"SoGRIN tour" organizes author tours to Baikal, Altai and the Kola Peninsula. In this case, we take a closer look at how a consistent focus on building a VKontakte community, a well-thought-out content strategy, and paid promotion help the tourism business attract customers.
- Full occupancy for the advertised tours
Campaign goals
The goal was to attract people looking to buy tours to Lake Baikal. Since the company's VKontakte community serves as one of its sales channels, it was chosen as the ad object of the VK Ads campaign.
KPI: The cost per message should not exceed 300 ₽.
Mechanics
VKontakte community management
For a travel business, it's essential to convey the emotions travellers will experience on their trip. That's why the community actively shares a variety of content: posts, photos, videos, clips, and stories.
And this content is not only from the author of the community: photos, videos, and reviews from travelers are often posted in the VKontakte community too.
Vibrant, visually engaging content is complemented by several conversion elements that make it easy for users to book a tour:
- VK Market. The widget helps draw attention to it: users select a destination and go to a selection with suitable tours.
- "Write to community" call-to-action (CTA) button, added directly to posts.
- Chatbot, offering a user-friendly way to book a suitable tour.
Personal communication also plays a significant role. Tatyana, the director of the company and the community’s founder, often communicates with subscribers and shares her stories. This helps to establish a trusting relationship with the audience, which is especially important when organizing author tours.
Promotion in VK Ads
From September 16, 2024 to January 31, 2025, we ran 28 ad campaigns. Let's look through targeting and creatives using the example of the two most effective campaigns in which we promoted the VKontakte community with the "Sending a message" target action.
Campaign 1
Period: from September 19, 2024 to January 31, 2025.
Bidding strategy: Min price.
Campaign’s results:
- 322 messages.
- 116,42 ₽ — average cost per message.
Campaign 2
Period: from September 16, 2024 to January 31, 2025.
Bidding strategy: Min price.
Campaign’s results:
- 289 messages.
- 121,12 ₽ — average cost per message.
Ad creatives
The ads used vivid photos and videos to convey the emotions of tourists visiting Lake Baikal. The texts were made detailed and covered the following:
- Baikal's natural wonders — with the text serving as a complement to the photos and videos.
- What's included in the tours: accommodation, meals, and guided excursions.
- How to get more details and book a tour. We used a codeword mechanic: users were needed to send it to the community by tapping the button in the ad.
Results
The client reports that there is a sold-out status across all advertised tours.
In the two most effective campaigns, the cost per message was 116.42 ₽ and 121.12 ₽, respectively. This is 2.5 times cheaper than the original plan — 300 ₽ per message.
The promotion also had a positive impact on the metrics of the community: the audience reach, the number of subscribers and dialogues within the community increased. To show the growth, let's compare the figures during the promotion with the month before the launch of the ads — an August.
Community subscribers are people who can become customers in the future. They read and like posts, watch videos and clips, are interested in tours and ask questions.
Contents
