ZSSK: How we helped the national carrier to gain more satisfied customers
Performance & Social
ZSSK
Client introduction
ZSSK (Railway Company Slovakia) is a national carrier. It operates passenger train services to Slovakia and we all have a lot of experience with it.
Assignment:
The client’s brief was to get more people to travel by train and to raise awareness of the possibility of buying tickets online directly on the railway company’s website.
ZSSK also wanted to ramp up communication on their social networks, build an Instagram almost from scratch and show Slovaks that they are a brand you want to be an ambassador for.
Objectives:
1. Sell more tickets from online
2. Improve the general PR of the company in the eyes of Slovaks
3. Boost social networks and bring more fans to ZSSK
Strategy:
While travelling by train, you gain the most important thing you have – time. You don’t have to focus on what’s happening on the way. You can sleep peacefully and not put anyone at risk. You can use it to study or work and by the time you reach your destination, everything will be sorted and you won’t have lost a minute. You can conveniently buy your ticket online.
Many people have unfortunate experiences with the railways that they are not shy to showcase on social media, so the client expected not only a good PPC campaign on ticketing networks, but also polished crisis communication and community management.
How we proceeded
During our cooperation with ZSSK, we mainly created search campaigns, banner campaigns and remarketing. Thanks to our search campaign, this ultimately resulted in an excellent conversion campaign. People were not used to buying tickets on ZSSK’s website. We taught them.
In the second part of the collaboration, we published posts that focused on interaction with the audience, on issues that everyone can relate to – from whether they like the train station in their city, to inviting them to send us photos of trains or tagging us in photos. Our visuality was built around what you can see if you travel by train. We educated the audience not only about the beauty of Slovakia, but also Europe. We published educational travel pieces and connected travelers with the national carrier.
We built Instagram from scratch and although Facebook already existed, we still had fantastic results not only in the number of followers but also in calming public opinion, which at the time was swayed towards the client.
Every Wednesday we came to Bratislava Central Station with a camera and a microphone and asked people questions about train travel, asked their opinion and shared videos in stories.
Through relentless education and explanation, we worked with the client’s PR agency and team to create a crisis communication that ultimately brought people together instead of tearing them apart.
