Phil Williams, Head of Marketing for First UK Bus Division, outlines to Jade Smith the marketing campaigns the company has implemented this year
Leeds was experiencing an unseasonably damp and dreary spell the day I met Phil at First West Yorkshire’s offices, where he is primarily based.
“My ethos on marketing is it either needs to influence someone’s opinion or change their behaviour,” Phil started. “Marketing can’t be wallpaper – you can’t be able to look at it and turn away.
“The level of complexity and involvement within the bus industry is huge. We can use practically every tool available in the marketing toolkit, which makes it a very interesting place to work for me.”
Phil went on to explain the changes made over the past year within First Bus’ marketing division.[wlm_nonmember][…]
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The past
Phil has been with First Bus for five years but his background wasn’t in transport: “I have over 20 years of marketing experience and in my previous position I was head of marketing for a sports governing body in Leeds for Rugby League. I started looking for opportunities to progress my career and when I met Simon Pearson, Commercial Director and Dave Alexander, Divisional Director, their passion and enthusiasm for the role and what they wanted to achieve within First Bus was motivating.
“Challenges motivate me, as does seeing that I have a positive impact on a business. Simon was very passionate and painted a picture of a fast-paced environment where no two days are the same. One of my previous roles was on the agency side, which is fast-paced, so it was a good fit and I jumped into it wholeheartedly.
“I’m really enjoying it. We have 14 operating companies in different environments with varying levels of competition and political pressures, so there’s always a different context to develop divisional campaigns within.”
Phil said that there has been a significant advancement in 2017 in terms of First Bus’ marketing techniques, technology and what the company wants to achieve as a business. Continual themes exist in terms of where First wants to be with its brand, but the tactics and strategies being applied constantly evolve to meet the needs of the business and its passengers.
The present
Phil’s current role is Head of Marketing for First Bus. The division is structured with operating companies based across the UK and Phil heads up a divisional team based in Leeds. Within that, there are divisional campaign managers who work with the operating companies to activate national campaigns that are consistent across the board.
“I also manage the team who are responsible for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which involves communicating with our existing passengers and developing a relationship with them,” Phil said. “We provide them with the information they want and need to be able to travel with us and influence their behaviour so they travel more and remain loyal to First Bus.
“CRM is something that we’re ramping up this year as we’ve brought in a specialist team of two people to commercially use our existing database and to ensure we’re meeting the needs of our passengers. We’re around five months into the live system now, with a lot of testing and learning to ensure we can influence the strategy going forward.
“My team also supports the operating companies with their local marketing plans. We ensure those plans dovetail with the divisional objectives and that there’s no conflict or duplication. The marketing team shares best practice and drives economies of scale where they have similar needs, working with procurement so we have a good supply base aligned for them.
“One aspect of the divisional role is constantly improving the marketing side by looking at new areas. We have a ‘test and learn’ mentality where we try an idea, see how it goes and if it works look at using it elsewhere. There’s a continual process of moving things forward, rather than resting on our laurels.
“The other side is being the voice of the customer internally. One of the responsibilities that falls within my remit is our permanently recruited customer panel of 5,000 people that is used for research purposes. We have an online community similar to Facebook where we discuss propositions about pricing, marketing decisions, what passengers look for in services and campaigns we want to run. The customer is really at the heart of everything we do; it’s less about doing what we think is right and more checking our decisions with the customers to ensure it’s in line with what they need as a service.
“We’ve recruited a Customer Service Director into the business, Mel Rees, who is using technology like First Bus Feedback which allows us to elicit feedback from our passengers to ensure we constantly improve how we deliver our bus services. Ultimately our passengers are those experiencing it at the coalface and have the best insight, so we want to ensure we have happy passengers who will travel more. We need to make sure we keep meeting their needs so that when they need to travel they know that First Bus is a good option for them. That’s been the focus over the last 12 months – looking at our customers and what they want.”
Technology
One of the key campaigns for First Bus is the technology campaign which has been running for nine months. Phil took up the story: “It’s an amalgamation of everything we do to make bus travel easier for both non-existing passengers and current passengers. That involves providing information in a simple way, ensuring it’s accessible and then making the journey experience better with technology such as WiFi or real-time information, which minimises the amount of time people have to wait at bus stops.
