Ideal Bathrooms: Will Hickman shares Ideal Bathrooms' Approach to Engaging Retailers
In this episode of The Build Up Podcast, Dan welcomes Will Hickman, the Sales and Marketing Director of Ideal Bathrooms, who shares his insights on marketing within the construction industry. Will discusses his diverse background in home improvement and the challenges he faced upon entering the bathroom sector. He emphasizes the importance of effective marketing strategies in an industry that is often perceived as outdated and resistant to change. The conversation delves into the significance of data-driven marketing, the necessity of understanding customer behavior, and the value of transparency in client relationships. Will highlights Ideal Bathrooms' commitment to exceptional service and the importance of tailoring marketing efforts to meet the specific needs of their B2B clientele. The episode also touches on the evolving landscape of social media marketing, the pitfalls of relying on influencers without a clear strategy, and the need for businesses to focus on relevant content that resonates with their audience. Overall, the discussion provides valuable insights into the unique challenges and opportunities present in construction marketing, encouraging listeners to embrace creativity and data analysis in their approaches.
This podcast is produced by dissident creative agency, the original disrupters of construction marketing. This podcast is born out of our passion to create conversations that push boundaries as hard as our content!
If breaking rules and standing out is your thing, we want to hear from you...
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Buildup. This is the podcast for marketing
Speaker:in the construction industry. I'm
Speaker:Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands for
Speaker:a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry, and
Speaker:that's why we created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world
Speaker:of construction marketing. I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies,
Speaker:creatives, influencers, and startups. This is the
Speaker:resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank
Speaker:you for being here and welcome to The Builder. Welcome
Speaker:back to another episode of the Build Up Podcast. I'm joined today by
Speaker:Will Hickman, right? Will Hickman Correct,
Speaker:yeah. That's me. Who's come over from two hours from,
Speaker:where's head office for you? Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes, Sales
Speaker:and Marketing Director of Ideal Bathrooms. Welcome to the show. Thank
Speaker:you very much for having me. I don't know whether we use the word show. Is
Speaker:show the right term? I feel that's a bit ostentatious, but
Speaker:I'm massively grateful for you to come on and take
Speaker:the time. I'm always surprised when people travel a real decent distance
Speaker:to come in here. I'm always surprised when people invite me to things, so yeah. Is
Speaker:I have done a podcast before, yes. Cool. Was it good? I
Speaker:We'll see how ours compares. I'd love it, Will,
Speaker:if you could give us a little brief intro to yourself and
Speaker:your kind of experience as a marketer. Maybe you can go through,
Speaker:Yeah, so I've been with Ideal Bathrooms just
Speaker:over a year now, joined last August, it's October now.
Speaker:whirlwind of a year really joining the bathroom industry.
Speaker:Not a great year to come in either really. Possibly, well I'd like
Speaker:a challenge. Before that I've always been in sort
Speaker:of construction home improvement so before that I ran a business for four
Speaker:years in fenestration and then prior to that I was 11 years
Speaker:with a carpet retailer PLC where
Speaker:I was purely marketing and sort of transitioned into an
Speaker:MD position for a for a large home
Speaker:improvement business in Yorkshire and then moved back to
Speaker:sales and marketing which is where I find most
Speaker:of my excitement really. So yeah that's how I've moved back into that
Speaker:role. What's capturing construction, Tiff? I
Speaker:like it. It's exciting. It's a challenge. I think
Speaker:you sort of settle into one form of industry anyway. I'm not
Speaker:afraid to sort of break out of that. I mean I've moved from carpets, fenestration to
Speaker:bathrooms which in some people's eyes who stay in
Speaker:one thing all their life find bizarre but it's incredibly transferable.
Speaker:It all goes in the home or outside the home or in a hall. In
Speaker:the case of windows. But yeah I think
Speaker:it's A challenging but exciting and very rewarding industry.
Speaker:I think I was talking to you a little bit about this before, if you went
Speaker:and worked for Coca-Cola, yes it's exciting, it's sexy but
Speaker:everybody knows it, have some fun with it. This is a challenge, I like
Speaker:I think also from the In
Speaker:construction, I think clever creatives and clever marketers can
Speaker:make a lot of difference. I never said I was clever at it. We'll
Speaker:figure that out as we go. I think people are steadily figuring
Speaker:out I'm not particularly clever when it comes to this kind of stuff. But
Speaker:I think we found this as an agency. I
Speaker:try not to talk about this in a great deal. The sign's already
Speaker:there so we don't need to. One of the things that's
Speaker:kept us in construction, apart from the fact that we really enjoy the work, none of us
Speaker:have a background in construction. But we found it's the place where
Speaker:we can make the most difference. And that's been hugely inspirational
Speaker:for us to be able to go to brands
Speaker:and make a huge difference and people to be really happy and to kind of
Speaker:get fame in the industry. Whereas if we went into hospitality,
Speaker:with the same level of creative, let's say we replicated the
Speaker:same amount of effort and work that we do when
Speaker:we work hard. If we went into hospitality, no one would know
Speaker:our names. And because it's
Speaker:so saturated. And I think construction is just one of those industries
Speaker:that you can, it's because I feel like it's still up and
Speaker:coming when it comes to marketing. I feel like as a rule, on
Speaker:Why do you think that is? Do you think that's coming up from higher directors
Speaker:Yes, possibly barriers to entry into
Speaker:the market as well. I think if you're not in construction, people don't
Speaker:let you in. So we got lucky. Yeah, I
Speaker:just got lucky. But then I also think the It's
Speaker:quite an old-fashioned industry, so marketing
Speaker:is, you know, I've been in it long enough to know it
Speaker:still gets called the fluffy colouring
Speaker:in department. That's not what marketing is,
Speaker:you know, it's so linked to sales, it's so linked
Speaker:to everything that we do as a business and everything's based
Speaker:on sales. If you don't have turnover you don't need everyone else in the business
Speaker:do you. So it's all it's all incredibly linked and it's the
Speaker:first part of the journey. So it's valuable and so
Speaker:many businesses just in the construction industry aren't there
Speaker:yet. You know only just creating websites in some cases still
Speaker:I think I imagine for financial directors and MDs you
Speaker:know when you look at figures Because a lot of the time
Speaker:they're looking at figures, they're having to report to figures to their higher ups and
Speaker:obviously they're getting the figures from the
Speaker:next rung down. When
Speaker:you look at sales figures you get an instant feedback loop. We
Speaker:did some sales stuff. We send the sales guys out, we
Speaker:gave them some targets, they hit those targets and therefore our sales are
Speaker:up or down or whatever. And marketing's a little bit
Speaker:more wishy-washy when it comes to figures. Sometimes it
Speaker:It's very hard to get an ROI on it, isn't it? That's the difficult part. Short
Speaker:term. Well short term, specifically in the traditional sort
Speaker:of routes to market, yes. Almost impossible to
Speaker:get ROI figures on it. But in the emergency with digital now, you
Speaker:know, everything's very linked, can be analysed, it can be
Speaker:Yeah. And I think I'm starting to look towards where we really struggle
Speaker:when it comes to reporting. So we're rubbish at case studies for our own
Speaker:business because we go and we've entered some awards this
Speaker:year and they go great. What was the ROI. I'm like. This is a marketing award.
Speaker:Why are you asking me? You should know that there's no ROI. Or
Speaker:it's very difficult to say. So what we base it on is trends. So
Speaker:we'll go, OK, we've got x amount of clicks to
Speaker:the client's website at this point. And these aren't e-commerce
Speaker:brands. These are selling to distributors. And
Speaker:a lot of the time, our marketing is to the end user. So it's like we're
Speaker:kind of marketing to the wrong people, but for the right reasons. So
Speaker:we typically work on trends and I think if
Speaker:you can accept in those kinds of meetings that X
Speaker:amount of clicks to our website usually translates to
Speaker:over a period of time X amount of sales, then in that case we've
Speaker:You have to decide the purpose of your media type and what
Speaker:you're doing with it. Is it awareness? Is it trying to get a conversion? Everything has
Speaker:to have a purpose doesn't it? As long as you set that out at the beginning then you can measure
Speaker:I think what I like about the industry, and I think this will probably
Speaker:Measuring is incredibly important. Doing
Speaker:it for doing it's sake is not clever marketing. It's got
Speaker:to be measurable and it's got to be measured. And
Speaker:also I think the big thing is accept it. If it's not words, it's not
Speaker:doing what you want it to do. File it, move on, but
Speaker:remember it because don't repeat it again. That's the thing that sometimes we
Speaker:forget in our business and we are trying to
Speaker:get better at it all the time but if you've done it once and it didn't work, make
Speaker:sure you take the learnings from it and don't repeat it again. And
Speaker:if it does work, let's analyse it. take the good bits
Speaker:I think Rory Sutherland, he said something, I
Speaker:don't know the exact quote of it because it was long, but essentially
Speaker:he was saying, Some of the best
Speaker:marketing should never have a success
Speaker:goal. It shouldn't be based on ROI. And
Speaker:every business should be putting into their marketing pieces
Speaker:of marketing that are never intended to make any money. And
Speaker:I think it was along the basis of that's where you
Speaker:get the most creativity the
Speaker:most innovation when you're not trying to make to
Speaker:convert this into some kind of monetary value. Yeah. And
Speaker:I mean you should have got him on the podcast. He's fascinating. He's
Speaker:very clever in the way that. And it's true
Speaker:is this is marketing doesn't always have to fix the problem. You know that's that's
Speaker:often what the case is with marketing is you bring them
Speaker:in and I think he tells this story about a the the
Speaker:best thing that London Underground ever did or travel in London was
Speaker:basically put the times on for the next train. So
Speaker:because people are quite happy to wait for 11 minutes, knowing the train's 11 minutes, then
Speaker:wait for 5 in a state of uncertainty. But that wasn't
Speaker:marketing, that was just literally changing something at
Speaker:the platform. Brilliant, kept everyone happy. He's
Speaker:He's very clever. I love Rory's
Speaker:stuff and I just love how eccentric he is. I'd
Speaker:love his life, I think. Can you talk to us a
Speaker:little bit about Idle Bathrooms, kind of what you guys do as a business model and
Speaker:In its most basic form, so we're a nationwide bathroom
Speaker:distributor, in its most basic format we bring in
Speaker:large pallets of bathroom products, we store them on shelves and
Speaker:we send them out in individual pieces to a very happy
Speaker:I'm proud to say customer base. So yeah that's
Speaker:it in its basic format but it's all about service and that's
Speaker:our big thing. It's what we want to be our differentiator in the market and
Speaker:how we leverage that. So we have an incredible OTIV of
Speaker:over 99% which is unparalleled to anybody else I believe in
Speaker:the market. And we just try and make it as simple as possible
Speaker:for our customers to engage with us. That's what people
Speaker:I love it. What about the split between like retail
Speaker:Because we're pure national, we have
Speaker:a large and diverse base. So
Speaker:yeah, we deal with high street retailers, but we also deal with
Speaker:large merchants and have a big cross section of
Speaker:that. We try and
Speaker:are trialing now to make sure that we're slightly different
Speaker:in how we engage with those. So our retail customer might not want, we
Speaker:offer a next day delivery service but is that what they want? Do they want actually to
Speaker:order it and get it the day before their customer needs it
Speaker:or their install needs it? So we're trialing and
Speaker:pushing that. Just trying to
Speaker:be there and again back to not that Rory's a hero
Speaker:but he's on buying behaviors and
Speaker:that sort of thing. I think that's just as important as the marketing in our businesses. How
Speaker:do customers want to engage with us? How do they want
Speaker:to deal with ideal bathrooms? And that comes down to
Speaker:I love it. And when it comes to actual marketing of ideal
Speaker:bathrooms, you know, we work with a lot of brands who, you
Speaker:know, we're marketing them or their marketing to both
Speaker:their direct customer, a retailer, or,
Speaker:you know, distributor, but they're
Speaker:also marketing towards the end user. Like how do you kind of approach marketing
Speaker:All ours is B2B. We don't touch the end consumer at all.
