Reducing CPA by 72% for luxury yacht brokerage, Northrop & Johnson

The challenge

As global sales and charter specialists, Northrop & Johnson’s offline reputation was firmly established within luxury yachting circles, but rising competition and changing search behaviors made capturing demand online increasingly difficult. Our challenge was to boost digital visibility and improve both the volume and quality of leads passed to brokers for charters and yacht sales.

Beyond just increasing traffic, the brief required organic and paid efforts to work in tandem to achieve outcomes. Success involved attracting high-intent audiences through new SEO and PPC strategies that refined messaging, creativity, and campaign focus. 

Our approach

Building authority

Establishing strong technical foundations was essential to securing Northrop & Johnson’s authority in a competitive market. Our efforts targeted high-value yachts for sale and charter pages, supported by focused content optimization and dedicated off-site link building. Technical audits, metadata updates, EEAT-style elements, and content templates for commercial pages were reviewed and refined to ensure strong onsite ranking signals.

Refining paid efforts

Paid media was restructured, moving away from broad display campaigns that generated low-quality leads. Instead, we prioritized high-intent targeting with improved creative and messaging, ensuring PPC drove relevant traffic and broker-ready inquiries.

The results

The results were significant. Not only did we push core keywords like ‘Superyacht’ and ‘Yachts for sale’ into Google's top three positions, but we also reduced CPA from 84 in 2024 to $51 in early 2026. Organic impressions grew by 15.5% year-over-year. 

Strong collaboration and close alignment turned Northrop & Johnson’s relationship with IDHL into a true partnership, keeping strategies focused on performance and long-term growth – even as the search landscape evolves.