Acquiring New Customers in a 'Sea of same' for Hey!Broadband

Hey!Broadband are a challenger brand supplying full fibre broadband to specific regions in the South East of the UK, targeting three buying phases: Awareness, coming soon and available now.

As a new entrant into a heavily dominated market, we are incredibly pleased that our customer-first approach is resonating with Hey!Broadband’s target audience and the journey of the brand is now coming to fruition.

Standing out in what can be perceived as a ‘sea of same’ in a heavily concentrated market, dominated by brands with higher spending power and awareness than Hey!Broadband, has always been the major challenge for the business so to see them begin to take a small market share from their competitors gives us the confidence we are on the right path, making the right decisions.

We’ve launched Benny, the new Hey!Broadband brand mascot. We identified and targeted key customers using a first-party data-led approach, putting Hey!Broadband in the best position to hit their goals based on the audiences available to us.

We overachieved our targets seen across all channels using a phased approach through outdoor and targeted social.

Objectives

Our ‘Stretch’ campaign was designed to target different audiences at different purchase stages across multiple channels, using a data-led approach to define the channels’ role. Our main goal was to acquire 1,000 new customers by the end of March.

Strategy

Typically, most brands in this space start with a promotion to establish themselves, seem attractive, and stand out from the crowd. We have taken a different approach using market research to identify product market fit using data and analysis, rather than tactics and offers.

Despite their size, Hey!Broadband are making big strides within their sector, are achieving sales targets month by month and are leveraging their viewpoint as the fair fibre broadband supplier to our advantage, meaning they are standing out for the things that matter and give our brand authenticity and an impeccable level of trust with our customers.

We’ve brought together a strong team behind the new brand to deliver on a more localised approach. Plus, with the introduction of Benny, we are viewed as a friendlier and more approachable brand that provides transparency, simplicity, and expertise to our customers, allowing us to scale up seamlessly in the future.

Execution

We targeted postal codes based on the household type and buying phase reflected in location data.

We refreshed the brand and introduced a new mascot, Benny. This combined with our renewed brand values positioned us as a friendlier brand whilst retaining our professionalism.

We planned campaign taking in digital OOH*, social and paid search after analysing household data within each target region, tailoring messaging specifically to household postcodes, as well as testing messaging within each phase. We used Mosaic data overlayed with ONS** data to look at:

• Household income
• Current broadband provider
• Mosaic group type – Aligning products to target audiences
• OOH inventory based on proximity to clusters of households with each phase i.e., what media was available based on commuter routes – We analysed regional bus routes to cover multiple regions for example to give maximum relevant reach possible
• Data – We used first-party data across search and social campaigns to segment customers and target audiences according to phase and location. We then deployed a remarketing strategy based on engagement and purchase stage, using different formats and CTAs to drive acquisition.

* OOH – Out of Home

**ONS – Office of National Statistics

Did it work?

Each campaign was analysed in real time based on objective, engagement and importantly, conversion rates.

Each channel had its own objective, based on an overall acquisition target. We knew that certain channels were able to acquire more orders, based on data profiling, and what we knew about each segment based on where they were in the purchase cycle. We used this information to build customer journeys for each digital channels – Search, Facebook and Instagram – for acquisition and OOH campaigns to drive awareness at the top of the funnel.

We bought specific inventory OOH to gain volume of impressions and brand activity. We increased frequency of digital ads and spend once we began to see engagement and conversion data at ad and audience level, using website analytics packages to work out time of day, day of week and what messaging resonated the most with the data segments we targeted.

We helped Hey!Broadband to elevate their brand and generate hundreds of sign-ups from new customers in Q1, each signing up to a 24-month contract across 3 different contract types, from £23 PCM up to £27 PCM. The orders increased month on month, resulting in a 60% increase in take up rate from January to March and we reached the targets that we had set at the start of the campaign.

The media outlay during this period equated to only 12% of the total revenue generated, with a low cost-per-acquisition and a huge improvement on the challenges that the Hey!Broadband team had faced in previous years, resulting in a fantastic ROI for the brand and a great start to 2023.