Doubling traffic for a niche skiing OTA brand

Brief The client engaged Type A to build out organic traffic and leads to both the consumer facing and owner facing side of their business. The client also required French and English language SEO experts that had experience in the French, Swiss and Belgian markets to build out a content and link acquisition strategy for all countries. The services provided were SEO and Digital PR in French and English.

Strategy The client was very unique due to the internal structure and the number of agencies and partners working together to fulfil a common goal. In particular: The site is a living breathing organism with new chalets being added and removed all the time. There was a large content team at our disposal They had a very responsive in-house development team due to the custom software they build for their clients There was traditional PR agencies in France that we had to ‘play nice’ with The was a paid agency that we had to share search intelligence with to maximise ROI There was also some interesting competitive factors in the market such as: Lots of independent operators with single specialisms One or Two Behemoth OTAs Publishers taking up SERP space at different times of the year With this in mind we decided that we would need an: An “always on” approach to technical SEO A training and briefing approach to content production A smart digital PR strategy that lets the traditional agency utilise our assets and share our editorial calendar.

Tactics Due to the size of the website and the competitive landscape, we realised that we would need to run all activities in tandem with both our SEO team and digital PR working on campaigns at the same time. As a result, we decided to run 6 PR campaigns in the year starting month 3 of the engagement to allow us to spend the majority of the budget on getting all of the SEO audits and strategy built to hand over to the internal teams quickly so we could then focus on link acquisition.

Europe's Top Ski Resorts Digital PR Campaign Concept When researching competitors we found that lots of people had 10 ten lists of ski resorts that were A) All the same places B) based on subjective opinion C) confined to a single area Therefore, we set out to create the ultimate data led ski resort map across all countries with excellent Skiing in Europe. The thinking was that the asset would be used by people researching the best places to go but also gave us lots of angles with local press to crown the “top” ski resorts in each area. Data The data for this campaign came from the Type A database. We scraped all the data from various sources including Google Maps API, Yelp Reviews, Tripadvisor and Local Government data. Creative If you are going to be talking about the best Ski Resorts surely you need to present it as a Ski Slope? So we made an interactive Ski Slope that could be cut by Ski Resort factors like “cheapest pass, number of chalets, etc” as well as a slicer to change view from country to country to allow you to focus on the destination you cared about most. Inspiring Destinations Digital PR Campaign Concept Some of the greatest creative works were created when musing while travelling. From epic novels to songs to movies, so many of them are birthed by a solo trip, a city break or a ride on a train. With this in mind we wanted to find the most inspiring destinations for creatives looking to create the next big novel. Data The data collection for this piece was incredibly simple, we pulled date of birth information from a database of artists, writers and other creatives that were born in the UK to produce a map of the hotspots that breed the most creative output. Creative As we were showing the density of creatives in specific locations, we opted for a heatmap style creative that let you however over each location in order to find out the density of creatives in a particular area. City Breaks Digital PR Campaign Research Our research showed that the client's core audience was families with young children. Therefore, we decided to make an asset that catered specifically to them. Instead of the usual “top places to visit with Kids” that requires 2 weeks off and a big planned holiday, we opted for the trendier “City Breaks” approach to show the best cities to visit with kids to build some culture into their lives instead of simply taking them to a warm resort once a year. Data To make the piece compelling to parents we needed to include data that they commonly care about. Therefore, we conducted keyword research in order to find the Frequently Asked Questions about major European cities and we found that safety, kids attractions, water parks and transport costs were all top of the list when it came to Google’s “People Also Ask” box. Creative For this piece we needed to display a lot of information in an digestible way, therefore we opted for an interactive table so parents could choose the factors they cared about the most to see the areas that they could travel to with their kids. Tranquil Destinations Digital PR Campaign Concept It was the middle of the pandemic and people were visibility stressed and looking for a tranquil escape from the madness of every day life. Therefore, we decided to produce the most tranquil destinations guide for people to travel to. Data The data was a mixture of Type A data and 3rd party APIs from Yelp and Google Maps. This allowed us to understand the cities with the most spas, less people and low popularity online so you could go somewhere quiet and relaxing that was off the beaten track. Creative We opted for another interactive table as it works so well in allowing us to build multiple stories for each location. As there were so many locations we could legitimately reach out to lots of non english speaking publications to pitch the story to a much wider audience.