In our 6th episode, Natalie is joined by Fiona Proudler, Chief Executive Officer at Yard, a performance marketing and technology agency for brands looking to challenge and create change in their markets. Natalie and Fiona discuss how using digital marketing doesn't have to be a daunting process. Instead, businesses can embrace it and learn how to provide the best customer experience, all while holding on to their story and heritage.
Understanding what digital activity is – 3m 10
Digital activity can vary for different clients. Some clients need you to write a strategy, some need you to guide them on how best to go about marketing their businesses. Some people need you to help them skill up their people, others, it might be creative thinking around their brand, their product, their service, or just a campaign. Or a combination of all aspects.
Changes in technology from a marketing perspective – 4m 15
It used to be that brands would build their plans on a ten-year basis. As time went on, businesses started to live quarter by quarter. The biggest disruption has been the introduction of the internet, and from there, saw marketing completely change and able to offer so many different approaches and how to understand the customer and their expectations.
How does digital help businesses succeed? - 11m 30
Now that we live amongst a pandemic, digital has been more important than ever to communicate with customers. Digital allows businesses to offer a personal experience, promote messages, interact with customers, be creative and express the business’s story resulting in the customer’s overall experience of the brand.
Staying true to your heritage while embracing digital – 15m
Having a heritage or history doesn’t mean you can avoid digital but rather gives you the opportunity to be authentic in how you position yourself in the market while remaining true to your core values.
The purpose of social media - 17m
Social media means connecting with an audience. Each platform can be better in different ways e.g. Instagram's for heritage. Twitter is for service. Facebook's for community. However, social is not about necessarily looking at each platform in isolation. It's about thinking about the overall customer experience strategy, and then making sure that social media lines up to how you intend to deliver that and then taking what you learned from social media and feeding that back and looping that back into the customer experience.
Why digital strategy is important – 19m 20
Businesses simply cannot have one. These days, if you don’t have a digital strategy then you could be easily replaced in your market by a company who decides to embrace digital. With digital, you can be transparent online, build your brand and therefore, consumers can see your business for what it is and see if it’s right for them.
Top tips for digital strategy – 22m 40
Don’t be put off by marketing jargon or even terms like digital transformation. It can be over used and hard to grasp but what it really means is moving forward with the times. Getting started is so important so you can connect with customers and are able to optimise what you’re actually doing digitally – understand the platforms you’re operating on, the systems you have in place, the processes, understand the overall journey for the customer. Don’t leave it to chance.
Designing and implementing a digital strategy – 29m 30
Understand the audience and what’s going to motivate them, understand how to optimise social media and learn how to measure your results so you can learn from them.
Mazars
Email: contact@mazars.co.uk
Twitter: @Mazars_UK
Facebook: Mazars UK
LinkedIn: Mazars UK
In 2018, we launched our first Family Business survey in partnership with Family Business United. The survey revealed the challenges, opportunities and issues that family businesses are facing on a daily basis. And whilst the specific detail may change because of external factors, such as Brexit and now the global pandemic, it became clear that there are a number of issues that family businesses will always face, so we wanted to continue with our research in 2019 with a second survey and our 2020 survey will be published this Autumn.
To view the Family Business Survey 2019, click here
To request a copy of the Family Business survey when it is released, click here
Yard
Fiona Proudler - https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-proudler-009361/
Yard - https://weareyard.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreYard
Twitter: https://twitter.com/YardDigital
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/weareyard/
Suggested Inspirational Reading:
Why being family owned is a competitive advantage
Entrepreneur article on family business
The digital transformation of family business legacy speed and customers
Family businesses in the digital economy
How family businesses are using social media to engage in lockdown
Digital marketing strategies for family business
Natalie Wright:
[00:00:30] You are listening to the Exploring Family Business Podcast, brought to you by Mazars, a resource of insights, information, and knowledge-sharing from family business owners, their advisors, and key individuals involved in the day-to-day running of a family business. I am your host, Natalie Wright, Head of Family Business at Mazars UK and having worked extensively with family businesses for a number of years, and came to support this valuable sector of us, biotech. At Mazars, we believe there is nothing more personal than a family business. Every family, and every business are unique. So we look forward to sharing a number of interviews, conversations, and panel discussions with you each week, as we explore what is top of the agenda for family businesses in the UK. Now, onto this week's show. [00:01:00]
[00:01:30] Hello and welcome to the sixth episode, of the Exploring Family Business Podcast, with Mazars. I'm your host Natalie Wright, and on this week show, we're going to be discussing the power of digital, when it comes to your marketing strategy. This is a really new area for me. So, to understand more about why it's more important than ever to ensure you have a purposeful digital strategy, for your family business, and how to incorporate one successfully, I'm joined by Fiona Proudler, the CEO of Yard, an independent agency based in Scotland and Wales. Fiona's experience covers businesses, the length and breadth of the UK and internationally, and includes a well-known list of brands including Expedia, the BBC and Virgin Trains. Fiona, thank you for joining me today. Can I start by asking you about you, and your background?
