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📬 "It's all about the benefits" - Sara Aust from Storebox about scale-up marketing
104 Plays1 year ago
Sara Aust is the Head of Marketing at Storebox, a thriving scale-up in the logistics industry that operates in 6 European countries. Here she developed from a crew member to a management position and built a successful team of 10 experts from different nationalities. During her career she gathered insights in the cultural industry as well as different Marketing positions, such as in a digital agency.
Are you curious to make your companies marketing ready for the future? Then I have the some simple and exciting options for you:
First, this is exactly what I do for my clients - I help them build their future strategies with workshops and coaching sessions.
I also have a very simple entry offer for founders and aspiring marketing experts: The Simple & Sustainable Marketing Academy, with a ridiculously cheap entry ticket price, because I love sharing what I have learned.
And if you enjoy reading: Check out my newsletter where I write about marketing, strategies and sustainability available every two weeks in the FutureStrategies newsletter.
About Florian Schleicher: I'm a marketing strategist - over the last 15 years I've led and helped shape marketing at McDonald's, Greenpeace and Too Good To Go. Now I help forward-thinking companies take their marketing to the next level.
With FutureS, the Impact Marketing Studio, I help brands achieve their goals and sustainable growth. All without the usual hustle.
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Transcript
Impact of Trends on Logistics
00:00:00
Speaker
I would definitely say that we can have an impact and play an important role. So what we do is to disrupt and improve the logistics market. There are many trends we can observe, for example, that door-to-door delivery will not be very common anymore in the future. Also, trucks will be forbidden in inner city centers due to traffic jam and pollution, etc. And yeah, I think here our goal is really to contribute in improving this last mile logistics.
Introduction to Future Strategies Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Future Strategies. I'm your host, Florian Scheicher. You want your marketing to achieve goals and sustainable growth? You have come to the right place. In this podcast, I talk with marketing experts and share my own know-how on how to bring your marketing to the next level with a lot of inspiration and learnings, all without the usual hustle. So let's jump right into it.
Introducing Sarah Ost
00:00:58
Speaker
Today, I am delighted to speak with Sarah Ost. Sarah is the head of marketing at Starbucks, a thriving scale-up in the logistics industry that operates in six European countries. There, she developed from a crew member to a management position and built a successful team of 10 experts from different nationalities. During her career, she gathered insights in the cultural industry, as well as different marketing positions, such as a digital agency.
00:01:26
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Sarah. Thank you, Florian. Thank you for the intro and the invitation.
00:01:32
Speaker
Great to have you with us. So I would like to start things off by asking you what is Storebox and what do you do in your role as head of marketing there?
Sarah's Role at Storebox
00:01:42
Speaker
So yeah, in my role as head of marketing, I'm responsible for strategically managing and enhancing the different verticals we have at Storebox. So the four different target audiences we have. So from marketing point of view, these are B2C and B2B. So we offer self-storage and logistic solutions.
00:02:00
Speaker
We have a franchise, as we are also a franchise system and are supporting in finding new potential partners. And expansion, here marketing supports in finding new real estate leads to grow our location network.
00:02:14
Speaker
So yeah, I'm leading a team of 10 very cool and smart experts in the field of performance marketing of brand PR content, offline and location marketing. So it's actually three different sub teams, but yeah, they cover various areas as all of our marketing for the six countries, as you mentioned, and for more than 200 franchisees is managed in our headquarters in Vienna. Wow. That sounds cool.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, it is exciting. Yeah. And one really interesting thing is that you are really solving an actual problem for consumers. Could you walk us through a little bit on the solution that you have and how it actually started?
Megatrends Affecting Storebox
00:02:58
Speaker
So yeah, Starbucks is tackling like different problems, especially
00:03:03
Speaker
urbanization and the struggles of last mile logistics. So to explain this, there have been two megatrends we can observe for many years now. So one is urbanization. Up to 2050, 75% of the earth population will be living in cities. And the second one is booming e-commerce. So research predicts that there will be an increase in e-commerce from 2023 to 2028 of around 60%.
