Growing B2C Customer Communities [with Andreea Magraon, Bolt Romania]

On today's episode, we have invited Andreea Magraon, head of marketing for Bolt Romania and together we will discuss launching national B2C marketing campaigns, as well as dive a bit into mobile app advertising and how to drive awareness and conversions in this B2C space.

 

With over 10 years of experience in marketing, communication and journalism, Andreea Magraon is a Marketing Manager for Bolt Romania since 2018. From this position, Andreea develops and implements the company's marketing strategy and coordinates internal and external communication, both in relation to driver and company partners, but also to passengers. 

 

Andreea also deals with the company's Social Media Strategy. Previously, Andreea held the same position at FlixBus, creating and coordinating the implementation of the transport company's marketing strategy for the local market.

 

However, her career in communication and marketing began at TRUST Communications, where she developed and coordinated PR and social media strategies for both B2B and B2C clients. In the more than six years of agency, Andreea has implemented PR, marketing and social media projects for clients such as Intel, Acer, Fujitsu, Saint-Gobain, Băneasa Shopping City, TEDx Bucharest, Reckitt Benckiser, Eaton, IntegralEdu.

 

Andrea's professional debut was as a journalist at Ziarul Financiar, covering there first the political field, and later the Hi-Tech business area.

 

Andreea Magraon is a graduate of the Faculty of Political Sciences within the National School of Political and Administrative Studies, and in 2011 she graduated with a Masters Degree in International Relations and European Integration at the same university.

 

Connect with Andreea:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreeamagraon/

Website: https://bolt.eu/en/cities/bucharest/

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

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Episode Transcript:

Andrei 

Hello everybody! This is Andrei and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. On today's episode, we have Andreea Magraon, who is the head of marketing for Bolt in Romania and together we will discuss launching national B2C marketing campaigns, as well as dive a bit into mobile app advertising and how to drive awareness and conversions in this B2C space. Hello, Andreea, how's everything going?

 

Andreea  

Hi, Andrei. Everything is okay. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast.

 

Andrei  

It's my pleasure. So you are tuning in from Romania. Right?

 

Andreea  

Yep. From our office, actually, in Bucharest.

 

Andrei  

Nice. So in order for our audience to get to know you a bit better and to warm up the ground, I know you started off as a journalist and you went into marketing and you rock and roll there ever since. Tell us a bit about you, a bit about what drove you to this niche and to this industry and then your growth from a journalist to marketeer and so on.

 

Andreea  

Sure. What can I tell? My experience was built smoothly, let's say step by step. So I started as a journalist at Ziarul Financiarul, which is the biggest business publication in Romania. I worked there for four years, I started as a political journalist, because my background is in political science. And then I switched to the IT department, which was one of the best things that happened to me because I met so many interesting people. I learned so much about these IT industries, I met CEOs, entrepreneurs who build businesses, so basically, it was super interesting for me and I love the domain. Then I got this opportunity to go and work in a PR agency. And I worked there with Intel, also with a big it Corporation. It was like a smooth transition from my IT journalist, to an account manager working in a PR agency for a big IT company. So basically, my journalist background helped me so much with the PR activity. I worked there for six years until it closed the office in Romania. And I felt the need to change, because actually I felt like an external Intel employee, Intel was a big part of my life, I learned so many things. I started with the AI and then we transitioned to marketing activities and I focused on marketing after that. And after I left the agency, I worked for Flixbuss, which is a big German company, a unicorn in the bus transportation industry. But in Romania there are only international lines, so no domestic transportation. But then, Taxify came along and I took it in October 2018, and I think it was one of the best decisions of my life because Bolt, back then Taxify is one of the best companies that I work for. So yeah, so in brief, this was my adventure.

 

Andrei  

Nice! Basically, journalism and then PR and then marketing. You've been with Bolt for about I guess three years. Congrats! You had a very nice campaign with Volkswagen, which we will discuss a bit about very soon. Actually, I can't wait for us to discuss it, because we haven't had the chance to catch up on how it went. But Andreea, tell us a bit about how was back then Taxify, when you joined the company. You joined to lead their marketing efforts and departments, how was the competitive landscape and how was the company at the point when he joined?

 

Andreea  

When I joined, the company had a couple of hundred employees. Now it has 2000 employees worldwide. And at that moment in Romania, we were around 10-15, now we are almost 100, because we have the development office here for Central Eastern Europe. We grew a lot, actually, we are joking that one month at Bolt is like six regular months elsewhere. The right hailing company was still competitive. It was the same, actually. But Romania is one of the most important markets for Bolt. It was, as I said, a small, small company, which grew so much, and it went through so many things in the past two years. But yeah, everything is well, now if we can say that. I mean, with this global situation, but yeah, we grew. And I'm very happy that I was part of that.

