Specialist CRM agency Flourish has strengthened its commitment to putting the customer experience at the heart of everything it does with the appointment of former TSB and Bank of Ireland marketing head Emma Stacey as a non-executive director.
The move follows a recent management restructure at Flourish that has seen Ian Reeves appointed Managing Director. The new senior management team will maintain Flourish’s pragmatic approach to CRM, whilst expanding the use of data available through search and social to continually improve the relevance of customer led journeys.
Stacey will advise Flourish as the team look to consolidate their position and move into the next stage of their growth plan. Flourish will draw on Stacey’s vast experience, gained in the financial sector, of putting customers at the centre of every marketing experience, whilst achieving financial objectives.
Managing Director Ian Reeves said: “I am absolutely delighted to welcome Emma to the Flourish family. Our whole team and our clients will benefit from Emma’s wealth of knowledge. The ‘money confidence’ TSB campaign demonstrated the importance of data driven communications, something Flourish champion with all of our clients and I’m looking forward to Emma helping us as we onboard new clients in the future.”
Has 2022 got you thinking about investing in some valuable training for your team? Maybe there were some SEO challenges that were brought to light in 2021, and this time you want to be equipped with the knowledge and technical know-how to make informed decisions when it comes to SEO.
To support you and your team, we are offering a series of workshops, dedicated to the fundamentals of search marketing involving Technical SEO, Google Ads, and Google Analytics. All of our workshops are aimed at beginners to help them gain more knowledge and confidence to drive their business to perform better online.
As much as we prefer hosting our training courses in person, we have to put the safety of the participants and our team first, so for now we are providing them via video conference. Our hope is that, as 2022 progresses our workshops may be able to be moved to our lovely office in the picturesque Bradford-on-Avon.
Our Technical SEO workshop aims to provide you with an understanding of the fundamental search engine optimisation elements needed to improve the performance of your website on Google and other search engines.
Our resident SEO professionals will be on hand to debunk common technical SEO myths and give you practical examples that you can apply directly to the session.
2022 Dates: Thurs 21st April | Thurs 21st July | Thurs 20th October
The Introduction to Google Ads workshop is run in partnership with our sister company, AdPilot. This training course aims to provide you with the know-how needed to research, build and manage a structured Google Ads account, as well as hints and tips that you can implement into your own Ad campaigns.
Google Ads and paid search marketing can be difficult to understand without the right guidance, so let our paid search experts break it down into easily manageable sections.
2022 Dates: Thurs 17th February | Thurs 19th May | Thurs 18th August | Thurs 17th November
Our Google Analytics training workshop will provide you with the knowledge you will need to set-up and manage a Google Analytics account, including the most effective ways to monitor, analyse and implement the best approaches to improve the performance of your website.
As with Google Ads, Analytics can be a daunting but necessary part of your SEO strategy so is important to get the right support from experienced professionals.
2022 Dates: Thurs 17th March | Thurs 16th June | Thurs 15th September | Thurs 15th December
Our workshops are limited to 8 spaces per session, so please book soon to avoid disappointment. You can book direct through the Varn training courses page or via Eventbrite.
For further details on training and how it could benefit you and your team, in lockdown and beyond, contact our team on 01225 439960 or at [email protected]k.
To promote and celebrate Single Awareness Day Hart & Jones have designed a range of scented candles. With tongue-in-cheek titles Stupid Cupid, Love Yo Self & Single AF SAD candles are the perfect accompaniment to your singleton self-care. A solid reminder that you don’t need a relationship to celebrate love.
If you have had enough of love-sick couples parading their relationships at Valentine’s then you are not alone. The expectation to be in love has led to 40% of our population associating the holiday with negative emotions, with many being left feeling lonely, insecure, depressed or unwanted.
From these feelings of isolation Single Awareness Day was born, a day to enjoy your singleness rather than drowning in your sorrows. In protest to the commercial monster that is Valentine’s Day, SAD is celebrated on February 15th , a day to enjoy singleness, empowerment and self-love. Honour the joy and freedom of being single and give love to the person most deserving of it, you.