00:03:28
Speaker
So if we look at it from a sustainability point of view, it's actually quite a disturbing trend, but kind of the overall consumer behavior will very likely not change too much. However, from our storebox business perspective, those mega trends help us to push the relevancy of storebox. So why? Because as mentioned more and more people are already living and will be living in the cities and these people will increasingly order online.
00:03:53
Speaker
And that's where the logistics industry, the logistics systems as they work today will be reaching their limits of capacity. And this is where Starbucks comes into play. We rent vacant real estate spaces, which will also be
00:04:12
Speaker
the result of this e-commerce trend. So there we rent those retail spaces and those can be used for different purposes.
Optimization of Last Mile Logistics
00:04:20
Speaker
So one is self storage as mentioned before. So here we solve the problem for customers. We have this kind of expanded living room. They can store their belongings there, like various things. Secondly, we have micro hubs and with those micro hubs, we assist companies in optimizing their last mile.
00:04:41
Speaker
What does this mean exactly? I can give you some examples to get a better picture. What we do here? So companies can be more efficient because we help them to reduce their travel time. This means that they have shorter distances, less kilometers and therefore less emissions of CO2.
00:04:59
Speaker
So normally, many B2B companies have their big warehouses outside of the city, and then their technicians or their employees travel outside the city, get some of their spare parts, et cetera, and then travel back to the city, back to their customers. And when they use storebox, they can use our decentralized storage network, because especially like in Vienna and Berlin, we have many locations already, and generally,
00:05:29
Speaker
more than 300 as you heard. And so they can use these inner city locations we have and don't need to take their waste like outside the city.
Target Audience and Marketing Balance
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah. One thing that I'm curious about is because you obviously benefit from network effects. So whenever your supply side, your B2B side grows, you can also grow the B2C side and vice versa. How do you then define your marketing target audience? Do you focus more on the B2C side or on the B2B part?
00:05:58
Speaker
I would say like from the beginning, the main focus was always B2C because as you said, we kind of needed the locations and this network to even service B2B better, especially if we talk about this logistics network and about the use of micro hubs for the last mile. Of course, we also have B2B customers like small and medium sized enterprises who just booked a storage online, who just need one cabin. So of course there we also serve B2B customers, but for this like
00:06:28
Speaker
last mile logistics optimization, here we really profit from the network and we need the network. And in terms of the target audience, I would say it's all about the benefit that Starbucks can bring. So we mainly define our audience by use cases. So our major USP, as you heard, is that we are local, we are the storage next door. And this factor of inner city locations is something various people can profit from.
00:06:53
Speaker
So on the B2C side, it could be students would do a semester abroad and need to store their stuff. It could be a young couple who wants to start a family and doesn't have enough space in their flat, or people who need to store their winter or summer equipment, etc. However, an average B2C customer is male and approximately 50 years old.
00:07:14
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. So I think it's very common because the older people get, the more things they have. Yeah. And the need for storage is bigger later in life. So I guess that's something some of us can relate. Yeah. And yeah, that's also what we see in our audience that they are actually like older or older, but later in life, I would say. Yeah. Very interesting. And do you also then target those people now knowing that they use it or do you still focus on the younger target audience?
00:07:43
Speaker
We target quite broad actually. So we do a lot of performance marketing and there we like also do lookalike audiences or like generally very broad and, um, automized targeting. And so I would say we define it between 25 to 65 years. So leave it broad and let the algorithm learn. You now dropped a word that I want to dive in deeper, which is performance marketing and.
00:08:10
Speaker
As it seems, there are two big waves currently in marketing. One who say, okay, performance marketing is the thing you need to do. And the other who says brand marketing is the thing you need to focus on.
Performance Marketing and Brand Importance
00:08:22
Speaker
How would you define the split the store box? So yeah, generally I would say we have a multi-channel marketing strategy with an emphasis on performance marketing. And I think the bigger we get, the more important brand marketing will be.
