Okay, it’s been a while
since I’ve last updated my blog. There’s really no excuse even though I did
spent the last 2 months working, finishing my digital marketing studies,
graduating, moving back to Finland and looking for jobs.
It’s been hectic. As an apology, please enjoy this snippet from the Ryan Air calendar :)
Lot has happened since my
last post but I’m still not going talk about Google+ vs. Facebook, Google Wallet or any of the
dozens of innovative and creative campaigns that have been launched during the
last month or so.
I’m starting again with a
soft post about something dear to my heart. ROI in digital marketing.
With all the advice given on
how to be the most innovative, creative and extraordinary digital marketer out
there, we tend to forget that optimizing everything to perfection might be
nice, but not make any difference to your bank account. Well, actually it can
but it will be a negative one.
A great example of this in
my mind is RyanAir. Their site is probably one of the ugliest out there, with a
very low usability. I could hire a 15 year old to do a better job. But that’s
not what the site is about. It’s not intended to be a cool visual explosion.
It’s meant to convey the exact same thing that RyanAir is all about. RyanAir is
CHEAP.
The thing evident for anyone
who has ever flown on their flights is that there is a reason why the tickets
are the cheapest around. Everything costs extra and the plane is packed with
small seats and large people.
The image you get of RyanAir
and of the service you get at the airport and in the plane is the same online.
You get exactly what you pay for. The site is cheap but an airline competing almost
solely on price can’t afford, and shouldn’t put too much money into the site
when they can get the same results with the simpler one.
RyanAir has pretty much perfected their website’s
purchase funnel with cross-selling items and services. After choosing the your
flight dates you get to the passenger details page which offers a myriad of
additional things the passenger can purchase. Passengers have to pay extra for
pretty much everything that is normally included in the price of a ticket by
other airlines.
These include
priority boarding, travel insurance, SMS confirmation, RyanAir approved cabin
bag, special equipment, special assistance and method of payment. After booking
the flight, the customer is bombarded with hotel and car rental options. These
advertisements are specific to the location and date you’re flying so they’re
highly relevant. The pricing of the different items and services is also quite
low so the hurdle to add them to your purchase isn’t too high.
With ever increasing
profits RyanAir is doing something right (besides buy oil with a good price) and in my mind their approach towards
online sales is really helping with that. The whole company’s brand and
messages support the image of cheap and that's exactly what they should be doing.