Fiona Proudler: [00:02:00]
[00:02:30] Thanks Natalie, of course you can, very easy to talk about me. I studied Marketing at the University of Paisley. I graduated and I joined my first agency, what was about 30 years ago now. And I guess over that whole time, I've worked with lots of different types of clients and so many different sectors. I think I've probably lost count. So everybody from breweries to energy and utility companies, media companies, football clubs, lawyers, accountants, lots of different businesses of different sizes and some which have been family businesses, family owned. And I guess what I've learned over that time is there are some common traits that apply to all businesses, particularly when it comes to talking about digital, and also some traits that set family businesses apart specifically when they're thinking about what they want to get across, which hopefully we're going to cover off in this podcast.
Natalie Wright: Thanks Fiona. Well, I think it's best to say that I'm a complete novice when it comes to talking about digital strategies, particularly in the context of marketing, it's not my area of expertise at all. So could we start with some basics, and could you just explain, first of all, what is an agency?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:03:00] Really, it's just a professional services business and we're set up to help our clients. Some of whom will be direct to consumer and many of whom will be business to business. And what we do is manage their marketing and their digital activities.
Natalie Wright:
[00:03:30] Okay, so could you explain more about what's involved, because digital activity sounds very broad, which can make it sound a little bit scary. So is it social media? Is it about creating a website? Is it both of those things? Does it go deeper than that?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:04:00] I guess it wouldn't surprise you to learn that it's different things, for different clients. It does vary enormously. Some clients need you to write a strategy, some need you to guide them on how best to go about marketing their businesses. Some people need you to help them skill up their people, others, it might be creative thinking around their brand, their product, their service, or just a campaign. And I guess for most, it's a combination of all of those things and taking it through from thinking about it, to creating it and executing on it. So that could be adverts, websites, mobile apps, you name it.
Natalie Wright:
[00:04:30] So in your introduction, you mentioned that you've been doing this for 30 years and we have all seen large scale changes when it comes to technology in that time and how it's used in different aspects of businesses. But could you tell me about some of the changes that you've seen over that period specifically from a marketing perspective?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:05:00] Well, when I think back to my first job in an agency, hilariously the brands that we worked with used to do their plans on a ten-year basis. And to think about that in the context of the now, just seems so unreal when all of us have become very short term in our thinking. In fact, most businesses really are living quarter by quarter. And I think now that I've hit the grand old age of 50, I'm not sure I could even, dare to think 10 years ahead. The biggest disruption has obviously been the internet. I remember back in the day you used to print out your presentation on tenacity. You'd run it through an overhead projector. You'd be relying on couriers and the post to take things to clients. But when we all started to see what digital could offer, then I guess things got really interesting for everybody.
[00:06:00] The agencies and the clients alike. What I always come back to is there are some things that just haven't changed at all, that starts fundamentally with the kind of purpose of setting up your business, whether that's a family owning a business or not a family owning a business. We all get measured on essentially the same criteria, will be sales, profit, or market share, or it's customer acquisition, retention and churn, or maybe it's costs and margin and efficiency, and the bottom line is, that's what we were measuring 30 years ago. So we all still need to deliver a performance, it's just digital has given us new ways of reaching audiences, new ways of engaging them, and that's because of the technology. And if I go back right to the start of the first ever website, I was involved in, pretty much it was about sticking your brochure up on the screen.
[00:06:30]
[00:07:00] And now we all understand that it's where our customers go to consider us, to buy from us, to talk to us, to share stuff that we have, to comment on what we're saying, to like us, to recommend us, all sorts of different capabilities that we offer them through our digital presence. And the one other fundamental difference, I guess, in those 30 years, or certainly in the last 15 years of internet is right back at the start those first ever websites, we were only offering kind of services during business hours. And now it is very much an expectation that all businesses are open 24/7, online and offline. So we can't live without digital. And frankly, I wouldn't want to.
