Industry: Retail Outdoor Furniture

“Having a plan for getting people through the door, and converting those to sales is key for us! We once cancelled a very expensive campaign after MarketNAV reporting determined that very few sales were being generated from it, saving the company $200,000.”

Will Ramsay, Director

Winner of the Best House / Homewares & Recreation Retailer at the 2008 American Express Rewards for Excellence

The Situation

Billy’s needed to get people through the door.  They were targeting a new segment of the market and spent money on the new shop site and needed to create awareness and generate sales quickly to continue to harness the building and renovation boom.

They needed to increase awareness of their new outdoor furniture concept stores and entice customers through the doors so they could experience Billy’s design possibilities. They needed an effective marketing strategy that would attract people who were looking to update their outdoor entertaining areas in a stylish and modern way.

The Solution

BusinessNAV was used to track the effectiveness of 6 marketing alternatives over a two-year period.  With the collations of lead and sales data Billy’s calculated its conversion rates in each of the 6 marketing areas. This provided the owners with valuable information on where to dedicate their time and money. 

By tracking where their sales leads were coming from Billy’s observed most of their sales were ‘business generated’ through site positioning, vehicles signage and mail outs to existing customers. They began to appreciate the value of an active database of existing customers not just for future sales generation but also as a company asset on the balance sheet.  This database could be used as a valuable source of referral sales.

The data provided them with monthly lead forecasts needed to reach sales targets.  Staffs were now aware of their targets and plan strategies around those that had the highest conversion rates. 

The Business Result

They cancelled a very expensive TV ad campaign half way through after they determined very few sales were being generated from it saving the company $200,000. They became more targeted about what mediums they used in their marketing campaign. 

Recognising most of their sales volume came from business generated sources (‘drive-by, walk-by traffic’) they became more vigilant about the site selection and appearance of its new stores.   Once the customers are in the store, floor staff are key to sale conversion.  As a result Billy’s formalised their staff training and induction programs.  Staff now know what has to be achieved each month to stay on track financially.  This has allowed them to more accurately plan staff requirements and stock levels with its outsourced warehousing.

Billy’s have also focused marketing efforts on existing and referral sourced sales with conversion rates between 80 – 100%.  Consequently they have introduced a loyalty reward program, which sees customer discounts at point of sale.   They are also introducing a staff reward program for customer spends over a certain value.

The website has also proven to be a valuable online shop front for them, with effort spent in attaining a higher search rating on search engines.  The MarketNAV data shows the website sourced customers now have the highest average spend.