The Fish Brothers Group is a multi franchise, family owned car dealer group based in Swindon. They offer new and used cars as well as contract hire, servicing and parts. In a competitive market, Fish Brothers were keen to identify new ways to promote their annual sale and at the same time improve their communications with customers and prospects.

Fish Brothers Group were looking to promote their inaugural sale, entitled The Big Sale, this is a large scale event aimed at increasing car sales in the run up to the new registration plates. Via previous marketing activities, Fish Brothers already had a well qualified email marketing list, so they decided to embark on an email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is a fast and effective way to communicate with your customers. Segmenting your data based upon previous interests means that your emails can be highly targeted, which will increase your click through and conversion rates.

Fish Brothers’ list was split into different interest groups based on car manufacturer; it was then split down further based on Fish Brother’s own criteria which determined what type of communication the recipient would receive.  In addition, each email included a unique code and voucher which ensured that each email was unique.

The major benefit of email marketing is that it provides the ability to look at the campaign statistics, which enables the marketing department to make more informed decisions and to continuously improve their email communications.

Sara Hodkin, Fish Bros Group Marketing Manager stated “We chose Generate UK to help deliver a number of complex and tailored email campaigns to form part of a wider sales strategy. The service and execution was excellent and results were brilliant helping us drive footfall into our 12 main dealerships. Since those campaigns we have continued to work with Generate UK where they have helped us set up our own branded email marketing system, provided infrastructure and on-going support through web and email consultancy.”

Click to view the Fish Brothers Group website

A few reasons why you might like to consider our Email Marketing System

• Your own easy to use, flexible email marketing system which is continuously supported and enhanced, meaning your system adapts to your changing requirements.
• No more costs per email; once the system is installed it is branded as part of your business.
• Instant access to analytics to help your reporting and your decision making.
• Supports multi-users across different departments, so you can provide different levels of access to different people based entirely on their needs.
• Still not convinced? Give us a call on 01635 550431 and ask for a demo.

Business is tough at the moment and small businesses have to think beyond their next piece of work. It’s interesting to hear directly from businesses about their challenges in terms of creating new business opportunities; which is why we’re pleased to hand over this blog post over to Christopher Eades, director of AA Eades and Son.

“We’re a small local building firm based in Newbury and for us having that steady flow of business coming in is vitally important. Over the years we have built a fantastic reputation locally for quality workmanship at competitive pricing.  Whilst business is still okay, with the downturn in economy I felt it was important to look at new ways to seek out new business rather than just rely on word of mouth.

I was discussing my situation with a friend who in the past has used email marketing and suggested that I tried it.  I was sceptical at first; could it really help me and directly bring me business?  I thought I would seek out a company to talk to and was recommended by another friend to speak to Generate UK. As you can tell I often go on recommendation!

I contacted Generate UK and sat down with them to look at the possible options available. We haven’t got a website, this is something that we are thinking about, and so I thought the online activity was limited in terms of where I could send people to so we opted for a direct response.

We decided to trial an email marketing campaign and as I mentioned after being pretty cynical I have to say I’ve been very pleased with the results. We invested in two thousand local contacts and Generate UK designed and sent out a personalised email campaign promoting our company and the services we offer with a promotion attached.

As a result we received 137 responses and 18 of these have turned into positive enquiries which we have quoted business for.  The great thing about the campaign is that Generate initially tested a batch of 50 to analyse how the message was received and the response it had. The initial message was tweaked only slightly and the main message was sent. It was a text based communication that was personalised with the recipients’ first name and signed off by me with my personal email address.

The campaign has more than paid for itself and I am teeing up another one in the near future.”

Christopher Eades – Director, AA Eades and Son

Thank you Generate UK!

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

For more information on email marketing click here or to speak with one of Generate UK’s internet specialists about building a direct response campaign please call 01635 550431

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DIY Pest Control has been actively involved in urban and rural pest control since qualifying through the British Pest Control Association in 1991. In 2009 diy-pest-control.co.uk was launched, its aim is to provide the best advice and latest technology to help you to control pests in your home or office.

DIY Pest Control have noticed an increase in natural and organic pest control solutions, and alongside traditional pest control products wanted to support the new site launch by targeting traffic via Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is Google’s flagship advertising product; it offers pay per click (PPC) advertising and site-targeting advertising for customers. Advertisers specify the words that should trigger and present their adverts and specify the maximum amount that they are prepared on a cost per click basis.

PPC is certainly the best way to make an impact and to be visible on the search engines, especially if your organic listings are not quite there yet. We advise clients with new sites to carry out some form of PPC activity while their organic listings mature.

The objective of DIY Pest Controls campaign was to raise awareness, increase traffic and increase sales. It was also a great opportunity to learn and analyse the traffic trends and customer behaviour, as unfortunately this information was not available due to the website only just recently launching.

