Overview
One of the world’s largest boat and yacht charter platforms needed to improve the metrics driving its core business. With over 50,000 boats listed across 500+ destinations and more than €100 million in revenue, the platform had significant scale. Previous funding exceeded €30 million. The challenge was making growth more profitable by improving the key performance indicators across the full customer journey.
Our co founder Markus Kuempel being hired as the interim head of growth, a huge challenge was presented – A quick turnaround towards profitability.
Initial Situation
- Cost per Lead too high relative to revenue generated
- Conversion Rate and Lead to Sales Rate underperforming
- Margin per booking not optimised
- No structured cross-functional approach between Marketing, Data, and Product
Objectives
- Reduce Cost per Lead
- Increase Lead to Sales Rate
- Increase Conversion Rate
- Increase Margin per Boat Sold
Approach
The engagement was structured across three areas: Marketing, Data, and Conversion.
On the marketing side, resources were concentrated on Google Ads as the primary acquisition channel. Campaigns were fully restructured for Smart Bidding, targeting decisions became more data-driven, and monthly in 6-figure territory was constantly optimized.
On the data side, dashboards were built to improve analysis across the funnel. Hotjar was used for user recordings and heatmaps to surface friction points in the user journey. Funnel visualisation was expanded to give a clearer picture of the end-to-end customer journey from first click to purchase. Communication between Marketing, Product, and Sales was improved to ensure all three teams were working from the same understanding of performance.
On the conversion side, A/B testing was run across key pages and elements to improve website copy. Lead forms were repositioned within the funnel, trust elements and review marketing were introduced, the product page was improved, and new landing pages were built with content widgets to support conversion.
Results
- 25% YoY improvement in Conversion Rate recorded in October and November
- All other core metrics improved measurably year-on-year
- Marketing campaigns moved from an outdated granular setup, to a more centralised one
Key Learnings
- Aligning Marketing, Data, and Product around shared metrics is a prerequisite for profitable growth
- Smart Bidding only performs when campaign structure and data quality support it
- Conversion rate gains compound across the funnel when CRO is treated as a cross-functional effort, not a marketing task alone
Google Ads is the main acquisition channel for most companies out there. At the same time, optimising conversion rate is just as important as it is to generate high quality traffic. Focusing on these both activities alone will have significant impact on business in a huge variety of industries.
