Signposter.com provides poster advertising services to small and medium-sized businesses in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The founders needed a solution to help customers choose sites quickly and easily, giving them access to information such as audience figures, format, and price. With Bing™ Maps for Enterprise, customers pick their sites from an easy-to-use map interface. As a result, Signposter.com has seen registrations double in six months.
Business Needs
Signposter.com is an online service backed by media group WPP. Set up in 2008, the service is designed to make outdoor advertising easy and accessible for all small businesses. The company’s 13 employees place poster adverts on billboards, street furniture, and buses for small and medium-sized customers. Simon Read, Chief Executive Officer of Signposter.com, says: “A lot of small businesses feel that poster campaigns are too expensive or complicated to be worthwhile. We want to help those companies get the promotion they need, while minimising cost and complexity.”
Signposter.com customers can choose from more than 98 per cent of all traditional poster formats in the U.K. Its customers also need an effective way to select the right sites for their adverts. To make that decision, they require access to geographical and statistical information, showing location and data on how many people are likely to see the site. Read says: “Local geography is important when planning a campaign with a limited budget—you need the most impact for your money.”
Signposter.com wanted to present this information in a user-friendly way, to make it quick and easy to design a poster campaign. Read says: “We want a company to come in, choose a site in its local area, design the advertisement, and be finished in the shortest time possible.”
Signposter.com aimed to achieve its objectives by providing a Web site with an easy-to-use map interface that could display all the information customers need to make informed decisions about their advertising strategies.
Solution
In early 2008, Signposter.com contacted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Infosys, which recommended a solution based on Microsoft Bing mapping technology and Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 Enterprise Edition data management software. David Stronach, Head of Services at Infosys, says: “Bing maps ticked all the boxes for us. It was easy to use and manage, attractive to users, and integrated well with SQL Server.”
With Bing maps, users can view a map of any area in which they want to advertise. Information from SQL Server showing the locations of potential poster sites is transferred automatically on to the map. Customers click on icons to reveal data such as how many people on average view the site every day, its format, and pricing details.
Once a company has selected a site, it designs the poster from scratch with an ad creator or by using a range of templates provided on the Web site. A mock-up of the poster is shown on a street-level photograph of the site. If the customer is happy with how it looks, it can proceed to book and pay for the site. Signposter.com then produces and sets up the poster.
The company also offers customers the opportunity to advertise on buses. But, as moving objects, these are difficult to represent on a map. Microsoft specialists from the Bing maps product team helped the IT team design the solution and overcome technical issues. Rob Brayshaw, Chief Information Officer at Signposter.com, says: “With some technical assistance from Microsoft, we designed a system to draw shapes on the map representing the route of each bus. Thanks to the professionalism of Infosys and the support of Microsoft, we developed a pilot version of the site within just four months.”
Benefits
Bing has given Signposter.com customers a simple and quick way to set up poster campaigns, and make well-informed decisions on where to market their businesses. Signposter.com has used the solution to generate interest in its approach to advertising, and increase site traffic, registered users, and—ultimately—revenue. Read says: “With Bing Maps for Enterprise, customers get all the local information they need to make their campaign with us a success. It has helped us double our customer base in less than six months.”
- Increased customer base. Signposter.com has made poster campaigns more accessible to local retailers, charities, and public bodies. Read says: “Our small business customers value the control Bing gives them over where to place their advertising.”
- Better value for money. Customers can view information on all sites in their local area, and decide where to spend their money to achieve maximum publicity. Tracy Guy, Service Manager for Shelter North East, says: “We are a charity and had a limited promotion budget. Signposter.com understood that and provided a streamlined professional service from start to finish.”
- Sustained customer interest. Employees have designed the Web site to be easily accessible and visually exciting, encouraging users to explore the company’s services. Statistics show that visitors to the Signposter.com Web site stay for an average of more than six minutes.
- Ongoing support. Brayshaw says: “Microsoft and Infosys have taken the burden of routine maintenance away from our IT team, which can now concentrate on developing new features for our customers.”
- Potential for expansion. Signposter.com intends to deploy Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in technology to further enhance the user experience. Brayshaw says: “With Silverlight, users can zoom smoothly into maps, and we can display more interactive content such as video clips.”
For More Information
For further information about Microsoft products and services, please visit
www.microsoft.com/uk
or call 0870 60 10 100*
For hearing impaired customers with a Minicom, contact: 0870 50 30 400*
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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published July 2009