Speaker:We are very determined to stay on that in
Speaker:our lane. So we don't we don't try and influence the
Speaker:end consumer at all, as in customer Mr. and Mrs. Smith. All
Speaker:ours is leveraged towards the the retail base and
Speaker:Because the end user can't buy the product off
Speaker:No, we've got no interest in selling to them at all. The
Speaker:only thing, by its nature, ideal bathrooms, it
Speaker:gets quite a lot of consumer traffic to the website. But
Speaker:we don't, we don't want to actually, as part of that we have
Speaker:a showroom locator on there. So if you are a customer
Speaker:with us, your business will be listed
Speaker:on there, we'll send you the lead, that's something that we
Speaker:want to do for our customer base, but yeah we've got no interest in it at
Speaker:And then just to clarify, like the products that you
Speaker:have on, that you sell at Ideal Bathrooms.
Speaker:Completely different, they're different brands and stuff like that, so... Yeah, we've
Speaker:got 30 different brands, yeah. Okay, wicked. Yeah, I think this might be the first
Speaker:And some of the sort of leading, leading bathroom brands in
Speaker:apologies to any that i'm not on a list i can't reel the 30 off now but all
Speaker:the brands that i try and uh try and poach when i go to uh all
Speaker:the trade shows i'm like hey nice toilets these are really cool do you need some
Speaker:content yeah don't blame me but this this may
Speaker:well be keelan the first ever official b2b
Speaker:purely b2b conversation that we've had.
Speaker:There's always been a, there you go, there's Keelan's bit. Make
Speaker:sure you get that in the edit. Speaking
Speaker:to people who are direct to consumer, or we're speaking to influencers, or
Speaker:we're speaking to brands that are technically
Speaker:B2B but only market B2C because they are the name, they're
Speaker:the Gerber or whatever. So this is fascinating.
Speaker:So I'm going completely off script now then. What
Speaker:are your channels? Where are you pushing your, not
Speaker:just in terms of social media, but where
Speaker:Yeah, very good question. A
Speaker:lot of it is email and relying on data.
Speaker:We don't tend to buy much data
Speaker:but certainly try and harvest it. I mean we're a 40 odd year old business
Speaker:so a lot of people have heard of ideal bathrooms, that's very helpful. You've got
Speaker:a pretty decent database as well. Yeah we have but you know
Speaker:it's about keeping those engaged, making sure that we're regularly
Speaker:communicating with them, making sure that we're We're talking to them if
Speaker:they've not spent with us for a while, there's a reason they've gone away, then we try and keep
Speaker:them warm and get them back again. But email is becoming more and
Speaker:more prevalent really. And we're trying,
Speaker:we've got a, I think it's market leading, in fact I know it
Speaker:is a portal, which all
Speaker:our customers have got access to, it's got live pricing, it's got live availability. It's
Speaker:got downloads on there as well that you can have, so if you want product specifications and
Speaker:all that sort of stuff, we're trying to make that the absolute hub for
Speaker:all transactions really, I suppose, in time. However,
Speaker:we also have to remember that our customer base
Speaker:is very different and unique so they want to order in different ways. We're not going to try and
Speaker:force them down that digital channel. That's the last thing I want to do. But
Speaker:certainly make it the absolute hub for it. That also then means we've
Speaker:got them logged in and we can communicate with them via web
Speaker:banners and tailoring to bespoke promotions or
Speaker:anything that we can harvest from that really, because what
Speaker:we do get is incredibly rich data when they're buying on the portal.
Speaker:You know, you can see what brands they're buying,
Speaker:what they've maybe clicked on and then clicked off, so then we know how to
Speaker:talk to them moving forward. I'm not saying that we can get to a Tesco club card sort
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's even even
Speaker:in situations where you're not quite ready to analyze that
Speaker:data, it's just good to get the data. We're doing this currently.
Speaker:We've tracked our time since Dissident's
Speaker:inception. So almost
Speaker:every task that we do is tracked from
Speaker:a time base. So we have all this rich data of all the different
Speaker:projects that we work on, all the different tasks within that project, and
Speaker:all of that time is tracked. I've not, to
Speaker:this day, I've done very little with that data. But when it
Speaker:when I'm ready for it, it'll be there. Yeah. And a
Speaker:really good example of this, you know, came up in this, I can't remember. There
Speaker:is there are clever quotes about data that have completely come out my head now.
Speaker:But um, that we
Speaker:had with a shoot, there was a there was a production coming
Speaker:up. and it was quite a specific
Speaker:amount of deliverables, so it was one production with let's
Speaker:say 30 deliverables, it might have even been 40 deliverables, that's 40 mini
Speaker:films from one day of filming. So it's quite a weird
Speaker:thing to quote for because we have our rates for production and
Speaker:then we've got edit time essentially. But
Speaker:luckily we'd we'd done similar things this before so we could go back
Speaker:to those those productions and I could figure out exactly how long
Speaker:it took to do all of that kind of stuff and I could base my kind
Speaker:of my quoting on that. Not really related to to marketing
Speaker:but a really good example of like you might as well start getting the data
Speaker:Absolutely and we're anything we do now I suppose certainly
Speaker:from a marketing perspective is we'll we'll put
Speaker:it as a campaign even if we don't look at the data because you
Speaker:might want to go back and look at it and you can't go back and measure after
Speaker:the event. It's very difficult so you've got to put that sort of
Speaker:data mining in place beforehand and that through
Speaker:our portal allows us a lot more of that. It's
Speaker:not 100% of our business going through there. People still want to, I
Speaker:think we're still taking faxes to be fair. There's the odd
Speaker:customer that still sends fax orders in which, you know, it's fine. It's
Speaker:not for me to go into their business and tell them that's not how to order with us. They
Speaker:can do it in smoke signals if they like, as long as we can receive it
Speaker:It's like the number one thing in sales, isn't it? Make it as easy as possible for
Speaker:people to spend money. So why take away, if
Speaker:they're like, this is the easiest, this is the most comfortable way for me
Speaker:We're not unique as a distributor, there are other distributors out there, there's other routes
Speaker:to buy the same product or a light for light product. Why
Speaker:would we try and make it complicated and, you know, that's
Speaker:the last thing we want to do. We want to make it as simple as possible for the
Speaker:Love it. I love it. So email, one of the sort
Speaker:Yeah, we still do an awful lot of social. LinkedIn gets
Speaker:good for us because we've got a captive market, I guess. Being
Speaker:B2B, you sort of harvest your audience and then just keep them warm
Speaker:and engaged. We're also trying to do more stuff with the social, it's not just push
Speaker:promotion all the time, it's actually a little bit more about what's behind the
Speaker:brand, the people that make our business, because that's incredibly
Speaker:important to us. We've got 190 colleagues and
Speaker:they're what make the business. I
Speaker:hear an awful lot when you're out on the road and you're with customers and you go,
Speaker:oh Dave your driver is brilliant. It's Dave
Speaker:that's flying the flag for Ideal Bathrooms. It's nothing that
Speaker:marketing's doing. It's just they love Dave, he
Speaker:always turns up with a smile, he delivers in the right way and they love
Speaker:him so they continue to buy. So it's about putting the
Speaker:people behind the brand in front of people, make it
Speaker:a bit less corporate I guess, a little bit more... Because
Speaker:that's where we are, we're people at the heart of it. And a
Speaker:It's often overlooked isn't it, that you can put a lot
Speaker:of effort into bringing the business in and then forget that you've
Speaker:got to try and maintain that business. And that's when the
Speaker:little nuance stuff that perhaps doesn't get measured can
Speaker:come into place like Dave. You know essentially that's a culture
Speaker:brand exercise to get people to
Speaker:be, you know, to be engaging in the right way. I had a very... I had
Speaker:an interesting thought the day I was... yesterday I was at the gym. You
Speaker:can probably tell from the video. But
Speaker:the gym that I go to is really well marketed. It's very high-end. It's
Speaker:not that expensive, but it's got all the stuff that a
Speaker:respectable gentleman like me would want. um so
Speaker:you go in there it's at a spa it looks amazing all the facilities are
Speaker:incredible blah blah blah um and then but
Speaker:then i i went in yesterday and i kind of had the complete kind
Speaker:of the experience not ruined for me but sort of dampened by
Speaker:the fact that the guys there were kind of just miserable yeah like the the
Speaker:um welcome that
Speaker:you get is off a personal trainer on their laptop.
Speaker:And it's like they're not interested in you at all and that's fine.
Speaker:But it's kind of there's almost like a disconnect there between the actual marketing
Speaker:and what's the end and kind of what what's market is the
Speaker:Yeah. And this is my. I use this a lot is
Speaker:the invitation has to meet the party and that's a big thing is you know if
Speaker:we're going to go out there and market incredible service,
Speaker:service with a smile, 99% out of all those great things. if
Speaker:the actual experience for the customer is, oh well it wasn't
Speaker:simple at all, my product was late, the driver was miserable, he
Speaker:swore while he was there, he also took a wing mirror off
Speaker:the car as he was leaving, all those other things, well
Speaker:they're not going to buy with us again. And I did
Speaker:this real example in my previous business I was at. team
Speaker:meet and they got a metal chain mail and some bolt cutters and
Speaker:made everyone stand up in the way. You know marketing starts with a
Speaker:lead generation then sales go out and sell the product. Then
Speaker:we've got to manufacture it and we've got to deliver it and
Speaker:we've got to make sure that the accounts up to date and there's so many people involved
Speaker:in the chain. and at any one point it could break and it just
Speaker:undoes the whole thing. The unravelling starts. And
Speaker:any business is the same. Certainly there's so many people involved
Speaker:in it. That's because our customers repeat purchase all
Speaker:the time. So there's so many times in that chain
Speaker:that we can get it wrong. And getting
Speaker:it wrong and repairing it, first of all you've got to identify it. A
Speaker:lot of moving parts in our business, how do we identify that we've upset them in any which
Speaker:and then repairing it. It's such an awkward conversation, isn't
Speaker:it? I've had situations where, you know, obviously we gain and lose clients. We
Speaker:don't actually, we've got a really good churn rate of clients, which is nice.
