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.