IN-DEPTH: Oodles.com’s founder Steve Sherlock on prioritising marketing initiatives

Published: 30 Oct 2009

IN-DEPTH: Oodles.com’s founder Steve Sherlock on prioritising marketing initiatives

Car rental comparison site Oodles.com is developing business via a “bottom-up” approach, where each customer is acquired profitably in the short-term.

“Bottom-up marketing approach is what we think our brand will thrive on into the future,” says Oodles.com’s Steve Sherlock.

Citing an example, he said, “Initially we had just one Rio Tinto employee making bookings via Oodles.com. Now we have literally dozens of Rio Tinto employees using the site. This was a classic bottom-up development in which we infected one person and they infected the others. If we had tried to approach Rio Tinto Head Office we would have had little or no chance.”

Sherlock, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Sales and Marketing in Travel Asia Pacific conference, to be held in Sydney (November 18-19), spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about prioritising marketing initiatives. Excerpts:

How can one look at prioritising marketing initiatives? Other than return on spend, and for how long there can be a steady stream of profit, should one also look at improving the lifetime value of the customer?

Steve Sherlock: A steady stream of profit would be nice, but right now it’s not our focus.

There are plenty of examples of companies that have not made profits, but have gone on to sell for oodles. That is the sort of trajectory we are hoping to follow, in the sense that we are investing a lot of money on R&D and building our brand, and we expect to profit from those efforts down the track.

It’s important to note, however, that our R&D is very much geared toward maximising the “lifetime value of the customer”.

We have put a lot of work into identifying and understanding the most frequent renters and the tools they need (but are not currently getting from other providers). As a result of this research we’ve developed a unique proposition. We’ll see how we go down the track in terms of profiting from this frequent-renter positioning.

It is recommended that fully-integrated marketing with brand, conversion, retention, with a solid media mix should always be the goal. What do you think are the major obstacles in working on the same?

Steve Sherlock: Fully-integrated media mix I think is a bit of a cliché. We try to look at it like this, if you provide a unique solution to the target audience’s problem, then build a brand synonymous with that solution, customers will come direct to your site, and hence you will enjoy a better conversion rate. Provided we keep doing that beyond our clients’ expectations, then we’ll get the retention.

Do you think companies need to understand their risk profile and strategic goals, develop marketing plans/investments in the proper priority, and encourage a culture of testing new ideas and optimising existing programmes?

Steve Sherlock: The answer of course is ‘yes’, they need to do all of those things. How do they achieve that? Well in our case the key is never losing site of our strategic goals.

Even though it’s vital every company understands its strategic goals, I believe that if you ask most businesses to identify their goals, they will struggle to give you an answer that isn’t – at best - slightly confused.

In our case, we want to communicate a specific message to a specific audience and this underpins our entire marketing approach. I believe that if we are consistent and disciplined with this focus, we will build a loyal group of followers.

What is the best way to prioritise resources, be it for SEO, SEM, PR, brand marketing, social media, CRM etc?

Steve Sherlock: PR number one, social media number two and CRM number three.

These are all brand building as far as we are concerned.

SEO and SEM are important ways to get traffic and sales, but they often result in not very targeted users. Often SEO and SEM visitors book 1.8 times a year, whereas we actively target frequent renters, like myself - I rent over 50 times a year because I don’t own a car.

Do you think the successful businesses of the future still need to follow the twin brand marketing strategy - i. e. with acquisition and conversion strategy throughout?

Steve Sherlock: The most successful brands will be those that acquire a client at close to zero CPA.

Why? Because they will have a unique proposition that can’t easily be substituted, and as a result they will build up huge followings who spread the word for them.

Marketers acknowledge that it is essential that brands are aware of and monitor conversations that are happening about them in real time, so they can understand how their customers feel and can also protect their reputation where necessary. What are you doing in this arena and what do you see as the best way to respond to such monitoring of conversations?

Steve Sherlock: We don’t get anxious if someone wants to talk about us and not to us, because we figure there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about. So we don’t systematically track the chatter.

Having said that, we do appreciate direct dialogue and we even reward bug reports with a $20 gift voucher. Recently via twitter, for example, a client alerted us to a bug, we fixed it and sent him a voucher and he tweeted about it saying “now that’s #customerservice”.

Ultimately, at Oodles.com we look at social media like a relationship, which means we have to be accountable, adjustable and ultimately acceptable.

Sales and Marketing in Travel Asia Pacific

Steve Sherlock is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Sales and Marketing in Travel Asia Pacific conference, to be held in Sydney (November 18-19).

For more information, click here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/smapac/agenda.asp

Or Contact:

Reece Gladstone
Regional Director, Asia-Pacific & Middle East
Email: reece@eyefortravel.com