How can a brand build very specific awareness that translates into sales? That's the challenge that Almosafer, a travel provider, faced when the team had a goal of raising brand awareness and preference among travelers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They also wanted to increase brand consideration among travelers researching upcoming trips. At the same time, they needed to boost flight and hotel searches on the brand’s website, paving the way for customers to book options including over 1.5 million properties around the globe, flights on over 450 airlines, and complete holiday packages.
As the flagship brand of Seera Group, Almosafer provides travel services and bookings through online platforms, call centers and retail locations. With both branding and performance goals, Almosafer’s digital marketing team was looking for a new way to grab consumers’ attention.
Approach
They decided to use TrueView for action, embracing the format as a tool to generate not only awareness and consideration, but also encourage users to take action on the website. TrueView for action campaigns are designed to drive leads and conversions by adding prominent calls to action, headline text overlays, and an end screen to video ads.
Almosafer’s campaign set out to reach audiences in both the upper and lower funnels. With this in mind, the team developed different success metrics for both prospecting and converting activities. For the former, they focused on flight or hotel searches and cost per flight or hotel search. For the latter, they measured flight or hotel bookings and cost per flight or hotel booking.
Results
Compared to Almosafer’s standard TrueView campaigns, TrueView for action quadrupled the volume of flight searches while driving up hotel searches by a factor of 2.8. The cost per flight search fell by 75% and the cost per hotel search went down by 65%.
When compared to standard TrueView campaigns, the volume of flight bookings increased by 3.7-fold and that of hotel bookings went up 3.5-fold with TrueView for action. The cost per flight booking dropped by 72% and the cost per hotel booking dropped by 70%.
The YouTube activity also produced awareness upticks, including a 13.3% lift in ad recall and 28% lift in brand interest on search. These numbers show that the ads have widened the presence of the Almosafer brand among travelers in KSA and Kuwait who are researching upcoming trips. With these metrics to hand, Almosafer’s marketing team is now able to demonstrate the viability of YouTube as a platform for both awareness and acquisition to the broader business.
