Welcome to the third article in the ‘Relationships’ series. If you missed our previous episodes, you can find the Fantastic British Food Festivals Relationship and the GLAD Solution Relationship here.

We believe in building a lasting relationship with our clients. We want our clients to succeed so we can grow with them. Our unofficial mantra is “If you succeed, we succeed” which sums up this belief nicely.

Chickidee Homeware is a perfect example of this.

How did the relationship begin?

Chickidee are a homeware brand with a few handpicked stores around London and the South of England. The relationship began with us working with Chickidee on an ad hoc basis, predominantly with our design team. Logos, branding, asset creation and even the odd product design began to become more frequent month on month.

Chickidee grew fast.

We knew it was time to invest into marketing.

A couple of strategy meetings later and Chickidee were on the WATB retainer plan – a monthly block of time which allows Chickidee priority access to any of our team, including designers, developers and marketers. Depending on the priorities of the month and the direction agreed on within the monthly strategy meetings, we’re able to be flexible in our approach on how the retainer time is spent, ensuring maximum return on investment.

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Interview with Joe Chandler, Managing Director of Chickidee:

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We asked Joe Chandler, Managing Director of Chickidee Homeware, some questions about the marketing services from WATB, and our retainer model.

Ok, so my first question is, paying an agency a monthly fee for marketing must be daunting for a small business. How do you justify such an outlay on something such as inbound-marketing?

It was a really hard cost to justify as it’s an investment into the unknown and about putting a tremendous amount of faith into others who do not know your business as well as you think you do yourself. I justified the investment at a time when the business was improving as otherwise I think I would have always wondered what if!

Why did you decide to put your faith in WATB to achieve these goals?

WATB had been working on bits of ad hoc work for Chickidee for a couple of years and so we had established a really positive working relationship, and I felt they had a really good understanding of my brand.

As we know, you work closely with Graham, our Marketing Executive, has his input changed the way you think about websites and marketing in general?

I think you are always aware of what a website requires but perhaps you lose the importance of the fundamentals when you get embroiled in the design. The quest to look a certain way ends up over ruling these fundamentals and Graham is very good at reminding everyone throughout the process about the return on investment which ultimately drives everything!

Have you seen a correlation between what you pay us for and your business improving via the website?

Our website is growing at a faster rate than the cost of marketing, which after three months is a great achievement all round

What would you say to anyone looking to sign up with WATB? Would you recommend us? If so, why?

I would say if you are ready to take responsibility for your website, I mean serious responsibility then you will be able to utilise the skill sets within WATB to get amazing results.

If you tentatively dip your toe in, it won’t work because like everything in your business, you need to drive it and occasionally steer it in the right direction.

By setting WATB clear objectives you will see amazing results as they are all experts in their respective roles. I would also recommend their flexibility which for me is so crucial as my business changes so quickly. If I have an urgent bit of artwork I need doing all I need to do is email and its back to me within a matter of hours.

Another benefit of the monthly marketing plan is that you can utilise any of their staff to provide artwork, digital content, code changes, etc etc which is ideal.

Thank you very much Joe.

So what does the Future for Chickidee?

Along with successful product design and branding, we’ve achieved the following over a 10 month period from June 2016:

• Increased the revenue through the website by 1600%
• Increased the conversion rate by 115%
• Increased the number of organic sessions by 128%
• Set up a high return on investment PPC campaign
• Set up an email marketing strategy for multiple tiered customer retention
  

There is already talks about increasing the hours of the retainer to manage the increased demand of marketing, design and usability testing from the WATB team. We are certainty excited to grow the relationship further and test out further ideas to build the brand and online sales.

“My website, which for many years was stagnant, has been steadily improving month on month since signing up to an SEO and PPC plan with WATB. Graham who looks after my account is very proactive and takes pride in generating a return on investment for me which is fantastic.” – Joe Chandler, Director at Chickidee

If you think we can work together, let’s chat! Fill in our form and we will get back to you asap.