Initially, Generate UK worked with DIY Pest Control to establish the target keywords; these would be the keywords/phrases that would be bid for in order to attract targeted traffic. Once the keywords had been identified, they were put into relevant keyword families, each family focused on a small number of keywords/key phrases.

The campaign contributed to a huge increase in visits to the site, accounting for as much as 69% of total visits. The increased traffic also contributed to a growth in the number of sales of products, which in turn helped grow the DIY-Pest-Control.co.uk database. Using Google’s own Goals Overview system, it was possible to see how the sales funnel was performing and make informed improvements on the fly.

Rowland Park, Director at DIY-Pest-Control.co.uk stated “I approached Generate UK to help me understand and make sense of PPC as a whole and especially the keywords I needed to target, as I didn’t want to waste any of my PPC budget on words that weren’t going to deliver results. Generate UK showed me that people now search using two, three or even four words rather than just one. They helped me categorise my keywords into groups and structure my PPC approach taking the more generic words and creating more targeted phrases from them. The results were fantastic and the service and insight they provided helped me not only understand the whole process but also delivered me some well needed business, many thanks!”

Click to view the DIY Pest Control website

If you would like to discuss how Generate UK can help you achieve more from your next Pay Per Click campaign, please do not hesitate to  contact us on 01635 550431.

We’re very pleased to announce that Generate UK has just been awarded a coveted contract to design and build a new web site for NHS South Gloucestershire. The new site will be built on the award winning Sitekit content management system.

You can read the full press release below:

Generate UK wins NHS contract

• NEWBURY (July 21st, 2009)—Generate UK, a leading digital marketing agency, announces the signing of the NHS South Gloucestershire contract.  The project to design and build NHS South Gloucestershire’s new website is already well underway and scheduled to go live at the end of September 2009.

Michael Robinson Generate UK’s Commercial Director said “This is a time of extraordinary growth and progress for us as an organisation.  We are extremely excited at winning this contract and at Generate UK we believe in the importance of developing strong, long term relationships with all of our customers. Our new partnership with NHS South Gloucestershire is a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate our ability to be a part of delivering, measuring and improving business performance, Generate UK’s philosophy is all about ‘filling in the online marketing gaps for your business.”

Generate UK, a dynamic and commercial thinking digital marketing company based in Newbury, Berkshire offer professional web project services and a number of other exciting online marketing services that would add value to any commercial and public sector organisation.

“We chose Generate UK because of their obvious enthusiasm and commitment to service.  This project demonstrates a significant investment by NHS South Gloucestershire to help increase communications within the local community and it is imperative that we get it right.  After a rigorous tender process we believed that Generate UK’s partnership approach to their clients gave us the comfort we required to take that next step” said Sue Pratt, Communication Manager of NHS South Gloucestershire.

About Generate UK

Generate UK a next generation digital marketing agency in Berkshire. Our mission is simple; to help our clients generate more from their online marketing activities. We do this by helping our clients to leverage next generation Internet technology. This could mean anything from a well targeted email campaign to a long term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy.  More information about Generate UK can be found on the Company’s Web site at www.generateuk.co.uk.

Press Contact

Joe Baily
01635 550431
joe.baily@generateuk.co.uk

Pine and Oak Furniture is a Berkshire based furniture specialist with over 17 years experience in wood manufacturing, sales and finishing. The company trades from their four extensive showrooms offering customers excellent quality furniture, at a fair price, coupled with great service.

Pine and Oak recently decided to grow their business further by harnessing the power of the internet and launching a new ecommerce website. As a company, the operational structure was already in place to support an ecommerce site with good stock holding – offering customers immediate product availability, and a dedicated team of delivery staff and vehicles.

The challenge with the new site was to provide a system that was both customer friendly yet simple for Pine and Oak to administer. From a customer point of view, the site needed to have a design that was engaging, displayed the products clearly and offered a zoom facility. The ordering method needed to be swift, without a lengthily account sign-up procedure, ensuring that the whole process was as simple as possible.

And, for the Pine and Oak team, it was important to provide a system that was easy for non-technical staff to update the product catalogue, allow for seasonal promotions and track the order process.

The Generate Shopping Cart was the perfect solution to meet the needs of both the customer and Pine and Oak. The menu navigation and page structure are simple to use and the powerful search function allows customer to find exactly the product match they are looking for.

The website delivers advanced order and checkout features including single-page checkout, guest checkout and support for multiply payment types. The web-based control panel allows Pine and Oak to easily manage their product catalogue from any PC and allows the team to react quickly to market changes and promotions. The back-end features also provide all the tools necessary for the team to manage the website, delivering a professional ecommerce site.

The results are clear: a well designed and thought-out ecommerce website that allows customers to shop with complete confidence from the comfort of their own homes.

