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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - Totally HR

Rain rain rain, miserable. But nothing cheers us up more at Bizvits than publishing a new website for a new client! Business Vitamins were approached by the Director of Totally HR to design them a new website. They were looking for a 100% bespoke design (check), no cheesy graphics (check), no complex or "out there" conceptual themes (check).

Of course the new site also had to position their business as a quality service provider, (check) utilise their existing logo and colourways (check) and most of all perform FAR better (for SEO) than the previous site ever did in the Google rankings (check!).

We're really happy with how the site turned out,  and more importantly we know the client is delighted too.

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

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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - Vandersanden, Integrated Campaign Management

The Client

Vandersanden BV (VDS) is a major European manufacturer of specialist building bricks, based in Belgium. They turn over c€80m, with most of their revenue coming from northern Europe. They have a long history of making very high quality bricks from locally sourced clay, as well as designing new and innovative building systems.

The Objective

VDS wanted to launch their flagship product, the Zero Bricktm into the UK market. Their target audience was wide, ranging from small private self-builders, specialist low-volume house builders and architects and specifiers from commercial architects and building contractors.
 

The key sales message was that the Zero Brick was new, different and unlike competitive solutions could be easily and quickly implemented without any additional training required by the brick layers.

VDS set themselves a target of having the Zero Brick firmly specified on a “significant” UK building project by the end of 2011. By significant, they specifically meant greater than 250k bricks. For reference, a typical UK 4 bedroom domestic property has c15k bricks.

The Problem

Vandersanden do not have a presence in the UK, except via their sales partner, Hoskins Brick, based near Cambridge. Historically, both VDS and Hoskins had only managed sporadic, ad-hoc display advertising which had not been backed up with awareness building via press releases. As a result, very few members of their target audience in the UK would have known either Vandersanden or their products. Whilst VDS knew what they wanted to achieve, they had little firsthand understanding of the UK construction or architectural media space.

The Solution

VDS turned to Business Vitamins who had been recommended having recently designed and built the new Hoskins Brick website. Business Vitamins drew upon their prior experience of marketing high quality products to the architectural and construction space, to create a workable marketing plan for VDS.

An initial mediaplan was built, listing the likely key publications read by the intended target audience. Using this, a range of PR opportunities was identified; a number of full page display adverts were created and a small number of direct mail pieces were designed. Each of these had specific tracking mechanisms in place to ensure that leads could easily be attributed to each media channel, and within that, which specific media title.

Additionally, an existing Zero Brick microsite was recreated by Vandersanden on a .co.uk domain, with tracking code in place in order to measure visitor numbers.

The Results

The campaign commenced in late June 2011 and ran for circa 5months. In total there were over 200 leads generated from the campaign. Of these, 128 leads were captured and recorded directly from the advertising, direct mail and PR. In addition, there were around at least another 75 instances of prospects contacting Hoskins Brick directly via telephone.

Most importantly, the campaign met its key objective. A major project, relating to the new construction of a major public sector building in Battersea, south-west London, has seen a deal specifying c6million Zero Bricks being specified for the sites marketing suite. 

Business Vitamins understand there is considerable potential for further sales leading directly from this initial opportunity; due mainly to interest from other public sector projects that are planned nearby.

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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - Moves With Care

Happy New Year! New Year, New website launch - this time for a rather unusual business. Moves With Care, are the only business in East Anglia offering a "senior relocation service".


Moves With Care approached Business Vitamins when it became clear their old website was simply not fit for purpose. It was an old design and simply wasn't performing well on Google. So, as well as a bespoke design and build, Business Vitamins assisted with the rewriting of the web content and also optimised the HTML tags to bolster the SEO friendliness of the site. The result? Two new enquiries almost immediately after launch.

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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - Danbred UK

Business Vitamins are really pleased to announce we've published yet another website! There's nothing like local business, and these guys (Danbred International) are "quite literally" a stones throw away, being based in our home village of Bacton, Suffolk.

It's not all old fashioned farming up here though, oh no. DBi are seriously high-tech, involved with the importing and development of Danish pig stock to produce top quality British farmed pork. Follow the link above to read more - warning - you might want to dig out some of your 'A' level biology notes beforehand... as I said, VERY technical!


Business Vitamins managed all the design, build, contributed to the photography and also assisted in writing some of the copy. The project tied into the creation of a folder and a number of small brochures, designed to promote different aspects of their business.


The website also includes a discussion forum, hosted on the DBi web server.


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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

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Suffolk Marketing Blog - Blackrock Consulting

We at BizVits towers are very pleased to announce the launch of another client website. This time, for a search and selection consultancy with UK offices in Kent and Bedfordshire, Blackrock Search. Simple, eye catching and informative were the keywords we were to consider when designing the site.

And whilst it may be a modestly sized site, it certainly looks the part and adds to their branding very nicely!

Business Vitamins designed and built the site from scratch, with just the company logo to work from! What could we do for 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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

Or follow BizVits on Twitter? 
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Or +1 us on Google+?
Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?

Suffolk Marketing Blog - Rail Marine International

Business Vitamins are pleased to launch the new website for specialist heavy engineering support service company, Rail Marine Industrial Ltd (RMI Ltd). Based in Ipswich and Brantham, RMI were looking for a website which was consistent with their existing branding and colourways, concisely communicated their value proposition and that also fully conveyed their commitment to quality.

Business Vitamins designed and built the site from scratch and also contributed heavily to the copywriting for most of the content.

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 Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.

Or follow BizVits on Twitter? 
Or Like us on Facebook?
Or +1 us on Google+?
Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?