00:08:38
Speaker
But as we are a scale-up, we need to work very performance driven and we need to be able to track our results and have immediate results as well. So I think this is one part or one clear factor why as a scale-up we're really focusing on performance. And on the other hand, one of the other key factors is that self-storage is a demand-based product. So also the self-storage report from 2023 from Fidesa, this is the Federation of European Self Storage Association.
00:09:08
Speaker
says that 45% of the public have not heard of self-storage. Wow, 45%. Yeah, exactly. And if you hear this as a marketer, you're like, oh my God, people don't know our product. They should know Starbucks. They should know storage.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then on the other hand, and this is also kind of the idea of the marketing strategy, it's okay if they don't know self-storage as long if they don't need it yet. But as soon as they need a storage, we are here and they find us. So that's why we do a lot of search engine advertising, of course, also SEO, search engine optimization, and also a lot of top funnel activities.
00:09:43
Speaker
And maybe regarding your question in terms of branding, we really profit from our location network. So as we have more than 300 locations, people really know us through our locations, which is great. This is also a result we saw in our latest survey that 25% of people are familiar with us through our locations. So they kind of serve as billboards for us, so to say. Yeah. That actually reminds me of back when I was working at Too Good to Go.
00:10:11
Speaker
And we were pushing stores to use our bags, paper bags, because every time a person was running around the streets with the Too Good to Go bag, it's actually an advertisement that people see. And it's the same for you. And I have a store box in the next street of mine. And every time I walk by it, I get reminded, okay, it's an option whenever I need it. And I think that's the important thing is because
00:10:36
Speaker
Mostly it's not a thing that people use on a daily basis, like nobody needs, or I don't know how many people need a store box on a daily basis. So it's all about constantly reminding them that when the time comes, it's there. It's kind of like automotive ads. So nobody buys a car every day, but if they then decide to, they should know, okay, there is brand XYZ out there. True, yeah, exactly.
00:11:05
Speaker
So this then means also that you invest a lot into just raising awareness. As you said, 45% don't know about self-storage solutions in general. How do you do that? How do you raise awareness for the whole market segment?
00:11:21
Speaker
I would say that we are not the ones to raise awareness for the whole market segment. This would be probably a bit too much. But in terms of B2C, we do meta and Instagram ads. We do YouTube ads. So of course, this is more like on an upper funnel level and more
00:11:36
Speaker
Branding effect as well. But then again, coming back to performance, we push a lot with retargeting also on the various channels. And also, of course, like we also have a team, Branding Communications team, which focuses on social media, on press activities.
00:11:52
Speaker
also location marketing team. Here we do a lot of marketing for our franchisees. So like each month they open some locations and here we do a lot of regional marketing as well. So regional press, sometimes we also do out of home. So it kind of depends on the size and on the specific.
00:12:12
Speaker
requirements for the location, but there we also try to be present in the specific region. So that's kind of how we try to push it awareness in the area where we are or where we kick it off. Sounds very good because also you mentioned press and I was just in a coaching session with a client of mine where I explained to them
00:12:32
Speaker
importance of using PR and press, because I think that's something that a lot of early stage startups are not aware of. How much potential lies in a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, a radio station doing coverage on you? What have you learned about how to create stories so that they are actually picked up and that you don't have to pay for them, but you play something that is just
00:12:58
Speaker
so appealing to journalists and to readers that they basically publish it for free.
00:13:03
Speaker
I think what we've learned and what we're still learning is that we need to be more brave because sometimes you think like, okay, this is very clean and straight story and this makes sense and this is news and people should publish it, but it's kind of boring and it's not relevant enough. So here we really try and as I mentioned, we're still learning. We really try to push more with the storytelling to think of different angles we could tell.
