AJ Joinery are a local business, employing 10 people and a large workshop in an idyllic location, surrounded by lakes and countryside.
They provide bespoke, quality joinery to homeowners and larger builders.
But during the last recession, they realised that they were over-reliant on the large housebuilders and they wanted to focus on their strengths of unique, quality and bespoke craftsmanship and do the work that they love.
The question was, how do we attract more of the right type of customers?
Fast forward to today, and they’re serving the customers and doing the work that they love.
They’re busier than ever (the worry is not running out of work, but wood to fulfil it!).
So how did they do it?
- Identifying the customers they wanted to appeal to
- Redefining the brand to appeal to the ideal customers
- Creating a website to showcase the bespoke work
- Implementing a content library, plan and schedule
- Creating social media profiles and start sharing content to build brand recognition and get the business visible on social media
Identifying the customers they wanted to appeal to
The first step was to describe these customers.
Who were they, where did they live, what would make them buy from this business as opposed to the competition, where could we find them online, what were they interested in. What didn’t they like!
Once we had a clear idea of who they were and where they would be looking for this type of service, it was time to create a more robust brand presence.
Redefining the brand to appeal to the ideal customers
Our starting point was the logo that was already in existence.
We created a list of the company’s values, what sort of words and phrases would appeal to our ideal customer, what did we want them to feel when they looked at our business.
What type of thing would our customers want to see to make a decision to get in touch with us and ultimately, buy from us.
As part of this process, we reviewed the competition, what we liked and disliked and where we could do better.
With the description of the customer, our values, the work we do and how it’s better than our competitors, we were able to create a clear brief for a website and engage a website designer.
Creating a website to showcase the quality of our bespoke work
We knew that our customers would want to be able to see examples of our work for themselves and would expect to see a professional looking website.
Creating the website took a considerable amount of work, but we think the results are worth it!
Take a look for yourself! https://www.ajjoinery.co.uk
The website has been kept as simple as possible, focusing on examples of the work in our customers homes and words that would appeal to them.
With a brand guide and the website underway, we then turned our attention to how we wanted to engage with our customers and reach them where they hung out.
Implementing a content library, plan and schedule
Before we could start posting on social media, we had to ask ourselves, what would our customers like to see?
What would engage their attention, make them like us as a business and ultimately, lead to enquiries about our services.
We created a list of types of posts that we thought our customers would love.
Graphic templates to set some brand consistency.
Got some professional shots of our work, craftsmen and workshop.
And created a library for the content on a tool called Trello so it could all be held in one place with the images, copy, hashtags and the results of the post i.e. did it work, were people engaged or did they just ignore it!
We created a simple schedule of how many times and what type of post for which days on which platform.
If you’re planning to use social media or create content, then the one thing I would advise from the start, is to create a library.
This way, you have everything in one place that you need, images, words, any links you might want to add and the date you publish it.
The beauty of having this library is that you can go back to previous posts, look at what worked and use it again and again and again.
Because, unless you love creating new content, you’re really going to want to build up enough that you can get off that hamster wheel and just use what you’ve already got.
Any time a testimonial is received, it gets published on social media and added to the content library!
Once we had some content to get started with, we set up our social media profiles.
Creating social media profiles and start sharing content to build brand recognition and get the business visible on social media
Our customers use social media (just like billions of us do every day) so we decided to use the two that were most relevant, Facebook and Instagram.
From the work we’d done on the website, we created the bio’s for the social media pages, graphics for the Facebook banner, added the business details and links to the website.
We started engaging with our customers, asking for testimonials and growing our followers.
Within 6 weeks, we got three new projects from customers that had seen us on Instagram!
A last few words!
Not everyone needs a website or to use social media but in today’s digital world, more and more of your customers will expect serious businesses to have one.
With good quality design and branding that clearly communicates your business, values, what you stand for and how you’re different from the competition.
A good website will increase your credibility, visibility and provide another way for your customers to get in touch with you.
And social media is one of the biggest networking tools you can use (maybe not as fun as meeting people in the pub or on the golf course) but it can work really well for all types of businesses.
It is a lot of work. I’m not going to lie. It’s a fairly simple process but as with all things, you get out of it as much as you’re prepared to put into it.
And it can be a bit daunting when you’re looking around, wondering if you need a website, social media or should you be focusing on something else?
If you’d like to have a chat about what your next steps could be, book a call right here!
And I’ll see you soon,
Cheers,
Karrie xx
