Neighbourhood Secrets
Em Goodier
✨ Let’s set the scene…
West Midlands Summer Houses is an independent business based in Birmingham. Initially, I had come across them as I scrolled through Facebook- they had tried a video ad similar to a TikTok, and it looked like it had flopped. After investigating their page, it was hard to tell what made them them. Their content and advertising were like most other summer house retails: without their logo stamped on, you couldn’t pick them apart.
So I decided to send them a couple of samples of spec work.
My idea had blossomed from the location of most summer houses: a garden.
A secret garden.
Imagine living in a small village, where everyone knows each other. Anything and everything is gossiped about, information exchanged for sniggers and wide-eyed reactions. So what if a neighbour in such a small village, decided to secretly build a bespoke summer house in their back garden? A luxury to keep secret, for only the closest of friends and family to be invited into. If it was found out, it would be the next big thing featured in the local newspaper.
And so the creative peeping tom adverts were made.
Reads: 'It will make your neighbours look through the hole in the fence...'
Reads ' The secret your neighbours have been hiding from you.'
It turned out the Office Manager liked it.
And three briefs were set only a week later.
📖 Brief #1
To introduce the features and benefits of custom-built summer houses and their creation process to new customers.
⚙ The Process
As someone who knew nothing about building a summer house, I was already a perfect candidate to see the process from a brand new perspective.
And so I set about learning what building a summerhouse was all about.
A Notion dashboard for research.
We sent out a poll via email to ask customers what they’re most pressing questions were when it came down to knowing how a summer house was being made.
The data was clear: listing features of summerhouses left more questions than answers, and the process of ordering a summer house seemed unclear.
💡The Results
The final products of this brief included an image Facebook advert and a Facebook video advert.
Bespoke Summerhouses Spec Ad
With the company hitting a dry spell in sales beforehand, the change in advertising brought a new wave of interested customers. The change in design and tone of voice made an active impact on their advertising strategy and helped increase their rate of inquiries by 30%.
📖 Brief #2
To encourage customers to imagine their dream summer house experience, and to use testimonials to persuade them to take this journey.
⚙ The Process
WMS has previously found that their photos and videos seemed to resonate a lot more than just their social media captions. They wanted something visually heavy, with minimal copy.
Their assets were already made, and their testimonials were already collated. All that was left was to combine the two.
💡The Results
Once more, these adverts boosted their initial rates of enquiries, and after all six adverts had been advertised throughout the summer, it led to an additional 10% in sales for the company that quarter!
Bespoke Summerhouses Spec Ad
📖 Brief #3
To create a Welcome Series for their upcoming newsletter campaign.
⚙ The Process
I was given free rein to design and create a newsletter strategy, as the client had never created one before.
Due to the large customer base, I decided the best option would be to create a Welcome Sequence that would segment subscribers into different email sequences. This would help keep the content of the emails relevant to each customer on their customer unique journey.
I started by creating Persona’s for each customer base, and brainstorming what they would be looking for in a summer house.
A Customer Persona file for a remote worker.
A Customer Persona for a married couple.
A Customer Persona for a retiree.
I then created a mind map of each of the sequences we would be using to help the customers throughout their purchase.
Mind Map of the Onboarding Sequence.
Mind Map of the Progress Sequence
Mind Map for the Niche Sequence.
Mind Map for the Aftercare Sequence.
💡The Results
Although not yet in place, my newsletter design and strategy will be implemented by WMSH early next year. You can see some example designs below!
The first design for a Welcome Email.
The first design for the Progress Sequence.
And a quick reference to keep you tied over...
🪄 Reference
Jordan, Office Manager at West Midlands Summer Houses
We recently hired Em as a copywriter to bring us some new business in as our approach was seemingly getting a bit stale. She was extremely efficient in communicating throughout the process, brought a fresh prespective on our industry and despite us being in business for 30 years, was able to come up with some ideas we never would have thought of. Her determination and interest was more than I've ever seen from anyone in her industry and what she lacked in experience she more than made up for in her work ethic. She upped our sales, gave us new ideas and we hope to work with her for many years to come!
You can design your own bespoke summer house with West Midlands Summer Houses here.
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Posted Sep 2, 2023
Using neighbourhood gossip to our advantage.
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