Case Study - Quinault Beach Resort & Casino
Mike | 6 March 2007 |
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Quinault Beach Resort & Casino Increases Revenue from Website and Enjoys Benefits of Two Years of Blizzard’s Online Marketing
Customer Overview
The last time Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. showcased Quinault Beach Resort and Casino was in 2005. At the time, Blizzard and Quinault had just released a website redesign and were in the initial stages of starting a successful Comprehensive Marketing Plan. Let’s take a look back at the beginning of the relationship between Blizzard and this Washington State resort and casino:
- In 2004, Quinault approached Blizzard to redesign their website. With Blizzard’s help, Quinault hoped to achieve:
- Faster load time for improved usability.
- More user-friendly navigation to funnel users to the appropriate “Money” pages.
- A “Book Online” function to streamline the reservation process.
- Easier navigation to view room types.
- The redesign and promotional efforts showed immediate benefits:
- Link popularity increased by 59%.
- Average monthly unique visitors increased by 66%.
- Bounce rate of the homepage dropped to less than 20%.
- Monthly return on investment was calculated at 895%.
- Increase Google traffic and unique visitors to their website.
- Establish a definition of their target market - keyword research showed Quinault is a family vacation “hot spot”.
- Promote three different URL’s - The promotion team recommended focusing on one URL and forwarding the others.
- Increase online revenue from paid and organic listings.
Strategy
Quinault’s Promotion account team focused on the fundamentals of promotion for the site in order to build a solid foundation before pursuing more advanced techniques; the results show that perfecting these basic techniques of promotion can have a significant impact on revenue generation. The team focused on the following Promotion procedures:
- Link Building
Blog Link Building - Submission to relevant blogs that link back to the website.
Benefit - As with any link building program, the intent is to link to a relevant website or blog that ideally results in a Google backlink.
- Optimization
Benefit - By constantly updating keywords, metatags and page text, Quinault can be sure that they are targeting the changing habits of searchers as well as their key demographic market.
- Directory Submissions
Benefit - The Promotion team researched and found the most appropriate directories for Quinault to be listed in. These directories drive quality traffic to the site. Some listings qualify as backlinks.
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
Benefit - As mentioned in previous case studies and articles, PPC advertising is the fastest way to gain online exposure. This option allows one to bid his or her way to the top of search engine results by focusing on targeted keywords that are relevant to the property or service being sold.
- Blizzard Tracking
Benefit - The Comprehensive Promotion Plan includes the Blizzard ROI Tracker, an integral part of making decisions on what services to perform. The tracker allows the Account Manager to track many aspects of the promotion campaign and make changes where necessary and shows the client how effective online marketing can be.
- Client Involvement
Since the website’s redesign, Quinault’s management has worked with Blizzard’s design team to keep content fresh and interesting.
Results
The Blizzard ROI Tracker makes it easy to analyze the effects of promotion efforts. The results are simply amazing, and clearly show that focusing on perfecting the most basic promotion techniques can prove to be very valuable in the long run.
What’s Next?
Relying on the strength of the basics of online promotion will propel Quinault Beach Resort & Casino into the next level of online success. As the Promotion team continues to work with management at Quinault, they will continue to refine the key elements of promotion that have provided success to date.
Conclusion
Quinault continues to build a partnership with Blizzard, and their web presence and online revenue continue to flourish. As the Internet changes and grows, Quinault’s relationship with Blizzard Internet Marketing will keep them at the forefront of Internet marketing and continue to bring them a very high return on investment.
Michael Buczek - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.
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March 12th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Blizzard
As a virtual tour photographer working in the hotel industry, I was glad to see you made the Virtual Tour index page easier to find. I wanted to see Bardford Bohonus’s work a while ago and on the old site had to search and search to find the tour. It was buried deep inside the website. If I hadn’t known it was there, I never would have found it.
I’m curious why you’re still using QuickTime as the exclusive viewing method. Since estimates are that only 59% of Internet users have QuickTime installed. And if the Web Surfer is on most business/government networks, they won’t be able to download and install QuickTime without an IT manager’s approval at all. So 41% of site visitors are discouraged from “impulse viewing.”
The need for QuickTime by 41% of Interent users also discourages the hotel sales staff and reservations department from taking meeting & convention planners and potential Guests on a guided “Online Property Tour” while talking to them for the first time on the phone.
Have you considered a “two virtual tour viewer” approach, using a Java Based Viewer like the PTViewer or ImmerVision viewer for a smaller, quicker loading version of the images, leaving the large QuickTime images for those who have or can download and install the software? It rare to find a computer being used to search the Web that doesn’t have Java installed and enabled.
Douglas Aurand
Douglas Aurand & Associates
We Show Albuquerque to the World on http://www.VirtualAlbuquerque.com
June 29th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Good job done! I can see that Website has awesome Google PR5 and that it is showing 1st page Google results for some of the relevant keywords.
My only question is about PPC Advertising. How did you manage it, assuming the fact that Google, Yahoo and most of the other PPC Search Engines do not allowed advertising content related to casinos or gambling? I had hard time here finding the solution as I also have poker-related Website and do not have any possibility to advertise it on PPC Search Engines.
Thanks
June 30th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Hi Alex, Thanks for the question,
We dont actually advertise the casino gaming in the PPC ads. We are strictly advertising the lodging/resort portion of the property. We do have to apply for “exceptions” from Google, but when they see that our ads are not written to sell gaming, we dont ususally have a problem
Again - thanks for asking - come back again!
~Carrie Hill
Editor, Blizzard Internet Marketing Newsletter
June 30th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Hi Carie,
Thank you for your respond. That make sense as Resort/Lodging are not actually selling online gaming. Very nice. Results are really awesome. Specially this 86% from Google traffic and 136% from PPC Advetising. And ROI (Return On Investments) is just amazing with astonishing 895%.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 am
Your results on your test are rather impressive. Now I am studying best practices on working with adwords. I know guys that make a lot of money on ppc.
Thanks. Bookmarked.