Thursday, November 21, 2013

Suffolk Marketing Blog | Fieldens Wheels Tyres and ATVs

Fieldens Wheels Tyres & ATVs are a fantastic example of a great business tucked away in the Suffolk Countryside, quietly going about their business. What the casual observer may not realise is that Fieldens are a major business partner to a number of global tyre manufacturers as well as an approved Honda retailer.

Need an agricultural tyre wider than a car? Go to Fieldens! Need a bespoke wheel to put it on? Go to Fieldens! Need to get about off-road in areas even your 4x4 won't venture? Go to Fieldens!

Fieldens approached Business Vitamins to design and build them a new website. From a design perspective, it had to be "different". It must not look like so many off-the-shelf websites that are all but indistinguishable from each other.
From a content perspective, Fieldens wanted to be able to upload and populate an online database of their take-off tyres - no mean feat with over 1500 stock items and a very regular turn around.

Always keeping an eye to the future, Fieldens wanted to ensure that the choice of content management system did not force the website down a technologically limited cul-de-sac. It had to be able to grow with their business and whatever was thrown at it in the future.



The website Business Vitamins created uses Expression Engine to manage all the content and the client loves the look and feel of their new website.

There's much more to come - as and when the new Fieldens tools come online we'll let you know..

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Friday, July 12, 2013

Suffolk Marketing Blog | Holiday Let Website | Micawber Cottage

A B2B client of ours also owns a holiday let cottage in that great British seaside resort town of sunny Broadstairs. He needed a small website to tell the world the cottage was available to let and asked Business Vitamins to make it happen:




The website is handcoded (as opposed to using a content management system) and uses a unique bespoke website design that communicates the quirky nature of the cottage itself.

The site features two lightbox style galleries of both the cottage itself and about Broadstairs.

The site also uses an in-built availability checker & booking system - not something we created ourselves - an off-the-shelf widget that just needed to be plugged into the right part of the site.


Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Suffolk Marketing Blog | P&R Hydraulics

P&R Hydraulics are a very specialist engineering business, based in Norwich. They rebuild, revitalise, remanufacture and repair broken and worn out hydraulic motors, valves and pumps. Active in a number of industries, their main customers are businesses in the construction, agricultural and oil & gas sectors.

P&R required a new website that underlined their business as a quality player offering something "a little different". Whilst many of their competitors had websites that were very staid and (dare we say it) dull, P&R wanted something that set them apart...


The client loves the heavy, industrial feel their new site has which leaves visitors in no doubt they've arrived in the right place if they need an engineering firm like P&R.

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

Why not find out more about Business VitaminsStrategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Suffolk Marketing Blog | Pace PLC | Website


Business Vitamins are really pleased to announce the launch of another new customer website; a lettings, property sales and block management business, Pace PLC of Southend-On-Sea.

Pace' old website was based on a very old style and suffered from poor usability. Key features such as being able to book viewings, place an enquiry or even a simple property search were buried too deeply in the navigation.

The new website features a much more fresh and contemporary design, built using a word-class CMS system, Drupal. The flexibility of this CMS means the site can be updated and managed far more easily than other CMS systems better suited to managing a blog site.



Already, the number of new enquiries is up. The sites built-in reporting functionality also enables Pace to monitor enquiries and cross reference these with their source from within the site - a huge bonus given the size of the site!

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

Why not find out more about Business VitaminsStrategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Monday, April 15, 2013

Suffolk Marketing Blog | Social Media Advertising


With literally millions of visitors every hour, Facebook & LinkedIn display advertising is a tempting proposition for anyone looking to get their business in front of a very big audience.

Assuming that most businesses do not have an infinite marketing budget, particularly for advertising via an immature channel, there will be some fairly serious questions to either ask or answer.

So which to use?

Clearly that very much depends on your business, your objectives and of course who (and where) you customers are. However, here are some quick guidelines that may help you decide where to put your money:

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is the platform to use if your business sells to other businesses (B2B sales). Whilst businesses themselves are still run by human beings, a business purchase decision is very different from a consumer (B2C sales) purchase decision.  B2B purchasing tends to be a longer, fact based process that focuses on ROI. B2C purchasing tends to be a shorter and much more emotive process that focuses on our need for something immediately.

LinkedIn does a great job at encouraging us to complete our online profiles. This is important to marketers as the LinkedIn advertising system enables us to target our adverts by specifically targeting people with certain skills, job titles, industries and locations. This means we can precisely target likely prospects for our business offering.  Be aware that job titles can be a little deceptive or ambiguous and that the skills listed on certain profiles can be somewhat “aspirational” or just plain wrong!

Because B2B buying is often a medium to long term process, we would recommend not including incremental direct sales as an objective from a LinkedIn ad campaign. Yes, this might depend on what you’re selling, but you’re far more likely to successfully develop increased company/product/service awareness or generate new leads. The latter is likely to be achieved by incentivising people to sign up to receive more information on what you’re selling after they’ve clicked through to your landing page. Once you have their details, they’re fair game to contact using a secondary channel such as email marketing or even the good old fashioned telephone.