 

Andrei  

Obviously, it's a market with some big players. So alongside Bolt, I guess, your main ones over the last two years, obviously, there was Uber and then it was the classic taxi services that were ongoing and so traditional in Romania, until you guys came along and Uber and everybody that tried to enter ever since, I think Yango... when did they try to enter? I think they don't exist anymore. Do they?

 

Andreea  

Oh, they are still here. I know that they're still on the market.

 

Andrei  

And then he was also Free Now, which I think they tried.

 

Andreea  

Yeah, actually, the former Clever, let's say. It was Clever and Uber when I joined, and now we have Uber, Free Now and Yango.

 

Andrei  

And basically, this is a market where it's very price-sensitive, and I think that it's a challenge for you to get customers to stay loyal to Bolt, isn't it?

 

Andreea  

Of course, everybody's prices dip, right? I mean they are watching the price and checking it. Our core value is that we are offering affordable rides to the passengers and at the same time, we provide high earnings for the driver. So these are the main points of our business, let's say and we want to stick with this as much as possible. Also, of course, the experience during the ride is very important, we need to provide this to the riders. And yeah, of course, as you said, the price is very important. But also I guess the other things are important, like the good quality, the good communication with the riders, if they have a problem, the communication with the drivers. Basically, to ensure that everybody is happy and to show that you care.

 

Andrei  

So from a marketing standpoint, you came in and you had to lead. So what was your approach to taking the brand and taking it out into the market, in the cities that you are operating?

 

Andreea  

When I joined, the app was available only in Bucharest and Cluj. In my first week, I participated in launching the service in Timișoara. So the approach was just to take the brand and communicate it better to the market. We had a couple of campaigns for riders and for drivers back then. 

Andreea  

So, basically what we did was to try to make Bolt a friendly brand. It was very important for us to make Bolt a friendly brand to the riders and also for the driver. Basically, we communicated through different campaigns, we had back then different campaigns with giveaways in the cars. There were different types of campaigns which we made: giving away free boxes on Halloween in our cars or on Valentine's Day like a single box - we took care of the single ones. So basically, different campaigns in which people can talk about the brand and remember us. We didn't forget about the drivers which are basically a big important part of our business. And we also had different campaigns with that, such as top driver kids. Also, everything to keep them engaged and close to us. After that, the rebranding campaign came, in which we changed from Taxify to Bolt. And we had a big campaign including outdoor, which we do very rarely in, in Bolt, as you know, we are measuring everything and outdoor is usually difficult to measure. But because we had this global campaign in which we rebranded, we chose to have an extensive campaign. What I want to also mention is that social media is a big important part of our strategy, we communicate directly with the riders and drivers. We are keeping funny, personal human language, because usually people want to communicate with humans, of course, not with brands. And we have regular giveaways with different prizes, because we want to give to the community something back, of course. Social media giveaways are part of our planning every time. Basically, when we plan campaigns lately, we try to have one, two big campaigns per quarter, in which we focus on the subject: we want to communicate. For example, affordability. This is one of the most important topics of all, because it's affordable to ride with Bolt. And we built the campaign around the subject. Actually, we are planning some nice, cool campaigns for the next month. Halloween is on the table. A bit different from what we had in the past, but you will see.

 

Andrei  

Nice! Because you mentioned the Halloween campaigns. Actually, that worked very well. I'm sure you already know. But I remember my friends that were taking Bolt rides and they were writing on the WhatsApp group: Hey guys, Bolt just gave me a chocolate. This was so cool. And then it was a little hype around it for that time.

 

Andreea  

Well, I'm glad to hear that the campaign worked. We are planning two or three companies. Last quarter we had a big campaign, it was called Safety Festival. So basically, because of the COVID situation which affected everybody, we tried to educate people to wear masks, because there was a huge discussion in Romania. So basically, we created this fake festival called Safety Festival in which we gave free rides to everybody, to show that everybody is wearing a mask. And no, they weren't obliged to post something in our cars. They could post the photos with them on the street, at home, in the office, wherever they were, but the most important was to wear a mask.

 

Andrei  

And how did you give them the rides? How were they sending you the pictures? What was the mechanism?

 

Andreea  

Oh, the mechanism was to post on our Instagram page. So basically, they had to post the stories with them wearing a mask, tag us and to use #safetyfestival. Yeah, and that was a campaign in which we educated and at the same time, it was the campaign for launching our Instagram page.