Natalie Wright:
You're absolutely right. I mean, consider how important the channel's been in 2020 alone and for businesses that didn't have an online presence or whether we're not investing time to engage and maximize the benefit, this must surely now be a wake-up call for them.
Fiona Proudler:
[00:08:00] Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, think about how we've used the internet the last six months, it's about staying connected. It's about staying safe. And I think what's happened is it's accelerated the need for brands and for businesses to understand, and frankly, to satisfy the needs of their customers far better. And there's a trend that's been much talked about, which is the collective confidence. And it's been low for people. We've sort the seek harbour of brands that we trust, and the comfort has come from the relationships that we knew previously. And we knew that we could rely on. So if you were a business that delivered trust or reliability or comfort, care, warmth, security, fundamentally your business had a resilience the others would not have had.
[00:08:30] And I think, in the context of this podcast, when we talk about family owned businesses, they were well-placed as a result of that. To maintain and to grow their customers, particularly to accelerate that through the recession because you know, my own experience with family businesses is that they can, and they do deliver trust and reliability and comfort and care and more sense of security.
[00:09:30] And that gives them resilience, as long as they're communicating that effectively through their marketing and digital endeavours. And I guess there's some delicious irony in that because so many businesses that I've worked with personally in the last 10, 15, 20 years, they try and create a brand heritage story. They literally invent them, whereas, again, my own experience of family businesses, they've got a story. They have a heritage and actually all they needing to do is turn the dial up on it. And I think there's maybe just one other kind of slightly more emotional truth or deeper truth about all of this, this year. And if you think about Natalie, your own experiences, or I think about mine, we've looked for our own families for strength in dealing with the pandemic and we've cried out for our blood ties. My mom's never had more FaceTime with me in the last six months than she's had maybe in the last six years, family has really meant something. And in business it clearly means something, and a family owned business obviously has that deep connection, right at its core.
Natalie Wright:
You're right. We're obviously all craving that connection on a personal and relationship level, which is something family businesses can deliver. So you've started to talk to us about digital. I know it's your area of expertise. Tell us more about it, if you don't mind?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:11:00] Okay, so obviously at this point, there's every danger that I'm going to use some annoying jargon and some buzzwords. So I will try and speak in as plain English as I can, opiate, my Glasgow vocabulary may come through. So you're asking me to talk about digital, and actually the language that I like to talk about is money in some shape or form. A family business, like any business, unless it's a charity needs to return profit. So to return profit, they need to be operating smartly. And everybody that's listening in on this podcast, doesn't need me to tell them that. So whether you're an accountant or a banker, or you're a consultant, or you're an owner, or you're a marketeer, the reality is we need to be doing the right things, the right way, great service, the right price, alter existing customers, and making sure that the value exchange is real. That's what gives you long-term success. So back to your point about talking about digital. If you use your digital channels effectively, you can deliver efficiencies in terms of the sales and the delivery cycle.
Natalie Wright:
[00:11:30] Could you tell us then Fiona, some of the opportunities that digital actually presents that can help family businesses succeed as we move forward?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:12:30] Okay, so clearly I could go on for hours or days about that. So let me try and bucket it into some kind of sensible approach to the opportunities that digital presents for the family businesses that are listening to this podcast. I mean, I guess it starts with this, the pandemic's made us all quite anxious. So as I hinted at earlier on in the podcast, it means we're looking for brands that we trust. And I would say family businesses are inherently trustworthy. Secondly, we've all got used to virtual, virtual, everything working, consuming, socializing, even with lockdown, that's not going to change how we're learning, how we're transacting, how we're consuming. So every customer of the businesses that are listening to this podcast will expect to do more digitally. And for that experience that they're getting digitally to be as good as the experience that they would be getting in real life.
Now, I think, again, my own experience tells me family businesses really, really value the personal experience that they can deliver. So again, the trends that have existed in this pandemic support family businesses, if they choose to get their strategies right. Another change, I guess Natalie would be all about messaging and chat and how that's exploded even in the B2B space, it's been dramatically on the up, and there is a need.
[00:13:30] People are craving that human interaction, now family businesses, once again are really well-placed around that because they are rooted in that human connection. I stayed at one recently, a hotel, a family owned business, and the owner came out and sat and talked to me at the dinner table. So usually a family business is great when it comes to human to human strategies. During the pandemic, we all get into watching live content. We're very much in the moment. We all enjoy those experiences. And not only that, the content that we saw and that we embraced during the pandemic, really kind of, was very high in terms of creativity. Even if you look at it on an individual level and I don't know whether this was you, Natalie, but we were all becoming inner artists and bakers and dancers and crafters.
