Social Media remains a piece of the marketing puzzle that many businesses find hard to justify as they struggle to see the direct return on investment that comes from social media activity.
Measurement has always been a challenge for social media practitioners and, whilst this issue continues to lurk in the underbelly of digital agencies across the land, every so often a case study comes along which shows exactly how you can leverage the power of a strong social presence.
This is exactly what happened recently when Qantas announced that many of their flights out of Australia would be grounded. Qantas released this extremely inconvenient news on their Facebook page (as well as through other channels), though without any information on when the issue would be solved and what they would be doing to help passengers make new plans.
Meanwhile, the clever folks at Virgin set to work and announced on their
Facebook page that they would be putting on additional flights for those stranded by Qantas’ failures. Not only that, they would be offering a special ‘Stranded Passenger’ fare so customers wouldn’t have to pay extortionate late booking fees. They also
contacted prominent bloggers directly to make them aware of what was happening.
And what happened? Facebook ‘Likes’ and comments flooded in and generated a huge buzz and good feeling towards Virgin because of what they were doing. Virgin even cheekily posted photos of their planes taking off as the Qantas planes sat dormant on airport runways.
And here’s the best bit. Shortly after the original updates, Virgin posted that 20,000 former Qantas flyers had booked flights with them to get to their destination. 20,000! Not bad for a few Facebook updates, and no doubt leaving a healthy deposit in Mr Branson’s coffers. There’s no question that along the way Virgin will also have picked up many return customers who won’t be going back to the airline that abandoned them and left them stranded.
It will certainly have taken some time for the social media team at Virgin to generate such a strong following and that they benefit from being such a huge brand, but they illustrated clearly in this example what great ROI social media can deliver if utilised properly. If you build a strong following of brand advocates and treat them well then they will spread your message for you and the ROI will follow. Nice work Virgin!
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