Case Study: How the Booker Group Increased Unbranded Impressions 38%, All Google Impressions 12% YoY

Booker Group Limited, or Booker, is a British wholesale distributor, heritage brand, and subsidiary of Tesco (a British multinational grocery retailer). With over 180 cash-and-carry wholesale locations, Booker also supports independent retail, catering, and other small businesses across the United Kingdom. All in, Booker serves +7000 retail customers within the Premier, Budgens, Londis, and Family Shopper symbol groups.

After years of growth, Booker had grown to hundreds of locations and thousands of retail customers. Listings management was opaque, inconsistent, and completely decentralized. As Paul Hamlyn, Head of Central Operations at Booker explains, "All of our retailers are independent, so we didn't have access to their profiles. It was all down to the retailers to manage themselves."

Booker adopted Yext in 2023, and rolled out listings management across 7,171 locations and three times as many listings. Before Yext, Booker had no clear, easy way to keep listings accurate and up to date, let alone optimized. They also had no way of knowing all the platforms they were publishing on or measuring visibility or the impact of their reach. But, Hamlyn knew how important that accuracy and consistency mattered in both traditional search and the new AI search landscape.

Hamlyn affirms, "Our retailers are all very busy. They don't get time to keep their Google profiles and profiles on other platforms up to date. We realized in our partnerships, we wanted to be able to support our retailers more."

Booker brought in Yext to drive their symbol brands' digital presence. As Hamlyn describes, there was an important opportunity for Booker to go back to basics and make sure every retailer's location details were correct. As he notes, "For our independent retailers, making sure the store name, address, opening hours, and the details of what services they offer — all of that needed to be correct and published."

Now, as Hamlyn attests, "With Yext, when a customer puts 'convenience store near me' into search, their local Premier, Budgens, Londis, or Family Shopper store comes to the top. We're directing customers straight to our retailers' stores rather than leaving room for the competition."

The ability to manage listings at scale became urgent, too, as Booker prepares to launch Scoot, its new home delivery platform. Scoot connects shoppers with their local participating independent retailer, enabling them to order food, drinks and household essentials from a curated list of products chosen by the retailer. Hamlyn reveals, "With the launch of our app, we want to get even more actionable information out to people. Yext is setting us and our retailers up for success."

Yext Listings is significantly increasing Booker's visibility, engagements, and conversions. Booker manages 7,171 locations across four brands (Premier, Budgens, Londis, and Family Shopper). All locations are managed with Yext. All in, Booker's portfolio adds up to +21,000 listings managed across 34 publishers.

In the last 12 months, Yext has updated over 207,000 pieces of information across listings, especially profile updates. During that same time period, Booker has received +56M Google impressions, a 12% increase for the brand and its subsidiaries year-over-year (YoY). From those impressions, Booker has received +3.48M engagements (aka customer interactions with their brand, online), converting +2.8M customers to driving directions to their brand locations.

Of those +56M Google impressions, +30M have been unbranded, which means Booker is getting in front of new customers with +38% increase in visibility, YoY. Part of their success also stems from managing their listings across more platforms. Booker's listings management now scales across 92.3% of the sites, platforms, andpublishers for which they're eligible.

With the success of Yext Listings across Booker's portfolio of brand locations, Booker is now rolling out Yext Reviews, so every location can automate and scale review management. For Booker, the endgame is empowering independent retailers with new, transparent insights into their customer expectations and experiences while raising their profiles and standing with the best technology available.

To learn more about Yext's offerings, book a demo today.