[00:14:30] And again, a family business typically has a craft story, which is right at the heart of the product or the service that they offer. And that can be shared. They typically have passionate enthusiasts who are right at the heart of the business. And again, their stories can be shown. And I suppose the last point I would maybe make, if I think about this is, the pandemic in the last six months, we've all, and it's been a trend that was carrying on before then. We all wanted to be seen more on an individual level. You know, Amazon, Netflix, we all talk about it being great examples of the period of personalisation. And I believe that family businesses, more typically, are able to pivot quite quickly to improving their customer experience, to make it more personalized. So I think that if I'm counting correctly, that might have been six ways in which it's relevant without even thinking about it.
Natalie Wright:
[00:15:00] Thanks Fiona, lots to take in there as well. So you picked on some really important points. I just want to continue with, and particularly on the personal side of family businesses. So how does a family business that say a hundred plus years old, possibly fifth, sixth generation ensure that they create that balance, which allows them to stay true to their heritage, the legacy, the values, plus being able to bring the brand through into a digital format so that they can reach a new audience if that's where they need to go.
Fiona Proudler:
[00:16:00] Okay, that's quite a tricky one to answer. And without being too controversial, what I would say is, the heritage story or the history that exists in family businesses, doesn't mean you get some kind of safe passage or silver bullet to success when it comes to digital. For me, success and digital, from my experience running large agency and running Yard is, the brands that get it right are authentic in how they position themselves to their market. So they stick closely to their core values. And that is something that family businesses typically have as the ease in their pack.
[00:16:30] They understand their own core values and they hold them dear. And I guess that's true, because the internet levels everybody out. You don't get to fake it, or if you do fake authenticity online, you get caught out. Consumers, whether they be business to business or B2C, they want the truth and they seek the truth and they look for honest voice. So really family businesses, you don't have a heritage story that means you'll be a guaranteed success online, but you've got a heritage story that will be authentic, and that should give you success online.
Natalie Wright:
[00:17:00] So then defining and focusing on the values of the business and the values of the family. They're not only important for operations and governance, but also from a marketing perspective. And also to demonstrate the authenticity, I guess, is what you're saying?
Fiona Proudler: Absolutely. It comes down to this. If you've got something that's inherently brilliant in your brand and customer experience, you need to be shouting about it.
Natalie Wright:
[00:17:30] Okay. So you've mentioned social media a couple of times when we've been talking, and this is probably what I can relate to most when thinking about marketing. So if we move away from kind of generalization about digital, what's the purpose of platforms, specifically, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, could you talk to us more about those?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:18:00] Of course, well, I think we all know that social media fundamentally boils down to the ability to connect with an audience. The different platforms tend to be better in different ways. So in simple terms, Instagram is a really good channel when it comes to nostalgia and heritage campaigns, which as we know are so typically found in family businesses. Twitter tends to play best when it's delivering service. So as a service desk, which family businesses could use that for. So it allows you to reach faster and I guess cheaper than some of the traditional channels. And Facebook for me is the platform that allows you to really route yourself to your community. And again, if you think about that from a family business point of view, being connected to the place that you started can be a bedrock for many of those organizations.
[00:18:30] So for me, Instagram's for heritage. Twitter is for service. Facebook's for community. But really the point is when it comes to social media, it's not about necessarily looking at each platform in isolation. It's about thinking about the overall customer experience strategy, and then making sure that social media lines up to how you intend to deliver that and then taking what you learned from social media and feeding that back and looping that back into the customer experience.
[00:19:00] One of the things just as an offsite that we find most often is social media has given a bit of a kind of second class citizenship in many businesses and it's delegated to junior people, or it's not resourced seriously at all. And I would say it needs manpower, either in hosting that yourselves or relying on external agency support at least to get you, building some momentum around it.
Natalie Wright: Thanks Fiona, so in simple terms then, why is a digital strategist so important for a family business?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:20:00] Well, I guess I would say there's, you can't not have one. There was a forecast recently and forgive me, but I can't remember where I read it Natalie, but it was something like 60% of the world's companies will be replaced by new ones, if brands are not on board with digitization, and that's quite a frightening statistic. I think some family businesses don't even like the word digitization, in fact I don't particularly like it. I think it almost presents a barrier in its own right, and certainly for older people, and I class myself as one of those, it sounds quite intimidating.