Speaker:But when they leave, I try my best to ask, What's
Speaker:the reason? What's the real reason? You told me a fake
Speaker:reason, I feel like. What's the real reason? What's happened along the
Speaker:line? Because a lot of times they'll say budget or something like that. And
Speaker:that may have been like a contributing factor, but there would have been other stuff
Speaker:going on there. Because I know you probably could have found the budget if
Speaker:you knew the results that you were getting was blah, blah, blah. Um,
Speaker:A lot of the time, unless they're really pissed off, you know, or whatever, which,
Speaker:you know... Well, they're the good ones to have, actually, because you can, you know,
Speaker:It's the ones that are silent assassins, I guess, that go, and
Speaker:then... They're slowly dwindled away, and you're like, we've let these guys down
Speaker:somehow. Or there's, you know, it might not just be something we've done, it's
Speaker:like a miscommunication. a process that we
Speaker:need to put in place to make sure that they're giving us the right stuff. Perhaps it was their fault,
Speaker:but we need to make sure that they're, you know, sort of performing the
Speaker:way that we need them to be so that we can perform, whatever. A
Speaker:really, really tough conversation to have, but if you can have it, it
Speaker:means that, you know, you've got the data to go, you know, next
Speaker:time we need to make sure that, you know, that they're giving
Speaker:us the right stuff. We had a client, who was a distributor,
Speaker:funnily enough. We ended
Speaker:up cutting ties with those guys. We worked with them for a really long period of
Speaker:time. And what happened was they were relying on us
Speaker:for one particular piece of content that we
Speaker:were trying to organize. And they had this weird product that they
Speaker:wanted to market. And I thought I'd found two
Speaker:products, actually, And I thought I'd
Speaker:found two potential shoot locations and companies
Speaker:that we could work with to promote this product and do some cool content on it.
Speaker:And both of those let me down. And in
Speaker:the meantime, what I should have said to the client was, I'm
Speaker:struggling with this. Should we do something in the meantime? Yeah,
Speaker:have you got any of your own ideas? Can we figure out something else? Have you got any of
Speaker:your own contacts that you could do with this? Because I was relying on these third parties.
Speaker:And then they were kind of letting me down slowly, but surely, over
Speaker:a period of time, and we let it slip. And then eventually, the client was going, we've
Speaker:not received anything from you guys in absolutely ages. And when's
Speaker:the shoot going to happen and stuff? And we kind of think, Jesus, like,
Speaker:we didn't technically do anything wrong. But we just kind of like took off, like,
Speaker:Is it the eye off the needle? That's not the right term. Eye off the ball? Eye off the ball, yeah. Maybe
Speaker:it's finger off the needle, I'm not sure. Anyway, we
Speaker:took our eye off the ball and we've let them go two months without content
Speaker:and we've still not delivered on the thing that we said we were going to deliver on. Perhaps
Speaker:what I should have done is said... I'm actually, I'm not going
Speaker:to try and deal with any third parties, you figure it out. And so
Speaker:yeah, the situation is like that where you go, there's no kind of like, no one did
Speaker:Transparency is the easiest way, you know. People make
Speaker:mistakes, mistakes happen, it's how you handle them, isn't it? And you know,
Speaker:if we're going to be delivering late or we're doing something that's that's wrong. We're
Speaker:big on having an incredible customer service department headed
Speaker:up by someone incredible as well, Hayley. And
Speaker:they very much face into these things because the customer is key and it's
Speaker:the right thing. We have a separate customer service department deliberately is
Speaker:that they keep the customer very, very happy. It's the
Speaker:right thing to do. But through facing into problems, through you know,
Speaker:they happen. Occasionally we go to load something on the wagon
Speaker:and it's fallen off the back and we only had one of them so we've got
Speaker:to just tell the customer. I'm afraid it's damaged but we'll
Speaker:get it there as soon as possible and I think as long as you tell people, they
Speaker:can decide then can't they? It's them not telling or trying to hide stuff that's deadly.
Speaker:I think bringing it back to marketing as well, the other thing about business
Speaker:and it's important is making sure we're talking to people about what's
Speaker:relevant to them. And that's something that here an
Speaker:awful lot about is talking to a retailer
Speaker:about something that's very merchant driven as
Speaker:a is of no interest to them. I mean that's the way we've
Speaker:improved our performance in the digital landscape certainly
Speaker:is by talking to them about meaningful products. Yes. Meaningful
Speaker:promotions. Somebody that's got a a
Speaker:bathroom retailer that's maybe doing 24 bathroom installs
Speaker:a year isn't interested in one product. An offer of
Speaker:buy 100 of these and you'll get a lifetime's worth.
Speaker:Thank you. It's not relevant. And you think about, you know,
Speaker:how you engage with marketing in your own day-to-day life is the most relevant content
Speaker:to you is the one that you engage with. You get
Speaker:an email that's irrelevant to you, you just delete it straight away. Social
Speaker:post, if it's not relevant to you or aimed at you, you scroll straight past it.
Speaker:It's about we are bombarded in our day-to-day lives,
Speaker:especially at work with information and content. cut
Speaker:through it, make sure it's relevant, make sure it means something to the individual that's
Speaker:receiving it and you'll have a higher click-through rate.
Speaker:It's fairly self-explanatory that one it seems but
Speaker:It's so important if you feel like an email has come through to you and it
Speaker:feels personal even though you know it's not, you feel like it's ticking all the
Speaker:right boxes in terms of your problems and your or
Speaker:whatever, you're way more likely to take interest in that, aren't you?
Speaker:I imagine that's quite difficult. How do you sort of,
Speaker:do you have like sort of separate, I'm not very good with email marketing in
Speaker:terms of the fact that I did it once a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker:got blacklisted instantly. So that was the
Speaker:end of my email marketing career. And I wasn't, I was actually asking
Speaker:people to be on the podcast. I'd send like a bulk email
Speaker:to a load of people to be like, hey, do you want to come on my podcast? Like I found all these people
Speaker:from LinkedIn. And anyway, so yeah,
Speaker:We're very good at it. Royal We, I've got an incredible team in
Speaker:the marketing department. So I split the six people in our department, but
Speaker:split it into we've got brand, digital, and
Speaker:web, which is very deliberate. I keep
Speaker:them very separate. I work collectively. I
Speaker:tend to come up with a harebrained idea and then they filter it to make
Speaker:sure that it works, which is great because I'd
Speaker:probably get blacklisted very quickly if it was my sort of idea
Speaker:of coming in and going, subject line, ignoring this email will
Speaker:cost you money. You can't use that, that's just going to get
Speaker:put somewhere else. Right, okay, we'll filter it down and make it work. And they
Speaker:do. And that's why our click-through rate just grows and grows and grows. And
Speaker:a lot to do with what we're doing with making sure it's relevant to the content. again
Speaker:that's that portal bit and you know the Tesco club card thing is that's
Speaker:um that was far before its time I suppose everyone knows
Speaker:about the Tesco club card thing but for the sort of clarity
Speaker:on it is they want to get to a stage because the club card harness
Speaker:all your data is you know by email if you haven't bought milk from Tesco for
Speaker:a while they'll they'll market you about milk because you're still
Speaker:buying it, where are you getting it from. And it's just so data rich
Speaker:and they've done it by rewarding people. I mean everyone's jumped on the bandwagon now
Speaker:but they were the first I think to really pioneer
Speaker:It's very clever isn't it. So when it comes to email marketing do
Speaker:you have separate sort of categories of your audience
Speaker:I'm not going to go into too much detail about what they are but yes we break everything
Speaker:into behaviours and we move about with it as well so we cut it
Speaker:every time we do something basically we look at who is the audience, who wants
Speaker:to receive that, who is it relevant to and then we
Speaker:Clever shit. Clever shit. This is like next level stuff
Speaker:Keelan compared to what we do and it's something that I've always been in
Speaker:awe of is this kind of like, you know, you've got,
Speaker:I don't know, 500,000 emails, people
Speaker:on your contact list. And these are split into different segments.
Speaker:And you can have funnels for each of
Speaker:those segments that go into different areas. And I'm like, who
Speaker:the hell is looking after all this stuff? You know, we're trying to make a, we're trying
Speaker:But then the other part of that is, Surround
Speaker:yourself with clever people. I'm very
Speaker:lucky to have that. So that's a
Speaker:blessing because I couldn't do it. And
Speaker:I think also the big of it is what I've just admitted there. If you can't do
Speaker:something, don't just bury your head in the sand with it. Lean into it and
Speaker:find the talent. Go and outsource it.
Speaker:bring it in house, do whatever you have to do to get that knowledge and
Speaker:creativity. Just because you can't do it doesn't mean
Speaker:it doesn't need to be done. And also
Speaker:don't be afraid to say it's not a weakness. probably
Speaker:guilty of it early on in my career but now, you know, I'm not afraid
Speaker:of saying what I'm good at and what I'm bad at and just
Speaker:put your hands up and say it's a great idea, I think it should be done, I'm
Speaker:not the person that's going to drive that, let's bring
Speaker:I thought about this concept the other day, someone asked me, I
Speaker:was at a show, so We've
Speaker:we were originally a full service creative agency when when this started
Speaker:we were full service creative agency. So not necessarily a marketing
Speaker:agency although there was a marketing element to it. So we would come up
Speaker:with like a marketing strategy for particular businesses and
Speaker:things that is very much in a creative driven sort of website branding socials
Speaker:content design stuff like that. And
Speaker:then we very quickly realized we didn't enjoy most of those things. There was there was
Speaker:there was a lot of that. I was just like, sound like a great idea. And technically,
Speaker:you know, it was one of those things that we could have enjoyed if we
Speaker:if we'd focused on it. Yeah, it was the lack of focus. And
Speaker:so we kind of had like a bit of a chat internally. I
Speaker:kind of knew what I wanted to do. And before, we'd run as a social media
Speaker:marketing agency and a content agency, which we now call
Speaker:a social first creative agency. That's kind of the term that we used to kind of
Speaker:bring production and social media marketing together. And
Speaker:we'd run the business like that prior to that, and we really
Speaker:enjoyed it. Why
Speaker:do we not enjoy this anymore? And also why are we making less money and
Speaker:working harder? So we kind of came to this conclusion and
Speaker:we were doing stuff that sounded like a good idea but actually we
Speaker:didn't enjoy it. And it made the work harder. And it
Speaker:made the focus less direct.
