We helped restaurant Original Sin double its bookings year-on-year

As a business, restaurants are perhaps more reliant on search engine optimisation (SEO) than most. If you feel like Italian and don’t have a go-to spot, you’ll inevitably type ‘Italian restaurant’ into your search bar and shop the results, often through Google Maps.

Without a meaningful presence on Google, a restaurant is reliant on loyal customers, walk-ins and word of mouth: enough to create a successful business, sure, but a restaurant’s largest potential market, internet users, remains untouched.

As the dust settled after the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 it revealed a ravaged city centre. Some of the city’s largest and most iconic landmarks, from skyscrapers to cathedrals, were severely damaged, and in some cases completely destroyed.

But Cantabrians are a resilient lot, and a new city soon began to emerge from the rubble. A key element of the rebuild could be found in the CBD, on the eastern bank of the Avon River: a fresh and vibrant hospitality hub where locals could meet, mingle, and soak in the sights and delights that were popping up around them.

In 2017 Original Sin became one of the first tenants of the newly opened precinct. An Italian restaurant and bar, it fast became a local favourite.

It was perhaps due to this instant success that Original Sin didn’t invest too heavily in its online presence – it simply didn’t need to. But in 2020, with the hospitality industry facing the unprecedented challenges of Covid, the lack of search engine optimisation (SEO) and online presence began to bite.
Original Sin was not ranking at all for the term “Italian restaurant”: a significant issue for a venue that was as well-known and well-loved as any of its dozen or so direct competitors in the area.

So the team turned to Traction Marketing for help.

From a real-world rebuild to the digital equivalent

Traction began the partnership by defining the goals that would shape Original Sin’s marketing strategy.

Three key objectives were set:

1. Build an online reputation: Original Sin’s enviable real-world reputation would be replicated online, built through off-page SEO and community efforts. The work would focus on Google Business Profile, review platforms, backlink building and more.
2. Rank on Google: Traditional SEO and local SEO would be used to push Original Sin high up the Google results for key terms like ’Italian restaurant’ and ‘function hire’. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) would get the business cited within the answers of AI engines.
3. Secure more advance bookings: Early bookings are incredibly valuable in the restaurant game – the guaranteed revenue offers much-needed financial stability. The goal was to earn Original Sin bookings weeks or even months in advance: an initial focus on weekends, then a switch to securing top-up corporate bookings on weekdays.

Goals set, Traction got stuck in.

Original Sin’s website proved key to these efforts. It was the focus of much of the SEO work, it helped to reaffirm the restaurant’s online reputation, and it was the primary channel through which bookings were secured.

Traction deployed a range of website improvements, inserting keywords, increasing the number of web pages, and crafting content that would prove irresistible to AI.

Paid ads initially formed a key part of the strategy, but organic efforts soon proved far more powerful. Traction pivoted away from ads to an organic-only strategy, and after three short months this new approach had already outstripped paid performance, saving Original Sin all of that previously allocated ad spend.

Google dominated, bookings doubled

As Traction’s strategy took effect, the rewards began to outstrip even the most ambitious expectations.

From not ranking at all for “Italian restaurant”, Original Sin became the top result for the term, rocketing past every single one of its direct competitors for an area that stretched far beyond its home in the Christchurch CBD. It was also cited in AI results for queries relating to ‘venue hire’, helping the business to secure high value bookings.

On the back of this exposure, and Traction’s community-building efforts, the reputation piece fell into place. Original Sin racked up reviews across Google and other key platforms, and brand engagement increased significantly on socials.

But the most impressive result of all was not online, but in the real world, where bookings more than doubled. The 2.2x year-on-year increase was all the more valuable in that a significant portion of those bookings were made well in advance, giving Original Sin enviable financial stability in the often volatile world of hospitality.

With revenue being driven by the uptake of deals, 1Team saw the importance of growing engagement within the apps. They just weren’t sure how, nor where they’d find the marketing assistance they needed.

So they began their search for an organisation that could get them where they wanted to go. Enter Traction.

“It was really rewarding seeing a venue like Original Sin climb to page one, inching higher each month,” says Millie Bremner, part of Original Sin’s ownership group. “That work made me appreciate the real value of SEO, especially when it led to an increase in foot traffic.

“We wouldn’t have known to focus on getting better conversions through display ads or SEO, or even using keywords like ‘Italian’ in reviews. Those little things just weren’t in my skill set, but Traction made them clear and impactful.

“They’re the ultimate experts in all things marketing, who help businesses understand its importance in clear and easy to understand terms, and who are really easy to work with.”