Web Analytics Report: Digital Marketing of Virgin Atlantic Airways

This report provides a detailed analysis of the digital marketing strategies employed by Virgin Atlantic Airways. It begins with an introduction to the airline's marketing situation, including its main competitors and its focus on leisure and business markets. The report then examines Virgin Atlantic's website, highlighting its features and customer service focus. It delves into the airline's marketing strategies, including its use of social media and partnerships. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to search engine analysis, exploring customer acquisition through metrics like heavy user share, cost per click, and leading keywords. It analyzes the performance of different search engine campaigns, including Google and Yahoo, and provides recommendations for optimization. The report also examines customer loyalty metrics and the importance of communication and customer relationships. Finally, it offers recommendations for customer acquisition, retention, and overall optimization, drawing conclusions based on the data and analysis presented.

Analysis of the digital marketing strategies of the Virgin Atlantic
Airways company
Introduction............................................................................................3
Virgin Atlantic Airways Marketing Situation...........................................3
The existing strategies and analysis of Virgin Atlantic Airways.............4
Virgin Atlantic website analysis...........................................................4
Marketing Strategies used by VA airways...........................................5
Search Engine Analysis..........................................................................5
i) Heavy User Share.........................................................................6
Cost per clicks and cost per acquisitions............................................8
Leading keywords in VA......................................................................9
Loyalty Metrics..................................................................................10
Communication and relationship......................................................10
1 | P a g e

RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................11
Customer Acquisition........................................................................11
Customer retention...........................................................................12
Optimization......................................................................................12
CONCLUSION........................................................................................13
References...........................................................................................14
Appendices...........................................................................................15
Appendix 1: Weight average method................................................15
Appendix 2: Calculation of customer lifetime value..........................16
Introduction
In the present age, with the increased innovations in the internet,
electronic commerce, and the networked economy has been the main
instruments fostering business growth, the relationship among business
partners and commercial movements (Palos-Sanchez et al. 2017). Checking
onto the company's history, it is evident that most companies have adapted
all their activities to the new existing technology, new management
strategies, and other effective communications landscape. This has also
been accelerated by the tremendous increased power of computing in
various devices that customers use (Hanke & Teo 2003).
Most travelers who prefer airline transport depend on the internet as
their main source of information. Because of the wide use of the internet,
most customers get access to information very easily, these have led to
more competition in the airline industry. Digital marketing has become part
of the airline industry where most companies in this business have come up
with various Digital Marketing techniques providing new outstanding
methods for online purchase of tickets (Wei & Ozok 2005). In the past, when
the technology was not widely used, customers depend on their friends or
associates to get information while in the present day, customers buy
2 | P a g e

products through searching for information using their phones or computers
(Macdermott 2015). This report is focused on Virgin Atlanta in terms of
strategies used in Digital Marketing.
Virgin Atlantic Airways Marketing Situation
Virgin Atlantic Airways obtain their 100% revenues from the air
transport services. Their main competitors being British Airways, EasyJet and
Ryanair. The unique part of the Virgin Atlantic is that it is built on a
foundation that is focused on the leisure markets and businesses and drives
on efficiency and effectiveness (Graver & Rutherford 2018). This enables
them to take advantage of its competitors. Satisfying their customer needs is
the main central strategy of Virgin Atlantic. The market analysis and
competitor's analysis can be seen in the Appendix.
The existing strategies and analysis of Virgin Atlantic Airways
Virgin Atlantic website analysis
 Virgin Atlantic website contains very many features meaning its
main focus is for customer services. It has customer charter
texts, flight disruption policy and carriage conditions. All these
website features contribute to the easy purchase of air tickets
for visitors.
3 | P a g e

