Background:
Singapore Airlines (SIA) is one of the world's renowned airlines with over 40 years of flying in the US and has been steadily growing in the market the past 3 years. Known for its unmatched level of customer service and onboard flight experience, SIA provides customers a high level of comfort so that they are able to feel at ease as if they were in their own homes.
The ASK:
" We want to inspire people to consider choosing Singapore airlines as their means of air travel "
" We want to inspire people to consider choosing Singapore airlines as their means of air travel "
The Challenge:
While we had a successful launch, about 2 months into the campaign, we were notified by the Singapore HO (Home Office) team that they were going to take the local US terms we were bidding on in Search, and incorporate them into their own keyword portfolio. This essentially meant that we were going to have to shut down ALL our search efforts in order to avoid competition between our own teams. By doing so, this would provide SIA a centralized control over all markets with consistent messaging, optimizations, and formatting. Additionally any new executions could be run at a quicker pace with a centralized operating unit. While this was a smart move for SIA, this meant we would have to pause out our search campaign and figure out a different avenue to place our remaining funds.
The Strategy:
We looked to think outside the box of what could potentially replace Search and came up with a similar, yet unique alternative - the Search placement on Pinterest. By utilizing Pinterest's search placement, we were able to tap into users who were actively searching for travel related keywords and were therefore in the traveling mindset. This gave us the opportunity to capitalize on searches for high-volume terms that were typically competitive within a traditional search landscape such as Google or Bing. Additionally, this offered us the ability to expand beyond plain text with images in search unlike the normal search environment. By curating a list of keywords tailored to users who were searching up destinations to visit, travel/wellness terms, and honeymoon/wedding ideas, we were able to showcase how flying with Singapore Airlines could play a part in any of these motives.
We looked to think outside the box of what could potentially replace Search and came up with a similar, yet unique alternative - the Search placement on Pinterest. By utilizing Pinterest's search placement, we were able to tap into users who were actively searching for travel related keywords and were therefore in the traveling mindset. This gave us the opportunity to capitalize on searches for high-volume terms that were typically competitive within a traditional search landscape such as Google or Bing. Additionally, this offered us the ability to expand beyond plain text with images in search unlike the normal search environment. By curating a list of keywords tailored to users who were searching up destinations to visit, travel/wellness terms, and honeymoon/wedding ideas, we were able to showcase how flying with Singapore Airlines could play a part in any of these motives.
The Results:
Our campaign began to see an uptick in sales once implementing Pinterest as a replacement for SEM. It drove a 0.46% CTR, about 21% more efficient than the Pinterest airline vertical benchmark of 0.38%. With an inexpensive CPC of $0.74, about 64% more efficient than the Pinterest airline vertical benchmark of $2.07.
