BRAND – A name, symbol or other marker used by businesses to distinguish their products from competitors’ and foster a public identity. (Investopedia)
Staying ahead of the curve is a big part of a successful business. It’s certainly played a major role in the impressive fortunes of one of our longest-serving clients, Hill’s Panel Products (HPP) Ltd.
So, when we were asked to define a new marketing strategy to drive the organisation through its next period of growth and reposition its branding, it added extra stimulus to the challenge.
HPP is a family-owned manufacturer and supplier of chipboard products, doors, fittings and accessories for the fitted furniture industry, particularly kitchens and bedrooms.
Formed 33 years ago by Malcolm Hill and his two sons, Martin and Stephen, and employing about 20 people at the time, HPP started out with one office block and a ‘borrowed’ warehouse from neighbouring George Hill Timber, from which the new company had de-merged.
Over the ensuing three decades and counting, HPP has never stood still. Its site in Oldham now boasts 10 warehouses and production plants, an impressive trade counter (with another in Sheffield), a marketing centre and substantial office space. Its workforce now totals almost 200 and turnover runs into the tens of millions.
HPP started working with us in 2011, so we’re proud to say we’ve played our part in this success story – more of that later – built on a continuous desire to improve the breadth of its ranges, the quality of its products, the service levels its people provide and its inclusive, supportive culture among staff.
This is what one customer said, when we asked him what differentiates HPP from its competitors: “I think it’s two things: the quality and the service. Cost wise they’re pretty much the same as everyone else. But when cost is the same and you sort out problems quickly, that makes a difference.”
That desire to continuously improve is why HPP came to us to re-focus its marketing and branding. Complacency is a dirty word at HPP.
HPP already enjoyed a formidable reputation with a leading brand position and significant share of voice in the KBB (kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms) sector, but perceived that some of its competitors were upping their marketing game.
Our brief was to clarify HPP’s strategic direction, elevate its reputation and brand positioning while amplifying share of voice – all in pursuit of even greater turnover and profit.
As well as underpinning development and growth, an added factor was to enhance the positive business culture and atmosphere embedded in the company to attract talent and boost recruitment in a difficult jobs market.
However, the overarching aspiration for HPP was to strengthen its market-leading position as a premium, reliable brand within the KBB sector, thus gaining new leads and prospects, growing career appeal for potential new recruits, improving customer journeys and cross selling opportunities, increasing visibility, share of voice and growing commercial validity of the business via strong marketing support and ongoing, cohesive and integrated activity.
Daunting? No, it’s what we do!
A huge element of this piece of work – and of that we do for all clients requesting it – was the strategy we formed to help HPP achieve its objectives. Increasing performance and profit and identifying target customer needs are key elements of any marketing strategy.
When we embark on a project of this kind, we delve into every nook and cranny of the business. In this case we:
Researched KBB industry insights – looking for the search terms dominating the share of search across the market. We then broke down our research by category such as doors, kitchen doors, bedroom doors, board and specific board.
Assessed HPP’s competitor landscape – taking in branding, logos, website UX, social media presence, the platforms being used and tactics, such as the use of video. This enables us to take an overall view of a competitor’s brand image, presence and positioning and helps to shape our strategy to combat any competitor strengths.
Established customer insights – personas, journeys and KPIs, ensuring that HPP’s profile is much stronger, more reputable and more consistent than that of its competitors. Customer journeys were divided into cohorts that can be addressed by devising and writing automated emails for each group.
Identified social opportunities – we do this by addressing elements such as Google reviews, website user data, case studies and social stories, press and PR and company messaging.
Identified marketing opportunities – creating opportunities to upsell and cross sell products via promotional campaigns and collateral, drawing up a strategy for the consistent promotion of products. This includes sales campaigns and their associated KPIs.
Enhanced HPP’s content strategy – to share across all channels (web, PR, social and print) to showcase expertise and insights into HPP. This focuses on industry trends, new product launches, opinion pieces and thought leadership from key HPP staff, people stories, testimonials and endorsements.
Refreshed HPP’s mission and vision – the latter being refreshed so that it now says:
“To lead the KBB market in terms of customer service, satisfaction, product choice and quality, availability and innovation, being the first in mind for product knowledge, trends, advice and support.
Delivering first class products, services and experience.”
There were other elements to our strategy such as campaigns, web, UX and digital that we’ll look at in a little more detail later in this insight.
The end result, however, is a focus on customer segmentation, the market place, target audiences, and where the HPP brand needs to be positioned to develop routes that cement, diversify, change and better penetrate the firm’s target market.
During one of our workshops with the HPP team, the firm’s existing strapline, ’Make it happen’, became a subject of discussion.
Did it still represent what HPP stands for?
It was our belief that ‘Make it happen’ was still very much relevant, and strong within the KBB marketplace. It gives the nod to customers that by visiting HPP, orders and solutions arrive quickly, easily and collaboratively, thus underpinning many of the firm’s values. It should, therefore, be maintained, we said, and it has.
The strapline wasn’t the issue, we observed, it just wasn’t being used consistently across all channels, and we recommended this be rectified to ensure brand consistency and coherence at all touchpoints.
We have since worked with Marketing Director Dan and his team at HPP on developing brand guidelines and a brand toolkit to ensure this consistency in its use across the business, from operational and sales literature, to social media and wider digital channels, literature, point of sale, exhibitions and beyond.
The revitalised ‘Make it happen’ as part of the master logo now forms a consistent and well positioned brand identity reflective of HPP’s quality customer experience and product/service delivery.
