The breathtaking Cliffs of Moher, situated in County Clare along the wild Atlantic Way. The Cliffs of Moher have majestically faced the Atlantic for over 350 million years and their beauty is incomparable – it is Ireland’s most visited tourist attraction and when you visit you will understand why.

Due to the nature of their location and demographic, they have always attracted Irish visitors and they have always been strong within the international market through third party operators.

TO BEGIN

The Cliffs Of Moher began their collaboration with Core Optimisation in January 2019. The goal of this partnership was to increase the visibility of the Cliffs Of Moher Tourist Attraction In Ireland as a place to visit in the overseas markets and increase revenue, especially at off-peak time slots while growing their online presence.

When we asked Maura Fay from the Cliffs Of Moher Visitor Experience about their partnership with Core Optimisation, she said…

“We have partnered with Core Optimisation for over a year now and their digital expertise in the hospitality sector has had a very positive impact on our online performance. They are a great team to work with both proactive and commercially focused and we look forward to continued growth in 2020.”

THE APPROACH

For the Cliffs Of Moher, our main objectives were to increase the attractions visibility in overseas markets, increase online revenue for peak season YOY, increase revenue for mornings, afternoons & off-peak times and educate visitors of the onsite facilities.

To do this, firstly we needed to review the Cliffs Of Moher’s online numbers. Therefore we began by conducting a full analytic audit alongside an in-depth Conversion Rate Optimisation analysis of both their mobile and desktop website. Once we had completed our analysis we could begin to work towards growing their online presence by understanding each of the digital channels and devices accessible to their audience.

We used the information gathered from here to map out both a short and long term plan of action that focuses on the growth of the international market and continual growth of the domestic visitors.

DEVISING A STRATEGY

Core were asked to work with the team to create a strategy that would attract direct business, focusing on the international visitor with an emphasis on morning, afternoons & off-peak times.

-> CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION

Before we started to invest in delivering traffic to the website for conversion we needed to rework the website. One of the main areas that stood out on our analysis is that the mobile device was the highest number of users (57% Of Users) yet the conversion rate was lower than that on desktop. We completed a full analysis and presented our recommendations to help drive the mobile sales YOY.

We worked closely with the web developer and the team at Cliffs Of Moher to apply the changes to the website while maintaining the brand look and feel. We also developed informative pages to help drive education while maintaining the sales approach from each page. Developing and optimizing pages across the site organically to help increase revenue through this channel

-> TARGETED PAID SEARCH ADVERTISING

Building out niche campaigns per country and applying the best audiences to these campaigns to help decrease the cost per click getting a better return for the spend. We also applied detailed bid adjustments on device, demographics, location broken down per city etc. We targeted each country with specifically tailored ad copy changing our language, tone of voice and messaging to be more relatable to the visitor’s needs based on location.

-> REMARKETING CAMPAIGNS

We built onto our campaigns with detailed remarketing. This strategy involves not just re-targeting the masses but using very specific targeting and messaging for the audience. We analysed the drop-off on the path to purchase and would re-target anyone within this group reinforcing the reasons for booking direct, for example:

“Save Up To 50% Off Ticket Prices.”

Audiences were then built using key indicators of interest such as the length of time on the top-performing pages, age groups, non-converters, people who have visited the site more than once and a number of other segments. We found that by applying these audiences our campaigns converted at a higher rate.

-> DISPLAY CAMPAIGNS

Traditionally we would approach display campaigns with caution as they can help increase your overall traffic but not produce conversions. However, as a well-established tourist attraction, this was ideal for the Cliffs Of Moher to increase brand awareness and generate new business coming to the market. Having to work within a budget we needed to use this channel with a strategic approach. Again we layer our remarketing campaigns with display campaigns and they produced conversions for Cliffs Of Moher at a low cost per conversion.

Cliffs Of Moher were an interesting client to work with as there are a lot of third-party ticket sellers which we needed for visibility but we also wanted to win back direct bookings. This gave us the challenge of managing the low season to maximize our opportunities during high season.Due to the nature of the destination weather is also a concern affecting us YOY as we were competing with the best Summer Ireland had in recent years during 2018. No pressure then…

We needed to decide what online methods would deliver the most appropriate and cost-effective results when reaching potential customers for the Cliffs Of Moher.

The strategy we developed focused on attracting the right type of customer for the destination through a number of online methods:

• Paid Search Advertising
  • Search Campaigns
  • Awareness Campaigns
• Remarketing
• Conversion Rate Optimisation