Alaskan Airlines Aggregator: Concept Validation

Product:

A new US-based startup - air travel aggregator specifically for local air service providers accessible through a web application.

Period:

January 2021 - April 2021

Services:

Google Display Ads, Paid Social

Tools Used:

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager

A Problem that the Startup Solves:

Prospective passengers have insufficient access to the services local Alaskan carriers provide, stemming from the lack of an effective search and booking platform. Consumers do not have
adequate awareness regarding the air travel options that exist outside major carriers. They are largely unaware that the local municipal airports might offer a more convenient and efficient flight routes, or that air service exists between city pairs that were previously only accessible by car.

The Request:

EDGEncy Team was hired to help the new startup validate early-stage assumptions regarding the target audience, interest towards the concept, run a series of experiments, generate awareness and collect the first leads.

How we generated traffic and leads:

Google Display Ads

Facebook Campaign

Our Assumptions:

1. B2C Profile - the main age group is 25-35: this assumption was not validated
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2. Target audience has the following Interests and Characteristics

Physically Fit
Health Conscious
Fashionista
Experienced leisure traveler
Comfortable and proficient with technology
Willing to experiment with and adopt new platforms and services

- this assumption was mainly validated

3. People would be interested in information about Alaska and would consider Alaska as their travel destination: this assumption was validated

numbers

Results that we achieved:

$5

cost per acquisition

$0.2

cost per click

27%

conversion rate per return visitors

Our Process

Analysis & Strategy

We analyzed historical data from past Google ads campaigns and Google Analytics data. Based on the findings and general assumptions about the business, we set up a list of hypotheses and experiments for future validation. To test out our hypotheses, we decided to run a Google Display Campaign and several Facebook Campaigns.

Lead Magnet

To increase traffic to the website and generate new leads, we decided to implement a lead magnet to the home page of the company. The lead magnet would contain a list of under-discovered destinations in Alaska where Alaska Airlines doesn't fly. We created images and texts that would incentivize people to visit the website, download the file and interact with the web.

Launch & Optimization

We set up the campaigns and spent the first two weeks on optimization and A/B testing. We excluded irrelevant placements (e.g. websites with foreign domains, gaming webs), set the availability to the top 20% of US income households, and ran experiments on different types of creatives, devices and locations.

Findings

As a result of the experiments and optimization, we dropped our cost per click from $0.80 to $0.20 and hit an average cost of $5 per acquisition. We reached a conversion rate 27% for returning visitors, and highlighted top-performing placements, geographic locations, interests and devices.

452%

website traffic increase

14%

bounce rate decrease

50%

session duration increase

Contrary to our initial assumption, age group 55+ had the highest conversion rates

iOS has more traffic than Android but Android has a much higher conversion rate.

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