Digital strategy is in some respects, no different from your broader marketing strategy. It's about brand growth. The beauty of digital is you're able to be transparent online and consumers can then see you for who you are as a brand and make sure that that aligns with their own beliefs.
[00:20:30] So digital, as a channel, kind of gives you a chance to spell out those beliefs in lots of different ways, whether it's video content or tweets or polls or infographics, or, live chat with the chief exec. So the way to think about digital strategy is just keeping it in those simple terms, is how access new markets and new customers, in ways that you haven't reached them before and actually in far more engaging and far more relevant ways.
[00:21:00] There was a few brilliant examples, in fact, again, I could do a whole podcast of examples, but there are so many amazing stories about different businesses and brands, some of which you will never have heard of, but there was one that I read about recently called The Tea Shelf, and the owners had a 150 year history in the tea business. So they have plantations and engineering, they were packaging, they were exporting, and they had a very swanky online tea store and they were selling fabulous premium tea.
[00:21:30] I'm a coffee drinker, so I wouldn't buy it, but they were selling all this amazing premium tea. And they started using dynamic market trends, information, really in their favour to their advantage by looking at their SEO, their search engine optimization. Sorry, I used jargon. Google ad words, their conversion rate optimization. And they incorporated all those lessons and learnings into their digital marketing strategy so that they could reach consumers all over the world. And I mean, their results were dramatic.
[00:22:00] So digital, if you can forget and park the horrendous jargon that can exist around it sometimes, it really can energize a business and it can energize the people. And actually ironically, it can energize the next generation of leaders in a family business, but also the original leaders in a family business. It's measurable, you can test, you can learn, and you can make sure that every pound that you're spending delivers a return.
[00:22:30] And again, I go back to what I said earlier, talk the language of money. That's what businesses hopefully on this podcast want to do, to generate profit. And I think digital is a wonderful channel for doing that.
Natalie Wright:
Thanks Fiona, I love hearing examples of how family businesses have used effective strategies. So it's great. I'll have to look that one up after the show. Can you then give us some top tips on digital strategy that our listeners could take away and actually implement into their own businesses?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:23:30] I guess the first step is just starting. If you haven't already started, so don't be put off by terms like digital transformation. It's overused, it's hard to grasp, but at its heart, what it's saying is you need to move forward. And actually the transformation word means at a pace, and that's not least because customers of our business, like those listening in, will be better informed because of digital, they'll feel less understood and they're actually more connected than ever. So let's not worry about digital transformation, but instead, let's worry about optimizing what you're doing digitally. I do believe everything can be improved, and as I said a minute ago, digital lets you test things out and work out what needs to change.
And it's not just about stuff that you see, as an external customer, sometimes it's about the platforms you're operating on, the systems you've got, the processes, or as we like to refer to as the plumbing.
[00:24:30] So I think make sure that you're on a journey of change, would be my first recommendation. I've got a good example. You said you liked examples, Natalie. So, one of my favourite projects in the last 10 years was working with Greyhound, the buses in the States. And I don't think it's family owned on reflection. However, obviously a very well-known brand. We all recognize it in the UK, from the movies, and the thing that created change and a digital transformation project for Greyhound was they had years of years of losing market share to the cheap airlines, and somebody tweeted, "If I ever ride a Greyhound bus after I graduate college, I will consider my life a failure." And so even though the losing share had created panic in their business, it was that tweet that really created the panic because nobody wants to have a toxic brand.
[00:25:30] And so we embarked on a digital transformation agenda, which was designed to try and allow them to regain the share that they had lost. So I guess it's number one about change. Number two, make sure you've got the right talent in your business. Now you can lean on agencies for that. You can [inaudible 00:25:08] your staff in from your agency for a period or just make sure that you've got the right people. And in fact, again, if you look at some of the best examples of family businesses, who've got great digital talent in house, then they've used that talent to reassure their audiences, sometimes to update customers, sometimes to share advice, sometimes actually just, and I don't know if you've seen this one, to pay tributes to workforces. So there was another good example of that. I think it was, let me remember the Danish family. I'm sure it's Danish, they own the shipping giant Maersk, hope I've pronounced that correctly.
[00:26:00] And they, the family shared a video of the crew of one of their ships sending the horn on the... It was a campaign called #heroesatseashoutout. And they did that on International Workers' Day. And again, it was to show solidarity with seafarers around the world.
