Two decades of brand building at Director level, and three years helping growing businesses as a consultant.

The challenge

Oxydise provides Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) chambers and Red Light Therapy beds. It wanted to generate more enquiries and leads while elevating the brand and bringing greater consistency and impact to its communications.

The challenge wasn’t simply to generate more activity. It was to understand who the business was trying to reach, what mattered to those customers and how the brand should communicate with them.

The approach

The work began by looking more closely at the different customer segments and the messaging being used to reach them.

That provided the foundation for a clearer brand direction and a more integrated approach to marketing, giving the team greater focus around what to say, who to say it to and how to communicate it consistently.

From there, I helped develop the brand and marketing activity to create greater focus, consistency and effectiveness across the customer journey.

The impact

The results below show the value of bringing together the marketing activity in a structured and clearly directed way. Monthly brand searches are now 2.5 times those of the nearest competitor.

The challenge

I joined Cycle King as Interim Marketing Director to provide senior marketing leadership and help establish a clearer long-term direction for growth.

The business needed a strategic review of its marketing and a long-term strategy. There was also an opportunity to improve the Board’s understanding of marketing and increase engagement with it across the wider business.

The approach

The starting point was to step back and assess the role marketing was playing within the business. A key finding was that marketing wasn’t sufficiently understood across the organisation, making it difficult to establish its strategic value or create alignment around what it should deliver.

I worked with the business leaders to define the Cycle King brand and its sub-brands, establish a clearer strategic direction and translate that strategy into practical decisions across the business. As part of this I also helped strengthen the whole marketing function, including the appointment of a Marketing Manager.

The impact

The strategy provided a clearer framework for marketing and helped drive a number of important strategic decisions across the business. It also delivered measurable commercial results.

The challenge

Choice Mortgages UK had built a strong reputation in Stamford over more than two decades, based on personal service and expert independent mortgage and insurance advice. But its marketing wasn’t reflecting the strength of the business. The team was investing time in social media and other activity, yet it wasn’t generating the awareness or new business they wanted.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on personal service and expert advice, but our marketing just wasn’t working. We were spending time and money on social media and other activities, yet nothing was driving new customers to the business. It was frustrating.” Nicola Bentman

The business didn’t simply need more marketing activity. It needed clarity about what it stood for, who it wanted to reach and how to communicate that consistently.

The approach

Start with the business, not the marketing. The project began with a one-day strategy workshop with Nicola and her team. Rather than jumping into tactics, we looked at the business from every angle: what makes Choice Mortgages different, what its customers value, where the opportunities for growth are, how the brand should make customers feel, and how to communicate expertise while keeping the personal approach.

A key opportunity was to bring the human and emotional side of the business to the forefront. Buying a home is one of life’s biggest decisions, about hope, ambition, security and protecting what matters, and the marketing needed to reflect that.

Bringing the strategy to life. Working with a small team of specialist creative partners, the strategy became a brand refresh with a clearer visual identity and positioning; a new website that communicates the proposition, showcases the team and makes it easier to take action; more authentic photography and video; a warmer, more confident tone of voice; and a clearer approach to social content. The objective wasn’t simply to make Choice Mortgages look better, but to make the marketing more recognisable, relevant and effective.

The result

The new brand and website created a much clearer expression of what Choice Mortgages stands for, and the response was immediate.

“The difference has been amazing. Our new website has had fantastic feedback, and customers are saying how professional and welcoming it looks.”

More importantly, the marketing began to generate a stronger response: more website traffic, greater social engagement, more new enquiries and increased awareness among potential customers. The new positioning also helped Choice Mortgages build relationships with local developers, solicitors and estate agents, creating further opportunities for growth.