Customer Success: How to Increase in YoY revenue 20%

The Kahler Grand Hotel has a rich tradition and history in Rochester beginning with the Mayo Brothers. In 1921, The Kahler Grand Hotel started its existence as Rochester's central landmark property, known then as The Kahler Hotel. The Kahler Grand Hotel will be 100 years old in 2018. It has 616 distinctive guestrooms, over 30,000 sq. ft. of conference and event space including the historic Elizabethan Ballroom. A major selling point, the hotel is directly connected to the world-famous Mayo Clinic and also provides a free shuttle that can take guests to nearby clinics and St. Mary's Hospital.
 
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  • 20%
    Increase In YoY Revenue
  • 84%
    Increase In Leads And Booking Referrals
  • 59%
    Increase In Site Visits
 

The Challenge

The Kahler needed a new website and digital marketing platform. The old website was very slow, and their mobile site made it hard for consumers to book. They wanted a friendly site that showed off their unique selling points:
 
  • Direct access via a climate-controlled pedestrian skyway or underground concourse to the #1 ranked Mayo Clinic - minutes from the world's leading doctors.
  • 30,000 Sq. feet of combined events space, elegant wedding venue, stylish bars and restaurants attracting the cities elite and offering an inhouse shopping experience.
 
The Kahler also needed well optimized keyword rich paid media campaigns to create a unified, holistic marketing acquisition plan. Milestone worked with the client to create target user personas that were leveraged to understand user intent and demographics.
 

The Solution

Our solution was to create a new custom website based on a mobile-first design, easy to navigate on all platforms. The addition of Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) augments the site's speed and creates a world class mobile experience. The website makes heavy use of structured content; leveraging Milestone CMS which supports over 120 schemas, we had the ability to implement meaningful search engine ready content.
 
The Kahler's new site highlights hotel amenities like direct access to the Mayo Clinic, a pet friendly environment, indoor pool, a free shuttle, and meeting spaces. The pages we created for weddings, dining, and meetings at The Kahler are infused with schema, making them extremely visible to potential customers who are researching venues. It was also important to promote the things to do in the surrounding area; Our content was tailored to position The Kahler as a local authority. The addition of our self-populating event calendar was yet another great way showcase the hotel location and the countless events near the property.
 
Apart from all the website technology, we took an omnichannel marketing approach. We do ongoing promotion for The Kahler on all major channels (Google, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare, Neustar, info USA, and Maps) as well as Initiatives including Google PPC, Email marketing, and Social media promotions on Facebook and other social channels. To grow engagement on Facebook. Milestone handpicked the topics and created custom images to engage new users and performed user interaction testing to understand user behavior.
 

Results

The site went live on 01/26/2018, and the website experienced dramatic growth in website and RFP leads, along with a steady increase in site visits, time spent on site and number of page views. A sophisticated omnichannel campaign that included segmented and personalized paid media campaigns also provided significant boost in group traffic.
 
  • 20% increase in YoY revenue
  • 84% increase in leads and booking referrals
  • 59% increase in site visits
  • 71% increase in page views
  • 11X ROAS across paid media (in first 3 months)
  • 219% increase in Google GMB actions
  • 435% increase in map listings