Executive Summary
Refreshing Mountain began as a destination for large group overnight retreats. Over time they expanded their offerings to include a variety of outdoor team building activities including a high ropes course, climbing tower and a series of ziplines. In 2010, they began experimenting with offering their zipline tours for individual bookings to local groups. There was immediate interest that blossomed into a goal to develop an outdoor adventure center to serve the local community and thriving tourist market in Lancaster County. But to make this goal a reality, they needed to greatly expand their marketing presence. Refreshing Mountain engaged Improve & Grow as their digital marketing partner and through the implementation of internet marketing services like search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, and website optimization, their web traffic, and online bookings significantly increased.
- 221% increase in online bookings for outdoor activities
The Challenge
While Refreshing Mountain had a great reputation in the region as a leading destination for group retreats, they had very little presence as an outdoor attraction. They had been able to generate a fair amount of activity with grass-roots marketing efforts but knew that they were missing opportunities to really penetrate the local tourism market.
The Solution
Refreshing Mountain turned to Improve & Grow to help market their outdoor activities. Our initial focus was to maximize the return on the Google Ads campaigns they had been managing internally with breakeven return. In just six months, we were able to improve the return on their paid ads to over 10X. Building upon this success, we helped then expand their online presence through search engine optimization, social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing. We also helped them improve their conversion rates through a website redesign and ongoing website optimization work.
The Results
As Refreshing Mountain continues working with Improve & Grow, the company has experienced constant growth. After experiencing success with their first zipline tour, the Challenge Adventure Tour, Refreshing Mountain added the Zipline Canopy Tour, Aerial Excursion, in 2013. The successful launch led to outdoor activities beyond ziplining. The company added various outdoor activity options like a climbing tower, an elevated obstacle course, pedal carts, a paintball target shooting course, and more.
In the past five years, online bookings for their outdoor activities grew by over 221%. The increase in business enabled them to not only improve their profits but also led them to invest in staff and expand their offering. They added additional staff, constructed new facilities, and implemented further activities. All this was made possible by investing in their marketing efforts with a knowledgeable tourism marketing agency.
