How I'd grow Bagsort

July 22, 2020

Bagsort is a website that allows you to find a place where you can safely deposit your luggage for a few hours while waiting for the check-in.

They have a network of local partner businesses, including certified local stores and hotels with extra space that you can book.

Their site is simple, but effective. It clearly explains what the product is, and counters possible objections.

I’d make the search bar CTA more prominent by putting it front and center, removing the hero image, and using the “drop off your bags...” part as a subheading.

I was surprised there wasn’t an app, because for something that people need on the go, it’d make a lot of sense. Apparently, it’s coming soon.

I think their promotional efforts should concentrate on the app. The site should only attract and funnel visitors to the app.

If you consider the customer journey, people see this site, think it’s cool, but when they need it, 99% won’t remember the name.

Their goal should be making people install the app on their phones to get a foot in the door. When users need the app, it’ll be right there.

If you have a big feature coming up, the best practice is collecting email addresses. Bagsort isn’t doing that; they don’t even have a newsletter box in the footer.

That’s a big missed opportunity. If they add a signup form, they’ll have an audience to launch the app to.

Given the historic moment, people think it’s not a great time to launch a travel site. But difficult situations can also present opportunities.

Today, travel influencers have 2 problems: they’re stuck at home without content and they don't get ad revenue.

Bagsort can leverage the first fact to create a travel-related piece of content, and use it to reach out to creators who’ll cover it.

If it’s newsworthy and interesting enough, influencers will cover it and it’ll solve their lack-of-content problem.

This doesn’t just give Bagsort free access to potential customers, but also helps them get relevant links and increase their domain authority.

The luggage storage niche is pretty competitive. They need a strong link profile to outrank their competitors.

Bagsort can also use the second fact by negotiating deals with creators to promote their product on their websites and social media (IG, YouTube, etc.).

With the current lack of advertisers, they can access bigger influencers that’d normally be out of their budget.

If Bagsort installs the FB pixel before launching these campaigns, all the traffic driven by them will create a big retargeting pool.

Once the app is ready, they can create a custom audience to target warm visitors. They convert better than standard cold prospects.

A SERP analysis shows that “Venice Beach luggage storage” query returns pages optimized for that term.

Right now, Bagsort is unifying content for all those neighborhoods on a single LA page. This doesn’t match search intent - they need separate pages for each location.

Their page titles are over-optimized. A good page title doesn’t just contain the right KWs, but attracts SERP clicks.

Always preview how Google is going to display page titles. Otherwise, you might get a truncated title that doesn’t entice searchers at all.

If I imagine people planning a trip to LA, many of them will watch YouTube LA travel guides or best LA attractions before their departure.

That’s a great opportunity for Bagsort: using YT advertising to display relevant ads to people looking for related videos.

Pro tip: avoiding YT ads because you don’t think you have the resources for video production? Trust me, that’s a mistake.

I’ve seen videos shot with smartphones and edited with $10 online tools perform better than videos that cost thousands. People like authenticity.

In the future, they could partner with new DTC luggage brands. Every time someone buys a bag, they get a free Bagsort deposit coupon.

It’d be a win-win: brands give a valuable gift, customers get additional value, and Bagsort gets new leads at a small acquisition cost.

Learn marketing from case studies

Every month I pick a new website and write a marketing case study explaining exactly how I’d grow it