Our clients who are conquering COVID19

The pandemic lockdown has undoubtedly had an impact on the whole world. For businesses of all sizes, it is a strange time that has brought unexpected difficulties and challenges. However, for some businesses it’s sparked a spike in sales and with the help of a strong digital marketing strategy they have been able to conquer the COVID lockdown. 

We know that during these times, there’s going to be a lot more competition than usual to get your brand noticed, so now more than ever, your marketing needs to work harder to keep customers engaged and keep new opportunities coming through the door.

Over the last few weeks and those to come, consumers will naturally be spending more time online, especially choosing to shop online over heading to the shops. It may have put an end to non-essential purchases, but for those businesses providing essential items or those that are in high demand, now is the time to tap into new shopper attitudes.

Here are just a few examples of how we’ve supported businesses and seen success from making the most of quarantine.

M.Hughes & Sons – Online Green Grocer

We have been working with M.Hughes and Sons for eighteen months now to launch the consumer side of their business. After having successfully been working as a trade business for years, owner Matt felt like the time was right to reach consumers in the North Wales area; he couldn’t have timed it better, as the UK lockdown forced the majority of his trade custom to come to a complete halt with the hospitality industry taking the biggest hit.

Following cleverly timed email marketing, minor tweaks to the functionality of the website and a ramped up social media strategy, the consumer side of the business has gone from strength to strength, even surpassing revenue previously generated from the trade business.

The Results (*16^th March – to date)

• 2530% increase in Net Revenue on the same period last year
• 11.3k orders placed
• 23.3k items ordered
• 4.9k new customer signups
• 253% increase in Social Media Following (3.7k new followers)
• 16k Engagements on Facebook alone

Shonn Brothers Wholesalers · Open to Businesses & Public‎

Just before lockdown was announced, home cleaning and antibacterial wipes shot into Shonn’s top selling products. In March, revenue from these products were up over 500% compared to the previous month and up 450% compared to March 2019. Bulk buying of Mrs Hinch favourite Zoflora increased by a whopping 96%.

As the hot weather hit in the last week or so, cleaning demand dropped slightly and was overtaken by kids swimming pools and gardening products (e.g. watering cans) – up 134% month on month.

The surge in home working also meant a surge in home office equipment such as copier paper and activities for kids (activity books) being the top revenue driving products in April but good old anti-bac wipes are still in the top three!

Cylinders2 Go – Leading online retailer of hot water tanks

Cylinders2Go, is the UK’s leading online retailer of hot water tanks, supplying to trade and general public, domestic, industrial and marine cylinders.

Historically, we’ve used a combination of PPC and Google Shopping campaigns for Cylinders to go resulting in meeting revenue targets month-on-month. However, with the demand for home improvement (replacing boilers/cylinders etc) increasing since lockdown, we’ve taken advantage of this and made some small but significant changes to increase potential revenue.

Utilising Smart Shopping campaigns and a series of Search campaigns based around the top converting search queries, and the queries that drove the most revenue, April saw a massive 66% increase in sales and a 48% increase in revenue compared to March.

If you’d like to chat to any of our digital team about how we can assist you with your digital marketing campaigns, you can still contact us as normal. These are going to be some challenging times and we don’t know how long it’ll go on for, but we really hope you’ve all managed to find a way to carry on as normally as possible.

During this time, we need to do what we can to help and support each other, so the team at Platform81 can still be contacted on 0161 850 2381