Before Leo&Go, you worked in marketing in the food and retail industries. What distinguishes marketing for a mobility operator from other sectors, and are there any cross-industry strategies that mobility operators should consider?
The main difference between marketing for “legacy” industries like food and retail, and the relatively new mobility industry, lies in the necessity to shift consumers’ mentalities.
As carsharing is not yet widely adopted, a big part of my marketing strategy is educating the public about what it even is. In a way you are starting from zero, which makes marketing in mobility much different than in mass markets.
However, one strategy that can be applied across all industries is the need to put the client experience at the center of everything. While working in retail marketing, I learned the importance of providing clear and transparent communication to increase customer satisfaction. This customer-centric attitude has served us well so far at Leo&Go!
Is there a “typical Marie day” and what would it look like?
There are some foundational things I do first thing each day. These include checking all of our channels, marketing tools, and data analytics, such as registrations, trips, social media, CRM, etc., to ensure everything is on track and evolving toward our objectives.
However, I do not really have a “typical” day and my tasks really vary. For instance, one day I may need to lend a helping hand to Mehdi, our Operations Manager, while the next day I am at the Lyon Street Food Festival, promoting Leo&Go and signing up new users! As we are a small team of four, it is essential that we are all versatile and willing to help each other.
Speaking of marketing tools, which ones do you consider essential for guiding users through the customer journey?
I actually rely on a variety of both online and offline campaign tools to reach our target audience. For an audience in the awareness stage, it’s about making them discover the service and so broad social media and SEA campaigns are very effective. We rely a lot on Instagram to expand our reach by running contests, which are our most popular posts, as well as announcing our participation in events, promoting partnerships, featuring our users, and just generally creating buzz. Also, the cars themselves play an important role and we need to ensure that the car’s design with our logo is noticeable, but not too flashy.
Once a customer is educated, now it’s time to try to recruit them to use Leo&Go. I focus on developing partnerships with local actors for cross-promotional opportunities and attending events to let people experience the service firsthand. We attend a lot of important seasonal events, such as back-to-school university events, outdoor markets, and music festivals. This shows potential users that we are a member of the Greater Lyon community all year round.
We have worked closely with the Vulog team on our marketing automation strategy and toolkit to maximize customer acquisition, activation, and, engagement. We selected Salesforce as our CRM and Batch for notifications – both of which are easily integrated with Vulog’s platform – and defined scenarios that automatically trigger email campaigns and push or in-app messages. For instance, if someone has not fully completed their registration or taken a trip in a while, we’ll try to reactivate them by sending messages offering support, promos, or highlights of our latest features.
Finally, a key tool for converting customers from casual users to evangelists has been making them feel implicated in Leo&Go itself. This means not only asking for feedback but actually implementing what they tell us. For instance, users had been requesting we add some larger-sized vehicles to our fleet and so we did! Our new, all-electric commercial vehicles have been a huge success and our users are pleased that we are really listening to their needs. It’s a win-win!
Can you share a particularly successful marketing campaign you have led?
One of my favorite campaigns was our “Tuesday Gift” gamification campaign, which we ran last March. Each Tuesday we shared a secret promo code via social media, email, and in-app notifications. In order to unlock the code and reveal the discount, the user had to access the Leo&Go app and then had 48 hours to use the code. Thanks to the campaign, we saw a huge increase in ridership on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which are usually our slowest days!
What have been some of your biggest challenges?
As Leo&Go is a mobility showcase, we have really embraced this “living laboratory” mindset when approaching our marketing challenges. We are constantly testing and fine-tuning our strategies, whether this be in terms of message, medium, or form. For instance, figuring out the right actions to reach the various segments of our diverse target audience (e.g. B2B, B2C, students, families, business travelers, etc.) required a lot of experimentation during our first year! Another challenge is convincing a customer who is signed up for the service to actually start using it. With our 97% satisfaction rate, we are almost positive that they will be happy once they try it, but getting them to actually book their first vehicle is perhaps the biggest hurdle. This is where the testing of marketing automation scenarios mentioned above comes into play.
Based on your experience so far, what’s one piece of advice you have for shared mobility operators?
Integrate yourself within the local ecosystem by attending events and forming strategic partnerships with local players. This will not only allow you to raise your profile and increase awareness about your brand, but it also shows that you are a true part of the community. It’s an efficient way to attract more users with very little investment. It’s strategies like this that prove that you can do a lot with a lean team!
Check out our other interviews with the Leo&Go team
Mehdi Lehouar, Operations Manager
Want to hear exclusive insights about Vulog’s Mobility Showcase? Subscribe to our Inside Leo&Go newsletter.
