Release NZ

Incremental Growth with Google Ads

September 2025

The Partner

Release NZ is a luxury accommodation provider based in Wānaka, New Zealand, offering exclusive holiday homes, apartments, and lodges. Their services go beyond accommodation, providing guests with personalised experiences such as private chefs, in-house massage, and adventure planning. Catering to high-net-worth travellers seeking privacy and premium service, Release NZ competes in the luxury tourism sector across the Southern Lakes region, including Wānaka and Queenstown. Their audience values exceptional experiences, so delivering the right message to the right audience is essential.

Data Story Services

Paid AdvertisingAnalytics & Tracking

27%

Increase in revenue

70%

Increase in bookings

-9%

Reduction in cost per acquisition

The Challenge

Their Google Ads account was generating leads but was costly in a competitive landscape, including bidding against OTAs. With a high demand for luxury accommodation, it was time to utilise Google's smart bidding strategies more efficiently and capture more market to effectively grow lead volume.

Unlocking incremental growth

Unlocking incremental growth in an already well performing Google Ads account.

Balancing seasonality and competition

Balancing seasonality and competition by directing budget to the highest-value opportunities.

Maintaining efficiency while scaling

Maintaining efficiency while scaling, improving lead quality, conversion rates, and CPA simultaneously.

Our Approach

To drive incremental revenue growth, we combined in-platform (attributed) performance analysis with data-led forecasting to identify new opportunities for appropriate and efficient bidding. This structured, forecast-driven approach ensured every advertising dollar worked harder, delivering scale without compromising efficiency.

Performance analysis and forecasting

We conducted a full audit of historical lead sources, booking volume, conversion rate, average booking value, seasonal booking patterns and CPA. Using YoY performance trends, we created revenue, conversion rate, average booking value, booking and lead forecasts to leverage the right channels and model budget allocation, prioritising campaigns with the highest predicted return.

Strategic targeting refinement

After identifying Google Ads as a channel with further opportunity to scale, shown by low cost to conversion and room to increase market share, we segmented our location targeting and refined audience targeting to higher net worth markets. We further utilised Google's smart bidding strategies with calculated targets.

Scaled campaign investment and reach

We revised target CPAs, weighted budgets towards better performing locations, utilised Performance Max campaigns to run across a broader range of Google Placements and increased ad spend, which remained below competitor revenue to spend ratios but allowed an increase in quality lead volume and maximised market share.

The Results

A revised paid marketing strategy for Google Ads that had the ability to capture demand by acquiring more leads whilst maintaining conversion rates, resulting in a 70% increase in bookings and 27% increase in revenue.

Over the May–July 2025 period, compared to the same period in 2024, booking revenue increased by 27%. There was a 70% uplift in bookings, and leads grew by 44%. Importantly, the lead-to-booking conversion rate improved by 5%, showing our targeting adjustments reached a more qualified audience. Google Ads lead conversions increased by 74%, while cost per acquisition decreased by 9%, enabling more efficient scaling. These results were achieved without expanding budget significantly. Instead, strategic reallocation and optimisation maximised the value of every dollar spent. By combining deep performance analysis with forecasting, we found growth opportunities in an account that was already performing strongly.