АНАЛИЗ РЕКЛАМНОЙ СТРАТЕГИИ КОМПАНИИ “AVIASALES” С ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕМ РЕКЛАМЫ У БЛОГЕРОВ И ПУТИ ЕЕ СОВЕРШЕНСТВОВАНИЯ

In order for the company to be able to create the necessary brand image in the consumer's mind, it is necessary to apply a comprehensive marketing communication system. In particular, it is necessary to use various marketing channels, methods and promotion tools. Aviasales’ marketing team manages to successfully create an image of a fun and simple ticket search through various channels, as well as convey the advantages of the product and the company without a direct description and be in close interaction with the audience.

Aviasales uses different methods of Internet promotion in its strategy. A significant part is taken up by social media marketing: Aviasales can often be seen on various digital platforms, in publications not only from famous people, but also from ordinary users. Aviasales' Internet communications with the public take place on the following social networks: Twitter, Telegram, Vkontakte, YouTube, as well as its own online magazine with the name “PSJR”. On these platforms, Aviasales most often uses the following social media marketing tools: content marketing and working with opinion leaders.

Within content marketing - that is, a set of marketing techniques for distributing useful information to gain consumer trust - Aviasales talks about travel in various social networks. With the help of Aviasales content, it stimulates consumption and demand for their tickets. For example, when the dollar exchange rate rose and air ticket prices followed, the company immediately urged subscribers to purchase tickets at the old prices before it was too late. This technique increased sales in foreign destinations by 45%. Aviasales also often communicates with users in the comments to publications. This helps customers realize again that Aviasales is on a par with ordinary people - this is how a close emotional connection is formed [2].

However, the most interesting tool that Aviasales uses masterfully and surprises its competitors with this is working with opinion leaders, namely advertising from bloggers. An ordinary user of the Runet could have noticed a long time ago: Aviasales is, practically, everywhere. Not so long ago, this company became almost the most prominent advertiser on YouTube, there is not a single famous show on social networks with millions of reach, where Air Sales would not be advertised at least once. So, it can be understood that Aviasales adheres to a very intensive promotional strategy through advertising from bloggers on social networks. When developing a promotion strategy, Aviasales proceeds from the following data: on average, Russian travelers buy air tickets 1 or 2 times a year. The highest demand for air tickets falls from May to August — during this time, Aviasales makes the maximum possible amount of advertising from bloggers - which is why during this period, Air Sales is most noticeable to ordinary users.  The main goals for which Aviasales does so much blogging advertising are to grow brand awareness and gain the trust of the audience.

The next step in the strategy is to choose the right bloggers. Most often, Aviasales chooses macrobloggers with views from 30 thousand to 1 million. At the same time, marketers rely on systematic growth - if severe falls or sharp jumps in the blogger's statistics are noticed, then Aviasales refuses to work with him. The company's marketing team also evaluates audience engagement: it is important that there are a lot of likes, and most of the comments are positive. Aviasales likes to choose travel bloggers, because the audience of these bloggers is quite positively reacting to the bloggers and buys tickets more often. For example, their advertising was often seen on the channel of the traveler Anton Ptshukin, as well as in the travel show of Ruslan Usachev. However, it is important to understand that Aviasales does not focus only on travelers, because people fly not only on vacation, but also to families or on business trips. Therefore, the company's marketing is aimed at everyone, and not at a specific segment of the audience. Accordingly, the company often chooses bloggers or Internet shows that have nothing to do with travel and are aimed at the mass audience. For example, the company actively cooperates with blogger Dmitry Maslennikov, who publishes entertainment content unrelated to travel, but with millions of views.  In the examples above Aviasales uses such a tool of blogger advertising as integration into content and direct advertising [3].

The strategy of promoting Aviasales through advertising from bloggers has another tool - sponsorship. Now the brand's ambassador is the famous blogger and stand-up comedian Danila Poperechniy (admitted as a foreign agent). In all stand-ups on his YouTube channel, the blogger mentions Aviasales, and he even got a tattoo with the brand logo - which caused a lot of excitement on social networks and increased the recognition of Aviasales even more.

Aviasales has a special approach to the next stage of the strategy - evaluating the effectiveness of cooperation with bloggers. They do not evaluate the effectiveness of advertising by the number of clicks on links under a video or blogger's post. Since all ads from Aviasales bloggers are focused on brand marketing, not performance. Here, the goal of marketing is to stay in the viewer's head and evoke associations with the brand. Therefore, the main KPI of Aviasales when evaluating the effectiveness of advertising through a blogger is the number of views and the growth of brand traffic to the site [4].

To sum up, Aviasales actively uses social media marketing to promote its brand and does it quite successfully. Resorting to advertising through bloggers, Aviasales more often uses tools such as integration into content, direct advertising or ambassadorship. Bloggers for advertising can be different because Aviasales do not divide the audience into segments. To evaluate the effectiveness of advertising from bloggers, Aviasales monitors metrics such as reach and traffic to the website. It was this strategy that allowed Aviasales to achieve such recognition and be the most popular service for finding cheap tickets.

Despite the high efficiency of Aviasales in promotion through advertising from bloggers, it is still possible to find growth points that will help achieve even greater success.

Firstly, at the moment many online platforms are blocked or banned on the territory of the Russian Federation, which makes it possible to publish advertisements on these sites. However, now there is a rapid development of Russian online platforms, which are gaining popularity among bloggers and users. Accordingly, Aviasales needs to adapt its promotion strategy and start collaborating with bloggers on new platforms such as Yappy, TenChat, YARUS, Rutube. Also, it must not be forgotten that many of the bloggers cooperating with Aviasales have acquired the status of foreign agents in the Russian Federation, and advertising with them is illegal in accordance with the Federal law "On the prohibition of advertising on the resources of foreign agents [1]."

Secondly, in its strategy, Aviasales often uses messages that are accessible and understandable to the younger generation, however, according to statistics, the share of travelers over the age of 45 is 23%, which is a fairly large layer of potential Aviasales’ consumers [5]. This segment may not understand the messages in advertising used by Aviasales in advertising for bloggers. Or, moreover, this segment may not be interested in those bloggers that Aviasales more often chooses for advertising. Because for the most part, those bloggers who advertise Aviasales have an audience between 18 and 35 years old. Accordingly, in order to increase awareness among the older generation, it is necessary to launch advertising campaigns in bloggers with an adult or elderly audience, as well as use more conservative and conventional messages in such advertising.

Summarizing all of the above, advertising from bloggers in Aviasales will be even more effective if the marketing team expands the number of online channels for publishing such advertising and searching for bloggers, not limited to traditional Internet sites. Also, a favorable change will be aimed at the older generation, who also actively travels and flies airplanes, but may not understand the company's youth communication methods in blogger advertising.