<<

www.carphonewarehouse.com www.three.co.uk www.vodafone.co.uk www..co.uk www.ee.co.uk

Hanging on the telephone

Search Traffic Total traffic 4,106,192

2,421,094

3,426,650 2,450,919 4,012,082

5,016,151 1,746,351 0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000

Paid Campaign

AD TRAFFIC 320,382 125,760 150,925 241,267 237,256

KEYWORDS 10,186 5,889 5,594 10,709 8,638

AD POSITION ! 1.22 1.23 1.17 1.15 1.22 Ad Position Ad position in Google (based on top 100 AdWords)

Ads in position 1 2 3 4+

100

80

60

40 AdWords in position AdWords 20

0

Landing Pages

70

60

50 60

40 43 30 41 40 40

20 (based on top 100 AdWords) (based on top 100 10 0

Toolbox

Adobe Analytics Adobe Analytics Adobe Analytics Adobe Marketing Adobe Analytics Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Adobe Analytics Cloud Adobe Marketing Cloud Cloud Google Analytics Cloud

Analytics Google Analytics Coremetrics Google Analytics Krux Digital Google Analytics

Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Cloud Cloud Cloud Cloud SessionCam On-page Analytics

OpinionLab Voice of Voice Customer

Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Adobe Marketing Cloud Cloud Maxymiser Cloud Cloud

Split Adobe Target Adobe Target Adobe Target Adobe Target Testing Monetate

Decibel Insight Cloud IQ Soasta mPulse SaleCycle Decibel Insight Decibel Insight Yahoo Dot Other Yahoo Dot Now Interact

How they score against the Good Growth Benchmark

5.0/10 3.6/10 5.0/10

5.6/10 6.0/10

Hanging on the telephone

Traffic Insight: Revenue comes from traffic that converts. Having more traffic than your competitors is a real advantage. Analysis: Among the five companies, there are c.15 million visits on Google in a month from desktop/laptop alone. This suggests that, whilst there may be some growth left in the market ( reported an increase in handsets in 2017 over 2016 of c.1%), current customers are actively looking for options as contracts come to an end. Carphone Warehouse capture the second highest amount of traffic, whilst Three sit significantly behind the other four. EE lead the pack – their advantage means that they are putting their pitch to c. 16% more customer engagements than O2. Three suffer here in terms of scale by having no cross-selling opportunity to broadband/fixed line or TV.

Paid Campaign Insight: If you are confident about your sales execution (i.e. customers stick on your pages and convert well) then you don’t have to outbid your competitors to gain a top 3 ad slot, which is where you will attract exponentially more traffic than position 4 or below.

Analysis: This suggests that Carphone Warehouse are attracting interest in the market far more than the telcos: they are buying approximately 33% more visits than O2 for example, despite O2 bidding for slightly more keywords. EE’s dominance in traffic is even more significant given its AdWords performance – its search advantage comes predominantly from its organic activity. Of the big players ’s strategy is the one that looks the least successful. Given the cost of many of the keywords in this sector (at time of writing it will cost something like £2-£4 per click for iPhone8 and Samsung Galaxy S9 for example), the investment that Carphone is doing to achieve this advantage will be significant and against the telcos may well be more punishing for margins.

Landing Pages Insight: Landing pages are a mark of how well you understand the different customer needs that you are fulfilling. The Landing Page Ratio indicates how much thought is going into segmenting both the marketing proposition and the initial sales engagement – the higher the ratio, the more effective the customer engagement. The ratio takes the top 100 keywords and identifies how many, as a percentage, have an individual landing page.

Analysis: It is obvious that in terms of landing pages, O2 perform better than the others with a landing page ratio of 60%. In contrast, none of the others gets much over 40%. This could be particularly tricky for Carphone as they are buying so many more visits and potentially landing more of these on less relevant pages than visits to O2, such that there is a bigger risk to them of wasting their investment in paid marketing.

Toolbox Insight: Listening to your customers is vital, without understanding the needs and wants of a potential buyer it is near impossible to improve conversion.

Analysis: Only EE have a way of listening to their customers online and getting their feedback. This is a significant advantage over everyone else in this competitor set. Three are at an even bigger disadvantage as they are blind as to their on-page performance.

What can you tell from this? The obvious conclusion: EE are the leading competitor among these five companies and at one level it should be, given they are the largest player in the market. Part of their strength is the ability to reach a good level of traffic despite having the lowest average ad position. They have the capacity, capabilities and financial backing to use this advantage to drive further gains. O2’s brand strength and customer loyalty will help them stay in contention. The inevitable conclusion: Three appear to be the strugglers as their search traffic levels remain low comparing to other competitors. Also, the absence of a complete toolbox makes it more difficult for the company to optimise conversion. The surprising conclusion: Vodafone, until the creation of EE, the largest player in the market, look rather lacklustre in a market that is only going to get even more competitive. They continue to lag behind EE and O2 – for example the launch of Voxi comes six years after O2 launched – and their reputation for customer service is doing little to help them win against the competition. The insight: Carphone is going through a challenging period and new CEO, Alex Baldock has had to face a tough time as he adjusts market expectations. Whilst there is a great battle in the appliances market, this suggests that there are also headwinds in mobile and broadband. More recently they have been focusing on connected products, but to make this generate the same levels of profitability that network commissions have provided in the past, they will need to make a significant investment in developing a market-leading reputation for educating and supporting customer decision making, selection and post-purchase service in the emerging connected product segment. This engagement starts online.

Find Your Results Now

Visit: app1.goodgrowth.co.uk

©2017 Good Growth Ltd. All Rights reserved. Renslade House, Bonhay Road, Exeter, EX4 3AY. Company No. 7847869