Marketing Spend and Bookings

Challenge

An 850+ vehicle tech-enabled travel platform had increased its paid digital marketing budget several times over. Bookings did not improve. The first question was whether the problem sat inside sales operations: staffing, response time, messaging, follow-up, or conversion.

Actions Taken

Start With Sales Operations

Reviewed staffing, response time, messaging, the sales process, conversion, the customer journey, and management visibility. The work included process mapping, sales dashboards, department-head mentoring, and staff coaching.

That first inquiry did not reveal a clear relationship between the sales variables examined and booking conversion.

Work Backward To Traffic

Extended the review upstream from the sales funnel to website traffic and paid marketing. Paid spend was associated with more traffic, but across the available data there was no reliable evidence that the additional traffic was producing more bookings.

Test The Result Five Ways

Tested the raw data through five analytical models and approaches. Also checked whether bookings followed traffic after a time delay. The result did not change.

Ask The Business To Challenge It

Presented the analysis to the Global GM, Head of Growth, and marketing team and asked them to find a flaw, missing variable, or alternative explanation. This mattered because I had suspected the marketing approach was wrong and wanted the people closest to it to challenge the work before it went further.

Put The Decision To The Board

Presented the evidence and recommended reducing paid marketing spend.

Results

• Found no reliable booking effect from paid traffic across the analyses performed
• Received Board approval for a 90% reduction in paid marketing spend
• Observed no loss of booking volume after the reduction