Overview
Most think petrol when it comes to bp, but they don’t. bp has fully leveraged their unbranded local search opportunity, making sure to show up in ‘near me’ searches when consumers search for products and services unrelated to their core business — and they are a leader in how it’s done well.
bp’s target audience includes not only fuel purchasers, but also customers looking for petrol stations “near me” or “open now,” grocery staples for a fast dinner or a late-night Cornetto.
To connect with this audience, bp’s goal was to create a great customer experience for local consumers at all of their online touchpoints: from providing the most accurate and up-to-date information, showing up in unbranded local searches, to being one of the only fuel brands to answer customer reviews.
By teaming up with Uberall, bp took control of its brand experience — over a complex digital ecosystem — through one centralized platform.
The Challenge
Uberall was tasked with the challenge of creating a standout customer experience by digitally marketing each of bp’s 1,319 UK locations. But managing the marketing campaigns, location data, and customer reviews manually for all of bp’s UK locations wasn’t feasible, especially in view of the 125+ online platforms and multiple review sites involved — not to mention bp’s complex business model, which includes owned, dealer-owned, jobber and brand license operations.
bp’s goal was to create a great customer experience for local consumers, from providing the most accurate and up-to-date information, to engaging meaningfully with consumers online.
bp sought to do so by maintaining accurate business listings and ranking highly in local searches, across each and every one of their UK petrol stations. Consequently, bp’s strategy required a holistic way to manage their digital marketing to customers at a local level, increasing engagement and awareness of the unique offerings available in each of its UK locations.
The Solution
The Uberall team formatted bp’s data to ensure the highest accuracy online, including contact details, opening hours, amenities, social media, and URL. When Uberall evaluated bp’s listings globally, they found 23% of stations were off by at least 50m, with 3% off by more than 1km. The Uberall team has now set up 100% of bp stations with accurate geo-coordinates and street listings, formatted to comply with directory requirements, creating an exceptional customer experience from the start.
To ensure that each petrol station’s multiple functions (fuel, café, groceries) are findable, Uberall worked with Google to implement the novel strategy of a ‘pin within a pin’, the first such innovation in the fuel retail world. For bp’s reputation management strategy, Uberall performed an intensive reputation analysis which informed bp’s new strategy, and bp is now able to manage their online reputation across all of their UK locations from one inbox, ensuring consistency and strengthening brand reputation.
The Results
By optimizing all their locations for unbranded local searches, bp is now poised to deliver a standout customer experience for its millions of customers in the UK. All of bp's UK petrol stations now have accurate geo-coordinates, and each of bp's offerings, including food, fuel, Wild Bean Café, and M&S Simply Food, are optimized for local search.
The results speak for themselves—a 233% increase in customers successfully finding bp listings when searching on Google Search or Google Maps and a 224% increase in customers viewing bp listings on Google Maps, amounting to 43.1 million more views. bp's review ratings also increased rapidly, with 5-star reviews growing by 19% and 1-star and 2-star reviews decreased by 5%.
