When Rochester International Airport (RST) came to us, their goal was clear: reach high-intent travelers more efficiently to help drive bookings, grow passenger traffic, and improve load factors.
They wanted their marketing to do more than create awareness.
They wanted to understand how travelers actually interact with their campaigns. Were they searching for flights? Adding to cart? Booking?
We know great creative is only half the equation. Without data and reporting, it’s impossible to connect marketing activity to real traveler action.
That’s where FlyMyAirport came in. Partnering with Airport One, we helped RST connect their digital campaigns to real traveler behavior for the first time. With access to FlyMyAirport’s real-time data, we could finally see the full traveler journey, and use that insight to inform every decision.
Instead of focusing solely on broad awareness, we shifted our approach to follow real traveler behavior, targeting the moments that matter most in the path to purchase.
By the end of September 2025, travelers had searched nearly 70,000 flights on the RST site, giving us a clear, actionable picture of who our customers are and what they’re looking for.
The Approach + Results
We approached this challenge like an ecommerce problem: how do people shop for flights, and how can we meet them where they are?
Using FlyMyAirport data (live since January 2025), we built a campaign structure designed to identify and reach high-intent travelers while maximizing RST’s marketing budget.
We scaled our Meta and Google campaigns based on performance data and used those insights to shift spending toward the audiences and destinations showing the strongest engagement.
One of our biggest wins was using RST’s evergreen Flocal creative as the foundation for new campaign builds, content designed to both educate and entertain while driving measurable action.
Campaign Structure:
1 – General Traffic Campaign
Focused on our Flocal creative. This content was designed to be both educational and entertaining. It also helped us build a warm audience pool that we later used for more targeted campaigns, like our sales push.
2 – Sales Campaign (Optimized for Searches)
Promoted specific destinations where RST competes with nearby airports. The goal was to drive searches using the FlyMyAirport widget, giving us direct insight into traveler interest and building an audience we could track through the journey.
Retargeting Campaign (Optimized for Add to Cart)
Targeted people who had already searched on our widget. These were high-intent users, and we built retargeting campaigns to help move them closer to booking.
FlyMyAirport data gave us the visibility we needed to spend smarter. We were able to shift budget with confidence and scale other channels like Google more efficiently.
Since launching our FMA strategy on Meta, we’ve:
- Driven 27,000 searches via paid advertising
- Captured 1,841 add-to-carts
- Generated 28 immediate purchases
- 482 total purchases across all channels
- 482 total purchases across all channels
While cost per purchase (CPP) can appear high at first glance, we’ve leaned on cost per search (CPS) as a more directional metric — helping us interpret intent in a category with long consideration cycles and heavy comparison shopping.
Why it matters:
For Airports: Proof that marketing can drive real traveler actions — not just awareness.
For the Industry: Demonstrates that airports can measure marketing success like any ecommerce business.
For the Budget: Better attribution leads to smarter spending and improved ROI.
Having real-time visibility into traveler behavior changed everything for RST’s marketing strategy — and for how we build campaigns as an agency.
By listening to RST’s need for more efficient, high-intent targeting, we developed a strategy that helped maximize their marketing investment and directly support their goal of rebuilding passenger volume.
For RST, it meant more confident, data-backed decisions and a stronger connection between marketing and bookings.
For Hit Agency, it reaffirmed the value of pairing creative strategy with actionable data.
And for the airport industry, it shows what’s possible when agencies and partners work together to turn insights into measurable impact.
