It's a case study in effective social marketing.
When Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong airline, wanted to boost brand awareness among American executives who fly often to Asia, it turned to social network LinkedIn.
As part of a nine-month campaign that ended last year but came to light recently, LinkedIn provided the airline with lists of business travellers with seniority who live near the airline's US hubs and who conduct business in Hong Kong, based on their membership in LinkedIn groups related to business travel in Asia, such as the China Networking Group.
Cathay Pacific then used display ads that nudged people to "recommend" its products on the airline's products page on LinkedIn, and 97 people did.
Each recommendation was posted as updates on users' LinkedIn networks, spreading the word.
Three sponsored polls asked business travellers what they might want to redeem their airline points for besides free tickets, such as electronics, concert tickets, or charitable donations. The surveys drew 1,324 responses from business travellers, which helped the airline prioritise future promotions.
Dennis Owen, Vice President Marketing Americas, says in a written statement:
"We already know the big companies going to china, but a lot of the small and medium-sized companies and individuals fall below our radar. Of the people that were recommending Cathay Pacific, there were very few company names that I already knew. This was great information."
Marketing as a growth business for LinkedIn
Last Friday, LinkedIn reported strong revenue growth for the third quarter, noting that $64 million, or about a fourth of its revenue, came from ads.
The company says that 72% of its UK members "follow" at least one brand of some kind via its site and that most of its members travel for business, according to its internal surveys. For instance, Cathay Pacific has 17,000 followers on the site.
Social travel takes off
Several high profile, pure plays in social travel (WAYN, Gogobot, Airbnb, Wipolo, Trippy, Roomarama, Tripl, Wimdu, etc.) have focused on leisure travellers.
Yet it's been business travellers who have been the first to embrace social travel as a way of turning downtime into productive time by setting up face-to-face meetings. Trip-planning tools like TripIt, IMGuest, Plancast, and Planely all can be integrated with LinkedIn to allow business travellers to make connections via travel.
It appears LinkedIn is a dark horse candidate for a victor in the social travel race.