00:13:28
Speaker
And also target very media specific because if you have one story and you just send it out to your whole press contacts, of course, it's not relevant. So that's super important to also kind of have this network or at least call them, sell them the story, pitch it to one specific media and not to five media at the same time.
00:13:49
Speaker
So yeah, that's something we definitely learned and are still working on. And of course, there are some stories which are just interesting, like investment and they're easier to get press coverage. And others, I think you have to be very precise in the targeting and in the storytelling.
00:14:06
Speaker
Totally agree. And you now touched upon a topic which was investment. So, Starbucks just raised 15.5 million for an expansion. What can we expect from
Expansion Plans and B2B Strategy
00:14:18
Speaker
that? Do you already have some marketing plans for the future that you want to share? Is it about going to new markets or is it strengthening your stance in the existing markets?
00:14:29
Speaker
So you can expect a lot of course. So yeah, what we want to focus on company-wide is the densification of our storage network in the Dach and Benelux markets. So of course, it's also what we support marketing-wise to really, on the one hand, get more franchisees in this region to further grow and expand our network.
00:14:52
Speaker
And also to grow our brand awareness, to support our locations, et cetera. So this is kind of the main emphasis. And also we are at the moment further developing our B2B product for the last mile logistics. So there's a lot happening internally at the moment. So that's definitely something we also plan to focus even more next year on our B2B marketing strategy and on pushing those
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, solutions even more. And yeah, actually for the rest, in terms of marketing, I'm still evaluating a lot. So yeah, looking into identifying new growth potentials. So I'm thinking also with the performance team we discussed of like broadening the channel mix. I'm also looking into micro influencers, some more user-generated content. So there are many ideas, but nothing has been set in stone yet.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, I like the micro influencer thing. We did that in the past and I also recommend it to a lot of clients at the moment because I think it's a good way to reach a certain kind of target audience in a very authentic way. Exactly. It's not you telling the story, but it's a person that people can relate to that then tells the story about you, which then gives you much more credibility. So I think that's a very good idea.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And it makes it much more interesting as well because we're always like, okay, with storage, what can we do more? How can we be more fun or more entertaining to get also more organic reach and not only be on the paid side all the time. So yeah, I also think that this could be a good option to reach a new audience and be more present, as you said, in a more authentic way. Yeah.
Sustainability Contributions in Logistics
00:16:34
Speaker
So one of the things I think you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, and I want to talk a little bit more about sustainability now, because you wrote on your website also, we create the logistics of tomorrow. So how sustainable is tomorrow going to be? You already mentioned some of the things that you're doing.
00:16:56
Speaker
But how sustainable can it actually be when urbanization is growing and also ordering online e-commerce is booming? How can you play a role in making it sustainable? So I think Starbucks can contribute and be a part of the solution to climate neutrality in various ways. So to be fair, the future will not be 100% sustainable, so we can't change the logistics industry in total.
00:17:23
Speaker
But I would definitely say that we can have an impact and play an important role. So what we do is to disrupt and improve the logistics market. And this has various positive side effects. As you mentioned, we talked about it shortly before. With our services, we can support in making the last mile more efficient.
00:17:42
Speaker
So this efficiency means that we save travel time for employees, but also on the customer side, we save kilometers. So for example, one of our biggest customers is IKEA. And for IKEA, we offer click and collect services. So people can order on the IKEA website, for example, a shelf, and instead of having a transport, which brings it to their home, they can choose store box, click and collect. So this saves time for.
00:18:10
Speaker
for the transport, but also instead of going to the IKEA and driving there maybe for one hour with the car, they can just pick it at the store box. And thereby we save CO2.
00:18:21
Speaker
Also, we have white label parcel walls in our locations, so lockers. And here it's possible to save up to 40% CO2 emissions on the last mile. So that's kind of the same way. So it serves like all as a micro hub where you, for example, can deliver your parcel to a store box and also return it there. And those are various options where we kind of improved the logistics, I would say, because in the long run, it will need to change. So.
