Background
Boutique surf hotel acquired mid covid as a distressed property. Target market of international travelers who will pay a premium for a destination experience. Surf lesson package trips can yield 10x the revenue being achieved from long term stays.
Objective
Build the LMBK brand via Instagram marketing. Target metric - organic followers from seeing promoted content. People who are interested in surfing & travel.
We expect that users who follow our content for an extended period of time will be more likely to keep us a primary consideration for future travel. Pricing will therefore not be the main factor these users are using to determine where to stay, allowing us to charge more premium rates.
Content
The content available for promotion and the underlying brand are the single most important factors for successful campaigns. In this case we will be using the existing content and optimizing for its best use.
- Total Follower increase (~3.3k ->10.4k)
- Cost per follower (CPF) ~$0.40 for in market audience
Findings
- Variations in CPF by country
- Expats in Indonesia cheapest ($0.10)
- US/ Western Europe/Australia most expensive ($0.50)
- Generally correlated with regions income level
- Diminishing returns to ad spend almost immediately, even with very large potential audiences. CPF ~$0.50 for spend < $10-15/day, increases to ~$0.65 at $15/day+, small campaigns for ~$5/day can see ~$0.4 CPF
- Creatives resonate differently with men vs. women
- Women prefer content that highlights the property
- Content with people (men or women) often does better with men
- “Artsy” photos do better with men
- Creatives resonate differently by age demographic
- Guests socializing & having fun does well with everyone, but skews younger than the general audience
- Brand fit is highly variable
- In general page visits correlate highly with follower count
- Certain creatives generate a high level of page views but those users do not convert to followers
- Ex photos with more revealing images of women generate a lot of page visits, however they are in line with the brand and the majority of content on the page, and therefore do not convert well to followers
- This is a unique metric to track to find “brand fit” for future creative campaigns
Strategy
We have seen enough bookings come through Instagram to indicate this is an effective marketing channel. Many bookings come months after the initial account follow, so there will be a long tail of future value from promotions. Advertising at moderate levels will continuously be run. New campaigns are tested using creatives that perform well organically.