What Pine & Oak Furniture had to say; Daniel Hulett, Managing Director stated “The new site was an important way to grow my business particularly with lots of people now shopping online. We were also finding that customers visiting our showrooms were asking for our website details so they could browse our products at home.

Generate UK were immediately very friendly and approachable. Their relaxed attitude was in contrast to other agencies I had considered – they made conversations about technical aspects of the site easy to understand. I am extremely happy with the site design and the ecommerce system - Generate UK have delivered painlessly exactly what I needed!”

Please click here to visit the Pine and Oak Furniture Website.

If you would like to discuss how an ecommerce website could help your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’re already selling products via the Internet, why not let Generate UK provide a free of charge Website Health Check.

Donnington Grove Country Club is one of Newbury’s ‘best kept secrets’; as well as offering a first-class golf course the venue also offers fantastic conference facilities, an intimate wedding venue, a beautiful hotel and a newly opened restaurant. 

The existing website did not do justice to the growing Donnington Grove business and therefore, Generate UK were tasked with delivering a fresh yet functional new site. 

It was important to Donnington Grove to have the flexibility to make regular changes to the site content to reflect new promotional activity, special offers and specific event information. These changes needed to be managed in-house whilst still maintaining the professionalism of the rest of the site and therefore the Generate UK Content Management System (CMS) was utilised. 

One of the biggest challenges with the Donnington Grove site was to deliver a design that show-cased each of the different business areas but was also easy to navigate. Equally, Donnington Grove had to manage the conflict between promoting their core golf business over and above the other areas of the company. 

The website has been launched and very well received by both customers and staff alike. The CMS has given Donnington Grove a very simple and user friendly interface that enables the team to make changes to any aspect of the content without the worry of inadvertently changing the site’s main structure. 

The CMS system provides a great platform for search engine optimisation through search engine friendly URLs, keywords, descriptions and page titles. This has enabled Donnington Grove to compete with other businesses for keywords that they were previously not listed for. 

The website analytics have shown an increase of 130% in the daily number of unique visitors to the site alongside an increase of 420% in the number of ‘sign-ups’ for the Donnington Grove Newsletter and special offers. In particular, new membership enquiries have increased and are25% of the number of new ‘sign-ups’. This has meant that Donnington Grove have been able to reduce their marketing spends in other areas. 

Oscar Inaraja, Deputy General Manager of Donnington Grove Country Club stated “The main challenge the new management team faced when they took over Donnington Grove was to make people aware that Donnington Grove existed and was open to the public. We are not just a golf venue, we have conference facilities, a wedding venue, a great restaurant; all of these services have a different set of target customers, which means that we had to adopt a flexible approach to marketing to ensure we were able to deliver the right messages to the right people.  

Generate UK have proven to be a great partner to work with, they have delivered more than what we agreed and are proactive and flexible in terms of helping us to identify new opportunities to increase the awareness of Donnington Grove. The new content managed website is the platform we needed to help promote our fantastic Golf Club.” 

Click here to visit the Donnington Grove website

If you would like to discuss how the Generate UK CMS could drive your website please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431.

The Red House, an independent pub and restaurant in Whitchurch, has recently been opened after an extensive refurbishment.

The Red House has been a part of the Whitchurch community for over 50 years and has now been sympathetically modernised, retaining much of its traditional charm. The original open fires are now complimented by a warm and friendly atmosphere, great service, an excellent menu and some very ‘fishy’ wallpaper! 

The Red House quickly realised that managing their online reputation was paramount in encouraging customers through the doors; local customers needed to be made aware that The Red House was again open for business and the venue needed to be found by potential customers from outside the area who may have never visited before. 

The Red House also wanted to focus on making their site as visible as possible in the search engine results through a campaign of search engine optimisation. This ensured that location based searches delivered ‘The Red House’ website as a result, raising the venue’s profile both locally and nationally. 

The results are clear; using web based review and directory sites, a significant growth in the volume of site traffic has been measured (an increase of approximately 270% since March 2009). In fact, 25% of all website visitors are currently from these sites. Traffic generated by search engine referrals has also grown and is now up to approximately 40%. 

This substantial increase in the number of unique visitors to The Red House website has not only generated more reservations and Internet enquiries, but has also promoted The Red House brand to a substantial number of homes and businesses. 

Generate UK look forward to a very successful year working alongside The Red House team. 

Sandra Bryant, Proprietor of The Red House Pub and Restaurant stated “The key challenge for any new business is letting people know that you exist. Generate UK were confident from the outset that they could build an online presence quickly that would help build our business reputation.  The work Generate UK are doing is brilliant; they are professional, always deliver their promises and have a very grounded commercial thought process. I’m very excited about the work that Generate UK and The Red House will be completing in the future.”

Click to view The Red House website 

If you would like to discuss how online PR or search engine optimisation could help your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431.

