multiple brands that the group managed. Some brands needed a migration strategy whereas others needed a boost. These requirements were combined with best SEO & SEM practices to quickly create a winning formula.
A major challenge was accessing data and understanding changes as they happen. Previous campaigns often led to poor performance because the group could not ascertain where spend was successful and where it was not. To tackle this challenge Fastrack setup live Google Datastudio dashboard which not only provided the data that was previously lacking, but also enabled the management team to keep track of spend.
Our SEO audit revealed significant optimisation opportunities which we presented to the Group. Quick wins were implemented first as is the usual way with SEO but we were keen to progress with more important and influential recommendations. These can be a challenge to understand let alone implement and that's where Fastrack assists. Over the years we’ve managed, provided and oversaw the implementation of a number of SEO improvements: including technical, coding, HTML, meta data, rich content, citation and keyword optimisation.
Recently the global pandemic brought about new challenges unlike anyone has experienced before. Having a strong relationship with withe Scenic team allowed us to share vital information about the groups operations, challenges and plans. With this knowledge we were able to design highly targeted and specific campaigns - whilst embedding a new flexibility to our work. In fact, we recommended a complete overhaul of all our campaigns to align with the new ways in which our clients needed to operate.
In some areas performance was even higher than expected, although the major factor was agreed to be the updated plans & forecasts.
Today we continue to run digital campaigns for the Scenic Hotel Group focusing primarily on SEO & SEM.
Lately we are exploring wider synergies between all digital marketing (including social media, content, websites etc…) and are confident a multi channel collaboration is key to the future growth.
Established in 1980, Scenic Hotel Group is New Zealand’s largest independent hotel group with a large number of properties across the country and South Pacific Islands. Established in 1980 by the founders of the group, Earl Hagaman and Ralph Brown when first visiting New Zealand, they fell under the spell of the magical beauty of the country. In 1981 they purchased their first hotel on the West Coast. The then 48-room Graham Motor Inn, to this day stands as one of the iconic “hero” locations of the group, the 130-room Scenic Hotel Franz Josef Glacier.
See https://www.scenichotelgroup.co.nz/ for more information.
