Smart targeting behind the scenes. Big “best day ever” energy out front.
For Amazement, every school holiday brings the same opportunity — and the same mild panic.
Families are actively searching for something to do. Competition ramps up. Every local attraction within driving distance suddenly has a “must-do” offer, and everyone’s boosting posts like monkeys who’ve just discovered the “promote” button on social media.
It’s tempting to just increase the social media ad budget and hope for the best. After all, more spend should mean more bookings… right?
Sometimes.
But being seen isn’t the challenge. Being chosen is.
And if you get the mix wrong? Budget climbs, returns soften, and the algorithm sends you a cheeky thank you note: “Cheers for that :)”
So heading into 2025, we didn’t just turn up the paid social spend for Amazement and cross our fingers. We refined the mix. Sharpened the targeting. Let traffic campaigns feed the funnel properly and optimised where it actually mattered.
The result? More families through the gate, and fewer dollars wandering off unsupervised.
The Client: Amazement
Amazement isn’t subtle. Hedge mazes. Animal Encounters. School holiday chaos in the best possible way. It’s the kind of place kids talk about on the drive home (if they don’t fall asleep with an exhausted smile on their face).
But attention spans are short. And parents scrolling for “something to do” on social media have options.
Which is why they partnered with us — to make sure their social media ads weren’t just colourful, but commercially smart.
The Challenge: Grow Without Just Spending More
Luckily for them, we’ve done this before. So we got to work.
It included:
- Increase purchases
- Drive more site traffic
- Improve efficiency
- And do it year-on-year
All while being selective with budget — like a koala carefully picking the best leaves and ignoring the rest.
Because throwing money at holiday traffic is easy.
Spending it wisely is harder.
The Strategy: Right Campaign. Right Objective. Right Time.
We didn’t treat every objective the same.
Instead, we split the paid social strategy across campaign types and let each one do its job.
Traffic campaigns carried serious weight.
- Impressions up 76.35%
- Landing page views up 128.62%
- Cost per view down 10.94%
- Which fed the funnel beautifully, leading to a 290.91% increase in purchases.
Conversion campaigns were dialled in carefully.
- Impressions up 65.37%
- Spend up 174.75%
- 3 purchases at $34.16 per purchase
Not headline-grabbing volume. But deliberate. Controlled. Measured.
Meanwhile, sales ad campaigns (event boosts on social media) were trimmed back.
- Impressions down 48.86%
- Spend down 45.95%
- Purchases virtually steady (only a 1.73% decrease)
Less noise. Same outcome. Which suggests something important: efficiency improved. We didn’t just “run ads.” We redistributed effort where it mattered most. Each campaign knew its part, and together they moved like a properly choreographed routine.
The Results: Better Performance, Leaner Spend
Here’s the big picture:
- Overall purchases up 15.59%
- Total social media ad spend down 8.29%
In a nutshell, this means: more purchases, less spend.
Which is marketing’s equivalent of eating dessert and somehow losing weight.
Why It Worked
Because we didn’t assume more budget was the answer.
We:
- Matched objectives to outcomes
- Strengthened top-of-funnel traffic
- Protected bottom-of-funnel efficiency
- And adjusted spend where it was actually driving results
More impressions don’t guarantee more bookings. But the right impressions, at the right time, in front of the right families?
That’s a different story.
And in 2025, Amazement’s story got better. The marmosets tried to stay cool about it, but we saw the victory laps.
