How Rival Profited From Travel Firm's Woes

How Rival Profited From Travel Firm's Woes

Nick Beck, director of search engine marketing at agency Tug, remembers vividly where he was when he heard niche tour operator Travel City Direct had hit the skids. He was out for dinner with his client Ocean Florida, Travel City's direct rival.

"My client was buzzing with excitement," says Beck. "We immediately created PPC ads to drive to a friendly, fair landing page that we worked with them to develop, offering people advice on what to do if they had booked with Travel City."

The campaign employed a heady combination of remorseless commercial tactics and concern for the plight of consumers. On the one hand, the search strategy deployed terms such as 'travel city gone bust'. On the other, the site that Ocean Florida had set up was tasteful, helpful and struck the right tone.

"It is nasty," Beck concedes, "but I think this example shows it is a win-win. They did a month's revenue on the first day and they got a lot of new customers and emails saying, 'You are the best, thanks so much.'"

As the campaign went on, the inevitable laws of search bidding kicked in, Beck recalls. "On day one, we were paying something like 50p a click, and by day three or four, people were putting maximum bids of 5."

The PPC push yielded a click-through rate of more than 20 and the landing page saw a conversion rate of more than 50 per cent during the 72 hours after the XL bankruptcy hit the press.

"While it is aggressive, while it is capitalist, if you couch it in a helpful fashion and that drives through to a satisfying consumer journey, everybody benefits," says Beck.

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