AQUA Forte's Comprehensive Digital Solution

AQUA Forte is a brand-new authentic Italian fine dining restaurant opened in Galle in mid May 2019.  

The team of AQUA Forte take pride in the food they serve and are very passionate about tradition and culture in which authentic Italian cuisine resonates with throughout the world. They are dedicated to providing the authentic Italian cuisine and thrive to provide the best possible Italian dining experience to their customers.

It was an obligation for digital marketing campaigns to bring out these values in digital mediums and communicate those to the key audience segments in a way that it defines the brand.

Key Challenges

• As a brand-new restaurant there was no brand footprint before starting the digital marketing campaigns. 
• With the Easter Sunday attacks, there was a significant impact on the tourism Industry.
• As a non-existing brand, the level of investment required (paid advertising etc.) to create the brand visibility was significantly higher so we had to look at lower cost channels and push organic visibility. 
• Communicating brand values to reach audience’s demands.

Our Approach

In the market, where meaning of ‘authentic’ can be ambiguous and blurred due to market noise, it was up to digital marketing campaigns to reach the demand of the audience and affirm that AQUA Forte is a truly authentic Italian restaurant establishing it as an aspirational brand.

In order to achieve this we started from the branding strategy itself. From the visual communications on how the brand needs to be portrayed on our social media communications and other advertising methods was discussed and finalized. With a clear vision about the brand we started working on delivering this message to our target audience through multiple channels.

With a limited budget at hand we focused on creativity and content as a key pillar to push out content. The social media channels for AQUA Forte gained fast popularity through carefully curated content along with a content marketing strategy that featured detailed blogs and articles on AQUA Forte blog.

Google Search & Display advertising along with Facebook Advertising was used with advanced targeting to drive reservations and orders. The approach was not only about driving awareness, it also looked at how we can keep a constant brand engagement with a guest or a potential customer. With these in mind we had a regular newsletter that was sent out to a dedicated readership who was interested enough to sign up for our newsletter.

Results

• Exceeded break-even point from the very first month onwards and month on month increase in reservations (Even after the significant impact Easter Sunday attacks had on the tourism industry).
• 1900% increase in brand related searches on Google.lk
• 1525% increase in organic website traffic (through SEO).
• 10k+ brand followers on Facebook and 1.6k+ followers on Instagram.
• Over 300,000 impressions and 12k+ user interactions through Google Ads.
• Month on month increase in email marketing audience.
• Month on month increase in engagement metrics such as inquiry submissions, phone calls, direction requests (local conversion metrics).