Global education service provider and brand owner of TopUniversities.com, QS Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) have appointed AgencyUK as social media partner. QS is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insights to the global higher education sector and famed for its university rankings, which have become the annual benchmark for universities around the world.
AgencyUK were appointed following a three-way pitch, in response to a social strategy and brand awareness brief set by the QS marketing team. AgencyUK will develop the organic social media strategy for the higher education and student communities around the world and launch a new programme of social media content off the back of it.
The pitch was overseen by Tim Edwards, Chief Marketing Officer at QS. Its purpose was to find an agency team who can support, unite, develop and promote their mission – to empower motivated people anywhere in the world to fulfil their potential through educational achievement, international mobility and career development.
The first wave of activity undertaken by AgencyUK includes strategy and creative that is based on education sector insights gathered from their world-leading independent market research and data analysis. The strategy will extend into the development of a global strategy and social media content plan rolled out in partnership with the QS global marketing team.
Tim Edwards, CMO, QS, said: “We were looking for an agency with strong strategic and creative capabilities and a track record in disrupting competitive markets. QS has grown rapidly through a combination of new product development and corporate acquisition, but we remain focussed on maintaining our market leader position, and to do so means being closer to our target audiences and continually investing in channel marketing.’’
Amy Stobie, Commercial Director, AgencyUK, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been appointed by QS. They are a well established brand with a host of well known digital properties and a continuing ambition for growth. Our social and creative teams are well placed for reaching out to these target communities and we’re keen to get going.”
AgencyUK are an independent brand communications agency with 32 staff based in the UK. The company has demonstrated 200% growth over the pandemic period, largely attributed to the expansion of their healthcare portfolio. QS is the fifth global account win in the past 12-months.
There are two basic ways of setting a price for a product. Either a business can calculate the manufacturing costs, add a profit margin, then use that calculation to set a price. Alternatively, a business can look at competitor prices, set a price that is competitive with those rivals, then work out how to manufacture to meet that price.
I doubt though that many consumers pay much attention to either of these approaches. Instead, consumers largely evaluate a price through reference points. For a consumer, value is not necessarily based on manufacturing cost for example, but what they think the product is worth in relation to something else.
For me, this is a starting point for studying the field known as behavioural economics i.e. working out how consumers assess value. There are many theories that explain the influences on the assessment of a price, such as how a price is ‘framed’, whether the product is ‘scarce’, or even whether it ‘signals’ high quality. I’ll go into some of these in future blog posts.
For now though, consider some practical examples. Most of us could buy a reasonable, newish car (four wheels, power steering, speeds of 70mph etc) for around £10,000, possibly less. Is a £50,000 sports car good value then? Well if you simply want to travel from A to B, you could argue no. But if other dealers are selling the same sports car for £60,000, suddenly the price looks good. It’s still £50,000 for a vehicle that essentially goes from A to B, but the reference point has made a difference.
Another example that provokes a lot of discussion: the price of petrol. I know people who will often remark about a 5p rise in the price of petrol perhaps costing them another £3 each visit. Yet, when my local petrol station began selling coffee for about £3 per cup, many customers decided that paying an additional £3 for an additional coffee was no problem. This is probably some form of ‘mental accounting’ process: I suspect petrol is seen as an expensive and painful necessity; coffee is an enjoyable caffeine boost.
Lastly, scale also makes a difference. When haggling with a vendor to buy a house, most of us wouldn’t think for too long about paying an extra £5,000 over the asking price to secure the house of our dreams. But if I added £5,000 to your water bill (bearing in mind that we all need water to survive) you’d probably protest in the streets! £5k when set against a large figure is a smaller proportion and therefore less scary. But it’s still £5k!
There is much more to say on these points, but this is a blog post rather than a book. I’ll save some for future posts. If you’re interested in discussing this or any other points regarding marketing and psychology, let me know.
Every January the digital marketing industry is ablaze with talk of new trends that will shake up how we do PPC. 2022 is no different.