“People value their time, whether that is free time, time at work or time with the family, and so on. We reduce the time our passengers spend at bus stops and allow tickets to be purchased via mobile so they don’t have to worry about having correct change, and speed up the boarding process. Passengers are now able to plan a journey via our app, see where the nearest bus stop is and exactly when they need to be there. In some areas, such as Aberdeen, we’ve also recently launched contactless payments. Everything is designed for passengers to have a better experience with us.
“Technology allows us to raise awareness of what services we provide. First has millions of customers across the UK and so it can take a long time for a message to reach everyone. I think technology is a great enabler and has the ability to simplify things. Google Maps is used by a lot of people for organising travel and our journey planner now employs that functionality.”
Phil said the technology campaign is working really well. As it’s primarily a digital campaign the marketing department can easily measure everything and optimise the performance of the campaign as it continues.
“Gone are the days when you have a plan for a marketing campaign and then let it run to completion intact,” Phil explained. “Now you start with a plan and then it’s monitored, tracked, optimised, the channels and messaging are changed and you ensure it’s as effective it can be. For example, we originally started off with 12 different digital channels, before we optimised that down over a period of months to the five that were generating the best returns for us and where passengers were clearly benefitting from.
“It’s also easier for us to monitor how effective a campaign in. Previously, if we did an advertising campaign on TV or radio, there was no easy way of auditing the effectiveness of that, but through the digital channels we can track passenger behaviour, pulse the activity by turning it on and off in specific regions and monitor the conversion rates, as well as encouraging sales via our mTickets app, which are recorded. This has proved the campaign delivers for the business in terms of results and effectiveness.
“That has been our key campaign and is designed to run continuously. We’re always looking to acquire new passengers and there are new passengers to gain all the time, through people moving to the area or changing their travel plans, for example.”
Students and young people
A more traditional area First Bus is covering is the student campaign. The student market is a very important market, so marketing has looked at what they can do to provide students with the right information and to sell them relevant tickets.
“Around 75% of students move away from home to go to university,” Phil said. “They’ll be in a new area so we give them the knowledge that they’re safe with us, which gives them confidence in using our services. We also want to inspire them by telling them the good places to go to in a new city.
“Our student campaign starts in June/July through channels such as UCAS and Clearing. We target students before they get to university, we attend Freshers events to get more data and make sales, then we go back to canvassing for six weeks after Freshers, providing maps and locations of places students might want to go in relation to their halls of residents and campuses. We want to welcome them and make them feel valued as a new person to the area.
“A dual approach is used – we go to both the students themselves and their parents to reassure them that safe transport is available for their children and they can buy a ticket before they arrive. It’s important to have as many students onboard as possible as they tend to follow what their friends are doing.
“We also hire student ambassadors as it’s easy for young people to see us as a corporate entity who they may not listen to, whereas someone their own age who knows the university and what students want can impart advice to them. They are much more likely to have an open conversation with someone who is like them than a corporate organisation such as us.”
Young people in general are an important market for First Bus as well and there is a divisional campaign to encourage bus travel from young people. “We’re in an aging population and it’s a cliché but young people are the future,” Phil said. “Traditional transport planning research has indicated that we form our behavioural transport habits between the ages of 18 and 24. If someone stops using public transport during that timeframe it’s very hard to get them to come back. “One of the aspects we’ve added to the ticketing app is delegated purchases, where parents can buy tickets to send to their child’s mobile phone. They have confidence in their child’s safety with us as they know with our technology they can always get them home. Our marketing plan is to make both existing passengers and non-customers aware that those options exist.”
Other work
Phil’s divisional team were involved in the launch of contactless payments in Aberdeen. The central team helped facilitate the campaign and then rolled it out with the local team, ensuring there was a lot of communication, planning and review so that it can be smoothly implemented elsewhere.
“We’re also improving the First Bus website and ensuring it’s user-friendly, so information can be found in as few clicks as possible,” Phil continued. “This has been achieved by restructuring the menu and navigation system. Tickets are purchasable through the website for key services so we’ve been looking at search engine optimisation so when someone searches for a route on the internet, the relevant tickets come up.
“All the changes we’ve made have been based on insights gleaned from Google Analytics. We use a Leeds-based communications agency called Home who work on our marketing campaigns and digital support. On a weekly basis we look at the analytics of the website and determine what we need to do to improve. A lot of time and investment has gone into the behind-the-scenes processes to ensure everything works optimally.”