 

Andrei  

Awesome. So now we go into my long-awaited subject, which was your campaign from last week. So tell us about the campaign, so the guys tuning in can know the backstory, as well.

 

Andreea  

Basically, during the last week of September, we had the cool campaign with Volkswagen in which our riders could test their new full-electric model ID3. What we did, we organised a couple of test drives free for everybody on our platform. We created a special category in the app in which people could call for an ID3 and ride it in the city. It was one of the coolest campaigns I've worked for, because it was also linked to our green plan, in which we launched a campaign during the zero-emission day, which was very cool, because it was linked to this green message. The collaboration was very, very successful. I mean, we had thousands of test drives and in four cities: in Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara and also Constanța where we have only scooters. 

 

Andrei  

Got it. So how do you plan the campaign? How did you get into the market? I guess he was a partnership with Volkswagen as well, who were supporting you.

 

Andreea  

Oh, yeah. They came to us with a proposal and we gave them the platform for the rides. All the promo and everything was done by Volkswagen together with us. And we used all the possible channels, all that you can imagine from TV, to radio, to online ads, influencers, PR, email pushes to our riders. Um, we also used social media: Instagram mainly, where we also had a small activation with some free rides. Um, and yeah, it was very, very successful, I have to say.

 

Andrei  

Nice. So 1000 rides was the limit that you had to give away? 

 

Andreea  

No, we didn't have a limit. I mean, that was the overall result. At first, we planned it for one week, from Monday to Sunday. And then halfway of the campaign, we realised that it's so successful, and we extended the timeline of the test, right. So basically, from 10 in the morning, and not from 12. And then, at the end of the week, we realised that, hey, we want to extend it for two more days for Monday and Tuesday. So it was a success.

 

Andrei  

Very well done. Congrats.

 

Andreea  

Thank you, actually. I think it's a good example of successful cooperation between brands. 

 

Andrei  

Nice. So I really like the way that you guys approach marketing in B2C. And one thing that we tried to do with each episode for our listeners (they come from various industries, and so on), is to give them takeaways that can be taken away from each episode and apply into specific business, depending on how each operates. So I'm trying to sum up what we have discussed now and transform this into applicable insights or advice for Marketing Leaders that operate in the b2c space. There are some takeaways that I got, and I think would be worth giving away to people so that they can apply them. Do you have any main ones or top priorities takeaways that you'd like to share?

 

Andreea  

So, basically, first, you need to first set what you want to communicate, what are your strong points, how would you like to be known for? So I would first highlight that, then I would target the audience for my product. So basically, to whom I will communicate all the things that I said. So who are your buyers, your clients, your users, right? Then check the channels that you would like to use. I think social media is one of them. If you're talking about B2C, but also b2b, if you can communicate differently, why not? And after you set the channels you also have the budget, of course, because you need to invest in ads. What I learned during the past years is that testing is very important. An approach that works for Ukraine, or Poland doesn't necessarily work in Romania. So, basically, when you send emails, or have an ad or whatever you are communicating in which form, you should have two or three forms and see which brings you a better result. This is one of the things that I learned and we are also implementing here and I think many should do that. So basically, you should play, you should test. Because this way, you will learn how to promote your brand better, or a product or whatever.

 

Andrei  

Awesome. Another thing is that, I think you did this very well by looking at your users in this case, and turning them into sort of nano influencers into their group of friends, or whatever. And I think that you do this very well also for these campaigns, but also for your sort of day to day activity, as you mentioned, with a safety festival or with using people in order to get to their communities better.

 

Andreea  

Exactly, exactly. So basically, you should make people talk about yourself. I mean, if you don't have necessarily a budget to have an outdoor campaign, you can have just some giveaways, where you ask people to tag their friends like it was the safety festival, post a photo with us, tag their friends. So basically, just give them something and make them talk about your brand. 

 

Andrei  

Awesome. Andreea, thanks so much for all the insight and for being on the show. I know you have a very busy day ahead. So really appreciate your time and input into this. And for all the guys tuning in and listening. Where can they get in touch with you if let's say they have a partnership idea, or if they wanted to pick your brains on any specific things that they might be thinking of?

 

Andreea  

Okay, they can write to me on LinkedIn where I'm very responsive. And I'm also on Facebook on Instagram. 

 

Andrei  

Cool stuff. Okay, so guys will have the details in the description below. So if anything is unclear or you want more information, either myself or Andreea would be happy to help you with anything that you might have going on. And until next time. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. And thank you, Andreea, again for being on the show. Have an amazing day. 

 

Andreea  

Thank you.