And the pace of change is, almost unbelievably, accelerating. 2022 is set to be a big year for PPC – keeping up with Google’s new-and-improved policies, like the removal of expanded text ads (ETAs), and the world domination of TikTok can seem near impossible.
So, to help 2022 feel a little less daunting, we’ve picked the top 5 trends you need to focus on this year and how to integrate these into your PPC campaigns.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest analytics tool from Google, and it’s better equipped for the future than the previous model, Universal Analytics.
This is because GA4 has more advanced tools and reporting such as predictive insights, cross-device measurement capabilities, deeper integration with Google Ads, and more granular data controls.
Google’s plans to phase out third-party cookies by 2023 shouldn’t be news to you. In a cookieless world, it will be even harder to track consumer activity. So, in response to this, Google is offering “Enhanced Conversions“, which will improve your conversion tracking.
If you haven’t been focusing on offline conversion tracking, now is the time to do so. Most brands today run both on and offline, and some businesses forget that customers still make purchases offline.
If you just use traditional conversion tracking methods, then these offline purchases would not be linked to your online ad campaigns. Without this knowledge, you won’t be able to accurately measure the success of your campaigns.
In 2022, Google will continue to create and promote AI, so it’s vital you keep up with these changes. One of the big changes we will be touching upon in a moment is the changes to expanded text ads.
AI and automation are still quite new to the digital marketing world, but they will be at the forefront of PPC over the next few years. They are particularly useful for those of you looking to automate certain menial tasks to free up your time.
AI combined with automation can help you create impactful advertising campaigns while also improving your conversion rates. These concepts can dynamically create your ads based on user intent and website content, automating the bidding process, and automating ad success reports.
The world of PPC will experience a big change in June 2022. When June arrives, you will not be able to create or edit ETAs in the Google Ads Interface.
Google’s solution to this change is responsive search ads (RSAs) and dynamic search ads (DSAs). These will become Google’s default search ad type.
The role of machine learning in automation is the cause of this change. And this is where Google’s RSAs and DSAs come into play. As you would expect, both these ad types rely on automation.
Google will take the reins and determine the most effective headlines and assets supplied by you. These choices will be based on an extensive amount of data collected by Google from advertisers.
June is not that far away, so you need to learn how to use RSAs and DSAs now. Once you allow automation and AI can take control, you’ll have more time to craft new ad campaigns.
When you use RSAs you are handing over a great deal of control to Google, and this can feel scary… especially if you haven’t trailed this type of ad before. So, test what works for your brand now while you still have time.
You need to provide Google with accurate information to choose the best ads for your campaign. And to do this, test and discover the data you need to run an effective ad campaign.
We’ve touched upon this lightly already, but it needs to be explored properly. One of the biggest trends for the whole of the digital marketing industry is the departure of third-party cookies.
Google is planning to ban all third-party cookies by 2023, and this is going to dramatically impact the digital advertising landscape…
Up until now, marketers have been complacent with how they collect their data, seeing as third-party cookies made the process of collecting data so easy.
The thought of advertising without third-party cookies is daunting. But you need to think of this as a great opportunity. It’s one that offers great rewards for those of you who have already been prioritizing privacy throughout your customer service strategy.
Today, first-party data has never been so valuable, and the success of your digital advertising will rest on how you obtain your own first-party data.
And you can start using first-party data as an integral part of new algorithms for Google, Facebook, and other large eCommerce platforms.
Right now, TikTok is the fastest growing social media network with more than 1 billion active users per month. And its reach will only continue to grow in 2022 and beyond.
Advertisers can’t rely on one form of advertising anymore; they need to diversify their ads. And TikTok is the perfect platform to experiment with.
The world of advertising is always changing, and you need to move with the times and adapt your strategy if you want results. In 2022, you need to look beyond paid ads and explore other avenues.
Today, influencer marketing is one of the hottest trends in marketing, and TikTok is the leading platform bringing influencers and brands together.
Organic content posted by influencers tends to be successful. For users today, videos are more engaging, and they are more likely to trust an influencer’s opinion over yours.
