One of the sectors where Social Media has become a key factor for businesses to engage and build loyalty is the airline sector. Not all the airlines agree in investing in social media and in taking care of the consumer journey*.However, I will put the example of Vueling to explain a business that is making a big effort to implement this strategy.
*The consumer journey is a new concept that Mc Kinsey’s experts have created to describe the new way of purchasing applied for consumers. As it is described in the article “The consumer decision journey – Mc Kinsey Quarterly” , in the past the process that consumers used was described as a funnel where the investment of marketing was basically redirected to the first stage, AWARARNES because consumers start with a number of potential brands in mind (the wide end of the funnel), and methodically reduce that number and move through the funnel until the end of the process where they chose one brand. The strategy used by marketers was push and one-way communication.
Due to the expansion of media and products, the customer’s possibility to be very-well informed, a two-way communication between customers and businesses and between customers within blogs, forums, facebook… the old way of buying has become obsolete and customers have changed the way they purchase. The “alert point” when customers are listening has been divided in different stages. Businesses need to develop a new marketing strategy and integrate social media as part of the whole business activity integrating in it employees, departments and CEOs to adapt their strategy to this new way of purchasing.
Vueling is a Spanish airline created in 2004 that operates in Europe but basically in Spain. Vueling has integrated very well the Customer Journey and has developed a strong social media strategy, taking advantage of the specific functions of social media. Within Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Vueling tries to create a strong two-way communication with customers to develop a close relationship with them.
What has Vueling done in every platform?
Their Facebook page is very active and well designed. They have more than 4.000 fans! Within the facebook webpage they develop the two-way communication with customers. There they can apply (1) the responding function and learn from customers suggestions and regrets; (2) the amplifying function by posting exclusive content, offers, promotions and new products and inviting their fans to publish it in their walls ( evangelism customers) and they connect with the customer by publishing pictures, allowing users to also publish, comment the pictures..
In 2011 they duplicate the number of fans in facebook achieving a total of 95.00 fans in only 4 hours thanks to the campaign Vueling Day. They were promoting their new routes and every five hours Vueling gave a free flight to one of their new routes.
Example of promotion in the facebook page
There they update customers with the last promotions, send information to them about their activity, apologize is there has been problems in any flight, congrats the internal team for some activity they have realized well… Concluding, they also exploit the two-way communication and invest in creating a relationship with customers
Youtube
Their activity in this channel is also very active. In the end of 2009 they realized a Lib Dup that has had more than 6.900 views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyJDimcdbLs
In 2011 they invited David Guetta, and the new single was played for first time in one of the Vueling flights. The video has more than 8.000 views!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R7GTWRO3ZU&feature=relmfu
Webpages
When they arrived to the number of 50 million passengers, Vueling created the webpage www.vuelinggallery.com where they thank passengers for travelling with them and collect the best pictures posted in Instagram to create the Vueling Air Gallery book.
Vueling Air Gallery making of: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=6tac7OUfU4Y&feature=youtu.be
In conclusion, we can say that Vueling is doing a good effort to take advantage of social media carrying out the demands of social media as creating critical brand asset, opening new channels of interaction and have a clear framework where operate. In addition to create buzz, learn from customers and target new customers with their activities in all their channels.