Leisure Industry Case Study
The Dungeons - How Tug Achieved A 65% Increase In Ticket Sales For The Dungeons Using Integrated Search Marketing
What did The Dungeons want to do?
Merlin Entertainments Group is the World’s second largest visitor attraction operator with leading brands including The Dungeons, which has venues in UK cities (London, Edinburgh and York) as well as The Dungeons in Hamburg and Amsterdam. The Dungeons were running a successful PPC campaign in terms of CPA and ROI however they had reached a limit on the quantity of sales they could generate through PPC. The existing PPC campaign focussed only on brand keywords. Similarly the SEO campaign concentrated on low hanging fruit such as brand terms as well. This limited The Dungeons audience to users who already knew about them and were already in the ‘buying phase’ of the purchase cycle.
In late 2009 Merlin Entertainment appointed search marketing agency Tug with the following objectives:
- Launch an optimised website – use SEO to compete effectively in the natural listing
- Increase the volume of online sales – use PPC to drive bookings
- Increase awareness of the venues among new audiences
- Increase traffic to their five websites
- Increase venue footfall and incremental revenue
How did Tug help them do it?
Tug worked with The Dungeons web agency to launch fully optimised websites across 5 venues and 3 international markets. Keywords for optimisation were expanded beyond brand to include broad terms such as ‘London Attractions’, as well as historical keywords such as ‘Jack the Ripper’. Extensive PPC keyword mining was undertaken by Tug to increase The Dungeons keyword list from 500 keywords to 45,000 keywords.
The new set of PPC keywords was extended to include keywords that targeted users at all stages of the purchase cycle from those at the research stage (e.g. “fun London days out”) to those at the buying stage (e.g. “buy London Dungeons tickets”)
A complex account structure was created to ensure the best possible quality score, the best use of budgets, as well as ensuring every PPC Ad served was 100% relevant to the search term used.
Tug ran regular Ad testing to ensure the highest possible click through rate (CTR). The team worked with The Dungeons web design agency to create new keyword rich landing pages to increase the keywords’ quality score and conversion rates.
New Google Content Network (GCN) campaigns were set up to run in months when traffic levels were low. This was to increase brand awareness, and to use the GCN to go out and actively find potential customers on the web when demand was low. Budgets were also adjusted to meet seasonal demand.
SEO link building included traditional directories, article submissions and blog and forum activity. In addition, banned videos were distributed as well as images of celebrities at the venue, competitions for free tickets organised with bloggers and press releases optimised and released through paid and non-paid channels.
To ensure Integrated Search Marketing, messaging across PPC & SEO was compared regularly, using PPC to be more sales focused and SEO to emphasize historical, educational and emotive messages. Regular traffic analysis from both channels allowed budgets to be amended to meet demand and support visibility for critical terms.
How did it all go?
The campaign achieved the following award winning results:
- 45 mission critical keywords optimised across all sites
- 36% have a top 3 ranking in the natural listings
- 8 competitions generated 5,000+ entries
- Integrated Search Marketing has grown site traffic by 72%
- 65% increase in PPC Sales
- 61% increase in PPC Revenue
- CPA of under £4 (with a £10 target)
- ROAS of 1,280%
- Tug and The Dungeons have been shortlisted for the 2010 DMA best use of Search category
Read more of our search marketing case studies
Read more about our 2009 DMA best use of Search Award