Figure: 1 Figure VA official website homepage
 For better customer service experience in VA, is a requirement
for all customers to register with the company. This also reduces
payments insecurities.
Marketing Strategies used by VA airways
 Virgin Atlantic is very active in most social media channels like
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth. Most Virgin Atlantic
customers make inquiries by participating and interacting with
the company via these platforms. The company has 248,490
followers on Facebook and 198924 followers on Twitter
(Yahyapour 2015). According to simmilareb.com, social media
marketing is a very good strategy to meet various customers
and listen to their complaints about the company development
(SimilarWeb 2018).
 VA also uses Lanner Group system for improving check-in efforts
in order to satisfy more customer needs (Alamdari and Fagan
2017). The system together with some partnerships in VA leads
4 | P a g e

to express check-in services for passenger baggage and First-
Class passengers.
 These partnerships with VA have seen the company rising the
ladder of being among the top Airways in the world.
Search Engine Analysis
Here, we analyze the company data as we examine the Virgin Atlantic
campaigns in terms of generic, branded keyword and keyword groups. The
mathematical calculation of SEO is discussed later on the Appendix.
Some of the strategies used by the VA to acquire customers are
discussed below:
i) Heavy User Share
This is a metric for making potential customers loyal to the company
by allowing heavy users to having a small share of the company. This brings
a feeling of ownership, thus promotes referral rates. Basing on the marketing
investment, Virgin Atlantic’s publisher contribution marketing campaign is
$3,906,596.63 and generating Net Revenue according to Ad Dollar spent per
click-through is $3.41. From the data given, the average conversion rate is
56.93% and the cost on ad per dollar spent is $15,397.77. This is a good
impression on customer retention. The overall total cost is $755,315.92. The
figure below is a graph showing Net Revenue and Total Cost.
5 | P a g e

Google -
Global Google -
US MSN -
Global MSN - US Overture
- Global Overture
- US Yahoo -
US
£0.00
£200,000.00
£400,000.00
£600,000.00
£800,000.00
£1,000,000.00
£1,200,000.00
£1,400,000.00
£1,600,000.00
Net Revenue=Total Revenue-Total Cost
Sum of Total Cost
Sum of Net Revenue
Figure:4 Sum of Total Cost and Net Revenue.
From the above graph, Google-US has the highest net revenue
followed by Yahoo-Us while MSN-Global and MSN-US having the least net
revenue respectively. Despite Google-US leading in the net revenue, it has a
very low rate of conversion and returns on ad dollar spent. From the above
graph, Google-US has the highest net revenue followed by Yahoo-Us while
MSN-Global and MSN-US having the least net revenue respectively. Despite
Google-US leading in the net revenue, it has a very low rate of conversion
and returns on ad dollar spent.
6 | P a g e

0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
A graph of Return on Ad Dollar spent against Conversion
rate
Google - Global MSN - Global Overture - Global Yahoo - US
Conversion Rate
Return on Ad Dollar Spent
Figure:5 Conversion Rate and Dollar Spent
Although Google-US has high net revenue and volume, it also has the
greatest cost per click. Moreover, its conversion rate and return on ad dollar
spent are low. Yahoo- the US has the least expenditure and receives the
highest rate of conversion among the rest of social media. Therefore, Virgin
Atlantic Airways should consider its budget on the publishers in order to
make more profits.
7 | P a g e

Cost per clicks and cost per acquisitions
These are monetary metrics that shows how each customer at VA pays
for the response.
Google -
Global Google - US MSN - Global MSN - US Overture -
Global Overture - US Yahoo - US
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
CPC, CTR% and Conversion Rate
Average of Avg. Cost per Click Average of Trans. Conv. % Average of Engine Click Thru %
Figure:6 Click Through Rate, Conversion Rate and Cost per click.
In the figure above, MSN performs better compared to Overture
because of the high click-through rate. Yahoo-Us has the highest average
cost per click of 16.0% and the average click-through of 9.0%. The Overture-
Us has the lowest conversion rate of 1.0%. Generally, the cost per click is
seen to be average I almost all the media used by Virgin Atlantic customers
with the lowest being 4% and the highest being 16.0%. The data from the
graph indicates that MSN-Global's performance is best among the rest.
However, more efforts are required to see the conversion rate increasing.
This means that Virgin Atlantic should channel more investments capital to
the website improvement.
The formula for calculating percentage click-through rate is as below:
Engine Click Through Rate (%) =(Visitors/Impression) *100
8 | P a g e