Speaker:the output wasn't as good in general because we were spreading
Speaker:ourselves too thin. And it turns out the fact that we just didn't enjoy
Speaker:it. Deep down, we didn't enjoy most of this stuff. But I
Speaker:was at Screwfix Live the other day and speaking to one of the guys on the stands. And
Speaker:he said, how come you don't do like PPC and like an
Speaker:SEO and stuff? That's something that we could use. Like what, you know, you seem like
Speaker:a great agency. Why would you not want to do that? And I'm like, it doesn't sound like much
Speaker:fun. And I went a
Speaker:bit further with this and I
Speaker:thought we've technically kind of all got our dream job
Speaker:here. You don't kind of join a creative agency because it's the sort
Speaker:of last resort. So most of us, although, you know, not every
Speaker:day is perfect, pretty much everyone of us is
Speaker:in the career that they chose to be in. Or certainly for
Speaker:me, I've got my dream job. This is as far as I go on the ladder of
Speaker:like career. And
Speaker:why would you spoil that by doing something that you don't like and don't want to
Speaker:do? Obviously you can hire that kind of stuff in but also
Speaker:at the same time from a creative agency like I
Speaker:That's again about staying in your lane isn't it? Yes. And knowing what you're
Speaker:good at and you know. there
Speaker:are natural adjacencies to what you say in there, you know, bring a PPC in,
Speaker:but that's specialist, that's very data-driven,
Speaker:not particularly creative at all actually. The opposite, SEO
Speaker:maybe a little bit more creative, but
Speaker:it's all about copy, so that's then linked, you know, you can see an adjacency for
Speaker:a PR agency deciding they want to go and write SEO content, fine,
Speaker:accept that, but it doesn't, it doesn't naturally
Speaker:marry up and I think that's you know but The
Speaker:first question, I suppose, as to why the construction
Speaker:industry is possibly a little bit behind in the marketing bit is the guilt of thinking, oh,
Speaker:marketing. Oh, well, whoever's doing our SEO must be
Speaker:able to do our PPC. And oh, do you think they could buy teleadverts? No.
Speaker:That's a different skill set. Again, could
Speaker:they do some radio creative? No, because you're
Speaker:tight for time there. You've got 30 seconds. You've got to get a key message in. It's
Speaker:very different to doing, a podcast like this where it can be
Speaker:as long as it wants to be. So they're all specialisms and
Speaker:I get the adjacency but sometimes I think people are guilty of
Speaker:thinking with marketing that there's adjacencies where
Speaker:there aren't any. And that's back to the reason why I've split my
Speaker:department into brand, web and digital. It's
Speaker:the three very different channels. So it's three very different skill sets. And
Speaker:yes there's some crossover between them but my head
Speaker:of brand doesn't know how to fix the website if there's a problem. Vice
Speaker:versa. I wouldn't swap the roles around
Speaker:the other way either. So that's about being a specialist in
Speaker:In a way it's it's it's almost so. that
Speaker:we're quite lucky in the fact that we can be specialists. And it kind of brings me on
Speaker:to a really nice sort of segue into a point that I
Speaker:put across quite a lot is I think a lot
Speaker:of big brands who haven't got the time to think, or just brands in general,
Speaker:MDs, whatever, They, like
Speaker:you said, they assume a marketing agency can do everything and do everything well.
Speaker:A full service agency. And some of them can. Some of them have got some
Speaker:great guys in there. But I, where possible, would
Speaker:push for brands to speak to
Speaker:specialist agencies. Yes, it's more to deal with. So
Speaker:it can be a little bit more of a time suck there in terms
Speaker:of you've got to deal with five or four different agencies as opposed to
Speaker:one that's doing everything. So you've got these four or
Speaker:five different specialist agencies that their sole focus
Speaker:is making sure that they're successful in that one particular field. And
Speaker:they can talk to each other quite nicely, agencies typically do, especially if
Speaker:they're specialists. You might need to manage those
Speaker:a little bit more, but you get a better result and it may well be cheaper, I
Speaker:don't know. as opposed to using a
Speaker:full service creative agency. Not to say that that's
Speaker:not a viable option but it's
Speaker:not always the best option to just go with one agency that does everything because
Speaker:a lot of the time brands
Speaker:are guilty of making
Speaker:I think the other fact is you I'm
Speaker:not so much in this current role but certainly in the past I've broke
Speaker:it up. I've had it in one place and then broke it up. It also holds everyone
Speaker:to account. So you can easily, most agencies
Speaker:now will cross-function with other businesses to collaborative
Speaker:work I guess. It holds everyone to account really. You
Speaker:know if you've got one single source of everything at one place you've
Speaker:just got to take their word for it. You've got no sort of... no
Speaker:benchmark I guess to to soundboard off anybody else because you've
Speaker:just got to take their word for it or or call them out on it and then that's that's
Speaker:They're one of the things that um they're really it's kind of
Speaker:related to this to some extent is the assumption that
Speaker:um if someone is young Um,
Speaker:then, and, and they, they know how to use tick tock that all of a
Speaker:sudden makes them a marketer. Um, and I see a
Speaker:construction brands doing this far too often because there,
Speaker:I mean the, the. The best
Speaker:metaphor I can do this is the kind of dinosaur old MD
Speaker:doesn't understand social media, but sees a pretty
Speaker:young girl who's got a load of followers on TikTok and
Speaker:says, right now, you can run our social media because you know how to work the
Speaker:platform in your own. And that might actually
Speaker:work out OK. But that doesn't make them a
Speaker:market and it doesn't make them qualified to communicate your brand to
Speaker:the audience, to the world. And I see this
Speaker:happen so much and obviously I run a social media agency
Speaker:so I do understand this but I think, yeah,
Speaker:unless that young person
Speaker:who knows how to use a particular social platform, unless
Speaker:they've got a manager who's also a very talented marketer
Speaker:and communicator, you're in for a world of hurt
Speaker:there. And you might not even realize it, that you're just, you know, ruining
Speaker:the brand by doing silly dances
Speaker:Yeah, and again, the big thing
Speaker:of the invitation Scott to make the party is not relevant is if you're selling,
Speaker:you know, if you're selling laws, keep it relatable to
Speaker:bathrooms if you're selling a bathroom product. it would not
Speaker:make great sense to go out and get a young influencer from TikTok to
Speaker:go and start doing dances and all the other stuff and
Speaker:just go, I don't get it, I'm confused. I'm
Speaker:not sure it's relatable. Yeah,
Speaker:it is. Screams are trying too hard, I think, in some respects,
Speaker:but they're also not relatable. That's not what you'd
Speaker:relate to a bathroom product. TikTok's great for plugging
Speaker:a lot of things, but I don't think it's quite there
Speaker:for us yet. The construction industry, or... That's not
Speaker:right. We just haven't hit the nail on the head with it, I don't think.
Speaker:Yeah, I've got my thoughts on TikTok. We use TikTok with our brands, but
Speaker:we use it to communicate the
Speaker:same things that we're communicating on other channels that are still relevant to
Speaker:that audience. I think one of the things that you
Speaker:see a lot of people saying On TikTok it
Speaker:needs to be raw, it needs to be like it's shot on a phone, it
Speaker:needs to be applicable to the platform because that's what people are used to seeing. Yeah
Speaker:totally, if you can do that and do it well, go
Speaker:for it. But if you only have the budget to create, let's say you've
Speaker:created really high quality premium content that
Speaker:Also back to that earlier conversation of ROI. What and
Speaker:who are you doing it for? Because if you're just doing it to tick a box to say, oh
Speaker:brilliant, we've got a TikTok channel, then fine
Speaker:if that's what you want from it. If you're actually trying to monetize it then you need to
Speaker:think long and hard about whether it's the right audience, whether
Speaker:it's the right market for you and what you're trying to get out of it. set
Speaker:your goal before you you delve into that that
Speaker:But there is that classic kind of thing of like we need to be on social media you
Speaker:know yeah so somebody high up said we need to be on social yeah we're missing we're missing
Speaker:it and someone someone else has gone okay I'll have a go yeah or
Speaker:whatever and uh yeah it's it's um thankfully
Speaker:as as we progress uh and as people retire as
Speaker:as newer blood kind of comes into the businesses and stuff like that and
Speaker:and cleverer marketers come into the construction industry as a whole We're
Speaker:going to hopefully see less and less of that kind of like, oh, we're here because we
Speaker:feel like we need to be as opposed to, like you say, have a goal or
Speaker:They're all now, much and much, even LinkedIn really is
Speaker:down to the point that people are seemingly, professional people
Speaker:are sharing what I'd call like Facebook posts almost. They're
Speaker:sort of checking in places, you know they're posting
Speaker:about their personal lives on LinkedIn which
Speaker:is fine, great actually. It's
Speaker:a channel and it works and you can put stuff. Now, if you
Speaker:want to be on TikToks, you think that's just take
Speaker:the good of that reflected, but put it on the right channel that's right to your audience as
Speaker:well. So if you're B2B, I don't think
Speaker:TikTok's the one. I'm not sure that's going to get you the cut through,
Speaker:but no, I could be wrong. Like I said, to begin with, not
Speaker:So B2B is a weird one. Because it's,
Speaker:you know, we're used to working with brands that are marketing
Speaker:to both. So in that scenario, I would say, if you're going to,
Speaker:if there's a need to be on, let's say your, So
Speaker:your Bosch tools, 100% you need to be on Instagram
Speaker:because you are marketing your products. People need to be able to engage with
Speaker:your product and your brand on social media. It's a great communication
Speaker:tool to the end user. You
Speaker:can obviously still be on Instagram and do
Speaker:similar stuff, but you're probably going to have a slightly different strategy because all that's going
Speaker:to be about B2B. It's about speaking to your distributors for
Speaker:the most part. So that's really good. And
Speaker:then yeah, you've got TikTok and it kind of makes sense for you to be
Speaker:kind of on there as well. But what you don't need to do as Bosch is
Speaker:employ somebody then to do a load of like what some influencer has
Speaker:said, this is the best way to get engagement on TikTok, even though it damages
Speaker:the brand, because you're completely going against your
Speaker:brand values and the normal times of communication. But
Speaker:B2B is kind of like a weird one. It's not
Speaker:one I've thought about a great deal but I don't think you
Speaker:need to be, you don't even think, you don't
Speaker:technically maybe need to be on Instagram. If you're creating
Speaker:content for LinkedIn, my thing has
Speaker:always been if you're going to do, you can create content on
Speaker:one platform, you might as well just auto post that to the rest of them
Speaker:because it's better to show up than not. As long
Speaker:as it's not again damaging the
Speaker:brand and I don't think it would be because you know if you've got content going out on LinkedIn
Speaker:that it is okay if that goes out on on Instagram because because
Speaker:you've not got an end-user audience. It kind
Speaker:of doesn't matter no one the end user doesn't really care about you anyway at this
Speaker:point because it's you're all about the distributors and and
Speaker:and stuff like so I don't think it matters whereas if you if
Speaker:you were technically marketing to the end user,
Speaker:putting your LinkedIn posts on Instagram might be a bit weird, you
Speaker:There are different channels altogether, aren't there? Yes. I think
Speaker:you just have to remember that they're all different channels and there should all be different messages and
Speaker:you can't reflect, we're very, because it's open to everyone and
Speaker:we were saying earlier about the email sort
Speaker:of being a little bit more unique in its mailing list,
Speaker:you then can't go out on socials with something that's, you can't say, oh, this
Speaker:is specific to this group of people, so I'll do that, but then we'll just post it on social so
Speaker:everyone can see it. So we're trying to use social more
Speaker:for for service messages and a bit more about the business and
Speaker:then get behind it as well. Brand values, meet the team, see
Speaker:It's absolutely like day in the life of like one of our drivers or
Speaker:something like that. I haven't done that yet, but that's a good idea. Well, I'll
Speaker:take that one for free. I've always wanted to do it. We
Speaker:nearly got the go ahead from one of our clients to do a day in the life of
Speaker:a BDM. I thought that might be quite interesting how they go in
Speaker:interact with their customers, what they do on a particular day, and stuff
Speaker:like that, some kind of, you know... It is
Speaker:interesting, it's sort of, again, not marketing related,
Speaker:but business related, is that our onboarding process now,
Speaker:whenever we take somebody new on into the business and welcome
Speaker:them to the team, is quite a detailed first week, and
Speaker:part of that is they'll spend a bit of time in the warehouse, they'll go out with a
Speaker:driver, because they have to, we want everybody to
Speaker:understand the business from cradle to to grave really so we'll
Speaker:get them to go and spend a bit of time with a supplier, go out
Speaker:with the sales team, see the customer for
Speaker:flesh because I couldn't believe it but when
Speaker:I joined, spoke to almost all the marketing team
Speaker:and nobody had been to a branch, nobody had been to any of our customers,
Speaker:nobody had been to a show. Ah, right, well let's
Speaker:solve that because you need to go and look at who we're selling to.
