Cave Hill Creek was established by Ian and Julie Chandler in 1988. A farmer and a teacher, they saw incredible opportunity to create a spectacular lake, group accommodation and function venue on this picturesque parcel of land at the top of the Raglan Valley.
With a passion for hospitality, hard work and a keen eye for the environment, Cave Hill Creek steadily grew. Today Cave Hill Creek is run by second-generation owners Tim and Angela Chandler. It is a year-round operation hosting 10,000 guests annually on camps, walks and weddings.
Cave Hill Creek began looking for a digital agency in mid 2016 looking to expand their online reach, build exposure for their school camp program and bring in more leads for the lucrative wedding market.
Understanding the need for a multi-channel approach, Cave Hill Creek approached a number of agencies specialising in differing areas.
Cave Hill Creek chose Webfirm after discussing a strategy that would involve work across a number of different channels, integrated with a reporting solution that fit their needs. Webfirm’s solution included account management and reporting, a content management solution, an off-page PR/SEO strategy to build awareness, website content optimisation and new content generation, a paid social media strategy, and a retainer to make periodical improvements to the website to boost conversion rates.
How we took our long-standing client from good to great.
Webfirm worked with Cave Hill Creek on their existing website platform initially, improving pages and cleaning up the blog to ensure it was as search bot and user friendly as possible.
Webfirm were able to provide Cave Hill Creek with dashboard software that enables 24×7 login access to see how different channels were performing in detail, without needing to jump between platforms. Through their single point of contact account manager, they were able to get the insight needed from their campaign team to make effective and high value decisions.
The overarching content strategy aimed to prioritise opportunities to gain external exposure over more conventional on-site blogging. Backlinks were gained from industry-relevant blogs through guest posting tactics.
The approach to SEO for Cave Hill Creek initially focused on revenue generating keywords for the client’s most profitable service areas. Following a process of bringing the site technically up to speed, work was scheduled across a schedule to optimise per topic, give time for Google to provide feedback, and iterate.
After a year working on the account, Webfirm and Cave Hill Creek came to an agreement that a new website was necessary to continue to improve on the conversion rate over time, as well as bring a fresh and clean look to the brand.
In the social media space, creative and tactics focused on return on ad spend (ROAS). Webfirm’s social media manager works directly with the client to understand the month to month, sometimes week to week objectives and how the paid social activity can support those objectives. Mainly utilising Facebook, ads and videos to generate traffic, leads and ticket sales.
Cave Hill Creek have seen remarkable growth across a number of key performance indicators since engaging the Webfirm team to implement their digital marketing strategy.
Most of the increase was attributed to the success of the ads campaigns being run through Facebook, as well as refinement of content strategy boosting overall organic results though blogs on and off site. Blog posts in the creative strategy were then posted through the Facebook page allowing for even greater amount of visitors per blog.
Additional tertiary benefit through NAP referral and reset up of the ‘Cave Hill Creek’ Facebook page with appropriate CTAs and guidance on how to post.
Most of the traffic increase is through on page and technical SEO changes to the website. This was later further improved through the new site launch, once launched was easily being crawled by Google, blogs were easily picked up and served higher in the SERP.
Keyword analysis of competitors ensured that Cave Hill was aiming for high volume low competition keywords which resulted in a steady increase of traffic month to month.
This included terms focused on ‘Summer Camps’ and ‘Country Wedding Venues’
#1 ranking in Victoria for ‘summer camp’ and ‘summer camp victoria’
#2 ranking in Victoria for ‘country weddings victoria’ and ‘country wedding venues victoria’
+200 changes across all ranking keywords (calculated as ‘Increases to relevant keywords’ – ‘drops in position.’)
Reworking the tracking on the site allowed for more robust recording of primary goals within the site. This addition data formed the basis for expansion into new types of markets and audiences through our channels. Leading to greater ROAS.
Later in the year, as tracking became sophisticated, we added some additional goals. These additions have contributed largely to the large uplift in conversions since Nov
Working with Webfirm has been fantastic. The team is friendly, relaxed and knowledgeable. They have helped us and improve the effectiveness of our online activities across web, search, and social media, growing brand awareness, introducing new customers and increasing engagement. Thanks guys!
Cave Hill Creek Tim Chandler, Owner