Slovak Lines: Case study
How Slovak Lines Boosted ROAS & Proved Sponsorship Efficiency.
About Slovak lines
Slovak Lines is one of the most popular public bus transport providers in Slovakia, with a 70+ year history in passenger travel. Based in Bratislava and tracing its roots back to 1949, the company operates regular regional routes as well as international lines to destinations like Vienna and Prague.
While steeped in tradition, Slovak Lines has embraced innovation – shifting ticket sales online and launching a modern mobile app to enhance customer experience. This blend of legacy and technology positions the company uniquely in a competitive, low-margin industry where efficiency is paramount.
Objectives
Slovak Lines, a leading Slovak bus transport company, partnered with Forvio to elevate its marketing performance through Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM). The goal was to address three major challenges – engaging younger travelers, measuring offline media impact, and optimizing seasonal ad spend – all within the constraints of a low-margin business. By leveraging Forvio’s MMM SaaS solution, Slovak Lines gained a data-driven view of its marketing effectiveness. This collaboration led to a 16% increase in overall Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and more efficient budget allocation across both digital and traditional channels.
- Reaching Younger Demographics: The company needed to engage a new generation of travelers on social media and mobile platforms. Traditional marketing wasn’t effectively capturing the attention of younger audiences who primarily interact online (e.g. TikTok, Instagram).
- Justifying Offline Media Spend: Slovak Lines invested in offline brand campaigns – including eye-catching Jumbotron ads at a major sports stadium TipSport Arena in Bratislava – but lacked proof of their impact. Demonstrating the ROI of offline channels and sponsorships was crucial to defend and refine this spending.
- Optimizing Seasonal Budgets: Demand for bus travel fluctuates seasonally, with peaks (holidays, festivals, ski season) and off-peak lulls. In a low-margin business, it was critical to distribute the annual marketing budget optimally – ensuring strong presence during high-demand periods without overspending when ridership drops. The team needed guidance on how to balance and time their marketing investments for maximum year-round efficiency.
Solution
1. Sales channel segmentation
Using Forvio, the team built separate MMM models for each ticket sales channel – web sales, mobile app, and bus station ticket office. This granular segmentation allowed Slovak Lines to see the performance of each channel’s marketing efforts in isolation. By integrating data from online campaigns (Google, Meta) alongside in-app promotions and station sales, the models revealed how each channel contributed to overall sales.
The MMM methodology ensured that overlapping influences were accounted for, giving a clear picture of which channels were driving conversions and which needed adjustment.
2. Sport event attribution
To quantify the impact of offline media, Slovak Lines incorporated its Tipsport Arena in Bratislava stadium Jumbotron advertising into the MMM as a custom variable. Forvio’s tools enabled the team to tag periods of increased brand exposure (such as days when the Jumbotron Ad ran during hockey matches) and measure any corresponding lift in ticket purchases. By attributing incremental sales to these offline events, the model could prove the ROI of the sponsorship. This data-driven validation meant that marketing leadership could confidently justify the offline spend – or optimize it – based on real performance insights.
The MMM results demonstrated that the stadium campaign delivered genuine incremental value in terms of brand awareness and ticket revenue, bridging the online-offline attribution gap.
3. Modeling organic social impact
Slovak Lines also wanted to capture the influence of its growing social media presence, especially on TikTok, where it was engaging younger customers with organic content. Using Forvio, the team modeled organic TikTok activity by assigning an equivalent media value or “proxy cost” to it, treating it as an input in the MMM alongside paid channels. This innovative approach meant that even unpaid social media impressions were given weight in the analysis. As a result, Slovak Lines could quantify how much ticket sales were being driven by TikTok posts and challenges, relative to paid ads.
The MMM revealed the true combined impact of paid and organic social efforts, guiding the team to better balance their content creation resources and ad spend on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Essentially, they gained better cost control on social channels by understanding the point of diminishing returns for both paid and organic outreach.
4. Custom event and seasonality integration
With seasonality being a critical factor, Slovak Lines worked with Forvio to integrate a custom event calendar into the model. Key travel events and seasonal factors (holidays, summer festival dates, ski season weekends, etc.) were added as regressors in the MMM. This context allowed the model to distinguish natural demand spikes from marketing-driven lifts. For example, a rise in ticket sales during Easter might be partially due to holiday travel demand, not just a campaign – the event calendar adjustment factors that in. By accounting for these external influences, the
MMM provided clear guidance on budget timing: it showed where marketing spend was most needed to boost off-peak periods and how to avoid overspending when sales would be strong anyway. Consequently, Slovak Lines reallocated its monthly budgets, shifting funds to under-tapped periods and channels as indicated by the model’s insights.
Timeframe
Week 1
Keek-Off Meeting
Week 2
Data Collection, 1st Model
Week 3
Goals Setting
Week 4 - 5
Validation
Week 6 - 7
1st Media Mix Iteration
Week 8 - 9
2nd Media Mix Iteration
Week 10 - 11
3rd Media Mix Iteration
Results
By replacing guesswork with Forvio’s evidence-based MMM insights, Slovak Lines achieved notable improvements in marketing efficiency and effectiveness. In just a few months, the company was able to realign its strategy and resources for better outcomes. Key results included:
- The optimized media mix led to a 16% increase in return on ad spend, meaning Slovak Lines generated significantly more ticket revenue for each euro of marketing budget. Reallocating spend to high-performing channels (and curbing low-performing ones) lifted the efficiency of every marketing euro.
- By fine-tuning the timing of campaigns, the team improved off-peak performance. Strategic budget shifts (from summer to school travel seasons, and between months) yielded a 5.6% gain in marketing efficiency during traditionally slower periods. In practice, this means more tickets sold per budget spent in off-season months, directly improving margins.
- The MMM analysis definitively proved that the stadium Jumbotron had delivered incremental ticket sales. This incrementality proof gave the marketing team confidence to continue investing in (and optimizing) offline brand campaigns. They now had numbers to back the intuition that event sponsorships drive real ROI, closing the loop between on-site fan engagement and online ticket purchases.
- With clarity on TikTok’s contribution to sales, Slovak Lines adjusted its social strategy. The company could put an appropriate paid budget behind social content and set realistic expectations for organic reach. This resulted in lower customer acquisition costs on social channels and an overall more balanced multi-channel strategy targeted at younger riders.
| 16% | Overall ROAS Improvement |
|---|---|
| 5.6% | Higher Seasonal Marketing Efficiency |
| Validated Events Sponsorship Impact | |
| Optimized Social Media Spending |
“Thanks to Forvio’s Marketing Mix Modeling, we now have a comprehensive grasp on which marketing channels excel and where adjustments are needed. The depth of insights is truly remarkable, allowing me to invest my resources wisely and with confidence.”
