Bubble Hotels are the coolest new way to combine the benefits and awe of camping with the comforts of a hotel.
Bubble Hotels are large, dome-like, clear-top structures that allow guests to gaze at the stars while enjoying the comforts of a hotel room, regardless of weather.
The first location will be in Joshua Tree.
Phase 1: TestBoom
Like the majority of our clients, we started them on our TestBoom program to test demand for the product before we committed to a full launch together. In TestBoom, we use a proprietary system and predictive model to determine how successful a launch will be with minimal upfront investment of time and money.
Messaging & Positioning
TestBoom begins with our Messaging & Positioning process. During this phase, we developed the initial ways we wanted to position Bubble Hotels in the marketplace.
From this process, we came up with 2 to 4 angles to test in the market. There are many ways to communicate the value of a product. An angle can be thought of as one of those points of value that we want to lead with. Here’s what we came up with for Bubble Hotels.
- Experience nature from your own private oasis
- Luxury of a hotel without losing the benefits of being in nature
- Being able to enjoy and experience the outdoors in a new way
- Wanderlust vibes
Next, we identified 2–4 audiences we wanted to test on Facebook
Think of an audience as a type of person — what are their interests, their age, their gender, etc.?
Here are a few audiences we came up with for Bubble Hotels:
- Travelers
- Newlyweds
- Photographers
- Influencers/social media enthusiasts
Test using our Reservation Funnel
Using the angles and the audiences, we’ll next want to program advertisements and send traffic down our Reservation Funnel which can be pictured below:
The ultimate goal of the reservation is get the user to put down a $1 deposit to reserve the product before you launch. Why? Because those that put down $1 to reserve the product before you launch are 30x more likely to buy.
You can learn more about what we call our Reservation Funnel by clicking here.
By putting down $1, users were able to reserve Bubble Hotels at a special VIP-only discount price. After only $2,227.74 of ad spend, we knew we had a winner on our hands with Bubble Hotels. Here were the stats:
- Ad spend: $2,227.74
- Leads: 4,496
- Reservations: 301
Using our predictive model, we had strong reason to believe that Bubble Hotels was going to do extremely well. They passed the TestBoom program and moved into Phase 2: LaunchBoom.
Phase 2: LaunchBoom
Once a product reaches Phase 2 of the LaunchBoom system, we are committed to having a massive launch. There’s a lot of small details that go into the process of preparing the launch. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to focus on the most important details.
Scaling pre-campaign advertising
During TestBoom, we only used a $2,227.74 ad budget. For LaunchBoom, we increased the budget to $26,883.50 for the pre-campaign. We diversified the ad budget by targeting additional audiences and testing new ad creative. You can see the results in the screenshot below.
Here are the notable metrics:
- Ad Spend: $26,883.50
- Leads: 32,125
- Cost per Lead: $0.84
- Reservations: 4,191
- Cost per Reservation: $6.41
The cost per reservation was especially exciting! A one-night stay (the lowest perk tier) was $299, so getting the reservation price down so low meant that we knew we’d have a great ROAS.
VIP Facebook Group
We call those that put down the $1 reservation deposit a “VIP.” One of the benefits of being a VIP is they are added to a private VIP Facebook group. The Facebook group allowed them to interact with the Bubble Hotels team as well as the rest of the Bubble Hotels VIPs. This is a great way for us to create an engaged community of people before we launch.
Having a “LaunchBoom”
With a pre-campaign email list built, we emailed the list when we launched to get funded extremely quickly. You can see in the graph below, the spike of sales on Indiegogo over the first 48 hours.
On the first day, we raised $258,238! On the second day, we raised $45,230. In 48 hours, we were already at $303,468 in funding.
Keeping the campaign momentum going
I like to compare a strong LaunchBoom at the beginning of a campaign to building a strong foundation for the rest of the campaign to build upon. The credibility gained by getting funded so quickly makes future visitors to the campaign more likely to convert. Here’s how we were able to capitalize on the strong start and keep momentum going.
Facebook & Instagram Advertising
The best way to continue to drive consistent and profitable revenue, is through Facebook & Instagram advertising. For Bubble Hotels, we were able to scale spend even better than we did in the pre-campaign because we now had the credibility of getting funded quickly.
Here are the important metrics:
- Total spend: $89,885.44
- Direct purchase value: $365,167
- Direct ROAS: 4.06x
- Total Raised: $690,453
- Total ROI: 7.68x
Another reason why the advertising was so effective was because Indiegogo lets you add the Facebook Pixel (Kickstarter doesn’t allow this). By having the Facebook Pixel you can let Facebook do what Facebook does best: optimize the advertisements using their algorithms. Since we know if someone purchases from an ad, we can tell Facebook to optimize the ads and show them to more people like the person that purchased.
Indiegogo Promotions
The Indiegogo team did a great job supporting the campaign with promotions. We were able to unlock many of the promotions because we had funded the project so much through email, Facebook, and PR. Here are some of the ways Indiegogo promoted the project:
- Email newsletters
- Homepage placement
- High placement in the category listing
Because of these promotions and visibility on the platform, Indiegogo directly contributed $54,856 to the project.
Indiegogo InDemand
Indiegogo has a great feature called Indiegogo InDemand which allows creators to continue to sell products on the platform after the campaign ends. This is how Bubble Hotels continued to fund the project after the initial campaign ended.
Through the campaign funding we raised $690,453, and we raised an additional $142,269 through InDemand. InDemand is a great way for us to continue to scale on Indiegogo’s platform until the creator is ready to transition to ecommerce.
To wrap it up, here are some of the biggest takeaways:
- Bubble Hotels used TestBoom to predict likelihood of success
- Built a pre-launch email list using our Reservation Funnel to identify people who are 30x more likely to buy
- Used pre-launch email list to have a “LaunchBoom” and raise over $250k in the first day
- Live campaign Facebook ads drove $365,167 in revenue from $89,885.44 in ad spend (a 4.06x return)
- Indiegogo promotions directly contributed $54,856 to the project
- Used Indiegogo InDemand to continue to drive sales after the campaign ended
Are you looking to launch a product soon? Get in touch with us so we can learn more about you and your new product!
