2013 Silver Best use of Search

Client Mark Warner

How did the campaign make a difference? Integrating SEO, PPC, social media, content marketing and conversion optimisation with other comms activities drove business success for Mark Warner while making customers' lives better. This delivered an 118% increase in sales, year on year, and a 133% increase in revenue.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Mark Warner is a challenger brand – and it doesn't just sell ski holidays so it can't exclusively focus on them like the specialists. The time constraints of a September start (standard SEO campaigns can take six to nine months to make an impact) meant that the strategy had to be creative. Making life better for people and rolling out a combination of paid, owned and earned tactics to support this would give the best chance of driving success quickly. This led to developing useful and engaging content targeting the needs of different skiers. Leveraging relationships with influencers earnt the editorial links and social shares to secure improved positions and raise awareness, while using conversion optimisation to increase visibility, and social media and changed visitors into customers.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? It was clear that those looking for skiing holidays either for their families or as first-time skiers had lots of questions, which were not getting answered. While there was information online, it was generally of very poor quality. For example, there was no detailed information on après-ski for families. Similarly, lots of people were asking for packing checklists but very few good ones were available. The key to this campaign was to make the Mark Warner site an authority on skiing for inexperienced family groups and other beginners. This meant content could be taken off-site too, both to niche sites and large, mass-market sites. The final push was a Twitter competition encouraging users to follow Mark Warner and share a key hashtag for a chance to win a holiday. This kicked the campaign off and gave traffic an initial boost.

Results Earning 120 links with an average domain authority of 68 (including coverage on sites such as handbag.com, My Destination, AOL and the Huffington Post) in such a short space of time was a standout result, without paying for coverage or links. Mark Warner expects to see similar engagement ahead of and during the 2013/14 season.