Speaker:They don't need to go to all of them but they need to go
Speaker:and see what a bathroom showroom looks like, what a merchant looks like because how
Speaker:are you supposed to market to people that you don't understand the customer base?
Speaker:That's incredibly important, almost more important than
Speaker:what the message is saying and how it looks really is, is it relevant?
Speaker:Yeah, I imagine it's relatively easy to in a big business like that to
Speaker:just like be like, no one's thinking, right, let's all go and
Speaker:So it's, you know, there's the sometimes a
Speaker:bit of I'll just get the bum on the seat and get working but
Speaker:actually we're less of that now and take the time of making sure
Speaker:they understand, make sure they're happy as well, make sure they're comfortable with
Speaker:it. Again back to the customer service team, we
Speaker:want to make all of them bathroom specialists so spend a lot of
Speaker:time with our brands, you know we get them doing training,
Speaker:going to the site, seeing the factory, all those things that
Speaker:possibly sound boring but actually you're selling these products
Speaker:day in day out. You should go and understand how it's how
Speaker:it all works. Could tell about the broad picture. Absolutely. Yeah. And
Speaker:then you're relatable to the to the customer when they ring up because our
Speaker:service is we should be bathroom specialists and we are now. So
Speaker:when they want to spit, they go, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker:what a shower tray looks like. I
Speaker:couldn't tell you what they're made of. Brilliant, that's really
Speaker:helpful, thanks. But now our
Speaker:It isn't. Customer service is almost like a sort of a
Speaker:branch of marketing in that respect, isn't it, for you guys? It's
Speaker:really important that the core messaging and
Speaker:stuff is, I guess there's more of a brand thing
Speaker:than marketing, but in that culture, But
Speaker:super important nonetheless, like, you know, you can have all
Speaker:this amazing marketing. And if that isn't kind of like if your
Speaker:customer service or general team isn't on board with the messaging
Speaker:and the goals and all that kind of thing, then there's again, there's that disconnect.
Speaker:Yeah, we spend a lot of time talking to all our teams really about
Speaker:how important they are in that, you know, going back to that chain example, how
Speaker:important they are. And because what we do is
Speaker:not unique. There's no point in me sitting here and saying that it is because it
Speaker:isn't. We distribute brands. So they have an option of
Speaker:turning left or right, you know, they can buy from somebody else. We
Speaker:want them to buy from us because it's super easy. We
Speaker:do what we say we're going to do and deliver it on time and
Speaker:in full. That's what we do. So everybody is very,
Speaker:very important and we spend a lot of time nailing
Speaker:home that message really. That's really cool. I
Speaker:don't know if it is cool or just actually pretty basic. Sometimes
Speaker:I think you forget the basics. I think it's the first thing to go.
Speaker:It's like when you go and do a workshop or
Speaker:you go to like a marketing seminar. And it's basically people reminding
Speaker:you of the stuff that you should have been doing. And you knew that you needed
Speaker:to do that. You just need reminding of it. You know, a lot of the time
Speaker:when you go to it, you know, like some of the best things you can do for your business is
Speaker:stuff that you already knew you should be doing. You just needed someone to tell
Speaker:And that's why, you know, listening to I'm not sure this podcast
Speaker:might be the right example as the one I'm starring in, but others you
Speaker:might be able to find some useful information. But learning
Speaker:those and you think, oh God, why didn't I think of that? But it's
Speaker:just you haven't had the headspace or you haven't had the time to do it. I mean it's my biggest frustration
Speaker:when someone has a... I love it, I love people having great ideas, I
Speaker:should have thought about that but we're not in that space. Leave
Speaker:your ego at the door basically. Anyone in
Speaker:our business is welcome to have a great idea and if they've got it then let's parade them
Speaker:around the car park because it's phenomenal. Nobody
Speaker:Do you know what really frustrates me is when our clients have better ideas
Speaker:than us. It's like oh you pay us to do this. and
Speaker:They might not have the skill set to execute it. That's the other thing,
Speaker:isn't it? You know, we can all have great ideas, but actually does it work in
Speaker:practice? Does it work in principle? You know, can you actually do it? Yeah.
Speaker:No. A lot of the time we're, you know, we have
Speaker:to like, we all do like, um, you sort of, uh,
Speaker:well they call kill them when you go and do idea development and stuff like that. It's a
Speaker:specific term and it's a dead easy word. What is it? It's
Speaker:Monday morning isn't it? Brainstorming. There
Speaker:we go. We're brainstorming sort of days where
Speaker:we're working with a particular client. We've got a, let's
Speaker:say we've got a campaign. So we've got to deliver X amount, like tons of deliverables on a
Speaker:particular product. Here's the core messaging. Here's who it's for. We
Speaker:have some constraints there. Go. And we go from
Speaker:wild to less wild ideas. One
Speaker:person's wild is different to another. And sometimes the
Speaker:client goes, well, what about this? And I go, I didn't even know if we were allowed to do that. But
Speaker:yes, let's do that. It's a brilliant idea. Of course, they
Speaker:know their products incredibly well. So they can come up with these kinds of concepts.
Speaker:And that's why I love collaborating with brands.
Speaker:And why I love working with marketing managers.
Speaker:Marketing managers are typically our clients, as opposed to MDs, because MDs
Speaker:just haven't got the time for us. But we can speak the same language, we
Speaker:can collaborate a bit easier. It's a lot of
Speaker:fun. So since you've been working with
Speaker:Ideal Bathrooms for just over a year, did
Speaker:you change anything when you went in there? What's been the year like?
Speaker:Because I imagine it's tempting for every marketer, every creative to
Speaker:go into a a company and go everything needs to
Speaker:change. I can do it better but actually a lot of the time it's not
Speaker:Yeah the problem is when you change everything all at once it's hard to see what
Speaker:worked and what didn't work. Yes lots of lots
Speaker:of change but I like to think not
Speaker:change for changing sake. We've not
Speaker:changed anything at the fundamentals of what the business is just a bit of refinement
Speaker:and then a refocus on what we are as a business really.
Speaker:I think you know that back to basics thing has been systemic
Speaker:actually in our business over the last year is actually
Speaker:just strip it back and keep it really really simple. Let's not go off
Speaker:and create something really complicated that nobody needs.
Speaker:Let's just keep it really really simple and execute it well. Make
Speaker:Was there anything in particular that When you came in and you analyzed
Speaker:all the marketing activities of the business
Speaker:previously, was there anything that stuck out to you as being like we need to
Speaker:stop this or change this or this needs to be... No, not
Speaker:The one thing that was a standout for
Speaker:me was our digital piece. We were
Speaker:clearly ahead of the game. But my constant
Speaker:worry of that is, you know, you're only ahead of the game for a snapshot
Speaker:in time. So we've got a big digital agenda of what we just want
Speaker:to keep growing on what we're doing really. You know, it has to be simple
Speaker:in a world where you know you'll buy
Speaker:Amazon every day. That's what people are expecting now.
Speaker:And you know that's that's what we have to have as a as
Speaker:a service offering. So we've we've launched quite a lot in the business again not necessarily
Speaker:marketing but it all helps and strengthens what we're doing. We've just launched electronic
Speaker:proof of deliveries. So now tracked orders sign
Speaker:on glass when you get there. But that's great and
Speaker:it's And it's sort of just in itself, but we've got then all
Speaker:the proof of delivery is onto the portal. So again, making people get
Speaker:into that, but keeping it in one place, it's ease
Speaker:of business. That's sometimes what it's not
Speaker:marketing is actually. just the ease of
Speaker:how you do business with us and keeping it
Speaker:really really simple. I keep going back to that point but make it
Speaker:hard and people will turn off. You know if
Speaker:it feels like you've got to jump through too many hoops then they'll just not do it. They'll just
Speaker:So I think we might have said this off air but I've always had
Speaker:this concept of it's not a new
Speaker:concept at all of like make it as easy as possible for people to
Speaker:spend as much money as possible. Um, because, uh,
Speaker:that's what they want. That's what they're there for. You're not tricking them into it. It's
Speaker:just, if you put up some barriers, they will go, Oh, I can't be arsed. You know? And
Speaker:anytime that I have to go through a more than if
Speaker:there's a situation where I'm going through the checkout and something's freaking out,
Speaker:I've just got to forget it. Can't be bothered, you know, like fix those
Speaker:And I think, sorry, that point is consumers and
Speaker:end consumer, you know, is a very different sort of, they will just go, oh,
Speaker:forget it, I'll come back later or not at all or never.
