Happy New Year all!
We always like to end a year with a review – best bits, client wins, new clients, achievements, successes etc. But 2019 was such a blockbuster year for us that we’re starting 2020 in full throttle. So instead, here are four of our clients’ top images from 2019 showing the fantastic years they all had.
A quick calculation shows us that we created and posted over 5,000 social media posts for our clients in 2019… wow. So here’s to making 2020 the best year yet for our clients.
What is leaf peeping? How do you do it and why would you want to?!
Read all about this autumn’s leaf peeping campaign in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley with a handy guide and driving route, top ten locations, things to do and places to stay: https://www.visitdeanwye.co.uk/inspiration/seasons/autumn-leaf-peeping
Working for Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Tourism is never boring! Leaf Peeping has taken off massively, the autumn colours are looking incredible already and on Sunday BBC Countryfile did a whole show about the Forest of Dean. So proud and so thrilled to see this area getting so much positive recognition. About time…
The Countryfile episode was filmed just a few weeks ago so the developing autumn colours can be seen, there is a great piece on Puzzlewood which presenter Margherita Taylor was clearly impressed with, the brilliant Forest of Dean Green Team are included, Matt Baker visits the Foresters’ Forest and the Rewild Project and sees all the amazing work they are doing to preserve Forest traditions and Lydbrook Brass Band’s summer Proms in the Quarry is covered too!
Even with all of that, the beautiful Forest itself was the real star, with some stunning aerial footage from AeroVue which really showed the huge expanse of woodland, the hills, valleys, lakes, paths and the wide variety of trees which are many different colours at the moment.
We were thrilled to see such wonderful coverage and such positive reactions from the presenters Matt Baker and Margherita Taylor. We love working in and for this very unique and special area.
In case you missed it on Sunday here is the link to watch the show again on BBC iPlayer.
We’re Rural Business Awards Finalists for the second year running!
Wow what a privilege it is to be in the running for these prestigious awards… again.
It’s fantastic to see so many brilliant local businesses included here in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley this year too. Congratulations to Float in the Forest, Wanderlust Camper Co, Big House Holiday Lets, Go Ape Forest of Dean and Bespoke Brewing Co. who are all up for awards this year. We are up for Best Rural Digital, Communications or Media Business in the South West with the awards ceremony taking place in October. As always we are just thrilled to be finalists.
Much more than just river crossings, the Severn Bridges created an invisible barrier between the South West of England and the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley on the other side. With the removal of the tolls in December 2018 we worked on a campaign to increase knowledge of the area to those in the South West with specific targeting to those around Bristol and Bath (over 1 million people). The campaign involved:
The campaign focused on the themes of The Forest of… and our pillars of adventure, fun, nature, taste and heritage.
You can see the video on Facebook here.
Happy 2019 one and all. 2018 was a fantastic year for us, we’ve been so busy for a start. We’re working with such a wonderful client list and working on lots of exciting projects, many of which have been here in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley. We’ll update this blog just as soon as we can with more information but meanwhile we’re busy providing our clients with our award-winning marketing services!
Oh and we love what we do! Follow us on Twitter to see our latest news.
We’ve loved working with the brilliant Lottie’s Vegan Bakery on their rebrand.
Lottie’s is a vegan bakery based here in the Forest of Dean. From our first meeting when Lottie brought a selection of cakes and treats for us to try, we knew this was going to be a great working relationship!
Lottie was looking to inject some colour and character into her year-old business which had taken off faster than she was able to keep up with. Her products have been a real hit with vegans and non-vegans and she was so busy baking that she never got round to getting her branding done properly!
We completed a rebrand for her including a new logo, colour scheme, website layout and social media package. She was thrilled with the results and was able to focus on what she does best – baking! Another great Forest of Dean business worked with.
We’ve had a student with us over the summer who is working towards a degree in psychology with the aim of working in marketing when he graduates. It’s been great to see his passion and enthusiasm for the field and also to hear his ideas and see his work, we’re sure he’ll go far.
Here is his guest post for us:
WHY VALUABLE CONTENT IS SO VALUABLE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MARKETING
The endgame of a marketing strategy is for as many potential customers as possible to be aware of a business’s product or service, putting them in a position to make the call on whether they should spend their money on it. In order to achieve this, your business must be visible and your content should provide value. The importance of visibility and providing value comes from a number of psychological factors.
The reason why it’s important to be visible in a variety of different formats – including social media, email, print or audio – lies in a psychological phenomenon known as the frequency illusion (or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). There’s no doubt that at some point in your life you will have experienced this. For example: a friend tells you about their new shoes, you’ve never seen or heard of them before, you don’t think much of it at the time but soon you start to notice them on every other person and in every shop window. This is due to selective attention: once you’ve seen these shoes, although unaware of what you’re doing, you look out for those shoes and ignore all other shoes. This is a dream position for the business – the customer is not only seeing their product regularly but is also ignoring the competition. A second psychological factor then comes into play: confirmation bias. With every new sighting of the product, it further cements the consumer’s perception that it has gained popularity overnight, and with each viewing, they begin to perceive its increased importance.
As you can see, visibility is crucial but just as crucial is providing content that’s valuable. Providing valuable content works in the same way as giving out freebies – it gets your brand noticed, and that initial brand awareness is crucial. Whether writing blog posts, press articles or social media posts, creating adverts, generating PR or recording videos or podcasts, a business can reach a broad audience and generate many new leads. If this content is all full of useful information that provides value to the consumer it calls into action the social norm of reciprocity: the business has provided value in terms of information and/or entertainment, and the consumer is more likely to provide value in return in terms of engagement, brand loyalty and of course, sales.
So keep providing valuable content, getting your business in front of the consumer in as many ways as possible and remember to always focus on the endgame: what is your goal and how are you going to achieve it?
Thanks to Max Didcote for the post and we wish you well on your course and in your future career!
Absolutely thrilled! We have been announced as finalists in The Rural Business Awards 2018!! We’re up for Best Rural Creative or Media Based Business in the South West.
This is such a great award for us to be in, we’re up against some strong competition but just being recognised is a great achievement for us. Very grateful and appreciative of all our wonderful clients, our great team and this beautiful Forest of Dean and Wye Valley which we adore living and working in.
See a full list of finalists on the website here, winners announced in October.
We’ve just completed a new website for long-term clients Down to Earth Stroud. A not-for-profit working across Gloucestershire they wanted a new site which showcased their many services and projects without looking cluttered, was modern and easy to navigate.
We gave them a fresh design with a simple, clean layout and they are very happy with the result!
As with all our websites, it is mobile optimised and fully responsive and built on a Content Management System that they can manage themselves and easily update.
Another happy client and a lovely way to end the week, happy weekend all!
You can see the website here: www.downtoearthstroud.co.uk