Singer Directory is a website designed to bring together opera companies, agents and singers. The site enables users to share and search performance history, experience and skills.

Singer Directory is a completely unique website because it brings together singers, agents, opera companies, impresarios and choirs and provides them with an incredibly powerful search function.

The system allows singers or their agents to upload CVs, biographies, agent details, photographs and audio and video clips. All of this information is then available to performance directors, who can make very specific search queries based upon the role they have available. This benefits both parties as it opens up new performance opportunities as well as reducing the time it takes to find suitably experienced performers.

Generate UK provided the technical development skills and project management required to complete the website build. It was a challenging project with tight timeframes, so having experience in creating web enabled applications was very helpful.

What Singer Directory had to say: Claire Hayes, Director stated “For Singer Directory the website isn’t just at the heart of the business - it IS the business. Though the site looks simple on the surface, there’s a lot of complex database management going on underneath. It was critical that our site builders could cope with that - not least because a previous company had to give up part way through! Over short timescales, Generate UK did an excellent job. They were helpful, efficient and highly professional - and their pricing was fair too. We shall definitely be back when we want to develop the site further. ”

Click to view the Singer Directory website

If you’re interested to discover what Generate UK can do for you, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431.

Newbury Flooring Centre is an independent flooring solutions provider who specialise in supplying quality flooring products from leading manufacturers.

Until very recently, Newbury Flooring Centre had a limited web presence.  They were keen to change this and invest in a new platform that would enable them to reach a wider target market, whilst allowing them the flexibility to introduce e-commerce to their site in the future.

The brief was simple; to provide a web site platform that encouraged more conversations with potential customers. Due to the size of the investment, the platform also had to support the future needs of Newbury Flooring Centre, such as the ability to take orders via the web site.

Newbury Flooring’s new web site has been built using the Generate Shopping Cart System; a powerful e-commerce platform that is designed for non technical users. Simplistic and effective, it offers complete search engine optimisation support, one page check out, full integration with payment engines, delivery agencies and Google.

One month after the launch of the new web site, Newbury Flooring had received search engine traffic for over 200 different keywords and phrases. The site was also quickly indexed by Google, creating an Internet Footprint of over 100 pages in the first month. These factors have enabled Newbury Flooring Centre to quickly compete with more established web sites in their market.

The project was delivered on schedule and is a great example of a local business driving sales by using the Internet effectively. Generate UK are delighted to be working with Newbury Flooring Centre as they build their online reputation.

Michael Robinson, Managing Director of Newbury Flooring Centre stated

“If it’s been on your mind to launch a new web site for your business, now is the time to act. In this day and age, I don’t think a company can survive without a site - it’s an integral part to every business. I would also recommend using a professional agency such as Generate UK who will deliver a site that provides commercial results. If you’re worried about your business, you can’t afford to sit back. Get your new site today.”

Click to view the Newbury Flooring Centre web site

If you would like to discuss how an ecommerce shopping cart could help your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’re already selling products via the Internet, why not let Generate UK provide a free of charge web site health check.

OPISAS is one of the fastest growing international investment companies specialising in providing the latest overseas investments in the most profitable regions throughout the world.

OPISAS are a new business and as a result were keen to stand out in their market and differentiate themselves against their competitors. They were also determined that the web site should contribute to their growth in terms of new sales and marketing opportunities.

A major area of focus was the usability and navigation of the site; early on in the scoping exercise a “three click” rule was introduced, which meant that it should not take the visitor any more than three clicks before landing on a property page. It was also very important that there were plenty of opportunities for the visitor to engage directly with OPISAS, by way of call to actions.

Another important aspect of this project was that OPISAS wanted to make their own updates and add their own content to the web site. This was vital because the quicker a new development could be added, the quicker the details would be available to potential customers. The ability to update and make changes in accordance with their market conditions gives OPISAS a huge advantage in this competitive industry.

Generate CMS provides OPISAS with the ability to amend every page within their web site, and supports search engine friendly URLS. It also has the advantage of being able to provide up to date visitor information on the fly, as well as incorporating the latest Social Media icons to encourage visitor interaction.

Tom Berry, Senior Partner of OPISAS stated “The challenge for Generate UK was to build a brand new website that needed to meet a number of objectives, those were; a great design, easy to navigate, encourage call back and ultimately sell property. The website is fantastic and it meets all of our objectives and more highlighted during the initial project scoping meeting. Now it’s built we’ve entered into the second phase of marketing the website and Generate UK are doing an amazing job of increasing our presence in all the search engines to help drive targeted traffic to our site, we’re really happy with how things are progressing”

Click to view the OPISAS web site.

If you would like a demonstration of the Generate UK CMS or would like us to quote on your design requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’ve already launched your site, why not talk to us about growing your Internet Footprint.