How Bamburgh Castle Doubled Its Christmas Revenue
and Achieved a 15x Return on Ticket Ads
GetRanked Digital helped Bamburgh Castle grow ticket revenue, increase bookings and build its wedding enquiry pipeline through targeted Google Ads and Meta campaigns.
Year on year
2025 Christmas campaign
2026 general admission
Year on year
Results from campaigns running between October 2025 and May 2026.
About the Client
Bamburgh Castle is one of Northumberland’s best-known visitor attractions. Its marketing needs to attract visitors throughout the year, promote seasonal experiences and generate enquiries for its wedding venue.
Each audience has a different buying journey. Someone searching for admission tickets might be ready to book immediately. A couple researching wedding venues may take months before making an enquiry.
What Needed to Change
Bamburgh Castle wanted to increase ticket revenue, make better use of its advertising budget and reach new audiences, without running every campaign in the same way.
The priorities were to:
- Increase ticket sales for general admission and seasonal events.
- Capture demand from people actively searching for Bamburgh Castle.
- Introduce the castle to new audiences.
- Bring interested visitors back to complete purchases.
- Generate more qualified wedding enquiries.
- Understand which channels were contributing to measurable business results.
What Changed
Capturing Demand Through Google Search
Separate campaigns for general admission, Christmas experiences, weddings and elopements, plus campaigns around the castle’s connection with The Last Kingdom and Bebbanburg. Each matched a specific audience and search intent.
Awareness and Returning Visitors Through Meta
Facebook and Instagram reached people who were not yet searching and drove them to relevant pages. Retargeting then focused on people who had already shown interest.
Tracking Meaningful Customer Actions
Ticket campaigns were measured on purchases, revenue and return on ad spend. Wedding campaigns were measured on pricing and brochure downloads, form starts and submitted enquiries.
Double the Christmas Revenue. 15x Return on Tickets.
Christmas revenue increased by 101%
During the 2025 Christmas campaign, total website revenue increased by 100.7% compared with the equivalent period in 2024.
- Website sessions increased by 25%.
- Paid Search traffic grew by more than 1,300%.
- Organic Search revenue grew by 10.5%.
- Google Ads achieved a 19.03x return on ad spend.
Paid Search accounted for just 16% of website sessions but generated 29% of revenue.
Ticket advertising achieved a 15.09x return
The 2026 general admission campaign built on the Christmas results. Google Search captured people looking for tickets, while Meta supported discovery and brought previous visitors back.
- 15.09x blended measurable ROAS.
- 24.78% Google Search click-through rate.
- 7.75% Google Ads conversion rate.
- £0.10 average Google Search cost per click.
- 77.05% engagement rate from Paid Search sessions.
Paid Search generated around 26% of total website revenue while accounting for just 11.83% of sessions.
Wedding campaigns built a stronger enquiry pipeline
We separated the general wedding campaign from the more specific elopement audience. The elopement campaign achieved a 13.06% click-through rate, compared with 9.63% for the wider wedding campaign.
Google Search became the main source of high-intent actions, contributing 43.57% of package price downloads, 44.41% of wedding brochure downloads, 39.43% of supplier downloads and 15.88% of form submissions. Meta supported the earlier stages of the journey, generating landing page visits at an average cost of £0.06.
What the Results Tell Us
Paid marketing works best when it reflects how customers make decisions. For ticket sales, the priority was capturing people ready to buy. For weddings, it was helping couples move through a longer decision process.
Google Search captured existing demand, while Meta introduced new audiences and encouraged return visits. By separating these goals and measuring the right actions, we could see which activity was driving commercial results.
What This Means for You
Your marketing should reflect how your customers actually buy. If someone is ready to purchase, make it easy for them to find you and take action. If they need more time, give them useful information and a reason to return.
And measure the results that matter to your business, not just clicks.