However, there’s more to organic marketing than just influencer marketing. Take the time to improve your Search Engine Optimisation, or explore the world of digital PR. It’s also worth diversifying your content marketing strategy and promoting user-generated content.
This year is set to change the world of PPC as we know it. So, if you want to be at the forefront of these changes, you need to start adapting your PPC strategies now.
Audience numbers are growing, and you need to innovate your offering to meet this audience’s needs. And now you have new tools to play with, you can experiment and implement new and effective strategies in 2022 and beyond.
The Green Claims Code has come into force, meaning companies making sustainability announcements should review their claims. Marketing and PR teams will need to take notice of what the Green Claims Code means for their communication work.
The code has been introduced to stem the tide of greenwashing, the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information, presenting a company’s products as more environmentally sound than they truly are.
Companies that are found to be greenwashing may end up in the firing line of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). They are breaking consumer protection law.
It’s therefore imperative that sustainability information distributed by your company is accurate and true.
Development of the Green Claims Code
The Code comes after the CMA’s discovery that around 40% of businesses’ claims around their environmental work were misleading for consumers. More and more companies are adding green or positive environmental claims to their products and services.
Claims include suggesting a reduction in packaging pollution or that your item was produced more sustainably than your competitors’ product. Consumers have seen these announcements in all areas, from cleaning products to tech services to beauty supplies.
The CMA has found that these statements are often unsubstantiated or inflated.
This video from the CMA has more information about the Green Claims Code.
The Green Claims code guidance
The CMA’s is focusing on fashion and fast-moving consumer goods to start. Don’t think that other businesses can wait. The Green Claims Code guidance applies to every company. Non-consumer facing and services businesses also need to check their claims that relate to sustainability. Every business should review their green claims and ensure that they are meeting their obligations.
What does the Green Claims Code mean for my business’ PR campaigns?
CMA’s criteria states that all environmental claims must be truthful and accurate; unambiguous; substantiated and consider the full life cycle of the product or service.
If businesses are comparing themselves to similar companies, then any comparisons of services and products must be fair.
Your business cannot fall foul of the CMA’s requirements. Here are some steps that could be helpful as companies seek to change their operating models and principles to become more sustainable.
Look inwards and understand just how sustainable your business really is. Review the claims made by your company relating to the environment, sustainability, carbon emissions or socially responsible actions.
This should be thorough and cover every part of the company, from packaging, marketing materials, website copy and encompass visual representations as well as text. If you use a recycling icon to illustrate a product when the entire product is not recyclable, the icon could be an infringement as it creates a misleading effect for the consumer.
B2B companies should be wary of using words such as ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ or ‘eco-friendly’. The Code states that terms such as these may suggest that a product or service has a positive environmental impact or “at least no adverse impact”. To meet the Green Claims Code, words and claims such as these must be true and can be proved. Otherwise, the company might not meet legal obligations.
Once you understand how sustainable your business is, ensure the information shared with your audiences uses the right language. As mentioned above, all claims must be substantiated. Add a single click-through link to provide clarifications for the claims.
Review all links in your business’s communications that relate to sustainable and environmental work, products or services. Proof points are needed to substantiate all the claims made and so this may require new designs, marketing materials and potential retractions.
Ensuring compliance with the Green Claims Code is not a one-off process. Across any sector, the number and nature of references to sustainability will change over time. Invest in training for all employees and check they understand the requirements regularly. It is not enough for senior leadership to understand the importance. Marketing, communications, compliance, product development teams should understand it too.
Preparing for the CMA’s Green Claims Code may appear daunting. However, consider this as part of your wider ESG and Sustainability strategy, as well as part of legal compliance. Accreditation via cross-sector schemes such as BCorp and membership of industry-specific organisations can help you to ask the right questions about your green claims.
The introduction of the Green Claims Code is also an opportunity to refresh your ESG & sustainability messaging, so also consider outside ESG communications support to ensure your PR strategies are fit for purpose.
Find all resources and relevant information about the Green Claims Code here.
