How We Helped Pybus Point Reach New Customers & Increase Bookings

The Challenge

The Pybus Point Lodge is a world-class fishing and wildlife tour experience near Juneau, Alaska. After being acquired by the Redmond team (who also own ‘Real Salt’, another client of ours), it was quickly realized that this lodge had a lot of potential - they just had to figure out how to get the word out!

The team was investing in an updated website experience and some great renovations to some of the infrastructure at the lodge as well. They wanted to drive awareness and new bookings for the upcoming season, which only lasts from June to September. At the time, Pybus Point felt like a well-kept secret. Most bookings were return guests, and the majority of new customers came from word of mouth or through travel trade shows across the country. The lodge employed a full-time salesperson who would travel to these trade shows and try to acquire bookings on the spot from adventure-minded travelers.

Limitations of Traditional Methods

While trade shows and a full-time sales team were effective, they were also expensive and not aligned with how modern travelers explore potential future stays. The Redmond team reached out to us to help them expand awareness of their amazing experience in Alaska and see if we could fill up the vacancy for the upcoming season. We were eager to help!

Initial Obstacles to Overcome

The experience at the lodge is truly world-class. Guests report catching dozens of huge halibut and other amazing fish, seeing countless wild whales among glaciers, watching eagles snatch fish out of the lakes and rivers, and even spotting many bears wandering nearby. So what more could you ask from a client with such an amazing product?

Overcoming High Costs and Limited Availability

For one, the rates are understandably quite high to stay at the lodge. At the time, each guest cost around $10,000 to stay, not including flight costs. Additionally, the ideal experience window was only about two and a half months, requiring guests to be ready to travel during a short timeframe. Lastly, bookings had to be made over the phone with someone from the lodge or through the sales team, as guests weren’t able to reserve their stay online and pre-pay.

Our Approach

To begin, we sorted through a huge hard drive of video and photo content from the lodge. We looked at reviews and acclimated ourselves with the full offering. We determined that Meta would be a great way to get the word out through very targeted audiences and creative messaging.

Building a Funnel-Based Campaign

We built a funnel-based campaign strategy on Meta that targeted potential customers by yearly income, travel habits, interests, and geographic locations. We then created high-quality video and photo creatives, highlighting the incredible experiences guests could expect when staying at the lodge. These videos had insane click-through rates of over 10% to these finely tuned audiences, with amazing engagement in the comments.

Optimizing Landing Pages

Finally, we crafted compelling landing page experiences that inspired travelers to consider Pybus Point, answered all their questions, and made the booking experience as simple and easy as possible.

Importance of Retargeting

Knowing how significant a purchase and consideration cycle an investment like this would be, we relied on a heavy retargeting strategy to continually remind potential guests about Pybus and encourage repeated visits to the website.

Excluding Unlikely Converters

We wanted to exclude people who were unlikely to book, especially those who experienced sticker shock after seeing the price. Using custom conversion tags on each landing page based on scroll depth, clicks, and video views, we honed in on the highest quality audiences. We also built custom exclusion lists to remove 'tire-kickers' unlikely to convert.

Prioritizing High-Value Leads

Audiences that spoke to us over the phone, subscribed to emails, received a custom price quote, and other parameters were our highest priority. These leads saw custom ads on Meta that helped drive them further down the funnel.

Results

In the end, we helped drive a ton of great awareness about Pybus Point Lodge. We were able to secure about a dozen bookings for the upcoming season, resulting in over $130,000 in revenue. The following season, after the website redesign was completed and using insights from the traffic we brought in from Meta, the lodge was fully booked and continues to operate at or near zero vacancy each year.

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Our collaboration with Pybus Point Lodge showcases the power of strategic digital marketing in transforming customer acquisition and increasing bookings. If you get a chance, be sure to check out Pybus Point and definitely consider staying!

If you know a brand struggling to figure out digital customer acquisition, we’d love to help!

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