The most overt element of the brief was to refresh HPP’s existing, distinctive red and grey branding (pictured above) and by a huge coincidence this task fell to one of our longest serving employees, Senior Designer Nicola Adamson, the daughter of Martin Hill, who still runs HPP today alongside his brother Stephen and MD Keith Wardrope.
Nic takes up the story: “The existing brand positioning and wider identity of HPP had been established for many, many years but with recent shifts from their competitors, it was apparent that HPP’s brand positioning needed bringing in line with market expectations and to set it apart from the competition.
“HPP didn’t want a total re-brand, they were keen to keep certain elements to preserve the heritage and trust within their existing brand, which had stood the test of time and served them well with their customers for so many years.
“The core fabric of the name and brand was to stay intact due to the significant value and loyalty within it. Because of this, certain elements within the brand remained the same to protect HPP’s heritage and customer faith.”
After extensive research, workshops and creative development, Nic and the team created a refreshed brand that evolved the existing branding yet is memorable and consistent.
The refreshed version, as you can see below, is clean and premium in its approach, whilst maintaining a clear nod to HPP’s heritage in terms of the colour pallet and abstract ‘board’ shapes, which are used within both the logo itself and wider marketing materials.
Nic again: “The new logo has been developed with a strong, bold font in HPP’s traditional red, which is encased within subtle, abstract and angled ‘board’ shapes, which again creates that link to the old logo’s ‘board’ shapes, only it has a softer, less clunky and more contemporary feel to it.
“The angled board shapes from the logo are used on a larger scale within various designed comms as an abstract background shape to add depth, interest and variation. This creates a consistent and unified appearance throughout all HPP’s new marketing materials.
Another part of our work was to develop a campaigns strategy and tactical activation that allows for HPP to positively influence sales and enquiries for key product launches and ranges.
This is built on a foundation of year-long activity that utilises SEO, PR, sponsorship, social, brand and creative repositioning, brand support and brand reach.
It can be applied across the campaign spectrum – major/minor launches, new market targeting etc – to increase awareness and interest in the business, its products and services, its share of voice and ultimately sales.
We then broke down each element into what would benefit it best – paid, earned or owned media or a combination of all three.
Two campaigns have already been launched with great success – Get the VIBO vibe, offering savings on VIBO’s Lamina range, and EGGER – seeing is believing, touching seals the deal, which highlights EGGER’s authentic décors, textures and worktops.
We are also delivering highly in-depth digital customer journeys, automations, UX (user experience), CRO (conversion rate optimisation), PPC (pay per click), and email.
We delivered a series of critical customer journeys and automations to help increase awareness of the product range and the variety available from HPP, thus allowing customers using one specific product category in their day-to-day activity, to learn more about the wider, and fuller ranges they could benefit from.
Additional to this, we also emphasised the outstanding quoting and room planning tools that HPP have developed in house, that allow for customers to practically run their business, quoting and ordering via the HPP website.
And last but not least, we have helped increase customer engagement by connecting customers digitally to their account managers, facilitating account reviews, performance optimisation, factory tours and marketing support to help develop a stronger connection between the brand and its customers.
All of this has been driven by improved customer journeys, optimising the user experience (UX) journey via the website, and building out preference data to ensure each automation is triggered once a certain status is achieved within the HPP CRM.
Much of our strategic work was to increase customer retention and spend, but new market and customer acquisition was another key element of our long-term, overarching marketing strategy, which meant using a number of tools to support this.
Utilising a long term PPC strategy and short term tactical activation plan for campaigns, we formed a two speed PPC plan that supported wider marketing objectives – build brand and activate sales for specific product lines and campaigns.
Utilising a combination of Google, Meta and LinkedIn, our team formulated a highly targeted PPC and remarketing plan that helped deliver on goals, leverage increased brand presence, and delivered increased sales of key product lines.
Part of this work was to develop a varied and engaging social media content strategy. Not just the how but the what, with our ability for unrivalled content coming to the fore, not just words but photography, video, reels and animations.
We are using photography from brand partners to enhance the HPP website and social media, giving customers inspiration to pass onto their customers and increasing sales of new products.
Other activity for social media and the web includes:
- Sales video showing full product range that replicates the sales team conversations with customers, to allow more customers to experience this if staff aren’t available.
- Behind the scenes footage to showcase the expertise of staff.
- Short clips for use on social media, stories and reels to promote a variety of different products in one clip and increase engagement on social media
We are also doing a full UX process on the HPP website, mapping out more strongly user journeys, key messaging, calls to action, cross selling opportunities and preference data collection to strengthen both the logged out and logged in journey with better brand hierarchy and positioning, personalisation, data capture and retention/cross-selling.
Dovetailing with this is a re-targeting PPC campaign aimed at users who have accessed the HPP website and shown buying intent, but not converted into a purchase or a login.
Finally, we have identified cross selling opportunities that could help leverage better sales revenues.
But back to the beginning. We first started working with HPP on its marketing back in 2011 and the partnership has flourished over the years, initially through our MD, David Wadsworth, and then particularly with our PR department.
Our PR output for HPP is prodigious, a strategy driven by Marketing and Business Development Director Dan Mounsey in liaison with Nigel Wareing, our PR and copywriter, who has established excellent working relationships throughout the business.
This creates multiple opportunities for HPP stories to feature in KBB trade and regional business media as well as regional and local news, creating a healthy share of voice throughout for HPP and underpinning much of its brand awareness work.
All of our output is then repurposed for HPP’s website, hpponline, and you can see the breadth and depth of the coverage we generate by visiting the news section here.