Speaker:And, you know, you've got to then keep them in the funnel and keep them warm, keep communicating back
Speaker:with them. For us in the business to business space is, If
Speaker:we make it difficult once, then just go, I'm going
Speaker:to have to find another option for this. People will persevere,
Speaker:but only so much. And I think people's tolerance
Speaker:for that is getting less and less. And
Speaker:that's because online has just become so much. Well,
Speaker:not even online, everything now, everything is so much easier than it was
Speaker:before. You know, you even think about checking in for a
Speaker:flight at an airport now, you don't speak to someone, you've done it all before, you
Speaker:go to an electronic bag drop, it prints the label for you, sticks it
Speaker:on and done. Now, the thought of going to an airport
Speaker:and having to queue for ages and get a printed boarding pass and then check your bag
Speaker:and drop it somewhere else, it'd be alien. Nobody would want to
Speaker:do that. But that was just an evolution. We're
Speaker:all now so time conscious, aren't we? And if
Speaker:it's overly complicated, we just switch off and go, forget it, I'm not going
Speaker:to bother. I don't need it. Or somebody else can do it, or I'll do it tomorrow. They
Speaker:Not just that sale, the continuous sale. Exactly. Your business
Speaker:relies on repeat business. When you get a client, you want
Speaker:to keep that client for 10 years, 5 years, 20 years, forever. And if they're injecting tens
Speaker:or hundreds of thousands into the business every single month or
Speaker:whatever, you lose that client, it's going to be difficult to get
Speaker:I think it's about respecting them as well and listening to them and
Speaker:making sure that when they say something's wrong or we
Speaker:fix it. That's my ethos and our
Speaker:business' ethos actually across the board is we're
Speaker:there to exist for our suppliers and our customers
Speaker:be our suppliers. Customers always come first and they do. But
Speaker:if they say something we take it where we digest it we listen to it and
Speaker:we try and we try and implement it because we're there we
Speaker:exist for our customers basically. So yeah they're
Speaker:What do you think people say about, you
Speaker:may well have the data to this or you can speculate, what do
Speaker:you think people say about ideal bathrooms when you guys are in the
Speaker:I don't have the data, certainly our reputation is
Speaker:good, I'm not saying it always has been, you
Speaker:know we're 44 years old we've had ebbs and flows of
Speaker:our reputation but currently incredibly good and
Speaker:that's really because we do
Speaker:what we're saying we're going to do. You know we don't go out there and
Speaker:make big statements and then not deliver on them. If
Speaker:we're going to if we're going to say we're going to do it then we'll do it. Yeah. And
Speaker:that's really resonated with our supplier base and our customer base. So
Speaker:as much as I don't know I do actually we've just had a. Went
Speaker:out and got some data because we do twice
Speaker:a year actually now, we get everyone in the business round and we do a sort
Speaker:of presentation of where we've been, what we're doing and where we're going. Again back
Speaker:to that thing of 190 colleagues, incredibly important to us, they
Speaker:all make the business. We want them to know and feel safe and
Speaker:understand where we're going as a business. And as part of that it's
Speaker:like I said it's very easy for us to stand up there and say oh it's
Speaker:great. But that's just us saying it. Let's
Speaker:go out. So we got supplier customer and sort of relevant feedback
Speaker:and it was overwhelming to be fair how pleased
Speaker:our customer base is with us. So yeah. And that's because we're
Speaker:one part of their business of probably a very small part of it and you
Speaker:know let's just make it simple for them. Make it easy. You
Speaker:know that the last thing I want us to be is mentioned every day in
Speaker:those places because that probably means we're doing something wrong. Yeah. If
Speaker:we're getting a lot of airtime in our customers day
Speaker:Yeah. I think one of the takeaways so far from
Speaker:this episode has been get
Speaker:your marketing message correct for the
Speaker:target audience and make sure you deliver on that message.
Speaker:And that's, you know, it's so simple but that's massive, isn't
Speaker:So many people get it wrong though, you know, that adage, the invitation has
Speaker:to meet the parties, so many people get it wrong. I've been, take
Speaker:your example of the gym, and you look online and it
Speaker:looks really sexy, it looks high-end and then you get there and it's like,
Speaker:ah. Shower's broken, only half
Speaker:the machines are working. Clearly I don't go to the gym, maybe burger
Speaker:gyms but not the other one. Yeah,
Speaker:you've just let them down, haven't you? You've gone
Speaker:into something and thought, oh, this isn't what I expected, so you're likely just to turn
Speaker:off straight away. Whereas actually, if your invitation meets the party, it
Speaker:Even if that invitation was actually like... So
Speaker:like if you're going down the route of like, okay, our gym's a
Speaker:bit of a hole. Let's market it as a bit of a hole because there's
Speaker:a market for that. People are looking for a
Speaker:gym where they just want to go in, grungy gym, you know, we
Speaker:Yeah, I think they're quite cool now. They're sort of like up and coming and
Speaker:Half the machines don't work, but you just have to make it work. Yeah. Don't try
Speaker:and be anything else. Yeah. Just be what you are. Because then, you
Speaker:know, if you've marketed, like, to the high-end gym, go, me, specifically,
Speaker:you know what I mean? I'll get my nails done, and you know what I mean? I'll get, like, whatever.
Speaker:Get some nice moisturizers in the bathrooms. 10-minute wait, an
Speaker:hour's soreness, fine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Get a little coffee afterwards.
Speaker:You know, if you're marketing to them, and then you have that gym, that's a
Speaker:disconnect there. And vice versa, if you're, you know, you
Speaker:know, there's a branding issue there, isn't there,
Speaker:if you sort of cross-pollinate between those two. You know,
Speaker:it's important to get your audience right in
Speaker:I think the other part of that is the other takeaway is don't be
Speaker:afraid of just because you think you've had the best idea. Yeah. If
Speaker:it hasn't worked, cut it, cut it dead straight
Speaker:away and go move on to something else. I think so many people get
Speaker:married to something and think, oh, we've
Speaker:invested in it, we've done loads of brand collateral or we've printed
Speaker:a brochure. If it's not working, don't
Speaker:try, don't keep trying to push it
Speaker:because it's like pushing a rock uphill basically. It's just
Speaker:know when to just go, that doesn't work. Let's
Speaker:Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that marketing is just testing most of
Speaker:the time. You know, as much as you can
Speaker:have a bit of data in your head, and
Speaker:on paper to go, right, we think this is going to work. Yeah, it's
Speaker:only a prediction and sometimes
Speaker:it doesn't and you can go ah we missed this key factor if no one cares or
Speaker:You can get very very hung up on that and you know it's better to have tried
Speaker:and failed than to have tried at all. It's you know just don't
Speaker:but don't try it fail it and keep trying the same thing and
Speaker:I want to dig a little bit deeper into B2B, because
Speaker:it sounds weird, but I'm quite excited about that. Because
Speaker:we're so used to, again, a lot of time we're marketing to
Speaker:the end consumer, a lot of the time juggling
Speaker:both. So B2B on
Speaker:its own is quite exciting. What kind of stuff are you putting out
Speaker:there to the world? And we touched on it briefly. content
Speaker:around values, content around the people and stuff like that. Do
Speaker:you have a specific strategy, you know, for that kind
Speaker:of thing? And also, like, how do you How do
Speaker:you touch on product when it comes to your content?
Speaker:There's always that kind of battle of like selling the product, selling the brand, you know, that
Speaker:Yeah, so there's a lot of different activity that we do and
Speaker:you can sort of bucket it up into, you know, awareness piece, promotional
Speaker:led, you know, we do, we join up with our
Speaker:supplier partners or sometimes just do our own promotions and we push we
Speaker:push those out. So it's not that we're not promotion led, but we always have
Speaker:to remember that we're one step removed from the end client. So it's
Speaker:difficult to go out there and influence the end user. So
Speaker:you're trying to make sure it's relevant for our customer
Speaker:base, which are businesses. So
Speaker:there's the promotion aspect of it but then awareness, not
Speaker:just awareness of us as a business but awareness of what brands we sell,
Speaker:awareness of our stock investment, that's what we've got
Speaker:to highlight all the time in our service messaging. We've just done something
Speaker:which I think is very clever but we
Speaker:have about 30,000 SKUs listed in our in
Speaker:our sort of portfolio, that's an awful lot to have. We've got
Speaker:a 108,000 square foot warehouse at Milton Keynes and a 56,000 square
Speaker:foot in Wakefield but that's not big enough to get 30,000 SKUs in
Speaker:there. So we've put a blue van against everything that
Speaker:we guarantee you can have next day. We've got it in there and it's, you
Speaker:know, sell with confidence. a lot about awareness of
Speaker:getting that message out there because that's resonated really well with
Speaker:our customer base. Actually again back into that keeping it simple, making
Speaker:sure that we're transparent about what we've got on offer and just
Speaker:saying we're going to have it in stock and then actually having it in stock and then actually
Speaker:delivering it to you when you need it. You know back to
Speaker:our promotional bit but really back to the B2B and
Speaker:how we market is, I
Speaker:just keep coming back to it, is making sure it's relevant to the audience, making sure
Speaker:that we've got the right message at the right time to
Speaker:the right person that's receiving it. And a lot of time and
Speaker:investment is spent in that area. Not only, you know, are
Speaker:we talking to the right person, or we've got an email address for ABC
Speaker:trade bathrooms, fantastic, but who is it that we've got the email address
Speaker:for? the man in accounts, is it
Speaker:the purchase order in, is it the person on the shop floor, who
Speaker:is it who is most relevant and are we even hitting home to them, I
Speaker:suppose that's the other part of it. the message is
Speaker:only as good as the data we're sending it to. So data is
Speaker:incredibly important, making sure that we've got it as
Speaker:refined, as detailed as
Speaker:possible basically. A lot of investment in that. Difficult
Speaker:by the way, people aren't willing always to give away their email
Speaker:address and it's part of their identity, isn't it, these days.
Speaker:So we're looking at ways of how we I would get that and get to the right person because
Speaker:you know it's about speaking to the person that makes the buying decision. And
Speaker:that's not always the MD of the business, in fact
Speaker:very rarely is I suppose. We
Speaker:deal with businesses of varying sizes, you know we'll deal with merchants that
Speaker:have got millions of turnover and
Speaker:40, 50 members of staff. So they might have a procurement department.
