How did VI-Kurdistan reach new customers by using PI’s services?
VIKurdistan, a travel agency in Iraqi Kurdistan, depended mainly on connections and (word of mouth) in marketing their services and finding customers.
What was VI-Kurdistan aiming to do?
VIK was aiming to build a platform where they could promote their services and find new customers willing to join the trips they were organizing.
Digital marketing to build VI-Kurdistan an online presence and help them in reaching new people
Given that Instagram and Facebook are very popular and are used by everyone on a daily basis specifically tourists that are looking for activities to do in the cities they travel to, VIK reached out to PI willing to start sharing relevant content for tourists in order to use social media marketing to reach new customers outside of their existing circle.
Why did VI-Kurdistan need to build an online platform?
Kurdistan is surrounded by beautiful mountains and has a beautiful nature during the different seasons of the year. Unfortunately, all that has been ignored throughout the years and it has been rarely spoken about, however, PI identified an excellent opportunity in that and turned VIK into a platform that would show places and promote tourism in Kurdistan alongside marketing their services. By that point, what VIK was standing for needed to be seen online by anyone living in that region or travelling there.
How did PI maintain the most profitable results?
PI has a team that can develop a marketing strategy and provide a variety of marketing services. With VIK, PI focused on planning strategic digital campaigns on Instagram and Facebook, producing promotional videos of their trips, taking creative and meaningful photographs for each trip, providing offline marketing consultation through weekly meetings, developing customers’ experiences as well as providing offline deliverables such as (trip agenda brochures). PI has access to a network of exclusive partners that own the top social media platforms across the country, VIK wanted to target tourists from different backgrounds so with the help of PI’s partners’ pages, posts were shared across multiple platforms in three different languages so no one from the viewers would feel left out.
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Using Social Media Posts to Get New Customers
VIK has collaborated with PI to help them reach a bigger audience (with their main target being tourists and visitors) through using specific targeting on their social media promotions for each trip.
Building The Brand Identity
PI made sure that VIK had a consistent identity online so that their audience would have a clear image of the brand and what it was trying to do.
Content Creation
- PI started to research and create more informative posts on VIK about the ancient places and the natural tourist destinations found in Kurdistan.
- Testimonial video stories from VIK’s trips participants were believed to be quite suitable in terms of grabbing potential customers’ attention.
- Professional photos from the planned trips, information about the VIK guides that took part in the trips were also a huge part of the content.
Targeting the Desired Audience
PI helped in targeting the desired audience through handpicking the most strategic partners pages to share VIK’s posts on and also through detailed targeting of people with similar interests and/or suitable demographics for the boosted posts of VIK.
Preparing for the Upcoming Trips
PI was constantly updated with the upcoming trips schedule in order to plan the content and boost posts accordingly for VIK, brochures on the agenda of each trip also needed to be provided before the designated day.
Consultations and Reporting Performance
Important data has been collected continuously by PI and shared in weekly meetings with VIK in order to report the performance of the ongoing digital campaigns and provide consultations on what could be improved in that aspect
Measuring Customer Experience
PI helped in developing a system for VIK to assess their customers’ experience after the trips in order to look for opportunities that could improve the upcoming trips and/or the content on their social feeds.
What success needs to look like?
PI was seeking:
- More booking requests and inquiries from people about VIK’s trips.
- High engagements that would help the content reach the targeted audience.
- Educate the people about Kurdistan’s rich history, nature and the fun activities in the region that is consistent with the brand’s identity.
- Get more customer satisfaction after phases of measuring customer experience and informing VIK about the opportunities.
Results: Targeting Tourists Through Social Media
The total number of people that could be interacting with VI K and their content online currently is about:
- 14.7K Followers on Instagram
- 33K Likes on Facebook
In one month (Nov 2020) VIK’s Instagram gained 5K followers through PI’s campaigns.
PI has helped VIK get 247% more customers for the 2021 New Year Trip (37 participants while VI-Kurdistan’s forecasted customer expectation was only 15 people).
VIK’s shared content gets treated differently across different platforms. Some posts do better than others and vice versa. PI is always working towards providing the content that works best for VIK through split testing and multiple trials and analysis. The most preferred platform for VIK so far is Instagram. Facebook works well in terms of building the brand but it doesn’t generate booking requests as much as Instagram.
PI makes sure to constantly stay in contact with VIK through group chats in order to receive inputs and approvals and improve the effectiveness of the business and it’s campaigns.
