At the beginning of 2015 we started working with a new client and the way the relationship has progressed, sums up perfectly the approach we have to delivering value in our work: The company, Slõ Drinks, manufactures and supplies drink additives to the healthcare market. Having built up their presence in the UK over the last 10 years, supplying to both the public and private sectors, they were now setting their sights on export and, in particular, on the US. Slõ Drinks were already doing some great things in marketing including a website that worked for them and email campaigns into what is undoubtedly a tricky market. However there was a gap in their capabilities in the area of social media and social media was going to be key to launching into the US market. BSA were brought on board to work with Slõ Drinks to develop and implement a plan to use social media to promote the business in the States. We were even able to secure some funding through the (sadly now finished) growth voucher scheme to support the development of this plan.
Building a rapport and getting things going
Over the next 6 months, we worked with our client to understand their brand & values and build their presence on social media, importantly targeting key decision makers within their target markets rather than trying to create a blanket presence. One of the core brand values is to make it as simple as possible for people to access and use Slõ Drinks products. With this in mind, in parallel with the social media activity, we worked with them to make their products available on amazon.com (rather than amazon.co.uk as we were targeting US customers) so that products could be easily ordered from the US. The first US order was secured in August, less than 8 months after taking the strategic decision to expand into this market.
Developing the process
As things progressed, the demand for content to drive the social media engagement increased. Initially, the company’s UK and US websites were completely separate from one another and the Slõ Drinks blog was hosted in isolation on wordpress.com. This 3-way separation became an issue. The decision was taken to build a new website (in WordPress) bringing together the UK and US sites, and also integrating the blog from WordPress.com into the main site. The new site also included a simple but effective e-commerce element allowing a range of products to be sold directly on-line. The flexibility of the chosen e-commerce platform means it is easy to add more regions and countries as the expansion develops.
Planning ahead…
With the strategy of regional focus and targeting, when we roll out to a new territory or country, it is important to have a website platform that is easy to localise for new markets. We built the system using WordPress Multisite that allows new local sites (including a shop in local currency) to be created almost at the push of a button.
Joining it all up
Now, a year from our initial meeting with the Slõ Drinks team, and from a standing start, they have a website that is delivering orders on a solid platform for promoting and selling their products across the globe, and a strategy for marking the company through a combination of blogs, social media and email in any market in the world. Furthermore, whilst SEO was never a core element of our strategy, the focus of relevant content effectively communicated to defined target markets has delivered slodrinks.com onto the first page of Google for a number of significant key terms.
Looking ahead
With growing sales in the US and a steady stream of enquiries from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand, 2016 should be an interesting year. From a marketing perspective, 2016 will see us continuing to use the platforms developed in 2015, developing the company’s global brand through blogging, social media and email. You can take a look at Slõ Drinks on Twitter here and on Pinterest here.