Speaker:But then also we'll deal with showrooms that have much
Speaker:smaller turnover and might be a husband and wife team or a family or
Speaker:who's the relevant person to talk to in that space. Of
Speaker:course we have a sales team out on the road as well that make sure that they're getting
Speaker:into those customers on a regular basis making
Speaker:sure they're updating to make
Speaker:sure from a marketing point of view we're talking to the right people but it's
Speaker:almost as important as the message really is who is actually getting what
Speaker:is more important who is getting delivered to. Is it getting seen by the right person
Speaker:Do you put much stock in a personal brand from a
Speaker:you know like from the I guess any of
Speaker:the people within the business. Do you have like a strategy around kind
Speaker:of personal brand on social media and Um, like
Speaker:the sales team, for instance, having a presence on social media and connecting with
Speaker:No, um, not currently. It's something that we're, we're definitely looking
Speaker:to explore. Uh, all our, all our ASMs have
Speaker:got sort of LinkedIn, um, quite prevalent
Speaker:on it. We are. toying with the idea of you know our
Speaker:marketing department writing content for people within the business to
Speaker:post because it's not just coming
Speaker:from Ideal Bathroom's main page isn't always the strongest way
Speaker:for it so I post a little bit nowhere near enough,
Speaker:not very good at it so I just sort of it's always one of those that
Speaker:is a forgotten I should do that but
Speaker:I don't have a load of experience in this, but I've often wondered,
Speaker:especially when it gets to B2B, when we've done, um,
Speaker:when, when we work with brands who are split, so
Speaker:we, you know, we have specific channels for specific audiences. So
Speaker:let's say we're working with Metabo for instance, or whatever. We
Speaker:don't work with them for clarity sake, but it's an easy one. Um,
Speaker:they will sell to distribution. And then they'll
Speaker:mark it to those guys, but they'll also mark it to the end user because they've
Speaker:got a load of money, they can put it into the resources for the content, they
Speaker:can drive the key messaging to
Speaker:the end user. So let's say
Speaker:we're their agency and we're looking at their social media strategy and
Speaker:we're doing all the implementation. The end user stuff's
Speaker:easy. Like that's easy, you know what I mean? You can go, in
Speaker:the broadest sense, great looking visuals. Here's
Speaker:my sort of strategy on a fag packet. Great
Speaker:looking visuals, using influencers
Speaker:or any content creators with a bit of clout. Addressing
Speaker:issues that the customer might have. And
Speaker:looking at an ideal life of the
Speaker:person that has these kinds of tools. This idealized version
Speaker:of a trades person or a DIY person. Having a
Speaker:great time doing whatever. That's my marketing strategy and a fag packet
Speaker:for the end user. And I
Speaker:That strategy. There'll be nuances to that. So
Speaker:B2B is a little bit more difficult, because that's a little bit more transactional a
Speaker:lot of the time, I've found. And so when you're
Speaker:creating the marketing material for B2B, there's always
Speaker:been a lot of sort of question marks for us around about what
Speaker:our messaging should be. Because a lot of the time we're
Speaker:thinking, this should really be personal brand. This
Speaker:should be, because the guys who are making the sales A
Speaker:lot of the time we're just reposting stuff from head office, which
Speaker:doesn't get great engagement, but we're talking about LinkedIn specifically here, from
Speaker:a social platform. Email, obviously very, very different. That's very
Speaker:direct marketing, which is actually great
Speaker:for a B2B setting. When it comes to social media, These
Speaker:guys are working on the fact that they've got great relationships with their clients. They've spoken to
Speaker:prospects and leads and stuff like that. They've probably got great personalities. Whereas
Speaker:the brand can often feel like a sort of just an
Speaker:entity. It's not a real thing a lot of the time, you know. When
Speaker:it comes to things like Metabo for instance. It's faceless. And
Speaker:so I've often spoken to the brands that we work with and said, can
Speaker:we figure out some kind of like personal brand strategy? where
Speaker:we're not necessarily writing the content for them, but these guys have
Speaker:sort of some rough guidelines of what they should be talking about, what
Speaker:issues they should perhaps should be speaking on, and
Speaker:some sort of target of two to three posts per week, something like
Speaker:that. Have like some sort of strategy around that and see how that goes from a
Speaker:social media perspective. Writing
Speaker:personal brand content is very difficult to do. it's
Speaker:got to be personal. You've got to write it like you're writing it, you
Speaker:know, a lot of the time, which I've always found the kind of, the idea of,
Speaker:we've talked about this, like I used to have someone who used to write my content for
Speaker:me, and it kind of worked because it was one person writing another
Speaker:person's content, but when you've got to write it for like 20 sales.
Speaker:Yeah, so difficult. And that's what you do, I mean, going
Speaker:back. to a carpet
Speaker:retailer. It was a franchise business actually which
Speaker:was interesting, really interesting actually
Speaker:as a franchise business model. We developed
Speaker:a social media platform for Facebook basically as to every branch
Speaker:had a separate And so we set the guidelines for it,
Speaker:we did the sort of overarching post, so again, B2C this was.
Speaker:So we do the promotional posts on it but then we try and actively encourage
Speaker:them to do local things. So take a picture of the front of the shop on
Speaker:a Saturday morning because they've got balloon arches up or something to say, you know, we've got an
Speaker:event, see if we can get some local traction. Join local
Speaker:groups because there's a lot of those on Facebook, isn't there?
Speaker:We're in Stoke now and talk about like, you know, things
Speaker:for sale in Stoke. They sort of exist, people go on there and try and
Speaker:find that information. But then again, keeping
Speaker:it, making sure that they're spelling everything correctly
Speaker:because that's, you know, not talking in colloquial sort of language because
Speaker:that then can upset the brand. So yeah, we tried that
Speaker:for about six months and then actually coming away from it because it just
Speaker:was really hard to police and hard to govern. The
Speaker:worst bit I think it all came apart at one point where somebody
Speaker:had received a review on it which wasn't a great one and yeah decided to
Speaker:post back to it on a Saturday evening I think after a couple of glasses of wine so yeah
Speaker:that was a strategy of let's come away from that and keep
Speaker:it central again but centrally it just didn't get the traction because
Speaker:it's it's that people strategy isn't it, of
Speaker:it being local and people are more engaged
Speaker:when it's relevant to them. So yeah it's a
Speaker:good idea, it's one that we've talked about and yeah I
Speaker:might accelerate, might steal and I'll let you know the results. When
Speaker:a head of technical sales or something like that, let's say, of
Speaker:a particular brand. When I see them, those guys posting on social media and
Speaker:they've got these guys that, you know, they've got a great network.
Speaker:When I see them posting on LinkedIn about a particular product or a particular thing that they've
Speaker:done or a problem they've solved and stuff, it gets incredible engagement and
Speaker:way more than the posts that we're being paid to produce on
Speaker:the brand's behalf. And I think, and so the
Speaker:strategy of Dissident is, although we post to Dissident's LinkedIn, it's
Speaker:essentially a dead channel. We
Speaker:use Dissident's LinkedIn profile as
Speaker:a gallery, a showroom of the content that we make. If
Speaker:people want to go and find that, but really it's the individuals within the business
Speaker:that drive sales and drive engagement. And
Speaker:I've got to believe that's got to be the same for sales guys in
Speaker:big firms like this. But again, problems are
Speaker:how do you police it? How do you get them on
Speaker:board? You know, they're already busy. Sales guys have got
Speaker:quotas to meet and stuff like that. But I do believe if you can get it right,
Speaker:I reckon it'd be incredible. I'd love to build a strategy one day. for
Speaker:a brand and and almost have like a somehow create
Speaker:like a template that makes it really easy for them to just go oh yeah this happened this
Speaker:last week what was the problem that you solved and it was for this client tag
Speaker:him in it you know something like that I don't know um but
Speaker:We sell displays and um the bits about getting in there is
Speaker:about bringing awareness of of that I guess
Speaker:it's the it's It's getting over the gap
Speaker:as well of sometimes posting on LinkedIn, sometimes
Speaker:you write stuff and delete it and go, who cares? Who's
Speaker:like, is that meaningful? Am I just doing
Speaker:it for doing it's sake? Does it sound a bit like a brag? Just
Speaker:remove it and end up not posting. It's about getting
Speaker:It's a tough one, isn't it? And it's got to be right for the right person. I'm quite
Speaker:good at self promotion, because, or sorry, I don't, I
Speaker:don't, I'm not concerned about self promotion. I don't think I'm good at it.
Speaker:But I've never been worried about it. And
Speaker:I think that's okay, kind of coming from me, because a lot of time I can talk about the amazing
Speaker:work that my team's done. Yep. I'm excited about that. And so
Speaker:but if it was me making that stuff, and I say, Look how clever I
Speaker:am. I mean, I'm clever in the
Speaker:fact that I've hired a really talented team member that can produce this
Speaker:kind of stuff for our clients to get some great results. Yeah. Amazing. So
Speaker:yeah, it's nuanced, isn't it? It's
Speaker:a personal brand. I genuinely think it
Speaker:And you have to make sure the tone of voice matches their character
Speaker:as well, I suppose. That's the difficult part of it as well. I've met
Speaker:that guy, he doesn't sound anything like what he's posted there.
Speaker:I don't think that's him. then
Speaker:So we'll figure this out and come back. If you
Speaker:guys do, if you guys do implement that, will you come back and
Speaker:give me some results after six months or something like that? See if sales
Speaker:increase or, you know, you do like a, I don't know, some
Speaker:kind of survey at the end with their customers and see
Speaker:if they like that kind of thing. But I think it could make a huge difference. It's
Speaker:just, like you say, it's the how do you get them to do it and how do you police it?
Speaker:And there's probably no clear answer to that. Are we
Speaker:missing any particular points of, is there anything
Speaker:you wanted to talk about, Will, anything you've come across when
Speaker:it comes to marketing? Because I feel like we've gone massively off tangent. to
Speaker:the point where I think we're way over time. But I feel like the
Speaker:stuff that we've come to has been the stuff that I would
Speaker:I think I'm always conscious not
Speaker:to talk too much about digital because it's only a section
Speaker:of what we do as a business and what people should do as
Speaker:a business. I think certainly in the construction industry it's still very
Speaker:much a people relationship
Speaker:industry. But my sort of advice,
Speaker:and look it's not because I'm a digital expert, because I'm certainly not, but
Speaker:embrace digital, don't be afraid of it, don't see it as the enemy. I think
Speaker:a hell of a lot can come of it and simplify the way that you do
Speaker:business and can do business with your customer base.
