Marcus Ho is an online business consultant at Internet Success Hub, an online marketing consultancy that supports companies to grow with social media campaigns and search engine optimization.
When Facebook campaigns are done successfully, the results can be incredible. For Qatar Airways, its recent campaign spread like wildfire, netting the company 150,000 Facebook fans under a month and 200,000 active users by the end of the campaign.
Qatar Airways is known for its premium service. It is also one of the 5-star airlines operating in the world. The airline wanted to use Facebook to bring its 5-star experience to a wider audience. It was a daunting task, but we took up the role and was glad to be able to meet the challenge.
First, the airline implemented the biggest sweepstake contest it had ever done in the history of the company – it gave away 100 free tickets to 100 destinations (to celebrate its 100th destination and the opening of their Facebook page). Users who entered the sweepstakes had a chance to snap up the tickets – but here’s the catch – if any user wanted to increase his chances of winning, all they had to do was to refer five of their friends. Thus, the viral capabilities of Facebook was leveraged – people were joining, referring their friends, who in turn, referred to their friends.
The results were astonishing – the sweepstakes, available in 5 languages, attracted 150,000 new fans and 200,000 active users (that means people who still, to this day, comment and post on their Facebook Page’s wall).
With the initial success, Qatar’s Facebook campaign needed to ride on the momentum. It continued on with premium Facebook ads.
Premium Facebook ads are ads that do not share space with other advertisers – thus maximizing exposure since the user’s attention will not be split among other ads. These targeted premium ads showed throughout the entire month of the campaign and directed people to the Qatar Airways Page.
Finally, Qatar Airways created their second biggest promotion – 2 for 1 sale, only for Facebook users. The current users and sweepstakes contestants were the first to be notified of the big sale, but the actual offer was kept under wraps until the moment it started. The sale was only available for 48 hours, which made it even more fervid. What made this particular sale unique was the implementation of the booking process within Facebook.
We were able to embed the existing online booking system straight into Qatar Airways’ Facebook page. That meant that users didn’t have to leave Facebook to book their flights. With this initiative, Qatar Airways was able to add over 11,000 active users on their page.
In essence, Qatar Airways’s success lies on its ability to use Facebook’s functionalities and its viral nature to implement a campaign that surpassed many expectations.
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