Our client operates an online comparison engine which matches car-owners with local garages, offering the most suitable services for their needs. They work through an algorithm which measures the preferences and requirements of the car owners, pairing them with the three most suitable garages in their area.
Originating in Denmark, the website launched in 2009, before expanding to Sweden and Germany. Our client was expanding this internationally successful model to the UK, initially focusing on developing a presence in 10 of the biggest cities across the country.
What they needed
With a multi-mullion pound venture capitalist investment, and senior board level talent drawn from JustEat, our client had industry insight and the resources to replicate their tried and tested model in the UK. After a soft-launch and press-releases to build brand awareness, our client had over 800 garages using their system online. However, with over 60 job requests a day, they needed to expand their network and get more garages using the website so they could match customer demand.
To support their launch, our client recruited a telesales team to handle demo requests internally, and convert leads into sales. To ensure their time was spent effectively on ‘bottom-of-funnel’ sales activity they decided to partner with us to outsource their lead generation—meaning their internal team were fed qualified sales leads to follow up. We could act as a flexible, scalable additional resource to support them through their launch and growth phases.
Garages tend to adopt a relatively traditional approach to marketing, relying on word-of-mouth referrals or repeat business, and rarely have any form of dedicated marketing function. These obstacles needed to be overcome to get new garages on-board.
What we did
We began by analysing the current market and understanding our client’s approach to launching the service abroad. The key to this was understanding the differences in requirements between the UK and other areas in Europe and ensuring that we tailored our approach to fit a UK market, while building on their previous successes abroad. Our clients CRM contained over 36,000 records for garages across the UK. With such extensive data, we needed to segment records to identify the most relevant garages to target.
Firstly, we needed to segment based on location. Due to the large amount of job requests in certain areas of the UK, we used heat maps to identify those areas with the highest number of requests, so that we could target those garages with live jobs in the area. We also had to take into account those garages specialised by car manufacturer and the services that they actually offered. It was important to target those garages that reflected the profile of the enquiries being received in that region—matching the leads being generated to the coverage which was required to provide a valuable user experience for the consumers using the site.
Once we had identified the most relevant garages we used a conversational approach to engage with garages. Given that many garages have no existing online presence and do very little marketing at all, we needed to overcome these barriers while on the phone. We used a range of questions to engage decision makers and draw them into a conversation about the benefits of the service—for example, asking about how the currently fill any downtime, and the impact of any troughs in demand. This meant we could promote the benefits of using our client’s services to support their current sales activity.
We arranged free trials and demo opportunities for the internal team, scheduling these in real time using the clients CRM system. We also conducted added value research to aid in our client’s future marketing efforts, by asking garages a series of questions regarding their preferences. This helped shape our client’s understanding of the target market, and identify the most fruitful areas of engagement.
What we achieved
Following the results and recommendations from the campaign, our client was able to modify elements of their current sales process to fit with the UK market. We were able to overhaul their whole engagement process and help develop a successful call outline which was targeted and relevant for the clientele they were hoping to achieve. This involved working with our client on the best way to package their offering and position themselves for future sales. We also provided them with KPIs and metrics they could use to monitor future performance of the internal team as they expanded their capabilities.
Throughout the campaign, we were able to secure an average of 12 online demos for every calling day, providing our client with hundreds of qualified leads, all signed up to take the free trial. Due to the initial successes, our client decided to double their marketing spend on telemarketing, extending the campaign to continue engaging with the cleansed and populated database.
For more information get in touch with Pamela
- Telephone:
- 0113 487 7013
- Email:
- info@blueberryms.co.uk