00:18:49
Speaker
There are many trends we can observe, for example, that door-to-door delivery will not be very common anymore in the future. Also, trucks will be forbidden in inner city centers due to traffic jam and pollution, et cetera. And yeah, I think here our goal is really to contribute in improving these last my logistics. And that's exactly where we come into play. Yeah. And I think you have a very important role, as you mentioned there, to play because
00:19:15
Speaker
You can be an enabler of people using a more sustainable way to get their parcels delivered. Because if the courier has to go to every apartment, then maybe they need to change parking spots every time. And it's much more effort and that does CO2.
00:19:35
Speaker
than if there is one pickup place. I'm not curious, Sala, do you also then say that in your marketing outreach that it's a more sustainable solution or do you more focus on the direct benefits of unpredictability, feasibility,
00:19:54
Speaker
easy mess, or does sustainability play a role? To be honest, it's not the main focus. For example, on our B2B website, so on the Logistic Solutions product, and for companies, we also emphasize it a lot, because also the goal of many companies is to become climate neutral on the last mile. So this is, for example, also the goal of IKEA, and that's exactly where they are, aware that they can reach these goals with us.
00:20:22
Speaker
On the B2C side, I thought about it when also preparing for the podcast that it's actually not something we communicate too much, but of course it would also be interesting to point out to the fact that people can deliver to the parcel walls and this is much more sustainable than home to home deliveries.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah. And also, I don't think every company needs to communicate on every channel about sustainability. I think what's very important is that if you communicate, there needs to be something behind that. Exactly. It can't be just, okay, we're doing this thing and then you look at it and you see, no, it's not actually that. But if you do something good, you can choose how big a part it should play in your sustainability communication. But I really like that you use it in the B2B communication a lot.
00:21:09
Speaker
Because I think there you also have an important lever that you can pull because all those companies need to become CO2 neutral. And they are looking actively for solutions. So I think there it's a very good way to play with it. So one thing I really like about what you were saying is, and you mentioned it now again, you focus a lot also on trends. So it seems to me like a big part of your analysis and diagnosis is always looking at
00:21:39
Speaker
what's going to happen in the world and how can we then be a part of that change and adapt ourselves? Like you mentioned, okay, trucks are maybe not going to be able to drive to the city center anymore, so we need to think of a new solution. And you also mentioned at the beginning, the megatrends, this urbanization and the booming e-commerce. So how often do you actually look at trends to adapt your strategy to them?
Trend Analysis and Marketing Adaptation
00:22:03
Speaker
I would say, or in this part, I need to give the credits to our CEO, Johannes Breit, as he's also from the logistics industry. And I think he always had this vision of where Starbucks needs to go in the future. So even if we started more on the B2C side, he always had this big picture that we will optimize the last mile. Generally, I would say in the marketing team, we look at trends.
00:22:28
Speaker
like regularly, but more in terms probably of what changes, what new features are there in performance or what channels are interesting or where should we adapt and keep up. So I would say like the main focus here is more like really on a specific marketing side, but of course we're also a lot in touch with those like mega trends and the topics we discuss overall at Starbucks, but it's not something marketing specific, I would say, but something we
00:22:55
Speaker
share and exchange on a company level. I like that because I think it's just important whenever you look at the big picture to also consider, okay, what's going to happen in the future and how is that going to impact us? And there are sustainability trends, but there are also other trends like the ones you mentioned. And I think you can only have a full picture of what's happening and where you're going if you also look at those trends. So I really like this approach.
00:23:22
Speaker
So now coming to the three final questions, Salah. What is good marketing for you in three words?
00:23:28
Speaker
I think it definitely needs to be impactful. And yeah, so what I mean with that is that it needs to reach a certain goal, which ideally should be defined before. So this could be either like to create attention in terms of branding or have like generate revenues or reach other KPIs. So I think, or be sustainable or whatsoever. So it should have an impact. Also, it needs to be data driven because yeah, you need to evaluate what you're doing.
