Traditionally, consumers have always wanted the most for their money, but now, more than ever, the pressure has increased to squeeze every pound. Our agency has worked within the low cost sector for quite a while and produced effective campaigns for brands such as Moneysupermarket.com, Travelodge and D-Link. We created the current Moneysupermarket.com TV ad featuring Dragon's Den star Peter Jones, as well as the Travelodge price comparison campaign which highlighted the higher costs of rival hotel brands. It ran earlier this year and was promptly mimicked by Premier Inn.
Within our agency, effectiveness has always been a key focus. We pride ourselves in producing campaigns that produce a measurable return on investment, so we've identified some key marketing principles that have helped brands like Travelodge, Young's, Lexmark and D-Link achieve impressive bottom line results, as well as generate sustainable customer loyalty that has value for any brand. Let's take our work with Travelodge for example.
Principle 1: Don't trade brand value for financial value. Do both. As a result of strong, single minded and clear branding, combined with simple pricing messaging, between 2006 to 2009 Travelodge has enjoyed revenue growth of around 20 per cent per annum. The company simultaneously dominates both share of mind and brand imagery scores, with advertising awareness double that of key competitors, and more than double on key measures of best value, brand you think of first and national scale. Travelodge is neither the biggest player in the market nor the biggest spender.
Principle 2: Understand your customers as people, not segments. Travelodge has built a very successful business model around its understanding of its customer base, giving them both the brand and sales message that is relevant to them, being sensitive to changes in customer needs and changing their approach accordingly. Technology allows us to both tailor communications in a cost and time efficient way, and, crucially, gives us the ability to observe and listen to customers and demonstrate that observation. As a result of this approach, Travelodge feels like it belongs to the customer, not the other way around -- a key factor in increasing loyalty by over 100 per cent during a three year period.
Principle 3: Seamlessly join up communications channels. Marketing cost and impact efficiency comes not only from choice of channel, but also from a mix of channels. Single-minded message integration both reinforces impact and 'noise' and offers customers real choice and ability to control how and when they interact with companies and brands. With Travelodge, effective channel and message management has resulted in measurable channel payback, with e-DM alone contributing over £1 million of incremental revenue per bi-weekly targeted email send -- an ROI of over 80:1.
Principle 4: Stand for something and stick with it.
I can't emphasise this enough -- it's a common mistake brands make. A key factor in the success of Travelodge has been the adherence to both a dynamic pricing structure and a clear statement of customer benefit. By underpinning all price and value messaging with the brand message 'Welcome to the hotel revolution', Travelodge is now seen as the reference brand in the sector, championing consumer desire for affordable and accessible quality, as well as driving significant growth of mnemonic association and brand resonance, as demonstrated by the consistently high prompted and unprompted recall, and positive brand association recorded in independent tracking studies.
These drivers are a set of mantras at our agency, and with good reason: they've always delivered. Who can argue with that?
Rory Teeling is planning director, DCH.
