​Dual social media/price drop strategy doubles forecourt’s fuel sales

GW Holmes, the Jet forecourt operator making a name for itself for low fuel prices, has had its best social media reaction this year to a Facebook post on a price drop to 136.7p per litre for unleaded petrol at the end of July.

Since highlighting price reductions two years ago, the business in Etherley Moor has doubled the volume of fuel it sells daily to up to 30,000 litres. The latest post generated 403 likes, 70 comments, and 114 shares, reaching hundreds of thousands of people, says the operator.

Tom Holmes, the third generation of the family business, who runs the forecourt with his father, says that he tries to post regular weekly updates on what is happening in the fuel market to his 12,000 Facebook followers even if he is not announcing a drop in price.

He will generally pass on wholesale price reductions over 1p to his customers, some of which come specially from Hartlepool and Chester-le-Street, around 25 miles away. The business, which Tom claims is often the cheapest in its area, relies on 60% of its sales from fuel.

Tom times the price drop/social media activity for Thursday or Friday ready for customers’ pay day, and says he books extra tankers. For the latest drop he increased his weekly deliveries from four to six.

“We have worked with Jet for 10 or 15 years and have a very good relationship with them,” said Tom. “We’ve been in a position where we have contacted them on a Friday at 3pm to say that we are running out of fuel and they have delivered at 3am Saturday.”

Meanwhile, Shell dealer Goran Raven, who runs a 750,000 to 800,000 litre a month forecourt, has also been using Facebook to relay price reductions on fuel at his Raven’s Budgens site in Abridge, Essex, for seven months. He says it has been beneficial posting price drops on standard and premium petrol and diesel, as well as AdBlue, with all of the press coverage around the Competition and Markets Authority criticising forecourts for taking too much margin from fuel.

He started sharing these posts with his 3,500 Facebook followers to increase fuel volume after upgrading his forecourt in December 2023 to include premium diesel and to give a greater emphasis on super unleaded. At the time he was focusing on increasing volume, but now the premium grades have bedded in he is focussing more on margins.

The strategy has worked, helping to double sales of premium unleaded to almost 60,000 litres a month with eight nozzles, from just under 30,000 when he had two nozzles. He is also reaching 30,000 litres of premium diesel from eight nozzles, and is achieving 3,500 litres of AdBlue a month from six nozzles.

But with the success has come some challenges from his Facebook efforts. “You have to have a thick skin if you are going to post about fuel prices on social media,” he warned. “You will always get an unfair kicking. But it was a valuable tool when prices spiked to explain why to customers.”