Despite lockdown, a collective of creative members from Works Social, the coworking space in Nottingham’s Lace Market, have been able to work together to carry out a messaging, web design and branding project to give Cube Construction Consultants a brand boost and secure its future success.

Cube moved into Works Social earlier this year and has enjoyed the benefits of having 24/7 access to the space and its virtual community during lockdown, when it wasn’t always possible to work from home.

Nicola Slater, Director at Cube Construction Consultants, said: “We specialise in strategic business development for organisations within the construction industry, but when it came to marketing our own business, we were finding it difficult to get across our messages and show consistency across our brand.

“It’s been great to be able to bounce ideas off other members and have a community we can call on, when much of the ‘business as usual’ we are used to is anything but. Having a collective of different freelance skills from web design, branding, development and copywriting has really helped us get the results we wanted.”

Virtual member, Matthew King Creative redesigned the website and brand guidelines. Friend to and ambassador of Works Social, Pixelshrink, carried out the technical development and digital designer and co-founder of Works Social, Han van Oudheusden from picturethis.studio delivered iconography and social media assets.

Han said: “This kind of project is exactly the ethos behind Works Social. Bringing different skills, ideas and values together to support each other, promote our different specialisms and forge strong business connections. It’s been a great project to work on and fantastic that our members have been able to access this community throughout this difficult period.”

Specialising in PR, strategic marketing and copywriting, Rachael van Oudheusden from Big Old House, led the project, saying: “It’s been great to be able to help shape the ideas and thinking of Cube. Nicola and Mark have some brilliant ideas, loads of experience and ambitious plans. They just needed a little steer to hone their messaging, develop their website and brand, plus put plans in place for future marketing activity. From the creative connections we’ve made at Works Social we were able to gather the perfect team to get collective benefit from everyone’s ideas and input. Aces in places really.”

The site and refreshed branding was launched in early November and has been well received. There are plans are in place for the first campaigns and the team is planning to collaborate again in the near future.

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BMC posed the question “Is B2B Marketing Boring?” to agency and client-side marketers from around the East Midlands

RIP ‘Corporate Video’

First up in the event’s cracking speaker line up was the ever-entertaining Neil Rostance, Partner and Head of Creative at Fat Free Media, a full service creative agency specializing in live action video and animation.

Having made over 2,000 films in his career as a filmmaker and ‘bus driver’, his passion for his work stands out when he talks about what he loves – telling compelling stories. Banning the phrases ‘Corporate video’ and ‘Corporate Communications’ from his agency some time ago, Neil believes that B2B has had a tough times over the years – although, after showing a comical selection of talking heads from the world of 1980s corporate videos, it was clear to see why!

Video killed the customer

Sadly, we haven’t left these style videos behind. Neil explained how B2B hasn’t fundamentally changed – the methods of storytelling are the same, there are just many more channels: “B2B marketing is littered with bias and assumptions. B2B marketers assume the world already cares that it is a good idea, then it bombs. It’s not that it is boring – it is that no-one cares. What holds back real human connection is trying to please their boss, peers but not their audience. The audience are humans and they want meaningful moments.”

Free your mind

Using a clever analogy about what your choice of seat on the bus says about how you want to be seen, Neil (the bus driver) went on to share different mind sets for visual marketing, including treating it like a first date and considering what you would put on your own TV channel for 24 hours. Pro tip: Don’t be a 24 hours news channels!

Be human, not boring

Neil wrapped up by saying “Successful B2B marketing content which captures attention needs to stop talking about what your business does. It needs to prove how much you love what you do and why in a human way. Everyone has a story to tell. B2B marketing is not boring, the bosses are boring. There is an expectation is that most of it will be dross, but it definitely doesn’t need to be.”
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B2B is more creative than B2C

Next up, a controversial lead in from Neil Berry, a B2B marketer with a decade of client and agency experience gathered at Capgemini, Fujistu and Affari Media, amongst others. His opening statement suggested that B2B marketing is naturally more creative that B2C, because sometimes it’s painful. Because you are limited by bosses, budget and having to sell the most boring crap. B2B is naturally more creative than B2C as you have to be more exciting.

