Google Ads Have More People Saying Yes to Destination Weddings
Destination Dream Weddings is a team of certified wedding planners who help clients plan destination weddings in locations like the Dominican Republic, Thailand, the Caribbean, and the Canadian Rockies. Their planners live in the locations where they book weddings, and they use local vendors and venues to take care of every detail.
The Goal
COVID-19 hit the travel and wedding industries hard. Once borders opened back up and travel was a little less restricted, Destination Dream Weddings wanted to bring in a steady stream of qualified leads. They asked Marketing Martian to make recommendations. We suggested developing a lead generation campaign on Google Search to increase the quantity and quality of the leads they were already getting.
The Approach
We developed the search ad creative and directed traffic to destination-specific landing pages. The ads ran in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. With this ongoing campaign, Destination Dream Weddings sees a steady stream of qualified leads each month. What’s more, these leads now have a 66% consultation booking rate—the highest number they’ve ever achieved.
We learned that Destination Dream Weddings had written a free e-book as a helpful resource for couples planning their destination weddings. The book was incredibly valuable, so we turned it into a gated download piece and created an automated lead nurturing email campaign as part of the download process.
When a lead arrived on a landing page, they could learn more about their ideal wedding destination and type in their email address to get the e-book. From there, they would receive several emails over the next few weeks containing more details about Destination Dream Weddings’ services and asking them to book a consultation. This keeps the business top of mind when leads aren’t ready to buy just yet.
Not only have the quantity of leads increased, but Destination Dream Weddings says these leads are more qualified–their consultation booking rate is higher than ever.
The Results
Before we started managing the campaign, advertising brought in roughly 10 leads a month. In the first month with Google Ads, our efforts brought in 22 leads and 33 email subscribers without changing the advertising budget.
Overall, the campaign earned 190 leads in 2022, and we grew the email subscriber list by over 500 people. Lead quantity increased by 43% compared to 2021. Lead quality also increased, as shown by an 87% year-over-year increase in booked consultations in 2022.
“Marketing Martian was introduced to us 2.5 years ago when we needed help to support a multi-country business model. Even though our business was greatly affected by safety restrictions and uncertainty for travel and destination weddings, Sarah was able to bring us leads and helped us grow our reach to help clients as far away as Thailand.
Sarah and Hannah are an integral part of our business success. Not only have we sustained, but we have grown since we partnered with them. I highly recommend Marketing Martian to any business looking for an amazing team to take their business to the next level.”
— Wendy Wharton, Destination Dream Weddings