Gross Profits Rise by 50%: The Hidden Croatia Case Study

The Challenge

Hidden Croatia Limited is an award winning specialist tour operator, focused exclusively on the high end Croatia market. Hidden Croatia’s General Manager, Anthony Johnson, knew they needed to exploit the internet as a distribution channel to build their revenue profile.

“We’ve seen turnover sourced from the Internet rise
from 30% to 70% since working with equals3”
Anthony Johnson,
General Manager,
Hidden Croatia Limited.

“We don’t currently have ecommerce, but we knew the Internet was a key research tool for customers and a critical step in the sales process. The challenge was to grow sales sourced from the Internet in a traceable and accountable way, without increasing our costs significantly,” adds Johnson.

The Strategy

equals3 began the relationship by implementing our proprietary ‘Online Revenue Audit™’; a 30 point audit of all the factors effecting Hidden Croatia’s online sourced revenues. This highlighted four key strategies for improving revenue performance for the business:-

1. Improved business analytics to be able to see what worked and to enable informed decision making, especially considering sales we completed on the phone rather than online.

2. Increased traffic volumes, by getting the existing marketing budget to work harder and reduce cost per visit.

3. Streamlined website to channel potential customers through the site to critical lead actions, and begin the sales process

4. Expanded lead options, opening up the options for beginning a dialogue with the business.

Expected revenue improvements, timelines and key performance metrics where agreed before any work was implemented, to ensure clear accountabilities and expectations.

Johnson adds; “The main thing for me was distrust of the hundreds of SEO companies out there. I am constantly bombarded by SEO companies each promising fantastical results. equals3 approach has been to first understand our business and to then execute against an agreed implementation roadmap. The depth of the solution presented by equals3 far exceeds the superficial promises from traditional online agencies and has at all times been delivered in clear English”

The Implementation

equals3 implemented the strategy in tight collaboration with Hidden Croatia. The steps were as follows:-

1. Launched a redesigned website, bringing the product to the centre of the site and with simplified navigation.

2. We built out a systems theory based reporting structure to manage the online business model and react rapidly to changes and optimisations.

3. Grew traffic into this nearly optimised site. Included implementing conversion tracking on Pay Per Click spend and optimising heavily as well as building out the site’s visibility and relevance to organic search.

4. Expanding how potential customer could interact with the business. We built out a ‘contact console’, providing leads more choice in terms of how them began a dialogue with the business. This included email, phone, call back and online chat, as well as a personalised PDF brochure which could be downloaded.

The Results

The revenue improvements have been significant for Hidden Croatia:-

1. 50% increase in traffic from PPC activity, without increasing budgets

2. 35% reduction in cost per visit

3. 30% increase in conversion of site visits to leads

4. Sales sourced from the Internet rise from 30% of turnover to 70%

“We’ve been thrilled with the improved revenue results from on-line”

Anthony Johnson adds “we’ve also been comfortable with the costs involved – to have hired these skills inhouse would have been prohibitively expensive, as would working with multiple agencies in each field. The results speak for themselves”.

equals3 is retained by Hidden Croatia through our Outsourced Internet Management service.