Agnese Jakovica has almost two decades of experience at airBaltic. Her role as head of digital marketing encompasses international marketing, campaign design, and developing the airline’s performance marketing strategy.
Passengers seek flights that are convenient, affordable, and are either direct routes or with minimal layovers. For airlines in Central and Eastern Europe, meeting these demands is challenging due to geopolitical constraints, and intense competition from low-cost airlines.
This didn’t stop our ambition at airBaltic, however, to explore new markets and boost bookings from Western and Southern Europe to the Baltic States. We now connect the Baltics with more than 70 destinations across Europe and the Middle East. To further expand our reach, we needed deeper insights into customer preferences, including their desired travel destinations and how they search flights.
Seeking to expand our reach, we turned to our partner agency, Mediabrands Digital (MBD). Together, we leveraged Travel Analytics Center (TAC), a tool providing insights about where, when, and for how long people are looking to travel.
“We went over the data pieces in all the TAC reports and explored how we can use them in combination with airBaltic’s internal data,” Jelizaveta Novozilova, Digital Media Specialist at Mediabrands Digital, explained.
Untapped potential: Cities close to the airport
Over six months, together with Mediabrands Digital, we identified several global expansion opportunities and tested them out with more than 100 campaigns and 60000 ad copies.
For example, TAC Brand insights report data showed us a significant number of searches for our brand from Slovakia. This was a big surprise to us because we don’t even fly from there. It turned out that many Slovakians fly from Vienna. The city is just a short drive away from Slovakia and offers direct airBaltic flights to the Baltics.
Moreover, through TAC Destination trends report we identified Google search interest for travelling to the Baltic region from Bremen, which is only a 45-minutes train ride from Hamburg from where airBaltic offers direct flights to the Baltic capitals.
Similarly we also discovered search interest for flights to Baltics from Toulouse, which is not even close to airports we operate. Apparently, people in France are interested in travelling to the Baltic countries, so we could reach them and offer our flights from Nice.