Summary

A large airport parking operator. We have worked with them since 2019, which means we were there for the two years when their entire market ceased to exist.

Today we run their search, their Google Ads, their Meta advertising, their email marketing, their graphic design, their conversion rate optimisation and their strategy, and in 2025 we built them a completely new website.

Client identity withheld for privacy.

2019: It Started At A Workshop

We met their marketing manager at a digital marketing workshop we were running. No pitch, no tender, no procurement process. A conversation over coffee with somebody who had a problem worth solving.

Seven years later we run most of their marketing. That is usually how the good ones start.

Search First

The relationship started with SEO. Airport parking is a search-led category. Almost nobody walks past an off airport car park and decides to book. They sit at a kitchen table a few weeks before a flight, search for a price, compare three options and book the one that makes it easiest.

Winning that moment is an organic search job first and an advertising job second, and that is where we began.

2020: The Market Closed

Then the borders shut.

Airport parking is one of the very few industries where the demand did not soften, or shift online, or get more price sensitive. It went to zero. Nobody was flying, so nobody needed to leave a car at an airport. Organic visits fell from around 6,500 a month to 669 at the floor in late 2021, a drop of roughly 90%, and it stayed down for the better part of two years.

There is no clever marketing answer to that. You cannot optimise your way into demand that does not exist, and any agency that tells a client otherwise during a period like that is selling them something.

What we did instead was stay, cut the spend to almost nothing, and keep the foundations intact so that the business was ready when travel came back rather than starting again from a standing position. That is not a glamorous piece of work to describe. It was the right one.

2022: Everything Opened At Once

Recovery in this category was not gradual. When restrictions lifted, people who had not travelled in two years all booked at once, and the businesses that were visible in that window took the bookings.

Organic search was back past its pre pandemic level by April 2022, and the advertising was turned back up in step with it rather than ahead of it.

2025: A New Website

By 2025 the site was carrying a business considerably bigger than the one it had been built for. We designed and built a new one, with the booking journey as the starting point rather than an afterthought, and we have been running conversion rate optimisation on it since.

Organic visits roughly doubled across 2025, from around 7,000 a month to a peak near 14,000.

What We Run Now

Results

Chart: seven years of organic traffic for an airport parking operator, collapsing 90% during border closures then recovering above the 2019 average

Estimated organic visits a month since 2019. When the borders shut, demand did not soften, it stopped: from about 6,500 visits a month down to 669 at the floor in late 2021, a fall of roughly 90%. The dashed line is the 2019 average. Traffic passed it again in 2022 and sits comfortably above it today. Ahrefs estimates.

The Advertising, Since Booking Revenue Became Measurable

For most of the time we have run this account, the ads were being judged on clicks and conversions rather than on the value of what people actually booked. Getting the real dollar value of each reservation reported back against the ad that produced it changed what the account could be optimised toward. From May 2025 that data became reliable.

Over the twelve months to August 2026 the advertising spent roughly $74,000 and produced close to 13,000 bookings worth $1.86 million. That is about twenty five dollars back for every dollar spent.

Chart: monthly tracked booking value against ad spend for an airport parking operator

Every month since booking revenue became reliably measurable in May 2025. The pink area is the value of bookings the ads produced. The navy line along the bottom is what the ads cost. The gap between the two is the whole argument.

The generic acquisition campaign, the one winning new customers rather than catching people who already know the brand, returns better than twelve dollars for every dollar. That is the number we watch, because it is the one that says whether the business is growing.

Then We Spent Less

Through June and July 2025 the account ran hot while we learned what was genuinely producing bookings. Once the revenue data made that clear, we cut the monthly budget roughly in half. Booking value came back within 5% of where it had been.

Chart: average monthly ad spend halved while average monthly booking value held within 5%

Before is the June to July 2025 average. After is every month from August 2025 onward. Spend roughly halved, monthly booking value came back within 5%, and the return on every dollar went from about 13 times to about 25 times.

Halving a budget is not a normal thing for an agency to recommend. The agency gets paid either way, and a bigger number in the spend column is easier to present as progress than a smaller one. We recommended it because the data said the second half of the budget was buying clicks, not bookings. The return per dollar went from roughly thirteen times to roughly twenty five times, and the client kept the difference.

Why It Matters Who Does This Work

Seven years with one client covers a lot of ground. Some of it is the work you would expect from any agency. Some of it is a website rebuild, a new email program, a design system, a conversion testing plan.

And some of it is two years of a market that had closed, where the honest advice was to spend almost nothing and wait. We gave that advice, we stayed, and when the borders opened the business was ready.

That is what we mean by doing what matters. We are not interested in being the agency that looks busiest in the good years. If you want one that will tell you the truth in the bad ones, talk to us.