Launching a business with a 2,308% Return on Investment
first, Some %%context%%...
Roxy Leisure has created some of the most iconic night out venues in the country, leading the emergence of ‘competitive socialising’ over the last decade.
With their newest concept, King Pins, they set out to recreate the Roxy experience for families. Less beer pong at 1am, more duckpin bowling at 1pm - you get the picture.
Their first site opened in the Trafford Palazzo in July 2023, and they came our way for a strong digital marketing plan to launch it to the Manchester public.
%%Easy%%, right?
Well, no.
As it was their first venue, King Pins had no brand awareness. Nothing. Nada.
The website was also as old as the brand - a matter of weeks. So they had no organic search presence for important keywords, and with some big, established competitors already trading in sites across Manchester, we needed to do something about it.
The opening date also fell slap bang in the middle of the school summer holidays, their key trading period. No pressure.
We needed to grab people’s attention and inspire families to visit the new venue. That meant that our objectives were:
- Generate bookings for the launch and for the school summer holidays
- Build brand awareness for King Pins and its location at the Trafford Palazzo
How did we %%approach%% it?
After a tonne of research, we focused on a paid search and display strategy. Not only would this achieve the brand’s objectives, it would directly counter the lack of organic search presence.
GENERATE BOOKINGS
We knew there’d be some frazzled parents out there desperately looking for things to do with the kids (some of us are talking from experience here). They needed somewhere to go and they needed to find it quickly. So we had to make sure King Pins was at the top of Google.
We targeted a bunch of non-branded keywords to position King Pins as the solution to the user’s search. This broke down into different areas, including the specific activity the parent was searching for, the location they wanted to visit, and more.
As the booking intent was clearly high, we landed them onto a page that was clear on how they could book, meaning King Pins gained a steady stream of pre-booked revenue from popular terms like “bowling in Manchester”.
BUILD THE BRAND
Focusing on just conversion-based activity would bring in the wins in the short-term, but as a new brand in a new location, we needed to think about long-term goals, too. With King Pins being an entirely new brand, launching in a new location, it was important to build the brand too.
To complement other PR and out-of-home activity, we targeted brand keywords so the low organic visibility didn’t lead to a potential guest landing on a competitor’s website (quite literally the opposite of us doing our job). With the intent being lower, the landing page had more information about the venue, games, and the food and drink to better sell the King Pins ‘experience’.
And because we love our distinctive brand assets (cheers Byron), we used the brand yellow consistently across a range of Google Display Network placements. We only targeted people in the venue’s catchment area, and narrowed down to websites with a relevance to both families and the location itself.
Been %%bOWLED OVER%%?
We still work with the team at King Pins on their paid media activity and have recently introduced paid social (Facebook and Instagram) into their channel mix. We've since also launched their latest site at the Arndale Centre in Manchester.
We love the direction the brand is going in, and we’re excited about bringing this same success to their upcoming launches… 👀
Well? Did it work?
Despite competition being unusually high due to the summer holidays, we brought in some extra ordinary results.
2,308%
Return on Investment
46%
of all online bookings
33%
of all website sessions
14.6 million
Total ad impressions during launch
The not-so-subtle social proof
James Travis
Brand Manager
