My final three and a bit years at Renault UK were spent within the Marketing team – more precisely, looking after digital within the Marketing Communications team. The role started as ‘pure’ comms, taking in social media, display and search, but grew to include responsibilities for websites and the overall digital strategy and budget for RUK.
This change was a great opportunity, but also brought its challenges. The result of redundancies within the organisation, it meant that there was more work being done by fewer people. However, it also unified all parts of the digital customer journey. Now, if a new campaign was being planned, I had the ability to control all elements – not just up to the point when the user landed on our website.
Having first got online in the late 90s, thanks to a dial-up modem and a five hour per month Compuserve connection, digital had always been a passion. I have no formal qualifications in the area, but I taught myself HTML and have built and run various websites over the years. It’s an area that I find hugely interesting, and one that’s challenging if you’re trying to stay on top of the latest developments.
I was introduced to the world of marketing. The internal team was a small one, but we worked with great agencies for many of our projects.
I’ve always been one for numbers, so the metrics available within digital channels didn’t phase me. It became something of a long-running joke with my ATL colleagues, who in most cases, weren’t able to measure much of what they were doing (not precisely, anyway!).
There’s much that I’m proud of during my time as Digital Brand Communications manager for Renault UK. We generated over 250,000 new vehicle leads through our websites, multiplying the monthly volume of test drive requests by 10 over the course of the three years.
Working with our media agency, lead generation is an area that I was keen to develop. Leads from search advertising increased and became less expensive; affiliate activity was introduced and boosted volumes; we tested and optimised user journeys to make sure our spend wasn’t going to waste once users arrived on our websites.
One of my proudest achievements came over the course of the final 18 months or so. Social media had never been a sales channel, but with the help of Facebook newsfeed advertising, that’s exactly what it became. Without giving away all the secrets here, with persistence and continuous optimisation, we turned this into a channel delivering more than (a forecasted)£4million of sales for Renault UK in 2014.
I’m also pleased with how we developed and implemented a digital content strategy for Renault UK. From the success of the Clio Va Va Voom test drive video that ‘went viral’, delivering over six million views and an astonishing share rate, through a collaboration with YouTube star ‘Charlie’ (of ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ fame) that gained two million views with zero media investment, to functional videos that delivered over 2.5 million views in their first six months online, I’m ecstatic at having been able to deliver content that played such an impactful role in different stages of the purchase funnel.
The Clio VVV video also gained multiple award nominations and picked up a Brand Republic Digital Award for ‘Best Viral’, which was an added bonus.
The Dacia brand arrived in the UK while I was in this role. Renault UK is responsible for marketing and distributing Dacia vehicles in the UK, so the launch fell to us within the comms team – a great and rare opportunity to launch a new car brand to the UK market.
During an exclusive six-month pre-order period, we took over 1000 £100 deposits from customers through Dacia.co.uk. When launch day arrived, we saw a phenomenal reaction to the affordable range of vehicles, and an amazing link between offline and online channels, with every airing of the Dacia TV ad driving huge traffic volumes to the website.
The result of investment in Dacia advertising was clear, but budgets were low and we needed to increase awareness levels and drive leads. The role of digital was crucial.
Our lead generation base firmly in place, we exploited opportunities for ‘topical’ campaigns that fitted with the brand’s ‘no nonsense’, ‘shockingly affordable’ tone of voice. The football transfer window and government’s budget day both fitted the bill nicely.
The launch of Dacia in the UK was nominated for an IPA Effectiveness Award in 2014, with results due in October.
There’s so much more – great technical advances (implementing a tag manager solution across all website platforms, driving efficiency and reducing developer costs, for example), implementing multi-channel analysis to assess the true value of digital display advertising, developing and nurturing a truly talented team. There’s so much that I’m unable to do justice here…
This was a role that also taught me the value of inspirational leadership. I now understand the importance of an environment where innovation is supported and mediocrity is challenged. None of it would have been possible without the right leadership.
Over the last nine years, I have learnt a lot, made many friends and had a lot of fun. Now, though, it’s time for the next chapter!…