Case Study Subasta de Ocio

1. Case Study S U B A S T A D E O C I O Content, Email, Social Media and SEO marketing strategies implemented for SubastadeOcio’s launch Alejandro Torres W R I T T E N B Y

2. W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y B A C K G R O U N D One month before SubastadeOcio’s launch, the market became more diver- siﬁed as not one - but two new platforms with our same business model joined the competition: Biduzz & Bidaway. SubastadeOcio.es was launched in Spain at the beginning of May 2013, during an economic crisis. The crisis hit Spaniards and their wal- lets hard and created the right market conditions for platforms that offered low-cost or discounted travel and leisure activities. Groupon reigned supreme and many wanted the crown. The market started to become saturated with many companies like Groupalia, Ofertia, Weekendesk, and LetsBonus offering similar services while many others were scammers who prayed on unsavvy internet users, increasing mistrust. Groupon was our competitor and king of our market, however, we offered two different business models: “collective purchase” VS “auction.” There was no direct competition. NEW CHALLENGERS ENTER THE ARENA They beat us to the punch. Which made the team nervous, while it made me excited: 1. They could pave the way and explain our business model. 2. I could analyze how to competitors were handling the same issues I was and use them as a point of reference while learning what worked and what didn’t. THE PROBLEM Coming in last place. How could I make SubastadeOcio different and succeed? Before we begin, you oughtta know

3. ” “ M A R C Z I N C K Our second challenge was to find this efficiency we had to get a sufficiently large volume of people bidding. At this point “online marketing is really important,” and it is now, a non-existent problem. Ads should be shown to people interested in travel and leisure activities to let them know that there is a different way to book these activities.

4. M A R K E T S A T U R A T I O N & C H E A P P R O P O S A L THE CHALLENGE: Standing out from both: competitors dominating the discounts/offers market as Groupon and other online auction websites that were first to launch. Our business model could risk the perception of having cheap leisure activities or not encouraging fast action. C H A P T E R 0 1 Content W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

5. U X W R I T I N G We offered experiences, and our bidders had to experience the thrill of a live auction. For users to be engaged and actively bid - we knew they had to WANT IT. The deals and activities offered on Subastad- eOcio were similar to our competitors; however, the user experience was completely different. In order to motivate our users to bid in our auctions - and try again in case they lost, we had to have a different tone and style. Every message, every button, every process. We needed to bring the thrill of a live auction to our platform. We needed a CTA (call-to-action) that triggered our bidder’s passion and encouraged them to outbid each other. Com- mands like “Learn More” or “More info” are for offers you can get anytime, anywhere. We wanted users to feel FOMO (fear of missing out). Miss out from an activity, miss out from naming their own price. They had to feel the urgency; they had to WANT IT. Thus, I suggested using “LO QUIERO” on our buttons, which became synonymous with our platform. “Lo quiero” (I want it): a CTA that knew how to push buttons W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

6. P R O D U C T C O N T E N T When users came to our platform, they weren’t bidding for a dinner at a restaurant or a weekend getaway, they were bidding for experiences: and each auction's content had one goal: selling the experience. The market was saturated with the same offers, we needed to stand out and be memorable. Titles, short descriptions, long descriptions, and any piece of content had to be playful and break with the “tradi- tional” tone used by our competitors. To sell the experience, users had to picture themselves enjoying the activity or plan we were auctioning. To earn their trust and avoid unhappy customers we also made to zoom in on the small print. W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y Our content: irreverent - yet informative

7. The content in this section had to put users “in the driver's seat,” describing the experience so they feel the joy they could have if they won the auction, thus generating great- er interest, engagement, and bidding. Picture it... For users to imagine the whole picture, each auction clearly described the experience: what's included, additional fees (if any), avail- ability, blackout dates, and all the information they could need to make an informed decision. Not so ﬁne(print) W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

8. AUCTIONS FINAL BIDS PRICE RAISED BY 50%

9. U S E R E N G A G E M E N T A N D T R A F F I C THE CHALLENGE: motivate registered users to participate in auctions, engage in bis wars, and ultimately raise total bid prices. C H A P T E R 0 2 Email Marketing W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

10. Without a doubt, the email that our users would see most frequently. The email was triggered when someone had a higher bid and was on the lead and how they could get back on top. I wanted users to know they could win the auction by bidding again. By users outbidding each other, it would raise the final bid price for all auctions, giving our providers a better ROI. A better ROI per provider would increase their loyalty, provid- ing better products and conditions or even exclusive products. EMAIL SUBJECT: “Someone dared to outbid you in [auction name]” CTA: “Will you let this go unpunished? Show them who's the boss!" Gamiﬁed emails: You were Outbid 01 After noticing a spike in traffic and bids before an auction's timer reached zero, I learned that to increase the odds of winning and keeping final auction prices low, some users would wait until the very end of an auction to make their first bid. We risked alienating early bidders, who could believe our platform was rigged, and our providers if their earnings were low. The solu- tion? Fifteen minutes before an auction ends, all bidders would receive a notification to stay vigilant so they could win. EMAIL SUBJECT: “It could be yours ; [auction name] is about to end!” CTA: Are you going to let them take it? No way! Act faster than them. Auction ending soon 02 W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

