Bright Light Marketing

Because you’re worth it

April is certainly living up to it’s showery reputation right now but here’s hoping we all have a very Bright 2012.

It’s been a good start to the year for us at Bright Light Marketing and we have been busy working on some really interesting and creative campaigns for our diverse range of clients. And we are proud to be working with some exciting new clients too including QubeGB and Millers Town and Country. We would also like to congratulate our client Roulotte Retreat for winning the Tourism of the Year Award at the Scottish Borders Business Excellence Awards and to the County Hotel in Selkirk and QubeGB for being shortlisted.

Also in this edition we take a look at the future for printed material in a high tech world and also feature part one of a really interesting debate on pricing. As ever we hope you find this month’s newsletter an interesting read and if there’s anything you’d like to discuss further with us then don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We hope that you have a very Bright and prosperous Spring into Summer.

Yours Fiona, Janice and Fiona

Are leaflets worth the paper they’re printed on ?

How do you buy in 2012 ? ipad, PC, Mac, android, E-reader, smartphone, tablet, internet enabled TV – or dare we say it via the humble leaflet or brochure ?

The ever increasing array of clever devices is changing the way we live at an astonishing rate. And of course a debate has been raging for quite some time as to whether we are witnessing the demise of printed material as more and more marketing is done electronically.

Without a doubt we would agree that having an online presence is crucial for arguably any business type. But we do not think that this means there isn’t still a place for printed material. We think there is and ask yourself the question - do you still read printed material ? We are sure that you do and that you do so on a daily basis and so do your customers. To illustrate the case here are a couple of case studies of recent promotional campaigns we have carried out for clients which clearly show how printed material can enhance a marketing promotion.

Lochcarron of Scotland – the genuine article
Lochcarron of Scotland are the world’s leading manufacturer of tartan and this 5 star Visitor Attraction in Selkirk blend their rich manufacturing heritage with retail. The adjacent Visitor Centre has over 700 fabrics in stock and is a showcase for the finished article as well as superb textiles, knitwear, gifts and café.

Lochcarron wanted to let local people know that this world class shopping experience was for them too. Bright Light Marketing decided that the best way to get this message out to a wider audience was via a highly targeted Royal Mail door drop. The Royal Mail is an ideal way to get your communications and messages out to a selected audience. In the case of Lochcarron they wanted to send a Spring newsletter to potential customers who lived in the vicinity of their central Scottish Borders base. The spring newsletter was full of new product ranges for Spring into Summer and included monitoring mechanisms so that the campaign could be properly measured too. This campaign was carried out alongside a social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter and this has generated a strong increase in new customers to the Visitor Centre as a result.

The company also do a lot of work with the international Travel Trade and are once again attending the premier Travel Trade event Expo. To fully capture the Lochcarron experience and tell the story, a bespoke Travel Trade guide has just been printed which will be used at Expo and beyond. The Travel Trade Guide incorporates real tartan swatches and blends archive material, photography and fact finding information into a brochure which will be kept and used by the international Travel Trade industry to place direct business with the company.

The Tontine Hotel in Peebles also regularly use printed material as a key part of their marketing promotions. And for their spring campaign this year they sent out a direct mail postcard to their customer database with “101 reasons” to visit Peebles and the Tweed Valley this spring. And yes all 101 reasons were included on the postcard. This again was done alongside a similar campaign on their Facebook and Twitter campaign giving customers and potential customers on a regular basis reasons to visit the Tontine Hotel and Peebles. To date bookings have been very encouraging for this campaign and feedback really positive from customers. Many customers comment that they look out for the postcards in the post from the Tontine and then book their break as a result. The Tontine Hotel closely monitor their marketing promotions and know on average for each direct mail campaign they do carry out - for each &1 they spend on the campaign they will get &10 back in actual business.

So next time you are looking at your own marketing don’t just dismiss print as yesterday’s tool! Print can, if executed properly, be very targeted and effective and more importantly can bring you additional business not just from existing customers but as a way of raising awareness and creating business with new customers too.

Because you’re worth it ?

Fiona Drane recently spoke at a 5 Star Self Catering conference at the Old Course in St Andrew’s on the subject of pricing. In order to prepare for the conference we carried out in depth research into the subject of price and it’s direct relation to marketing. And we thought our findings and conclusions would make two interesting and hopefully informative newsletter articles. The first one we want to share with you looks at how you research your price and the second article in next month’s newsletter looks at how you then market your price.

As with any major business decision, the key is to carry out lots of research into the subject before you set your price and look at how you are going to then market your product. When we were looking at the pricing of 5 star self catering we looked at two main areas. Firstly current customer perceptions on price and secondly the competitor market. This approach is one that we carry out when we prepare Marketing Plans for all clients and allows a comprehensive look at the marketplace of the product we are working within.

There are various ways that you can carry out customer perceptions on a subject. For an existing product where a business already has a customer database, we would recommend using a survey tool like Survey Monkey and send out a survey to your customers. This can also be done in paper form instead or as well. Another effective way we find is to use Twitter. Twitter is a great way to ask people what they think of a particular subject and we have used it on a number of occasions and have found the insights we gained valuable to our findings.

So over a period of a week we carried out some research on Twitter. Throughout the week we asked various questions around the issue of price. Most of the answers did not surprise us however some did when we asked what people were willing to spend more on?

With no exceptions everyone who responded said there was one thing they were willing to spend more money on and that was ....................................FOOD! Yes food, not a new kitchen, a car or a holiday but what we need to survive, simply food!

Although we were very aware that we are living in a very price conscious market this made us realise yet again that we are all worried about the basics in our lives which means that if you are selling other products you need to work harder to get people to notice your product and actually buy it. We know we all are aware of this but it does help sometimes to hear it direct from people and realise this is not just media spin. It is reality. These are extremely tough trading conditions.

This research also does fit in with consumer studies which show that people are concentrating on the basics. This however does not mean that people are not spending money but they are spending less, analysing the market place more, looking for quality and giving much more consideration to what they do spend any additional money they have on.

Finally we took a look at the competitor marketplace and looked at every 5 star self-catering property in Scotland. A competitor audit is a very effective way of looking at the marketplace. We find that it is most effective too when you list items that you want to look at. So in this case we looked at ten ways that 5 star self-caterers market their business including looking at price. This gave us a very comprehensive view of the 5 star self-catering market.

So the customer research showed us that we are living in a very price conscious marketplace. It also gave us some valuable insight into what customer’s expect from 5 star self-catering. This then allowed us to look at whether 5 star self caterers are aware of these expectations and promoting them in their marketing. Finally we looked at the competitive marketplace with a comprehensive competitor audit.

This research was essential in giving us a greater knowledge not just of the product but also of the customer. This then allowed us to move on to the next stage of the process which we will discuss next month - How you set your price using this market knowledge and then promote your business accordingly.

As the burning question is How can you get customers to buy your product in a price conscious market place?

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