October 2020
We’re really pleased to have had another busy month here at the KPC virtual – and sometimes real – offices. From welcoming new clients to receiving some fantastic feedback, there’s lots for us to update you on.
In this month’s round up, we have also included some of the latest trends, tips and updates from the marketing industry which you’ll find useful.
After completing a business focus session in September, the De-RISK team are the latest business to choose to work with us on regular basis. The specialist risk management organisation works across major projects with strategic partners and is looking to KPC to help get more value and results from their marketing spend and efforts. We’ve already recommended stopping a few resource heavy activities that are not delivering and are refocusing them on clearer messaging that appeals to the target audiences and personas we defined during the workshop.
This month we’ve also been assisting our client, Furlong Flooring, with a campaign to introduce their fabulous new in-store display stand concepts to their customers. The display stands are game-changing for the industry and after months of hard work on perfecting the concept, we’ve helped to spread the word to their retailers through a series of new assets (a dedicated landing page, social posts, case studies and brochures) and consistent and targeted messaging. So far sales of the stands have already exceeded expectations.
At the very start of the month we helped kitchen designers Chisholm Design, refocus their business and marketing thinking when they came to KPC for a strategic workshop session.
As with all these discovery sessions, the results are very different. For Chisholm Design, a refocus on their business proposition helped to develop a much clearer plan to attract and gain new customers ahead of the competition. Heads buzzed with ‘lightbulb moments’ and with input from their business coach who also attended the session, we emerged with a clearer set of goals and actions to help the company reach the next phase of growth.
Kim attended a virtual brightonSEO conference earlier in the month which was excellently put together and a great example of how online events can work.
Kim says: “Maret Reutelingsperger's talk on topic clusters was particularly excellent. I'm sure many of us have been guilty of writing one piece of content before moving onto a different subject. Maret spoke about how to build a whole cluster of information around one topic in order to generate authority and demonstrate leadership within your field, while also improving your position in SERPs.”
You can see Kim’s other brightonSEO highlights here.
The next in the series of the Institute of Internal Communications’ (IoIC) training sessions focused on leadership. Speakers, from the likes of BT and EY, explained how they have encouraged and even developed leaders who find themselves calling on new skills in a new, virtual, environment; helping them to step up and be in the room. Practical ideas and examples made this another substantive event.
The training is part of an on-going series replacing a two-day physical event and Debs’ next IoIC session is on 26th November.
Phoenix Footwear came to us earlier in the year for a strategic marketing workshop. Working in a highly competitive industry with very tight margins, the men’s footwear design and manufacturing company already supplies some of the UK’s leading high street retailers but wanted to expand its reach.
We recently caught up with Phil to see how he found the workshop. Here’s what he had to say:
"I was ready to assess the business and our customers and brainstorm how we might present ourselves in a better way to gain more business," says Phil. "What I got was a really sharp focus on the real decision makers in our market. It was revealing to talk about who we really needed to impress – not just the buyer, but all the people the buyer works with and particularly the people who sign off the buyer’s recommendations. We hadn’t spent enough time thinking beyond the buyer, and it became clear that we really needed to."
This was the theme of the latest article that Debs wrote for The Alternative Board (TAB). We speak to lots of business owners who feel they are doing all the right things – website updates, SEO, online advertising – and still not seeing tangible results. The article covered some key questions to ask your marketing team or agency and looked at ways to consider your marketing more strategically before spending money on the ‘doing’ activities.
Read Debs’ guest article for TAB
“I’ve been lucky enough to have had access to LinkedIn Stories for some months now, thanks to our client Cat Lift Trucks which is based in the Netherlands – one of the pilot countries for this new feature,” says Kim, our social media expert.
Stories is now being rolled out across LinkedIn in the UK and although it’s a great update to have, Kim thinks it will take a while for users to start adopting it into their marketing strategy. “If LinkedIn continues to develop the feature, it will be really useful from a marketing point of view. Instagram is a prime example of where stories work brilliantly – most influencers now fulfil brand deals via their stories rather than on grid posts. We can only assume that this is because they are more engaging. Although LinkedIn has a different audience and demographic, I think LinkedIn stories, used well, could be great for future engagement.”
Why not read Kim’s LinkedIn post about the stories update?
With the initial furlough scheme having drawn to the end, the likelihood is that we’re going to see many people made redundant from their roles. It’s a turbulent time for not only those who find themselves being made redundant, but also for those handling the redundancies and those employees left behind in a business that looks remarkably different to when they joined.
If you’re a business leader finding yourself in this position, you may be worried about what the upcoming months will look like. How can you keep a steady ship during periods of uncertainty and change? And how will your role change?
With your team relying on you, it’s critical that you show the leadership skills they are looking for, not easy with an extra focus on remote working. Things to think about are:
We have an article on how to demonstrate leadership in uncertain environments that you might find useful.
