Mid-Sussex Timber

Established in 1929, Mid-Sussex Timber (MST) remains to this day a family-run business with its Head Office based in Forest Row. With three other locations in East Grinstead (including a showroom), Haywards Heath, and Crowborough, they are direct importers and are one of the largest stockists of TImber in Sussex. They specialise not only in Softwoods, Hardwoods, Panel Products, Window Frames, but also, Building Materials, Fencing & Garden products, Painting, and Decorating supplies.

Mid-Sussex Timber joined The Creative Group back in July and Creative Pod became their full-service outsourced marketing and design department, covering elements of;

• Marketing strategy
• Campaign creation
• Social media marketing
• Monthly email marketing
• Press coverage and outreach
• Digital and print design assets
• Facebook events
• Blog content
• On-site visits
• Merchandise design

Situation

From our initial introductory meetings, Creative Pod and MST established core objectives to work towards for the first six months, which included;

• Increase awareness of their wider product range, such as building materials, and promoting them as a ‘one-stop-shop’
• Increase traffic to the website, increase orders, and push footfall into stores through PR and marketing activity
• Content days across the four branches
• Re-engaged with lapsed customers through email marketing, through relevant discounts, and promoting new product launches
• Drive traffic to the website through paid advertising; both Google Ads and Facebook advertising
• Facilitate 3rd party introductions

Solution & Results

Where to begin? To achieve these objectives we covered the following marketing activity;

Campaigns

Since July, we have run four core campaigns;

• Mid-Sussex Timber celebrating their 90th anniversary
• East Grinstead open day
• Black ‘green’ Friday
• Annual Christmas Tree delivery to East Grinstead town

For each campaign, we created digital assets, which included high-resolution social media graphics, headers for both the monthly e-newsletter, and for the social platforms. For the date-specific events, such as the open days, we created a Facebook event and ran this as a boosted post to increase the level of awareness in the local area. We also designed flyers and leaflets, as well as designing a paid ad for magazine space. All to increase awareness and the level of engagement.

Case Studies

We recognised that MST works with a variety of customers, both independent and mainstream, therefore we created a blog page on the website for dedicated case studies and news articles. Over the last six months, we have written and published four case studies, covering their work with Cheeky Monkey Tree Houses, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited, their annual Christmas Tree delivery to East Grinstead town centre, and MST celebrating their 90th anniversary. With more case studies on the horizon, we hope to develop this page even further, to showcase their broad range of work and improve their SEO.

Press Release Coverage

Over the last six months, MST has received 17 pieces of press coverage, including an exclusive double-page interview in the Builders Merchant Journal, as well as digital coverage in Refurb & Developer Update, Timber Trades Journal online, Construction update, Sussex Living magazine, The Argus, DIY week, and more. Plus print coverage in the East Grinstead gazette, Builders merchant news, Builders merchant journal, The Argus, East Grinstead handbook and Timber Trade Journal.

Email Marketing

Using Mailchimp we designed a monthly e-newsletter template to send out to MST’s customer list, this was to reach out to lapsed customers with new product offerings, discounts, and MST recent activity. We also designed and sent out email newsletters for events, such as the open day, and exclusive product discounts.

Organic Social Media Marketing

MST was already active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, so as we took over these platforms, we added LinkedIn into the mix and across each platform, we ensured they were consistent with their logos, and bios. Over the last six months, they have received the following activity;

• Twitter: received 40 new followers and averaged 7,166 impressions per month
• Facebook: received 30 new followers, and from July the total engagement increased from 382 to an amazing 1,540
• Instagram: received 55 new followers, with an average engagement rate of 4.3%
• LinkedIn: as a new platform, they have received 93 followers and have an average engagement rate of 5.48%

Merchandise

As useful items for their customers, we designed branded beanie hats and A5 notebooks. Mid-Sussex Timber also gives them away over Christmas to increase brand awareness.

On-Site Visits

With the majority of our clients, we like to visit their offices and learn about their specific sector. As MST was a new sector for us, we organised on-site visits at their Forest Row and Haywards Heath branch, to gain a better understanding of timber merchants. This was a good opportunity for us to meet the team, see all the supplies, and take lots of photos and videos to use within our marketing content. We are also planning to visit East Grinstead, and Crowborough this year!

Next Steps

“We’ve really enjoyed working with Creative Pod, they’ve become valued members of our team. We have some exciting projects in the pipeline this year, and we look forward to continuing our work with the marketing team.” Cara Waters, Marketing Manager at Mid-Sussex Timber.

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Over the last six months, we have integrated ourselves to become Mid Sussex Timber’s outsourced marketing department. When we work with a client, we like for them to think of us, as if we were in the next room. We have covered a huge amount of marketing and design activity, which has resulted in an upsurge in online sales. As we move into the next six months, we will be covering more events and introducing paid advertising into their marketing strategy, through Google Ads, so watch this space for another update!

If you are interested in outsourcing some or all of your marketing activity or would like to discuss your requirements further, please get in touch at hello@creativepod.net