Speaker:That's all I'd say is to To embrace it and
Speaker:back to my earlier point is, if you don't have the expertise, don't
Speaker:be afraid to just admit that and go out there and go
Speaker:to some networking events, go to exhibitions, research
Speaker:online, you know, tap into LinkedIn, find some
Speaker:experts on it and don't go with the first one that you see, you
Speaker:know, spend a bit of time do the due diligence
Speaker:on it but embrace it because it's not going away. In
Speaker:fact it's moving faster than we can
Speaker:keep up with it I think, that's my takeaway. But then don't
Speaker:forget, don't forget your traditional lever, don't forget
Speaker:your other base, don't try and move your whole business to to
Speaker:that way of working that platform except that people
Speaker:want to be almost omnichannel I guess and
Speaker:come in. I said it earlier but if people do want to send
Speaker:us smoke signals or pigeon carry a mail and still continue to use
Speaker:fax then you know it's for us
Speaker:to adapt our business to how a customer wants to engage with us. Yes. Not
Speaker:drive them the other way but certainly digital
Speaker:is is the future. Well
Speaker:I hope that this podcast will be… I'm not the first person to
Speaker:say digital is the future I'm sure.
Speaker:It's got to the point where it's got to like the thing where most there's
Speaker:a lot of verticals where Digital
Speaker:isn't even really a term that's used anymore. It's just incorporated into
Speaker:marketing as a whole. Whereas I think for
Speaker:construction, it's still very relevant to call it digital because I
Speaker:still speak to businesses that are very successful. They've
Speaker:got one page websites built in the early 2000s. They're still
Speaker:going. There's no need for them to have a website. They
Speaker:hadn't found a need up until recently. um and
Speaker:now they're going crap you know with all of this stuff is
Speaker:on the table and we haven't got access to it at the moment um so
Speaker:yeah i think i think you know it's it sounds silly
Speaker:to us but you know reinforcing the
Speaker:the benefits of digital is is massive because like i said i
Speaker:think I think construction as a whole, as
Speaker:an average, I'm not saying all businesses are like this, is
Speaker:about seven years out of the day when it comes to tech. Marketing
Speaker:And I think some of that is down to the fear of, oh having a website means
Speaker:that I'm not supporting the
Speaker:high street. No it does, it does support it.
Speaker:The two can exist in perfect harmony and actually
Speaker:support each other very, very well. You need
Speaker:to have a digital identity now. It's the first port of
Speaker:call. These days I wouldn't go to a restaurant if
Speaker:I couldn't look at the reviews, if I couldn't check
Speaker:the menu. I know what I'm having three days before I've
Speaker:gone and I don't think I'm unique in that. Most people will go, oh it
Speaker:I'm not going to go there. And again, I don't want to dive too much into
Speaker:this, but the new word generations that are coming in who are less likely to
Speaker:pick up the phone and book a table in the first place. They want to go online,
Speaker:And to the point where- There's a statistic I read somewhere about how
Speaker:many people like just, if they can't book a table online,
Speaker:I had it at the Miller & Carter the other day. We were on a shoot. We
Speaker:were at- It was Screwfix Live.
Speaker:So we were staying near Farnborough in a travel lodge,
Speaker:which I was a bit devastated about because I'm far too fancy for
Speaker:a travel lodge. But as we were driving
Speaker:in, all the boxes were
Speaker:ticked. As we got just turned off the road, Starbucks
Speaker:drive-thru tick for the first in the morning. I'm chuffed with that.
Speaker:I love a Starbucks drive-thru. Miller & Carter right
Speaker:next to the place. And I was like, yes, here we go. I can deal with
Speaker:a travel lodge if I can have a Miller & Carter before I go
Speaker:Is that right? I'm a Premier League guy, minimum, at
Speaker:the moment. But pleasantly surprised by
Speaker:the Travelodge. And Miller and Carter, though,
Speaker:couldn't call. You had to book online. So,
Speaker:Yeah. And it was fine. But if I hadn't had
Speaker:great Wi-Fi or whatever, that might have been a struggle for me. And
Speaker:But that's the, you know, you have to cover all bases. And one thing we haven't touched on
Speaker:actually, another thing that we've brought in fairly recently is WhatsApp for
Speaker:business. Yes. Which is incredibly exciting
Speaker:because We've not had that channel before but again a
Speaker:lot of our customer base just wants fast availability, fast
Speaker:pricing, fast response and they
Speaker:can do that on the move, they can do it while they're sat behind the desk, they
Speaker:can do it while they're walking around the shop and the
Speaker:feedback to that has been incredibly receptive actually. But
Speaker:just as simple as opening up as many different channels as possible that
Speaker:our customer can engage because if that's how they want to do it then
Speaker:100%. I love that. So key takeaways from
Speaker:this, remove barriers and
Speaker:market to the right people, the right audience, change
Speaker:your marketing strategy and output to
Speaker:the right audience, and make sure you deliver on those
Speaker:Exactly. Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I haven't,
Speaker:do you think, Will? No.
Speaker:In that case, there was possibly another piece that we're going
Speaker:to touch on which I think is topical and it's something that we're very passionate about
Speaker:is the ethical agenda. So we're wanting
Speaker:to be as energy efficient as possible.
Speaker:I think all the supplier base now is waking up,
Speaker:I guess, to the need, you know, we are going to
Speaker:run out of water. Electricity is
Speaker:not quite as... it's
Speaker:a luxury, isn't it, now that we're allowed to find new sources for.
Speaker:I think we're ahead of the game in that. We're
Speaker:really pushing the ESG agenda. all our
Speaker:vehicles. We haven't moved to electric because that's not what we
Speaker:think we're ready for as
Speaker:an industry. I don't think we could do what we're doing on electric. We wouldn't be able to
Speaker:deliver the service and the reliability. All our vehicles are Euro
Speaker:6, they're all a minimum of 18 months old. And that's not just
Speaker:for vanity, that's because it's about doing the right thing and it's
Speaker:about reliability and keeping our service ahead of it as well. But we've invested in
Speaker:matting and other things to reduce damages because
Speaker:actually that all factors into our OTIV and
Speaker:our sustainability because it's difficult to recycle all those
Speaker:products and that's not an efficient way of doing
Speaker:it. I think a lot of people just think, oh, it's about getting rid of cardboard or any
Speaker:of those other... Your packaging or whatever. Yeah, it's not. It's about making sure
Speaker:stuff's not damaged and it's delivered on time. We've
Speaker:invested in vehicle tracking and route
Speaker:planning software. all the time, looking to shave
Speaker:miles off the delivery route. Again, that's twofold.
Speaker:It's saving us fuel, but also it's doing its bit
Speaker:for the planet. It's not saying that we're saving the world, but we're
Speaker:trying to do our bit. And it's on our radar all the
Speaker:time as something that is incredibly important
Speaker:to us because it's not going away and it shouldn't go away. And
Speaker:we don't want to do it for ticking a box. We
Speaker:want to do it in the right way and support our customers and
Speaker:our and our supplier base again because more
Speaker:and more, I think I read somewhere, one in five customers now ask
Speaker:about sustainability and ask about the life cycle of
Speaker:their product and the water aspect of it because
Speaker:our British sewer system isn't going to cope
Speaker:for long with the house building that we're doing and have to look at how
Speaker:much water we're putting into the... into that network and
Speaker:good for the industry, the industry is ahead of it but we
Speaker:Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, I was going to mention that it's not
Speaker:just about, like you said, a box ticking exercise and just being
Speaker:like shouting it for the sake of shouting it. People are
Speaker:genuinely looking for this now. Your customers are
Speaker:looking for it. I think a few years ago that wouldn't have necessarily been
Speaker:the case as much. I think it was a case of great, like that's a
Speaker:I think if you do it right it shouldn't cost the
Speaker:No, I'm sorry, what I meant by like, you know, you're like, no, yeah, you
Speaker:look at it because the customer's going, I'm paying more, you're
Speaker:more expensive than these people, but you are a lot
Speaker:more eco friendly, I'm still going to go with the cheap guys. I think more
Speaker:and more now that's not the case. And I think it's going to be a case of Yeah, you're
Speaker:right. I think a lot of it's being eco friendly,
Speaker:it's got cheaper, which is good. It's got more accessible. But
Speaker:also, it's got more desirable from
Speaker:a consumer point of view. Not only for your
Speaker:customers, but the end users potentially as well. So there can be communications between
Speaker:the brands and distributors and the retailers, you
Speaker:I think we just respect our part in the journey for that as well. You know, if somebody is
Speaker:out there selling that as a strength and then, you know, if we delivered on a 15-year-old
Speaker:transit coughing black dust out the back, it doesn't, you
Speaker:know, back to that invitation not meeting the party, that doesn't resonate back
Speaker:through with the customer. We've got to do our part in
Speaker:it and the whole service offering that we have. And
Speaker:And businesses of your size, of ideal bathroom size,
Speaker:small changes can make massive differences, can't they? That's the
Speaker:beautiful thing about it, is you can start implementing this
Speaker:kind of stuff. This isn't an environmental show, so we'll get
Speaker:off this subject at some point, but you
Speaker:can put in small changes which make huge differences, not just to
Speaker:your bottom line, but also the environment, you
Speaker:know, great. Win-win. You know, there's some things, you
Speaker:know, putting up solar panels is going to cost you a lot of money in
Speaker:the initial run, but you don't have to do that initially to
Speaker:make a difference, which is great. And the thing with the
Speaker:vans, I love an electric van, but we travel very typically 300 miles,
Speaker:200 miles, and they just haven't got there yet. If we were like Central
Speaker:London production company that only worked in Central London, 100% electric van.
Speaker:Don't make knee-jerk decisions just because it ticks a box. Look
Speaker:at it, make sure it's the right fit for the business, the
Speaker:right fit for the customers and actually it can be counterproductive
Speaker:if you do it the wrong way. But we're not writing electric vehicles on the
Speaker:agenda, it's just... as and
Speaker:when and where again where possible if we're
Speaker:doing it in a route to London if we can do it then we will do it. Superb, superb.
Speaker:Anything on the agenda for the next six months, 12 months anything you're excited about
Speaker:Lots of things again not to push on it
Speaker:we have a digital agenda that we're wanting to push
Speaker:and accelerate quite quickly on again all
Speaker:just in that b2b space to make our customers more
Speaker:engaged easier for them to deal with us. That's
Speaker:based we're also launching an own brand which is exciting.
Speaker:Yeah. We've had one
Speaker:for a long time but it's
Speaker:not been touched for a while so we're relaunching that. Watch this space, that's
Speaker:quite exciting. And yeah, that's
Speaker:the main two really I would say on
Speaker:Yeah, the ones we're allowed to talk about. While we could do that maybe
Speaker:we can get you on if we do anything with the with
Speaker:the personal brand stuff and then perhaps we can get you in to talk about our
Speaker:own brand in 12 months time or something like that and you can see
Speaker:kind of we can learn some lessons from that. Amazing.
Speaker:Thank you so much for coming on Willie, we appreciate it. Amazing. Desperate