Michelin starred, restaurant quality pasta, delivered straight to your door. That’s the idea behind new recipe box venture, Otto. And as the fledgling service prepares to outgrow London town, they’ve turned to Bristol agency Flourish to lead the way to plates further afield.
Since launching in May last year, Otto has ramped up service – going from servicing just four London postcodes, to delivering right across the capital. And now, with big plans to expand outside of London, Flourish has been appointed the agency to help take exceptional pasta to the masses. And boy is there an appetite…
In 2020, the UK spent a huge £190m on fresh pasta and noodles (YouGov). And pasta accounted for just under 12% of evening meals (kitchen cooking index).
The popularity of recipe boxes has skyrocketed in the last few years, too. A Cardylicks study found of the 22 million UK bank accounts they analysed, 11 million purchased recipe boxes. It’s a market that was worth $10.6 billion globally in 2020, and it continues to grow.
But with growth comes competition. Otto will be going toe-to-toe with the likes of Pasta Evangelists and all kinds of other recipe box cuisines, so demonstrating value and quality will be top of the agenda.
Otto was founded by entrepreneur and Pots & Co founder Julian Dyer, and long-time collaborator and friend Phil Howard, Chef-Patron of Michelin-starred London restaurant Elystan Street.
Julian said of the recent partnership between Otto and Flourish: “We’re really excited about working with Flourish on taking Otto onto the next step of our journey.”
He added, “We have exciting plans for the retail side of Otto as well as the restaurant, working with Flourish will help us produce inspiring marketing campaigns to bring the brand to life and help us grow the business.”
Flourish has been a long-time supporter of challenger brands like Otto, albeit on a different scale – Samsung, ebay and Huawei to name a few big-hitters. And Flourish’s Managing Director Ian Reeves can’t wait to get stuck in:
“As a customer journey agency, the acquisition of new customers plays an important role for all of our clients, and especially for brands ready to expand, like Otto.”
He added, “We’re absolutely delighted to be working with Julian, Phil and the rest of the Otto team – their passion is infectious, and their pasta is unbelievably good.”
To find out more about our work with challenger brands, big and small, please get in touch.
WithinDigital is an almost monthly digital marketing podcast, featuring in-depth interviews with experts in digital advertising, SEO, social media, and everything in between.
Click here to listen and subscribe to WithinDigital on iTunes>>>
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In episode 10 of WithinDigital, Nick Livermore is joined by Incubeta‘s Head of Measurement Consultancy, Kate Jervis, to chat about the ‘first-party data renaissance’ of 2022.
Data is at the heart of everything we do in marketing. And first-party data has been around for a long time. So, why in 2022 are we talking about first-party data like it’s this new thing?
Together, they cover…
This podcast first appeared on the Adapt Website here >>> https://www.adaptworldwide.com/insights/2022/withindigital-episode-10-the-first-party-data-renaissance
Launch is delighted to announce the appointment of Stephanie Iles as its first ever Sales Director. Steph joins the agency from SearchStar (now Adapt Worldwide), where she worked for over 5 years as a New Business Director.
Steph will help Launch to reach new prospects, aligning the agency’s services with individual business goals, and being a first port of call for brands to learn more about how Launch can help them achieve their aims with clever digital strategy and paid media.
Steph says: “I’ve worked and travelled across the world during my career, but my heart is in the South West. I’m very excited to have joined Launch, where the team has the same passion as I do for championing businesses across the region. Launch is filling a gap in the market for a reputable agency that’s at the very top of its game. We’re curious, ambitious and personable and we understand how to marry South West individuality with success online.”
Jaye Cowle, Managing Director of Launch, says: “Steph is an experienced operator who is perfectly placed to continue the excellent growth we have experienced over the past few years. We have a very strong contingent of South West clients, and with Steph on board we’re looking to grow that further with a focus on results, transparency and team work. We’re excited about the year ahead!”
Steph is the latest appointment in a year that’s seen Launch grow from 7 to 20 people to meet the growing demand for digital marketing services.