Case study · Villas · Uluwatu
From a quiet launch to a villa that books out.
In February 2025 a new boutique pool villa in Uluwatu came to us with an Instagram account under 500 followers and slow early sales. This is what we did over the next twenty months, and what changed.
- Production
- Social media
- Meta Ads
4,630
Instagram followers in Sep 2026 — from under 500 in Feb 2025
+52%
paid results on the same budget, Q3 vs Q2 2026
#1
median engagement among five nearby villas
~90%
average monthly occupancy, as reported by the villa’s management
Chapter 01
The brief.
Two-bedroom pool villas a short walk from the beach, newly opened and almost unknown. Early sales were quiet, the Instagram account had fewer than 500 followers, and the guests the owners wanted were a long-haul flight away.
In March 2025 they gave us a clear split of where those guests should come from. Everything we did after that was measured against it.
- 01
A real following
Grow an Instagram audience from almost nothing — people who would actually stay.
- 02
More direct bookings
Send guests to the villa’s own website, not only to booking platforms.
- 03
Known abroad
Be found by long-haul guests in Australia and Europe, not just by Bali locals.
- Australia40%
- United Kingdom20%
- Spain10%
- Netherlands10%
- Germany10%
- France10%
Chapter 02
The strategy.
Not one big campaign, but four steps. Each one started when the numbers from the last one told us what to change.
- 1Launch
Feb – Apr 2025
Get seen at home first
Ads aimed at the Bali market to fill the profile fast. The launch Reel, opening on the villa’s entrance, reached 136,000 accounts.
- 2Pivot
From Apr 2025
Point the budget abroad
Markets reset to the owners’ brief, and 70% of the ads now sent people to the website. 21,000 website clicks by the end of August.
- 3Focus
Q4 2025
Premium markets only
Spend moved out of low-cost markets into Australia, the UK and Europe, with website traffic as the one objective.
- 4Refine
2026
Test, keep, repeat
Two-week flights by market cluster. Every Reel competes against the others in the same month, market and objective; the winners stay.
Chapter 03
The content.
Every photo and Reel was shot by our own crew at the villa: arrivals, light moving through the rooms, slow mornings by the pool. In 2025 that meant three Reels a month; by 2026 a new post went up every 2.7 days.
We also wrote every caption and posted on the days the audience was most active. The same Reels ran as ads, so the feed and the paid campaigns always told one story.
Who it was made for
A woman aged 35–44 in Australia or Spain, planning a long-haul villa stay. She finds the villa through a Reel, saves it, studies the profile — then books.
56% of the audience are women; 84% are aged 25–54. Two quarters of data, the same guest.
Won 28 of 31 head-to-head tests since January
Best at turning profile visits into follows
30% of viewers watch past three seconds
Most-viewed post in the account’s history
Retired after one month
Cost per result against the other ads in the same month, market and objective. Below the dashed line (1.00) means cheaper than its rivals.
Chapter 04
The results.
From a handful of followers to the highest typical engagement of the five nearby villas we track — with the right guests, and an ad budget that now buys half as much again.
February 2025 is the owners’ estimate at the start; every other point comes from Instagram Insights.
- Aug 2025
- Dec 2025
Fewer local followers, more of the long-haul markets in the brief.
Q2 2026 total
3,380
Q3 2026 total
5,122
The same ad budget in both quarters. August also benefited from an unusually cheap ad auction.
Every market got cheaper on the same budget.
- 1Our client · 4.6K followers0.52%
- 2Villa D · 5.4K followers0.40%
- 3Villa B · 34.8K followers0.17%
- 4Villa C · 13.5K followers0.16%
- 5Villa A · 41.9K followers0.06%
What an ordinary post earns, so one viral hit can’t skew it. Rival villas are not named.
+20%
website visits from Instagram, Q3 vs Q2 2026
2.1×
saves on Reels — the clearest sign someone is planning a trip
33K
views on the most-viewed post in the account’s history, 7× the follower base
+36%
Instagram views, Q3 vs Q2 2026
~90%
Average monthly occupancy, after quiet first months.
As reported by the villa’s management. Bookings run through a third-party system, so we don’t claim this as our number — everything else on this page comes from Instagram and Meta Ads data we can measure.
What made the difference
- 01
One team, one plan
The same crew shoots, writes, posts and runs the ads. When a Reel wins in the ads, it shapes next month’s shoot list.
- 02
Budget by market, not by habit
We started from the owners’ market split, then moved money every flight to wherever results came cheapest.
- 03
Every Reel earns its budget
Creative is tested head to head each month. Winners keep running for months; the rest are retired early.
Sources: Instagram Insights, Meta Ads Manager and our reports to the client (Feb–Aug 2025, Oct 2025–Mar 2026, Q2 and Q3 2026). The client and rival villas are not named, and ad budgets are not shown.
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