We are awakening everyone’s inner 'home improvement enthusiast' with our Spring/Summer campaign for GPH Builders Merchants.
GPH Builders Merchants gave us the task of creating an advertising campaign, with the aim of reaching homeowners ready to tackle home improvements as the country emerged out of lockdown.
The campaign had to be modern, inspiring customers to achieve a new look with their home and to promote GPH as the supplier of choice.
The campaign objectives set were:
- To engage with the large majority of the public planning to carry out home improvements this year (whether themselves or by a tradesperson).
- To promote GPH Builders Merchants to potential trade customers.
- To clearly demonstrate to the public and trade the full range of products and services available at GPH Builders Merchants (both in-branch and via the ecommerce website when it’s ready).
- To promote the 4 locations in Aberdeenshire.
- Use a mix of digital and traditional advertising to ensure maximum reach.
Marketing campaigns work best with layered information, each of which communicates something different to the viewer. Therefore, we ensured to include several elements to this campaign:
- Fix Up, Look Smart – reference to the activity of carrying out a DIY project and ending up with a great result (and a nod of course to Dizzy Rascal).
- Four DIY icons - reflecting the various types of home and garden improvements.
We also ensured that the Fix Up, Look Smart campaign logo worked in harmony with GPH’s existing brand identity.
- Strong lifestyle images – giving inspiration on what customers could achieve through their own DIY improvements
- Product information – tags that linked ‘the look’ with actual products available from GPH
- Core messages – linking the customer (fix up your garden) with GPH as their DIY partner (with our huge range of building materials).
- GPH logo – a visual reminder promote GPH as the supplier of choice.
- Calls to action – accessible contact information to get in touch and find out more.
The 3-month digital campaign to run from April to June involved a mixture or organic and paid activity.
The organic activity focused on a series of Instagram and LinkedIn polls, encouraging customers to send before and after photos of their completed projects with GPH and a competition to win £500 of GPH gift vouchers.
Paid digital advertising included a new, targeted advert on Facebook and regular sponsored carousel posts on Instagram.
An often-overlooked marketing tool are e-newsletters which are the prefect way to communicate with your existing clients. The GPH mailing list had over 2,500 subscribers so why wouldn’t you target the customers who already have some loyalty to your brand? Therefore, Fix Up, Look Smart Mailchimp newsletters were designed to complement the existing marketing activity.
Press advertising was also included in the campaign as a means of raising awareness to people who might not be as active on social media. The primary publication selected to support the campaign was the Evening Express along with local publications of each GPH branch location including Inverurie Herald, The Ellon Times, Buchan Observer, Fraserburgh Herald & Mearns Leader.
