Overview
Building and scaling digital marketing for a €1 billion travel platform in a new market
One of Europe’s fastest growing travel companies, with over 5 million customers and more than €1 billion in annual transaction volume, planned its entry into the German market. With no local marketing presence and a small on-the-ground team, the brief was to build and scale a full go-to-market operation from scratch, acquire the first customers, and feed daily performance insights back to the London headquarters.
Initial Situation
The client was an established travel platform with over 5 million customers across England and Ireland, but had no presence, no local team, and no acquisition channels in place in Germany. The project was multi-million in scale and required close coordination with the London headquarters, with the entire local marketing operation needing to be built from zero.
Objectives
- Execute a successful market entry into Germany
- Acquire the first 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 customers
- Scale Google Ads campaigns to 7-figure monthly spend
- Improve CVR and CPA through data-driven optimisation and conversion work
Approach
The engagement covered three areas: Marketing, Data, and Conversion.
On the marketing side, Google Ads campaigns were continuously optimised in close collaboration with the PPC team in London. Spend was scaled to 7-figure monthly levels, with targeting focused on the best performing travel destinations and audience segments. New campaigns were tested on a constant basis to identify what worked in the German market specifically.
On the data side, several hours of analysis were conducted daily across Google Analytics and Looker Studio dashboards. The focus was on identifying which products worked for which audiences at which margins, and understanding exactly when and where users were converting or dropping off by device, day, time, and funnel step. Actionable recommendations to improve CPA and CVR were fed back to the project team five days a week.
On the conversion side, user interviews, recordings, and heatmaps were used to identify friction points. Trust elements were built including Trustpilot integration and an About Us presence referencing 2 million+ app downloads. Landing pages, product pages, and content were improved, A/B testing was run continuously, and new payment methods and features were added to reduce drop-off at checkout.
Within the first 5 months after launch, the team was scaled to support the growing operation across Google Ads, data, and conversion.
Results
- Conversion Rate increased by 500%
- First 10,000 customers acquired in the German market
- Google Ads scaled to 7-figure monthly spend
- 3 marketing team members onboarded within 5 months of launch
Key Learnings
- A successful market entry requires more than budget. It requires daily data discipline and a tight feedback loop between local and central teams
- CVR improvements compound quickly when Marketing, Data, and Conversion are treated as one connected effort
- Building trust from zero in a new market is as important as driving traffic to it
- The right interim expertise can carry a multi-million launch without a large local team
The largest market entry in our portfolio to date. With the right expertise in SEA and CRO, results like these are replicable regardless of team size.
