AAE RAFTING
Despite their established service and presence in a highly tourism-driven area, they wanted to increase market share.
After ramping up and implementing our strategy through most of the year, AAE was happy to see booking growth of 40% year over year, despite a flatline in their overall industry.
AAE Success Story
Situation
AAE originally came to V9 wanting to increase market share. Every October, reports are released for vendors in their industry, showing how many trips were booked that season and, therefore, their total market share. Since water levels can dictate how busy a season might be, increasing market share was the metric that would best show growth or decline year-over-year. But the question was: how did they book more trips and get more interest in their services?
Once V9 was brought into the fold, our experts saw AAE’s potential to create more appealing content, up SEO value, and drive visitor interest. They also pinpointed the need to strengthen the site experience and a user’s journey through it. So, we got to work.
Solution
Customer Personas
As we do with any client, our first task with AAE was to ensure a strong set of ideal customer personas. After working with their team to figure out who they most wanted to attract, we created two personas:
- The thrillseeker is interested in content about higher-level whitewater rafting experiences and water levels for the year.
- The Midwest family likely to be rafting for the first time with children, making nature, scenery, the Royal Gorge bridge, and having safety the primary focus.
Once we had the personas hammered down, our team approached the site and its content with these new insights in mind.
SEO improvements
Our SEO experts implemented various site optimization improvements, focusing on keywords, metadata, and technical elements to ensure that searchers connected with AAE’s site.
Audience-focused content
As our SEO team got to work, our content team also worked to develop a robust content strategy. The goal was to attract new users and better control the landing pages from search. Using the new customer personas, we were able to create content that spoke to both the thrillseeker and the Midwest family, and that was designed to escort them through the journey to booking. From there, we utilized creative blogging and paid social media promotion to engage the audience outside of organic search.
Overall, by focusing on increasing organic sessions and organic revenue, V9 was able to grow AAE’s bottom line — and get them a stronger standing in the market share.
Results
The true outcomes of our collaborative efforts weren’t known until when end-of-season numbers were released. After ramping up and implementing our strategy through most of the year, AAE was happy to see massive results: Despite a flatline in their overall industry, they were able to grow revenue 40% YoY.