Cost per Click=(Total/Click)
Conversion Rate=((Total Booking))/Visitors * 100
From the graph, we can conclude that the company should increase its
cost per click to attract more customers.
Leading keywords in VA
The graph below represents the five most visited campaigns
Virgin Atlantic
Global Campaign Virgin Atlantic
Branded Virgin Atlantic
Brand & UK
Destinations
Virgin Atlantic
Global Campaign Virgin Atlantic
Brand & UK
Destinations
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
Top 5 most visited campaigns
Clicks Trans. Conv. %
Figure:7 Most visited campaigns
The Virgin Atlantic branded is doing well in terms of clicks and
conversion rates. The highest attained clicks are 300,000 with a retained
customer visits of 1.6% while both the Virgin Atlantic Global campaign and
Virgin Atlantic Brand & U.K. Destinations recoded the least clicks, according
to the data provided. The campaign of Virgin Atlantic Airways UK
destinations recorded 30,418 and 14,713 visitors respectively. However,
much still need to be done to win more customers for better profits.
According to the similar web, the topmost keyword that most
customers search is Virgin Atlantic which has 779.7% while the least is the
9 | P a g e

flight to New York with 40.27% (similar web 2019). This metric is very
essential to VA as it gives the lead to acquisition and conversion of
customers.
Loyalty Metrics
This is a very important customer relations aspect because both the
customer the company must enjoin to achieve it. Through this loyalty, VA will
be assured of getting a fixed income hence having great financial stability.
To achieve this, the company have taken advantage of free advertisement.
This will further ensure that potential customers spread the company news
by mouth.
Communication and relationship
According to Goldsmith, the bulk of customers or money or the number
of customers is not enough to keep any business running smoothly but a
good relationship does (Goldsmith & Loskot 2000). For the VA to keep its
dream of being the best airline in the world, it must consider and work
towards bettering the relationship between the company and the customers.
This is a good metric to consider if the company desires to have a constant
profit flow.
RECOMMENDATIONS
From the analysis of the data given, it is very evident that there are
areas that need many considerations in every online environment. These
areas are customer retention, customer acquisition and finally optimization
strategies.
Customer Acquisition
i) Promotion strategy
This is aimed at offering incentives to attract more customers to hire
services offered by the company (Yilmaz & Bititci, 2006). From the data set,
Top 5 keywords that had a high probability of booking were related to cheap
air ticket, this shows how the price of ticket fare can attract more customers.
10 | P a g e

ii) Word of mouth
Most visitors, when treated well as per their expectations, tend to be
loyal to the company and share the products as well as the website to their
friends. This can be done easily on social media like Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn and so forth
iii) Customers relations management
Good customer relation is a good marketing strategy as it aims to get
and maintain its customers and, in the process, the company is able to
identify long term customers. This helps the company maintain good
relationships with long term customers while also satisfying the needs of the
occasional clients to win their trust (McDonald 2002).
iv) Always give back to your best first-time customers:
If the company runs a special product offer, visitors should be considered
first to help retain them.
Metrics:
It is commendable to monitor visitors on a website (Farris et al 2011).
The acquisition strategy is measurable by a number of click counts on a
website. Increase in the number of clicks indicates that the SEO plans are
well articulated. However, the cost per click is a stand-alone metric that the
VA should have close monitoring to compare which one works best.
Customer retention
i) Promotion Strategy
This can be achieved through package ticketing where the keywords
with high customer visits are given low prices.
ii) Next time discounts:
This offer is aimed at assuring the visitors that the next time they
would be having some discounts on the services rendered to them if they
chose the company another day.
11 | P a g e

iii) Customer satisfaction:
The company’s main aim is to give the best services and products to
both new and old customers. Therefore, the work on improving the services
offered.
v) Company Credibility:
If the company creates a good trust with its customers, some potential
customers jump away from its competitors to its advantage.
vi) Survey of every new customer:
Satisfaction survey is a very vital tool to businesses as it enables the
company to identify at-risk visitors before they leave you. It also helps you
know your better products in the market. When using this, ensure that the
emailed visitors do not require a separate survey site for form completion.
vii) Don not downgrade your customers:
If in any case a client fails to pay in time for a product such cell phone
air ticketing app, do not downgrade to a free version. This will make the user
to lose trust in you as he will los most premium services after the down
grade. To solve this, the company should put payment defaulters in some
deactivated form (Sharma 2013).
Metrics:
This metric is used to identify factors that would lead to customers to
repeat purchases and return page visits. According to Graf and Maas, all the
strategies used are aimed at achieving the customer lifetime value (Graf and
Maas 2008), therefore VA should be working at maintaining the customer
relationship at long terms. This can be achieved through non-intrusive
contacts such as emails and social media
12 | P a g e