Marketing tools
“Part of my role is to see where we can help the marketing teams across the division,” Phil said. “We have a lot of marketing people in the operating companies, so we ask them what support or training they may benefit from and then try and arrange it on their behalf. There has been an increase in requests for support in digital marketing, so we are arranging courses to ensure everyone across the marketing division is up-to-date with the latest trends, technologies and media. They can then use these as tools to get their messages through to the correct audiences via the right channels.
“First Bus has done advertising on most channels – Snapchat has been used in our young people campaign as they do 10-second promo videos which we’re trialling. Facebook also has a video feature which we’re using for both the technology and young persons campaigns.
“Where traditionally if you wanted to go on radio you would have to pick a specific station and a set transmission area, now there’s the opportunity to work with digital radio through DAX (Digital Audio Exchange) where you can target certain postcodes. For First Bus that makes it easier for us to target areas around certain routes, giving us the ability to focus in and refine the effectiveness of our marketing.”
Changes
Phil enthused: “Digital marketing is one of the biggest changes I’ve seen in my time here – rather than doing broad brush marketing where you target everyone indiscriminately and send street teams out, you can now really focus in on who your target audience is.
“Globally, digital marketing has improved massively. With the complexity the media has now I can target individuals, whether that’s via the CRM system or looking at Facebook profiles or online advertising targeted on peoples online browsing behaviour. That’s added a few more tools to our kit in terms of being able to reach people at different times with the right message.”
With technology improving so quickly, digital trends come in and out of fashion swiftly. Social media channels die and people move over to new ones – Bebo and Myspace have been replaced with Facebook and Twitter and now Snapchat and Instagram are becoming more popular. “It never stands still,” Phil said. “A challenge for us as a business is to stay abreast of all the trends and technologies – some might be right for us to utilise and others may not, but we can quickly identify whether something is working well through digital media.
“We can personalise advertising for people based on their browsing history – the opportunities available now to identify people based on their preferences, lifestyle, behaviours allows us to pinpoint the correct people for our messaging.
“Google says that around 20% of all searches on the web are via voice and the forecast is it will reach 50% in a short period of time. We need to move with the times and ensure our website is configured to be indexed from voice search – that requires back-end changes that will improve usability when voice-activated products such as Amazon Echo’s Alexa become more prominent in the marketplace.”
Challenges
Asked about the challenges marketing in First Bus faces, Phil said: “The anonymity of some of our passenger is difficult. Retail organisations and online businesses know who their customers are and have the means to easily influence them. Our cash customers are untraceable. A brand facilitates a relationship with someone, so it’s hard to improve that relationship when you don’t know much about your users.
“The other challenge is technology improving at the rate it is and keeping abreast with it. We have a huge market so we need to ensure that everyone from the OAP to the lawyer can access the information they need to travel with us. If passengers aren’t kept happy they will go elsewhere.”
The future and advice
“From First Bus’ perspective there is still quite a journey,” Phil said. “In the future I hope to bring in new ways to keep passengers faithful to us with loyalty schemes, for example.
“We recently carried out a trial in Leeds where the internal messaging of the bus has been refreshed, adopting a friendlier tone of voice and informative stance. That has received positive feedback – passengers feel more informed about local travel, bus travel was more enjoyable as there were interesting facts about the area provided and our brand is part of the local community, which is one of our core values. We’re certainly stepping in the right direction.
“Advocate marketing is an up-and-coming channel at the moment, where you find existing customers who are proud to be associated with your brand to harness that power of word of mouth on social media and offline. We’re starting to look in that area.”
As for any advice he would give to fellow marketeers in the bus industry, Phil said: “Use your bus services as regularly as you can: you can’t understand the passenger experience unless you use the product.
“An urban operation such as Leeds or Glasgow has different objectives to a tourist destination such as Cornwall which has a seasonal market. Every location has different challenges and products, such as open-top buses or electric vehicles. They need to be sold in a different way and their advantages communicated to the passengers using various techniques. In First Bus we’re encouraged by the top down to use the services to proactively improve our offering, which is not isolated to just the marketing department.
“Listen to what your customers need. With the change in the media landscape we can prove to the business the positive effect we’re having on passenger numbers.
“Ensure you embrace technology, listen to your passengers and like everything else in life, work hard!”[/wlm_ismember]
