La Jolla Kayak

This article was originally published at diamondandbranch.com

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La Jolla Kayak is an ocean adventure tour and rental company, specializing in kayak, bike, and snorkel tours in the jewel of San Diego. From kayaking the Seven Sea Caves in La Jolla, to biking along La Jolla’s coast, to snorkeling with leopard sharks, this family-owned company will take you on the adventure of a lifetime!

In our ever-expanding digital world, effective digital marketing strategies have become crucial to many businesses’ success. La Jolla Kayak noticed that their online presence and marketing efforts were not as strong as those of their competitors, causing them to miss out on huge revenue opportunities. Diamond + Branch loves local businesses, which is why we were ready to paddle out into the rough seas with them and get them back on course!
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The Challenge

When La Jolla Kayak came to Diamond + Branch, they were struggling with several key digital marketing issues. Their custom-built website was not designed for search engine optimization, their social media presence lacked a brand voice and consistent posts, and their paid advertising campaigns were not generating revenue. Diamond + Branch immediately recognized that in order for La Jolla Kayak to succeed in a highly competitive local market, they would need to increase the efficiency and success of their website, improve their online reputation, and refine their paid campaigns.
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The Strategy

Diamond + Branch began with an in-depth evaluation and action plan for each of La Jolla Kayak’s online problem areas. First, we moved La Jolla Kayak’s clunky, custom-built website to WordPress — the most customizable and easy-to-optimize content management system (CMS) on the web. Not to mention, Google loves WordPress. Why? Because Google ranks websites that have optimized content on responsive (mobile-friendly) platforms — two huge requirements that all WordPress sites satisfy. You can think of your website as the baseline for your digital marketing efforts — without an optimized website that Google trusts, all other efforts will fall short.

‍Next, we needed to show existing and potential customers that they are La Jolla Kayak’s main priority and that La Jolla Kayak’s brand is authentic. How do we do this? Social media. For a service-based tourism company like La Jolla Kayak, a major part of their social media strategy needs to be managing their reviews on platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook. Additionally, they must consistently post content that is relevant to their target audience (in their case, that means mostly videos and images), as well as engage directly and authentically with their audiences across all social media platforms.

‍Once Diamond + Branch got La Jolla Kayak up to speed with an optimized website and rock-solid social media strategy, we were ready to start driving paid traffic. We considered the type of services La Jolla Kayak offers, as well as who their target audience would be, and decided that Google AdWords and Facebook/Instagram made the most sense for the company’s paid campaigns. In the beginning, we funneled the majority of our paid advertising efforts into Facebook/Instagram, the channels that are best known for amplifying brand awareness along with increasing user engagement and relationship-building. Once we noticed a significant improvement in engagement levels and followers on Facebook/Instagram, we shifted our focus to Google AdWords, which reaches an immense audience and greatly increases the likelihood of conversions.