Sales and marketing
This year our strategy has focussed on driving customer response through our online platforms. Our You Gov surveys conducted in recent years show our national brand awareness remaining at three times the level of our nearest competitor, and awareness levels of 80% in London and 42% outside of London. Although Big Yellow leads the industry in terms of brand preference, there is still an opportunity to improve our brand awareness, in particular in regional cities outside London where we have recently opened stores.
(Source YouGov: September 2011)
Online
The website continues to grow in strength, with online prospects now accounting for 80% of all sales leads where details are first recorded on our operating system. Telephone is the first point of contact for 12% of prospects and walk-in enquiries, where we have had no previous contact with a prospect, represent 8%.
The Big Yellow website continues to evolve and we are constantly improving the user journey and prospect conversion throughout the site. Web analytics allow us to remove barriers to conversion in the web journey and to test new web page design to help increase conversion.
Mobile
With the huge growth in the use of smart phones and web browsing on mobile devices, we launched a dedicated mobile site in October 2011. This site is optimised for mobile phone use and presents the user with a simpler version of the main website. The mobile site accounted for 23% of our total web traffic in April 2012.
Online customer reviews
Consistent with our strategy of putting the customer at the heart of our business, our online customer reviews continue to generate real-time feedback from customers as well as providing positive word of mouth to prospective customers. We ask our new customers to rate our product and service. These reviews are published on the website.
The reviews published indicate we are consistently delivering a very high standard of service:
- >
- Over 6,400 reviews have been published
- >
- Over 60% have awarded a score of 5 out of 5
- >
- Our average overall rating is 4.6 out of 5
- >
- Our average customer service score is 4.7 out of 5
In our view, real time customer reviews which have been independently and externally obtained are much more persuasive to prospects than scripted testimonials. We also gain real time insight from customers publishing Google reviews and from monitoring mentions of Big Yellow with the social mediums of Twitter and general online forums.
Driving online traffic
Search engines continue to be the most important acquisition tool for us, accounting for nearly 70% of all traffic to the website. We continue to make ongoing investment into search engine optimisation (“SEO”) techniques both on and off the site. This helps us maintain the number one position for the popular and high volume search terms “storage” and “self storage” in the organic listings on Google. We have also been optimising our business pages and now appear high on Google’s listings for the most popular business storage related search terms providing a good source of business prospects into the site at low cost.
The sponsored search listings remain the largest source of paid for traffic and we ensure our prominence in these listings is balanced with effective landing pages to maximise site conversion.
This year, we have also continued with online display advertising on websites which are contextually and geographically targeted to our core audience groups. This activity performs both a direct response and branding role.
Efficiencies in all online spend are continuing into 2012/13, ensuring return on investment is maximised from all our different online traffic sources.
Online marketing budgets will continue to remain fluid and be directed towards the media with the best return on investment.
Social media
Social media continues to be complementary to our existing marketing channels.
With over 24,000 ‘likes’, our Facebook channel allows us to keep engaged with our target audiences, keeping the brand front of mind and allowing a forum for their feedback and dialogue. The Big Yellow YouTube channel is being used to showcase our stores to web prospects through a video store tour. We use both domestic and business versions to help prospects experience the quality of the product without the need for them to visit the store in person.
We also continue to develop a substantial amount of online blog content. Advice and tips for packing, storage and de-cluttering are published weekly on the site and posted through our Facebook and Twitter channels. This provides useful and engaging content for visitors.
Sales promotion
We have continued our sales promotion offer throughout the year of “50% off for up to your first 8 weeks storage” across all stores, coupled with a Price Promise for comparable local competition. We continue to manage pricing dynamically, taking account of customer demand and local competition.
Budget
During the year the Group spent approximately £2.8 million (4.3% of revenue) on marketing, the same as the previous year. We have held the budget for the year ended 31 March 2013 at £2.8 million with a focus on driving our revenue through delivering more prospects to the website.
» Continue