Facebook

Facebook is the platform to use if your business mainly sells to consumers. In addition to generating leads and developing awareness, Facebook advertising is also better at actually driving direct sales. Why? As well as sharing LinkedIn’s ability to target by location, Facebook advertising can target people by their interests, i.e. things they like. This automatically enables us to sell to someone’s emotions. For example, we can ensure adverts for mountain bike accessories only appear to people who have listed mountain-biking as a hobby. An emotive purchase is usually a no-brainer, in fact almost literally, as it’s bought with ones heart and not ones head! I’m sure we can all think of a personal example where that has backfired!

Facebook advertising can be used to target business Pages (note the capital P), as opposed to making the adverts appear on individuals pages (note the small p); so B2B targeting can also occur on this platform. And again, by considering interests, job titles and location, a good level of targeting can be achieved. Just like a lot of online B2B marketing, due to longer and more considered buying cycles, it may be worth limiting expectations to generating leads and developing awareness rather than generating direct sales.

B2B advertising is often more challenging. For example, your company sells PC support services; it’s highly doubtful that many people have listed a hobby that indicates their likely to want your services! Consequently, many B2B campaigns have extremely low click-through-rates.

Two final items to consider..

Firstly, click through rates via social media advertising in general, and in particular on Facebook, are extremely low. Obviously this is offset by the potentially huge number of impressions (number of times your advert is seen), but be prepared for some very low numbers. Like, really low, i.e.  0.03% - 0.1%.  

Secondly, consider those percentages when calculating a campaign budget if that campaign is to be priced by impression. You may find that even with a significant number of impressions, such a low click through rate may not deliver enough traffic to generate enough new enquiries that actually close into new business. Focussing on conversion optimisation is therefore critical!

If your budget can stretch to it, try running a campaign on both platforms at the same time. If  managed correctly, and the messaging is right (maybe different for different platforms?), it should be possible to definitively answer the question of which platform is right for your business.
Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Suffolk Marketing Blog - Business Vitamins Websites Video

 
So are you basically lazy and can't be bothered to scroll down to see a selection of the websites we've designed and built over the last couple of years?

No problem, we've just created this handy video so you can sit there and see what our web team have been doing!

Psst, not only is the video in HD quality, (make sure you go "full screen"), we've used some rather cool funky music too - so go on, pump up the volume, we dare you...




Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

Why not find out more about Business VitaminsStrategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Monday, July 30, 2012

Suffolk Marketing Blog - How to Win Customer Loyalty


In the current economic climate, customers are increasingly likely to shop around for goods and services.  When budgets are tight and adding real value becomes more difficult by the day, maintaining market share is all about customer loyalty.

During a recession, customers are less susceptible to a simple discount or a reward in return for a purchase.  Customers know the value of their money and seek to get the most from every pound.  From a commercial point of view, the way to bring that indefinable added something that customers seek is often through a loyalty scheme.

If you’re considering setting up such a scheme, the first thing to realise is that a good scheme is not about being cheaper.   It’s about being better and being different.    It is also an efficient way to influence customer behaviour without entering into a price war.

Second, you need to consider your objectives and aims carefully.  What are you trying to achieve?  Where does your product/service/brand fit?  You need to understand your customers to hold on to a share of their budget for any length of time.  Examine the supermarkets as a great example of this.  Sainsbury’s gives points, Tesco gives discounts; the difference is subtle but key to attracting their different target audiences.  A common objective for many loyalty schemes, particularly for offline businesses, is to capture customer details such as contact information and other additional demographic data. Online businesses will often have access to these details as part of their customer registration process, but could use a loyalty scheme as a tool to gain even deeper customer insight.

Third, knowing the client inside out is crucial to keeping a loyalty scheme fresh and ensuring the rewards remain appropriate.  A scheme must provide clear benefits for members and deliver added value in terms of financial rewards, customer service and the member experience.  Therefore it is critical your scheme collects relevant data that you can act upon quickly.  It must also offer members a better service than their non-member counterparts. 

Once you have customers earning rewards for loyalty, you are still only half way there.  To build a truly loyal customer base, redeeming rewards has to be simple.  Customers increasingly like to redeem rewards via the same channel with which they have initially engaged with the brand.  Online is obviously critical, while QR codes, mobile apps and NFC (near field communication – i.e. mobile phones chipped for quick transactions) are becoming more popular as the mobile platform develops. Customers now expect instant in store reward redemption to complement purchases.

For smaller companies considering a loyalty scheme but with concerns about cost and operational burden, working in partnership with carefully selected partners can offer a satisfactory solution.   However there are issues to consider such as diluting a strong brand, information leaks or customers receiving irrelevant offers.  It is crucial that brands are compatible. 

Loyalty schemes at their best should deliver for both sides.  If a loyalty scheme is well planned, expertly executed and consistently improved, the subsequent gain in revenue should far outweigh the running costs.  But never forget, a bad customer experience will always cause damage however many points or gifts you offer the customer.  If you neglect the customer experience, your reward scheme is doomed to failure.

Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.

Why not find out more about Business VitaminsStrategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?