Case Study – Mad Monkey – Stay the Night

Client

Mad Monkey

Location

SE Asia
Australia

Work

Social media management:

Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Paid social advertising

Client

Mad Monkey

Location

SE Asia
Australia

Work

Social media management:

Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

Paid social advertising

Lexie Hadley

Global Brand Manager at Mad Monkey:

“Working with the Stay the Night team has felt like gaining an extension of our own. They consistently went above and beyond – handling requests (even when sometimes outside of the original scope) without hesitation, and always with such a positive, can-do spirit. Knowing that our socials were fully managed took a huge weight off our shoulders, and we saw continuous follower growth and results throughout. If you’re considering working with them – I say do it. They’re wonderful, full of joy, absolute experts in their field and nothing is ever too much trouble.”

About

Mad Monkey is a well-established brand in the hostel industry, known for its lively atmosphere, budget friendly offerings and buzzing social calendar. Founded in 2011, the brand has grown rapidly, with hostels located across Southeast Asia and Australia.

The brand places a strong emphasis on creating a fun and inclusive community. This is reflected in their lively social events, such as pub crawls, beach parties, and cultural tours. Mad Monkey’s hostels are known for their welcoming atmosphere, making it easy for solo travellers to meet new people.

Main Challenges

When we began working with Mad Monkey Hostels in June 2024, the team were frustrated at their lack of cohesion and growth across social platforms and weren’t seeing ROI from organic or paid channels. They were also having trouble organising and engaging their local teams in terms of creating and sending content in order to showcase the experiences they offer.

Ensuring their organic and paid social strategies were best practice:

When we came on board, Mad Monkey Hostels had a recent change in leadership and they were seeking a new strategy which followed the latest trends and best practises in order to get the most out of the
platforms.

Establishing clear ROI from their marketing channels:

The Mad Monkey team were not able to track any bookings or revenue from organic social platforms. The lack of ROI was also preventing them from activating paid social campaigns.

Expanding brand awareness, maximising reach and growing their audiences with users from key target markets:

The Mad Monkey team wanted to invest heavily in expanding brand awareness among key target markets across the globe. They want to be known as the ‘best and only place to stay’ while backpacking across South East Asia.

Ensuring a holistic approach and strategy is executed across social platforms:

Before we came on board, their social platforms were run by a number of people, and there was little cohesion across platforms.

Results

Increase in direct bookings:

80%

Increase in direct booking revenue:

106%

Increased conversions from
social to website:

96%

Increase in TikTok in 40 days:

0 K+

Instagram audience growth:

0 K+

Reach across platforms to the key target
18-35 audience demographic:

0 m

Approach

In order to achieve Mad Monkey’s objectives, we implemented the following approach:

Targeting a largely Gen-Z audience, we reviewed copy and tone of voice tweaks that were required to make the brand more ‘human’ on social platforms. We knew we needed to make the content less polished and instead, make it authentic and relatable so that people could genuinely connect with it.

We developed a native ads strategy whereby we created and launched ad campaigns that looked more like organic content as we know this resonates more with this age group.

Implemented A/B testing across all organic platforms and in paid ad campaigns to ensure that we are pushing the most effective content types out to our target markets in order to drive better results.

We knew that re-engaging the local teams on the ground regarding content creation would be a challenge – especially when there had already been an unsuccessful attempt. We strategised with the onsite teams, developed tailored visual content guides for each property and shared detailed weekly briefs around the content that we were seeking.

We work closely with the Mad Monkey team, communicating with the marketing team on almost a daily basis and meeting with the leadership team every fortnight to discuss performance and progress.