Customer Case Study

1. Customer Case Study – LHW.com Customer Case Study – The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd. Customer: Based in New York City, and with 24 offices around the world, Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), Ltd. ( www.lhw.com ) provides global luxury hotel accommodations to consumers around the world. Users can log onto LHW.com to find and make reservations at high-end hotels located in some of the world’s premier vacation destinations. LHW maintains a network of hotels, including The Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India; Cape Grace in Capetown, South Africa; Hotel Santa Catarina in Amalfi, Italy, and more. The company represents over 430 luxury properties in over 74 countries. Each property must meet the requirements of a rigorous inspection process—from reservation through checkout—in order to be considered an LHW certified hotel. Challenge: LHW.com is known the world over as one of the web’s premier destinations for people seeking to find and reserve luxury hotel rooms. One of the company’s challenges, however, was raising that awareness in the United States. “One of the barriers that we had was the fact that we’re an international company,” explained Jeff Mirman, director of online marketing, LHW. “A high percentage of the consumers who use our services do not live in the U.S. As a result, we’ve traditionally held better brand recognition in Europe and abroad than we have in the United States. We wanted to increase our brand recognition in the U.S.” Mirman recognized that one of the methods of doing this would be through increased exposure among the world’s leading search engines. Unfortunately, the company was having difficulty obtaining that. “When we first started working with MarketSmart Interactive, we were starting from nowhere. We had little exposure on the search engines and were also in the process of completely redesigning our website.” As with most companies, LHW’s old site had not been designed with search engines in mind. The company greatly relied on MarketSmart Interactive to advise them on the building of a “search engine friendly” site. MarketSmart Interactive also provided consultation on how to obtain higher search engine placement and build better brand recognition. MarketSmart Interactive helped set the foundation,” said Mirman, “and we’ve seen some great things.”

2. Solution As LHW began building their new site, MarketSmart’s interactive marketing and technical teams worked very closely with Mirman to advise on the design of a site that would not only be user friendly, but also visible to the search engines. As part of this effort, MarketSmart Interactive provided: An in-depth site analysis that provided insight into different aspects that would help increase the site’s visibility among search engines “ In the trenches” consultation with Mirman and his team as the site was being built. “ We definitely value MarketSmart Interactive as a key strategic partner for us,” said Mirman. “This is essential. It’s about touching a part of our business that you can’t see; everyone needs to be involved so that they can understand what we’re about and what’s going on. MarketSmart Interactive understands LHW— our business, our personalities. They are not just someone we’re paying. They are our marketing partners.” In addition to technical consultation, MarketSmart Interactive also provided the following deliverables, taking LHW through the site building process, to optimization and beyond: Intensive keyword research that helped identify the most appropriate keywords for LHW.com The creation of keyword-optimized META tags The creation of keyword-optimized site copy Continued site optimization on new pages Weekly analysis of search engine rankings Continued consultation regarding site and marketing direction

3. Results MarketSmart Interactive’s partnership with LHW has been long-term (over two years at this point), signifying the value that LHW has placed upon the relationship. Over the course of these years, MarketSmart Interactive has been able to achieve some significant results, including: Traffic that has more than tripled Over the past 24 months, traffic to LHW.com has tripled over what it had been 2 years ago. “That’s a direct reflection of what we’ve been doing with search,” said Mirman. “The focus that MarketSmart Interactive has given us has been instrumental in this growth.” Site has gone from minimum visibility to over 1,000 top ten rankings Many of the terms the site is now getting ranked on are related to specific hotels that people are actually searching on, thereby driving the most qualified traffic back to the site and increasing leads, both in the U.S. and abroad.

4. Summary LHW.com has now become as well known in the U.S. as it has been overseas. In addition, the amount of qualified leads back to the site has dramatically increased as visibility on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines has soared—exactly what Mirman was looking for. In addition, Mirman has been able to enjoy the experience of working with a company that not only brings a great amount of technical prowess to the table, but a flexibility and creativity not typically seen in other search engine marketing companies. “One of the great things about our MarketSmart Interactive team are their flexibility, knowledge, and experience,” said Mirman. “We’re a unique business. As a result, we need to be able to think outside the box. We needed a marketing partner that wasn’t going to pigeonhole us into doing X, Y and Z. They needed to be creative, not a cookie cutter organization. MarketSmart Interactive is that and more. The team there has provided us with a lot of direction for what we need to do to solidify and continue our company’s growth.”