From #70 to #2 on Trip Advisor in 6 Months

Story Bridge Adventure Climb

The client.

The Story Bridge is Brisbane’s most iconic structure, and the Story Bridge Adventure Climb is must do experience in the city.

The challenge.

The Story Bridge Adventure Climb contracted us to help them develop a number of digital marketing-lead growth campaigns.

We identified the free independent traveller (FIT) market as a key growth opportunity. They are avid users of Trip Advisor and many rely on this online resource to plan their activities in foreign cities.

The problem was that the Story Bridge Adventure Climb didn’t rank very highly in the highly competitively ‘Outdoor Activities’ category on Trip Advisor.

The problem was not that they were rated poorly (they weren’t). The issue was they simply weren’t receiving enough reviews often enough to stay ahead of other attractions in the category.

The solution.

Marketing automation

The first step to helping the client increase their ranking on Trip Advisor was to implement a marketing automation system.

We chose ActiveCampaign for its ease of use and because they required basic CRM functionality. We integrated ActiveCampaign with the following third-party systems:

  • Rezdy – Booking system designed specifically for tour and activity operators
  • JotForm – Electronic indemnity form that all climbers must sign
  • WordPress – Website and enquiry forms
  • Instapage – Used for Google Ads and campaign landing pages
  • Facebook – To automatically add and remove people from custom audiences.

Understand the customer

We did this because it is crucial to understand how customers interact with a business for any digital strategy to be truly successful. This is very difficult when customer data is spread across multiple systems.

This allowed us to achieve a complete understanding of customers in one place.

Armed with this understanding, we then built highly personalised customer journeys based on user demographics, geography and tickets purchased.

Asked for Trip Advisor reviews

We implemented numerous marketing automations. The one designed to improve their visibility on Trip Advisor was a post-climb follow-up email.

An ActiveCampaign automation triggered this email from the CEO one day after each climb. It simply thanked and asked every climber to review them on Trip Advisor if they had enjoyed the experience.

No incentives were offered and people were never filtered out.

This one simple request in a personal text email saw their ranking climbing quickly from #70 to #2 on Trip Advisor in less than 6 months.

trip advisor rating

The question now is… how long will it take to get to #1?