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Will Critchlow - Making your Mark Online
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Distilled
December 10, 2013
Technology
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Will Critchlow - Making your Mark Online
Distilled
December 10, 2013
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Transcript
Make your mark online: Local business edition WILL CRITCHLOW
Today’s a great time to be a brand We just
launched our report on big brand content marketing
You get all the links
PR is easy …or, as bad-pr.tumblr.com put it
‘Time to start buying food for Christmas’ says supermarket chain
bad-pr.tumblr.com
You rank for all kinds of things This is [sheds]
And if you push the boundaries you get a gentle tap on the wrist (I don’t mean Argos)
Many updates seem to have reinforced this bias
Brands are how you sort out the cesspool -- Eric
Schmidt (as Google CEO) Back in 2008 Led directly to the “Vince” update in February 2009
This is what you get when you search “Google Vince”
now
Caffeine enabled Panda and Penguin
“Brand update” August 2010 Allowing multiple listings from the same
domain
What about Hummingbird? Human language = brands win (again)
The layout changes are just as bad
None
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None
Dr. Pete has 114 slides of this stuff: http://dis.tl/beyond-blue-links
What’s the little guy to do?
Firstly, it’s not all rosy for the big guys (that’s
another presentation)
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…and you have some advantages
Agility
Passion
Humans with deep expertise everywhere in the business
Sure. Sure. Whatever.
No. Really.
I want to tell you a story about this guy
When I met him in 2007 he was a restaurant
consultant “Keep an eye on these shining stars; you’ll be seeing a whole lot more of them”
and he’d just opened a steak place in Shoreditch
Will Beckett
The restaurant is Hawksmoor
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He isn’t a client of Distilled (I wish! – here’s
why)
Remember this result
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Many of these searches have embedded map / local results
Will’s restaurant is the furthest one from the centre listed
here
In fact, he’s subsequently opened more. He has two in
this set
I said brands have the advantages building links
They’ve not done so badly Guardian TimeOut Bloomberg Evening Standard
Forbes CNN Telegraph Jamie Oliver Zagat The Metro Wired Huffington Post Tatler
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I think they might have cheated
Quite simply the best steak you can get in London
Zagat http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
The best steak we have ever eaten Esquire http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
Five Stars – tremendous steaks Time Out http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
Oh. And…
some of the best cocktails to be found in the
capital – Ask Men
If you don’t have great product, I’m not here to
help
start-ups fail for the same reasons restaurants do: Their food
is bad Paul Graham http://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/issie-lapowsky/how-paul-graham-became- successful.html
…and yes, Hawksmoor may not be particularly “small” or “local”
any more
valued at £35m The best article I’ve found: http://dis.tl/hawksmoor-sale
…but they were
So what’s worked for them?
Apart from this…
…and this?
Nothing about restaurants is replicable online -- Will Beckett, Hawksmoor
Take the online offline and vice versa
They have a book
They invite bloggers for steak In fact, they started in
2009
Make it personal
Brand monitoring is HUGE
Will runs the Twitter account
No need for fancy tools Of course these tools have
their place, but small businesses manage without
Except in the core business OpenTable lets them treat regulars
and VIPs appropriately across multiple locations
Unsurprisingly they win plaudits for their service offline as well
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/443d5068-cc34-11e1-839a-00144feabdc0.html
Expect early results if something is going to work
Most posts look like this “431 people like this”
Photography is huge Marketing team is now 4-strong – 1
is a photographer
Some Twitter use is similar to FB
More often it’s about 1-1 service
And conversely, relatively little engagement when it’s not going to
work
They thought Instagram would work like Facebook for photos Apparently
they saw little engagement
They have dabbled with Pinterest
They’ve tried a few things on YouTube The Julep –
397 views
The most successful was also the cheapest Time lapse of
the opening of Air Street – 4,815 views
They have a high bar for spending money
Every £ is compared to hiring someone who can “go
to every local business and invite them in” I have no particular reason to believe that they do this on butcher’s bikes, nor wearing cravats
We spend about £500 / month on Google and £500
/ month on Facebook -- Hawksmoor
For this reason, evergreen works Where do the best steaks
in London come from?
Is it only Hawksmoor that can do this?
Nope. BrewDog have done a great job
They love penguins And video has been great for them
too (260k views)
They have, um, a unique sense of humour 60k views
on YouTube and another 165k views on Vimeo
Equity for Punks is genius Equity for punks
Fastest Growing Company in Scotland and … the fastest growing
food and drink company in the UK -- James from BrewDog 2012 achievements
We projected ourselves naked onto the houses of parliament --
James from BrewDog Real 2012 achievements
OK. Just steak and beer then?
Let’s look at Lush
She also maxed all her credit cards so she could
buy paints and varnishes to revamp the shop From “Cosmetics to Go” – the story of Lush
There’s a book
All kinds of visual content works Pinterest
All kinds of visual content works Instagram – 200k followers
All feeding into Facebook
They’ve also made video work
Just B2C?
Check out what people like Geckoboard are up to
And Server Density Full disclosure: we’re investors
Let’s end with some tips
Find a way to invest in photography
Video helps you “scale humans” [Thanks to Chris @wistia for
the example – see more here]
None
FiveSecondTest / FeedbackArmy While traffic is low, use others’ networks
for feedback
Give access to people (Including founders) Qualaroo, Olark
You must have at least one of TIME and MONEY
The founders of ponykit.co.uk fold gift vouchers into origami horses
Feed scarcity See this on Facebook
Delight your existing customers
Build flywheels I still really like Launchrock
To wrap up
Take the online offline and vice versa
Make it personal
Focus on things that work immediately
Keep your high bar for spending money
Aim high
Thanks. Any questions? WILL CRITCHLOW
[email protected]
@willcritchlow
Ingredients Hawksmoor http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q3gJeCPp7Hs/TRCRCQfc3FI/AAAAAAAAApQ/9sf9djAqLgA/s1600/hawksmoor+outside.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TODza-6pmvg/UVd8v8tk1zI/AAAAAAAAABY/PhSFKQUwPac/s1600/The+Internship+Intl+Poster.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/kessop/3987243989/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/texaseagle/9621931347/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/singapore2010/4916726882/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/zense/1439805907/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparker/4754031315/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusjb/4507576159/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeegeek/3198844118/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjmartin/8869357235/ Thank you to Will Beckett for his permission to share all the juicy details