11. When an auction ended, all users - except the winner - received an email notifying them about the auction ending, who the winner was, and when the auction would be live again. This email increased transparency, helping us build user trust and sales. Auction ended - users who didn’t win 03 W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

12. EMAIL #1 TRAFFIC SOURCE

13. W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y W E A L S O N E E D E D V A L I D A T I O N THE CHALLENGE: with rampant distrust by internet users and many companies scamming people, how could we earn users' trust? Find Out More T I M E T O G E T C R E A T I V E Creativity is more important than knowledge C H A P T E R 0 3 Social Media

14. “People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. You should be an open book, be trans- parent.” Phillip C. McGraw In 2013, internet users in Spain were wary of trusting online businesses. Scams were frequent, and to top it all off: for the spanish market, Subastad- eOcio's business model was brand new, untested and different. Our social media channels were an asset for building trust. We did these by sharing three type of publications on our Fan pages: Social Proof 1. SCREENCAPTURE FINISHED AUC- TIONS WITH AWESOME DEALS Did someone get an awesome deal on our platform? We showed it! Seeing is believing. I shared those screen captures as posts in our social media, although, for privacy, I hid their profile info. Now our followers could see we were for real and that it was possible to name your price to enjoy your favorite activities. 2. CALLING ALL #SUBASTEROS Curious and cautious followers who were weary flooded our social media channel with comments and ques- tions to our users. They wanted vali- dation. We would publicly tag those users in a public post sharing their queries with our community and asking them to share their experiences. 3. USER GENERATED CONTENT To collect user feedback and improve our services, we contacted #subasteros that had claimed and participated in leisure activities purchased on our platform. Most, if not all were positive feedback, so we asked them for con- sent to share it on our website and social media, serving as social proof. W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

15. Content created to share as social proof on our website, newsletter, and social media channels. Social Proof W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

16. S O C I A L P R O O F W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

17. W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y N O ( K E Y ) W O R D S T O D E S C R I B E U S THE CHALLENGE: no one was looking for us. Purchasing leisure activities on live digital auctions was unheard of. Internet users searched for keywords such as “hotel discountes,” “hotel offers;” those who looked for “hotel auctions” were looking to buy a hotel, not book a night. Free organic search seemed an impossible traffic source channel. Find Out More T I M E T O G E T C R E A T I V E Creativity is more important than knowledge C H A P T E R 0 4 SEO - SEM & Online Ads

18. Epic battles, worthy of Games of Thrones, were fought by competitors like Groupon, Groupalia, and LetsBo- nus to be #1 on SERP results using “offer” as their keyword. Competitors like Bidduz and Bidaway, were positioning their content with “auction” as part of their keywords. Should we follow suit? Copying our competitors could have been an expensive and potentially destructive mistake. ERROR 404 Using Google Trends and their keyword search index tool, I realized that simply swapping the word “offer” for “auction” to generate new keywords (as the others had done) was not going to work, as internet users didn’t use these search terms. Like N’Sync before me, I was now going to sing “Bye, bye, bye” to plan an SEO and an SEM strategy. SHOULD WE JOIN THE COMPETI- TION? Our current content and content guidelines had to be modified to include: “offers” as a keyword. For example: leisure offers, hotel offers, restaurant offers, etc... The IT team updated our in house CMS to assist our on-site SEO efforts. The CMS would use the product title, product descriptions and image file name as meta and alt-tags automati- caly. Our content manual was updated to record this process and include the new "irrerent" style guidelines.

19. Since day one I knew "offers" was only a temporary keyword. I needed to generate awareness around "auctions." The competition was tough, but I wasn’t going to back down. Competitors had been in the market for longer, and we were playing catch-up. To index more pages, raking with long-tail keywords we created new categories and subcategories pages and included canonical links. Any and every meta information, alt-title, or anchor text we already had was optimized or created. We used our blog to help us position our top keywords, generating content that included them or creating inter- nal links. I also did off-site SEO, and participated in content exchange and link-building efforts on third-party websites and directories. Sure, our content was search-en- gine-spider bait, but it had to be read- able to our visitors, so we did use the keyword “auction” in our website, content, and meta info. To do so, I turned to social ad campaigns on Facebook and did media buying using RTB to generate awareness, focusing on our claim as “hotels from 1€. You decide the price!" Once visitors started pouring in and converting, I started using ”auction” on our push campaigns. We analyzed our platform traffic sources to monitor any changes in search terms, and a few months in, we started receiving organic traffic from users who had used “auction” as a keyword on their search terms. When I noticed a spike in traffic from these sources, I modified our on-site SEO, exchanging the word “offers” for “auctions.” And yes, that was the plan all along. Competing by pushing and pulling W W W . A L E J A N D R O T O R R . E S S U B A S T A D E O C I O C A S E S T U D Y

20. E-Commerce Awards 2014. From left to right: Alejandro Torres, (Marketing Director), Marc Zinck (CEO), Ignacio López (Sales Director) JUNE 2014 D A T A Biggest Online auction platform community on social media - beat- ing eBay Spain. #1 Registered users 250K Unique daily visitors 15K Awarded auctions 200K

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