Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Empty berths cost more in a month than your marketing budget for the year.
The structural problem for a marina operator is that an empty 24m berth costs you $4,000 to $6,000 a month in lost revenue, and the broker who places that yacht is googling 'super-yacht berth Sydney Harbour' or '24m berth Pittwater', not browsing your brochure site. The other structural issue is the competitive set. You're not competing on price with the Bunnings boat-ramp crowd: you're competing with Royal Motor Yacht Club, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, RPAYC, RSAYS, Hamilton Island, Sanctuary Cove, Mooloolaba Marine, Fremantle Sailing Club. Every one of them has a website with a berth-availability page, a Clean Marina badge, and a super-yacht concierge package spelled out. Most independent marinas have a single home page that says 'permanent and transient berthing available, please call'. That doesn't fill the 24m berth, and it doesn't win the super-yacht transient who's coming up from Hobart for the New Year's Eve fireworks.
Good marina marketing is three things, in this order: a berth-and-service page library that has one page per berth length (10m, 12m, 14m, 18m, 24m, 30m+, plus a super-yacht-transient page that names the maximum draft, beam and length), one page per revenue line (fuel-dock, pump-out, dry-stack rack, hardstand, slipway-and-haulout, brokerage, chandler, on-marina restaurant), and one page per credential (Clean Marina certification, BIA Marina Group member, EPA compliance, cyclonic and storm-surge engineering), so you rank for every '[berth length] berth [location]' and '[service] [location]' search the yacht clubs are currently winning; a seasonal Google Ads calendar that lifts hard around the Sydney-to-Hobart (late November), Sanctuary Cove Boat Show (late May), Hamilton Island Race Week (late August) and the New Year's-to-Easter cruising season; and a Google Business Profile rebuilt as a Marina (not 'Tourist Attraction') with every revenue line as a service category and the Clean Marina credential in the description. Get this right and the 24m berth fills, the broker's first call is to you, and the fuel-dock spend doubles.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the empty berths that cost the most (24m and 30m+ first, where a single vacancy is $5k-$15k a month), the seasonal transient windows (Sydney-to-Hobart, Sanctuary Cove, Hamilton Island Race Week, Easter cruising), and the high-margin services beyond berthing (fuel-dock, brokerage, chandler, restaurant). Briefs the other agents so the berth pages, the seasonal ads, the dock photos and the Google Business updates all push toward filling the highest-cost vacancies first.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for a brochure CMS subscription nobody updates, and ships a dedicated berth-and-service page for every berth length (10m, 12m, 14m, 18m, 24m, 30m+, super-yacht transient), every revenue line (fuel-dock, pump-out, dry-stack, hardstand, slipway, brokerage, chandler, restaurant) and every credential (Clean Marina, BIA Marina Group, EPA compliance, cyclonic engineering).
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move marina rankings: berth-length-and-location keyword optimisation on every page, Marina schema (not generic Tourist Attraction), internal links from the berth pages to the fuel-dock and concierge pages, and a Google Business Profile rebuilt with all 6 service categories and the Clean Marina credential surfaced. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes; flags anything bigger.
Launches Google Ads on the berth-and-location queries that actually convert ('24m berth [location]', 'super-yacht berth [location]', 'transient berth [location]', 'dry-stack rack [location]'), with 80% bid lifts in the 6-week windows before Sydney-to-Hobart (late November), Sanctuary Cove Boat Show (late May), Hamilton Island Race Week (late August) and the Easter cruising peak. Pauses spend on a berth length when that berth length is fully tenanted.
Turns every dock walk and every transient arrival into a post in your real accounts: the 38m Princess on E-arm, the fuel-dock at dawn, the dry-stack forklift moving a Bayliner in for the weekend, the Race Week fleet docked stem-to-stern, the on-marina restaurant filling at sunset. Builds the destination-marina trust signal that wins the broker placing the next yacht. You upload one photo from the dock walk, the agent drafts the caption in your voice, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces brokers, owners and skippers Google before they book a berth or a transient: 'cost of a 24m berth in Sydney Harbour vs Pittwater', 'super-yacht refit yards on the east coast', 'where to berth for the Sydney-to-Hobart finish in Hobart', 'Clean Marina certification: what it actually means'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull in the broker weeks before the placement decision.
Your first 30 days.
- Annual plan tilted to fill the highest-revenue empty berths first (24m and 30m+) and capture the seasonal transient windows
- Google Business Profile rebuilt from Tourist Attraction to Marina with 6 service categories and Clean Marina in the description
- Berth pages indexed for every length (10m, 12m, 14m, 18m, 24m, 30m+, super-yacht transient) with full specifications
- Revenue-line pages live for fuel-dock, pump-out, dry-stack rack, hardstand, slipway-and-haulout, brokerage and on-marina restaurant
- Clean Marina, BIA Marina Group, EPA compliance and cyclonic engineering credential pages live
- Seasonal transient ad calendar live with bid lifts for Sydney-to-Hobart, Sanctuary Cove, Hamilton Island and Easter
- Super-yacht-transient ad group split out at higher CPC with the 30m+ berths, concierge and shore-power surfaced
- Marina schema deployed with berth-length, draft and shore-power attributes
- Dock-walk photo caption library running three times a week from the dock, fuel-dock, dry-stack and slipway
- 'Sydney Harbour vs Pittwater berth cost' and 'Clean Marina certification explained' guides drafted for approval
Marina operators lose the 24m berth and the super-yacht transient not on facilities but on visibility. The broker placing a $4m cruiser searches '24m berth [location]' or 'super-yacht berthing [location]' and clicks the first result with the berth specifications and the Clean Marina badge above the fold. If that result is RPAYC or Sanctuary Cove or Hamilton Island, that's a season's transient and a year of permanent revenue gone. The work is making sure when a broker types your berth length and your harbour into a phone, the first thing they see is your marina, with the specifications, the credentials, and the seasonal availability they actually need.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the berth-page library and the seasonal transient ads for $4.5k a month. Tools are cheap but the dock-master never has time to write the cyclonic-rated super-yacht page between storm clean-up and EPA paperwork. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the berth pages, launch the seasonal ads, post the dock photos and keep your Google Business profile fighting the yacht clubs on completeness. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Fill the 24m berth before the broker rings RPAYC.