Vero Beach Marketing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing director at Captain Hiram’s Resort, which is located in Florida.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vero Beach Marketing?

For four years, we’d had a relationship with another company that focuses on chain and boutique hotels, but we kept noticing major inconsistencies with our dashboard results from them. We also discovered they were not managing the AdWord campaigns closely which resulted in being charged for ads that had expired. After that mishap, I wanted to hire a company that was a better fit for a small business to help us revamp our digital advertising.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked them to help us improve our data collection and advertising results, so their first step was to perform a review of our Google Analytics account. Next, they helped us identify and redefine our target markets. Once we had that customer persona developed, they worked with us on ad copy that could help hone our message and put together a new AdWords strategy. They set everything up in a fresh Analytics account so that we could compare the results against those from our previous contractor and gave us 90 days to evaluate both approaches.

Once we decided to work with them long-term, they also consulted with our in-house social media manager to review advertising best practices and ensure we were up to date.

What is the team composition?

We work with their manager, Stacy Cook.

How did you come to work with Vero Beach Marketing?

I’d known Stacy for several years and always viewed him as a resource for our questions regarding Google services, so I called and gave an overview of our situation. We also considered another company, but Vero Beach Marketing was the better fit, especially since they were local and easily accessible.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $10,00 on their fees so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

They started consulting for us in January 2018 and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

This past summer, we added weekly live musical performances for the first time and we had to think carefully about our advertising strategy in terms of our target audience. The results blew all our numbers out of the water. Our ad campaign generated millions of impressions and nearly 100,000 click-throughs. The amount of revenue we brought in based on event attendance increased more than 50% over previous years. And, thanks to the event series, we also saw a significant increase in hotel stays.

How did Vero Beach Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re highly responsive and have a quick turnaround time on their projects. They were also willing to delve deeply into market research to see how our resort matched up against competitors with similar offerings. When it came to our summer event campaign, we met every two weeks to debrief. I was also able to check on our numbers daily and contact them by phone or email anytime I had questions. If the numbers seemed to taper off after four or five days, they’d help us tweak things until traffic picked up again. They were fully engaged in our success.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I can’t overstate how much of a good impression it makes when someone starts out by asking questions about how they can help you rather than pushing their own solutions. They’re genuinely interested in learning where we wanted to go as a company and guided us to those results. Not only that, they also offer budget proposals for approval before getting started, which is helpful for a small business. In addition, they were able to show us trends that appeared as a result of their strategies and always delivered on what they promised.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a solid understanding of who your current clients are and also consider whether or not those are the clients you want to reach. Vero Beach Marketing can help you refine your advertising to either draw in more of the same kind of clients or reach new ones. While you’re considering this, be open to listening to their advice and look at the data they gather in order to understand your client base.