Post on 25-Oct-2014
Advertising Case Study
Damion White, Social Media Marketing Coordinator, BookIt.com®
Bookit.com®Company Background
BookIt.com® is currently the nation’s largest privately
owned online travel website, featuring deeply
discounted hotels, flights and vacation packages, in
addition to complementary services and activities.
BookIt.com® differs from other online travel sites in
that it strives to provide the most intuitive booking
experience on the web, citing a primary dedication to
“Guest Elation” while focusing on delivering the most
competitive leisure and vacation destination offers.
Objective
Increasingly, consumer choices about travel rely
heavily on personal recommendations. BookIt.com®
recognized early in its growth that having a large,
active Facebook community would give potential
guests a forum for true dialogue about their travel
choices. Fans would be able to engage with one
another, share experiences and offer peer-to-peer
consumer advice. Additionally, the platform would
provide a cost-effective means for dedicated BookIt.
com® Team Members to assist existing or potential
guests with questions, feedback and issue resolution.
When it initiated its targeted Facebook campaign,
the company page had nearly 30,000 fans, but BookIt.
com® was looking for a way to better engage existing
fans and to acquire new ones. “This campaign was
really about opening the lines of communication
Facebook Executive SummaryClient:
www.facebook.com/bookitdotcom
Objective: Engage existing fans and
grow the fan base for the BookIt.com®
Facebook page
Solution: Sponsor a giveaway
called “Trip a Day in May,”
supported by targeted Facebook
Ads and Sponsored Stories
Key Lessons:
• SponsoredStoriesonFacebook
don’t require the production
of any creative, which can
make them easy and cost-
effective to deploy.
• UsingFriendsofConnections
targeting can help identify
likely customers or fans as their
friends already like the brand.
“With the ‘Trip a Day in May’ campaign, I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we will be able to
leverage Facebook’s capabilities. We plan to use the Facebook platform both as a communications and a distribution tool,
as well as a sounding board to help us better develop our business models, both online and offline, in the future.”
Advertising Case Study
between BookIt.com® and our friends, and
more formally introducing ourselves to the larger
Facebook community,” says Damion White, Social
MediaMarketingCoordinatorforthecompany.
“We believe in skating in the direction of the
puck, and in our experience, there has been no
better platform for doing that than Facebook.”
Approach
In May 2011, the company launched a month-long
giveaway called the “Trip a Day in May Giveaway.” The
contest gave away a free trip on each of the 31 days
in May. People could submit entries either by email
or by connecting to Facebook through the Facebook
Connectsocialplug-inontheBookIt.com®site.
BookIt.com® supported the giveaway with Facebook
Ads; it used various ad units but emphasized
Marketplace Ads, which are often used to incite
people to take a specific action, such as entering
a contest. The campaign targeted individuals with
travel-related interests by using Facebook’s Likes &
Interests feature. BookIt.com® also used Friends of
Connectionstargeting.“Wedeterminedthatitwould
be more powerful to introduce ourselves to people
who were friends of our existing community, and
therefore more likely to take action,” says Damion.
Sponsored Stories was the important second
component to the strategy as this product allows
businesses to increase the visibility of fans’
interactions with brands on Facebook by featuring
them on the right column of pages. When someone
liked the page, the action created a Like Sponsored
Story, which was displayed to that person’s friends
on the right-hand column of his or her page.
“With Sponsored Stories, you see your friend’s
profile picture and you see the number of people
who like the page followed by the page name,
and that’s it,” says Damion. “It’s the simplicity
and the fact that it leads with the familiar, your
personal friend, and that makes it compelling.”
Results
• 65,000uniqueentriestothecompetition.
• Morethan1milliontotalentries.
• 39,031fansaddedtotheBookIt.com®Facebook
page directly from the Facebook Ads and
14,493fansaddedthroughorganicimpressions.
Organic impressions are free, value-added
impressions that result from fans sharing and
postingcomments.Withmorethan106,000
fans by early August 2011, BookIt.com® could
potentially reach nearly 33 million friends of
thesefanswithFriendsofConnectionsTargeting.
• 35-40percentofthetotalnumberof
fans added to the Facebook page were
generated by the Sponsored Stories.
• 72percentofpeoplewhoclickedona
Sponsored Story became a fan of the
Bookit.com Facebook page. “The Sponsored
Stories were by far the best-performing
product in this campaign,” says Damion.
• 460milliontotalimpressionsforthe
campaign;198millionofthemwere
social impressions or displayed the name
of a friend who liked the brand.
• 94,000clicks,47,000ofwhichweresocial.
• 30percentincreaseinrevenuedriven
by Facebook month over month in June,
following the “Trip A Day in May Giveaway.”
• 1,400percentincreaseinrevenuedrivenby
Facebook for the second quarter of 2011
compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Advertising Case Study
The company also saw a very high level of
engagement with the BookIt.com® Facebook page,
particularly during the giveaway campaign. “We
would post something as simple as a photograph
of the Golden Gate Bridge on the day of the San
Francisco giveaway, and that would generate 400
Likesand250Comments,”saysDamion.“Then,it
trended that way for most of the entire month.”
The Future
BookIt.com® is working on a concept for a Facebook
application that leverages the company’s large
and continually growing fan base, and encourages
content sharing in innovative ways. Because travel
is an industry about which individuals are often
passionate, consumers generate excellent content
that can supplement content added by BookIt.com®
staff. The company looks forward to promoting
the new application and its future Facebook
endeavors with robust Facebook Ads campaigns.