- Paid
- SEO
About the client
Globus family of brands (Group Voyagers Inc) is the largest tour operator in the world. Specialising in river cruises, and escorted and independent holidays; prior to COVID-19 they provided services to almost 50,000 passengers each year. Offering more than 500 different itineraries, across 30 businesses, Globus has been a leader in travel for over 90 years.
When COVID-19 shut down international travel, the ANZ team needed to pivot quickly, turning to domestic travel within Australia and New Zealand to offer holidays within people’s homelands. By July 2020, Globus had created tours for locations such as Tasmania, The Great Ocean Road, and the North and South Islands of New Zealand.
Challenge
Changing the way regional customers saw Globus’ offerings through domestic travel.
Bring Globus tours to Australians and New Zealanders in their own countries
Traditionally, Globus customers in the ANZ region booked tours to Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa; but when COVID-19 shut down international travel, these bookings halted. With borders closed for an indeterminate period of time, Globus needed to pivot and bring the tours to clients in their home countries.
Attracting customers in uncertain times
Globus designed 14 tours that were on offer via the Globus and Cosmos Tours brands. Once the tours had been created, the hard work began – selling their Australian and New Zealand customers on travel at home, when they’d traditionally looked abroad for their adventures.
There are so many beautiful, unique destinations across the region, so efforts were needed to create a full-scale digital marketing strategy that focused on domestic, rather than international, travel in 2020 and 2021 to help scratch the travel itch while borders remained closed.
Solution
Achieving big results from small dollars, using optimised digital strategies and experts in their fields.
Reaching your goals is easy when you have the right help
We assisted Globus in reaching their goal of selling a range of Australian and New Zealand-based domestic holidays to customers from within the region.
We began by creating a digital strategy that focused primarily on:
- SEO
- SEM
- Video
With a budget that fluctuated between $5,000 and $60,000 per month, we needed to be able to create flexible execution points that could be changed quickly to ensure we were maximising their spend and bringing the right audience to the Globus’ websites.
How we got there
Our SEO experts researched the interest and volume of search trends for local tourism destinations. These insights were then used to create ads with copy that sold the opportunity of seeing some of Australia and New Zealand’s best sights, via Globus’ unique tour offerings, while living in a world where international travel was no longer an option.
Our search engine marketing experts worked to structure Google ad search campaigns, ad groups, and keywords and match types (across four separate accounts), to create the most value for money for the client, all the while honing in on the unique selling points of the itineraries.
Display ads were created to appear across Google’s extensive display network and YouTube clips were created by Globus’ creative team and uploaded into Video Campaign by In Marketing We Trust, as we knew that harnessing the power of YouTube would allow audiences to experience parts of the region they may not have been aware of and, hopefully, develop a hunger to travel at home.
Globus had big plans around offering domestic itineraries that they had developed to pivot during COVID-19, and were looking for help to define and execute a strong digital strategy to bring their tours to life. Having worked with them for many years, we knew we could offer a full scale solution that helped them remain relevant during turbulent times.
Results
Achieving 1,900+ conversions and booking out tours, via strong digital strategy and first-class execution.
Booking out tours around the region starts with good conversion metrics
In the six-month period from October 2020 to April 2021, the team at In Marketing We Trust achieved more than 1,900 conversions for Globus (900+) and Cosmos AU (1,000).
Having previously worked to automate sales and marketing analytics for Globus, we were able to provide data that measured campaign success in a meaningful way that could be presented to the senior leadership team.
Cultivating robust conversion rates
Our team of experts built Google Ads campaigns that converted at 10% for click-through and a conversion rate of almost 4% in the period from November 2020 to March 2021. Regular optimisation allowed us to make the most of Globus’ fluctuating budget.
Using YouTube as a tool for education
Video is a powerful medium, and YouTube ads can be an important part of top-of-funnel activity for businesses, as they attract the attention of potential customers and can start telling a brand story that will entice them to learn more. During the six-month campaign period, we achieved a view rate of 24% for Globus.
“Our main focus is now definitely on domestic business. And, surprisingly, passengers booked on our domestic products are new to the company.”
Rachelle D, Consumer & E-Commerce Marketing Manager, Globus family of brands
conversions
click-through rate
video view rate
Testimonials
Rachelle Delgado
Digital Marketing Coordinator
I especially appreciate that In Marketing We Trust are so proactive in ensuring that we are kept up to date with reporting and have been a major help with migration. One of the best agencies we’ve worked with. Cecilia is wonderful! Very easy to bounce ideas off, will offer advi...
Lilly McVea
Digital Marketing Manager
You’ve been one of the best agencies I’ve worked with … and this is something I’ll carry into the future with me … No doubt we will work together again. Thank you for your fabulous work across our accounts so far – we’ve had so much on the move and you’ve managed ...
Louise Percy
Digital Marketing Manager
Absolute experts in SEO, SEM and digital strategy, they truly live up to their name and I trust them to deliver great results for my brands. They operate as if they are part of your team and have the detailed skillsets to plug any holes you have internally.
Kirra Loh
Digital Performance and Content Marketing Manager ANZ
We've been working with In Marketing We Trust for years and the team of specialists know our brands and accounts inside and out! Their expertise in GA4, SEO and paid media has been so valuable to us - they've guided us through all sorts of projects such as site migrations, adopti...