Neil Berry presented the idea that B2B needed to have a heart and courage to have more impact and be less boring

From greyscale to colour

In a Wizard of Oz themed presentation, Neil discussed ideas, creativity, Account Based Marketing (ABM) and strategies for personalization of direct mail with wow factor.

The phrase “I just don’t have a creative brain” Neil suggested was an excuse and a myth.

He believes B2B has lots of great ideas but sometimes it is the content implementation that lets it down, adding that “If you are not evoking emotion in someone then you will not get the audience to feel anything – if you are not excited about it no-one else will be.”

For more on ‘Is B2B Boring?’ visit the BMC’s website. To read about previous events, check out ‘The Rise of the Humans – Are we experiencing purpose overload?”.

The post Is B2B Marketing boring? appeared first on Big Old House.

For very small businesses, start ups, micro businesses and one person working from home outfits, it’s hard to know where to start to build those networks and which events to put the time and effort into.

Let’s face it, walking into a room full of strangers isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and it can be emotionally draining to big yourself up and make small talk with someone you’ve never met when your head is still problem solving or you’ve spent a whole day staring at a lap top in solitude. But, getting you and your brand out there in as many ways as possible is the most important thing you can do.

Connecting small businesses

Small business network Enterprise Nation cottoned onto this years ago and has been a trusted source of support, advice and action for those building up businesses for over a decade.

With already established hubs in Birmingham, Bristol and London,  Enterprise Nation had it’s inaugural ‘Small Business Meet Up’  in Nottingham recently, at the newly opened tech hub, Accelerate Places and it was true to its mission of “creating a more entrepreneurial society in the UK, helping you start, run and grow your business”.

The atmosphere had an energy and excitement from the off. Within two minutes of arriving there was wine and diverse chat with an innovation consultant, design architect and skin care specialist about the merits of marketing automation without human intervention (pet food mailers to non-pet owners) and the questionable credentials of celebrity TV builders (think Grand Designs).

Enterprise Nation Founder, Emma Jones MBE

For the ‘formal’ bit, we made our way into a very trendy amphitheatre style arrangement and were given the low down on the evening from Enterprise Nation’s Nottingham Ambassador, Greg Simpson of Press for Attention (thankfully the rubber gloves remained off), who then handed over to an excitable Emma Jones MBE, founder of Enterprise Nation – with a strictly no PowerPoint policy for the evening.
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Platform for pitches

The enthusiasm for the team of beauty related start ups, including IntheBuff,  who had just returned from a pitch at Boots was infectious and Emma’s relaxed, yet no nonsense approach to bringing people together was refreshing – encouraging people to take the floor and use the forum to make direct business contacts. Chinese Tea Ceremony start up, August Moon,  taught us all a lesson in PR and self belief.

The main event was an overview of Handle – an idea so good you can’t believe it doesn’t already exist – which offers a digital dashboard for your business profile, so you can see your business the way the world sees you at the touch of a button. Built by one of Accelerate’s first occupants Business Finance Technology Group Ltd (Bizfitech), Handle will no doubt enhance Nottingham’s growing reputation as a FinTech hub.

Wrapping up the evening talking to a fascinating accountant-turned-fashion designer off to Qatar for her first show was inspiring. The energy, buzz and passion for supporting people on their business journey was infectious.

Be inspired

For anyone looking to be reinvigorated by networking events and build their brand, as well get access to exemplary business support and solid, practical, results-driven advice, give enterprise nation a go – tell ‘em yer from ‘NOTTINGHAM’ and get 10% discount on membership. Might see you there.

Photographs by Toby Neal

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The helpful chaps at Hootsuite have pulled together a really handy guide to working out which social media sites are best for you, depending on your target audience…

https://blog.hootsuite.com/top-social-media-sites-matter-to-marketers/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=owned_social&utm_campaign=social_hootsuite

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With facts and stats for You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Snapchat it gives a succinct overview of each social site or platform and some really good examples of who is doing it well. There’s also some great social media insight and infographics from Growing Social Media.

It’s not always possible to be all things to all people with so many channels to choose from.  Successful social strategy is about picking a few targeted channels and doing them well, with tailored content and targeted messaging.

Get in touch to chat through your social strategy or if you need a hand crafting compelling content to keep audiences engaged.

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