00:23:58
Speaker
and creative. And yeah, here I also think it doesn't necessarily need to be creative in terms of, okay, you need a crazy design or a crazy message. It can be that as well, but also creative in terms of the approach you're taking, because sometimes it depends on like which company you're working at. Is it a startup? Is it a corporate? And yeah, there you need to find different approaches and sometimes think outside the box and adapt to the situations you have. Yeah, I like that also with
00:24:27
Speaker
The balancing act of data-drivenness versus creativeness. What do you think is the future of marketing?
00:24:35
Speaker
I think it's ever-changing. That's also what we touched upon before shortly. There are new trends all the time. There are new updates, new features, new social channels. There's so much happening all the time. I think as a marketeer, you really need to stay up to date. It can be challenging sometimes because you always need to learn, but I think that's also what makes it fun and interesting. Definitely ever-changing.
00:24:59
Speaker
And I also think that it will be more automated in the future. I think it's already going into this direction of course with AI and many
00:25:08
Speaker
features coming, but I guess in the long run, also the way we work in marketing will probably change due to all the technology which is coming. And I hope that it's more sustainable. So yeah, I think we're talking a lot about sustainability and it's getting more and more important. And I hope that in the future, it will be also not just something we talk about how we can implement it or how we can communicate it, but it's really like a fixed component of it.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah, I also hope so, and I think it's going to happen. The only question is when and will it be fast enough?
AI in Marketing and Future Plans
00:25:46
Speaker
But I have a follow-up question because you mentioned automatization and AI. Are you using AI as a marketing team? I would say yes to a certain degree, but not too much yet.
00:26:00
Speaker
So yes, like for content, for some prompts, but for example, for using it really for creating content, this is something I want to test more, but actually we're not at a stage yet where we say we can really use this content. It is really saving us work time, but it's more like you need to play around a lot to really get a result you can use. But I guess this will also improve soon. And that's definitely something I want to do more in the future. Cool. I'm looking forward to catching up then.
00:26:28
Speaker
and see what you're doing. So last question, what book have you read recently that you want to recommend here? I've read Assembly from Natasha Brown. And this is a book about cultural assimilation, about privilege, about race, gender, and power. So it's actually quite a short book, which covers a lot of very intense topics. And yeah, it tells the story of a Black British woman
00:26:55
Speaker
who from a superficial perspective does all the right things, she lives a good life, she gets promoted in her finance job, she has a wealthy boyfriend, but still
00:27:05
Speaker
she's very suppressed and controlled and never feels like she's belonging. So it faces discrimination like as a woman, but especially as a black woman. And yeah, it's very critical and touches all the inequalities of our time. So yeah, it's quite, it makes you quite angry and sad, but I think it's a really important and good book to read. Yeah, that's why I want to recommend it here. Yeah, definitely goes up to my Christmas reading list. Thanks for sharing.
00:27:32
Speaker
So Sara, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I definitely learned a lot also. Thanks for sharing your perspectives and I hope to see you soon. Yeah. Thank you so much for the invitation. It was really cool to talk to you and I'm looking forward to our next chat soon.
00:27:50
Speaker
Then see you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. And that's it for today's episode. Thank you for listening. And now I have a question for you. Are you curious how your marketing can achieve sustainable growth? Then I have some simple and exciting options for you. First, this is exactly what I do for my clients. I help them build their future strategy with workshops and sparring sessions.
00:28:15
Speaker
I also have a very simple entry offer for founders and aspiring marketing experts, the Simple and Sustainable Marketing Academy, with a ridiculously cheap entry ticket price, because I love sharing what I've learned. Lastly, if you enjoy reading, check out my newsletter, where I write about marketing, strategies and sustainability, for over a thousand bright and curious minds.
00:28:41
Speaker
you can find all the info in the show notes. And if you have any feedback on this episode, I'd love to hear it. Please give me a rating wherever you listen, if you like it, or reach out to me directly. So until next time on Future Strategies.