Community Building
Objective
As one of the world’s leading online travel companies, Expedia knew that they needed to capitalize on social media and expand their ability to engage with customer and prospects beyond their existing 20+ global web sites. So, while on-going engagement with customers was the ultimate goal they knew they needed to start by getting to a critical mass of Fans: 1M new Fans in 6 weeks.
Solution
FriendTrips was an interactive, inherently social Facebook sweepstakes experience that enabled users to pilot a virtual plane and enter by inviting five friends to join them. Invited guests were then encouraged to create planes and dream trips of their own. The ultimate prize was a luxury vacation with five friends.
To maintain excitement throughout the campaign and increase virality, Expedia gave away daily prizes based on votes of user submitted travel photos and stories.
A multi-channel marketing campaign of paid, owned and earned media that leveraged the full Facebook marketing platform supported the sweepstakes. Expedia integrated PR, print advertising, celebrity endorsement, email marketing, promotion on Expedia’s and its partners’ web sites and social outreach. A robust mix of Facebook advertising using Sponsored Stories, marketplace and premium ads was instrumental to the campaign’s success.
The Efficient Frontier platform optimized advertising across audience segments, ad creative and bidding. Audiences were both added and pruned based on insights from the FriendTrips application engagement data. Creative assets were built and tested to capitalize on current events and strong performing segments. Bids were automatically set to maximize ad performance.
This campaign is a premier example of how to make Facebook marketing work, as outlined in the recent Forrester report "It's Time to Make Facebook Work"
Results
- Expedia gained 1M new Fans in 6 weeks, representing a 750% increase
- Engagement was up with 15-30x more mentions on the wall
- Cost-per-Fan was reduced by over 400% during the campaign