[00:26:30] So number one is about changing. Number two, may be about the talent. If you asked me to keep going, I guess it's about investing in the end to end customer experience. Don't leave it to chance. I would always use the word it needs to be magical. And digital really does give opportunities to share magic. I remember personally moving into a CALA home and having, it was a very hot summer and I picked up some turf feed. The site manager phoned me at work and said, your turf is going to die if you don't put some water on it, have you got a sprinkler?
[00:27:00] And I said, Oh, I don't, I'll go to B&Q on the way home. And by the time I got home, the site manager had gone out and bought me a sprinkler and put it on my lawn. And I remember tweeting CALA and then emailing CALA, and then sharing that story on Facebook. Now, CALA didn't ask me to do that. I did that because for me, Hamish, the site manager (shout out to Hamish if he's listening), he just did something that was utterly unexpected and brilliant. And digital allows you to showcase those brilliant customer stories.
[00:27:30] I guess I would ask everybody on the podcast to think about their e-commerce platform. If that's relevant to you, are you selling enough? Do you own it? Because if you're relying on Amazon and eBay, then frankly, I would encourage you to think about a proprietary infrastructure, making sure that you've got control of it all. As a control freak, that's rather important to me. So there's plenty of great platforms out there. Everything from Shopify to WooCommerce and good agencies, agencies like Yard, obviously I have experience with those platforms, but hopefully if you've got an in-house staff team, they can help you make sure that that platform is correct.
[00:28:00] And then maybe the last couple of things I may offer up, if I'm allowed, you've got to be found. That's what search engine optimization strategy is all about. It's the very opposite of one of my favourite movies, the Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner. Where they utter the line, "If you build it, they will come." Well online, if you build it, they may not come. You actually do have to put effort and digital is hard work. Do not think that there's an easy solution to any of this, you need to use SEO techniques, to make sure that you're ranking well.
[00:28:30] And I guess a lot of family businesses might not have in-depth experience in-house, but this is where you can lean on an agency once more, or you can recruit that. And because it's a free form of marketing in many respects. So if you invest in getting your marketeers trained up, then you should be able to deliver and make sure that you are found.
[00:29:00] And then I said, there was a finally, now let me remember what it was. Oh, content. I was going to mention content, and I've already said it more than once on this recording. The story of a family business can really help you connect with a customer and in a very authentic way and in a way where that passion that you have for your product and your services can get hired. As long as it's personalized, then you'll make sure that you, or you should make sure that you'll have some kind of competitive edge, make sure that you're developing a playbook around that content strategy.
Natalie Wright:
[00:30:00] Thanks Fiona, I mean, we've covered a lot there. I know you gave me some various links before the show. So I'll pop those in the show notes. So people can look at them, create some resources to help listeners as they start to assess own strategy, so thanks for that. And also, thanks again for the examples. So, the ones that you use there do evidence that value the personalization, in particular like the house story as well. That was a good one. So if we just start to ramp things up then, and sorry, I'm going to speak more tips from you. What's the top three things that any business needs to remember. So family owned or not, what would you say the top three things they need to remember when it comes to designing and then implementing a digital strategy?
Fiona Proudler:
[00:31:00] Number one, digital is just a channel. That's fundamentally what you need to remember, and nothing works unless you understand the audience and what's going to motivate them and that you reach them where they want to be found. So that's number one. Number two, social media, well, it's not just about two cat photos or your embarrassing mom dancing, social media can really generate proper brand connections for businesses that are trustworthy, who have clear values, who are authentic, don't [inaudible 00:30:52] , or as I've said a few times on this podcast, a family business. And then thirdly, I guess I would say digital is giving you an opportunity to measure, in a way that most other channels are not as good at.
[00:31:30] So every pound that you're going to spend, you're going to be able to see the results of it. And right now, we're all needing results, whether they be from your in-house marketeers or your external agencies, if you've got one. So make all these people really put their money where their mouth is, particularly your to external agencies and ensure that they are delivering measurement and results to your business.
Natalie Wright:
Fiona, thank you so much. You've given us a lot to think about today. Thanks for sharing so much of your value and experience with us. I'll detail links to Fiona and the Yard in the show notes, along with the various resources and guidance that Fiona's referred to. Where can people find out more about you and the business Fiona?
Fiona Proudler:
Anyone is welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. Fiona Proudler P-R-O-U-D-L-E-R, and of course our agency is weareyard.com.
Natalie Wright:
[00:32:30] Thanks Fiona, so that brings the sixth episode of the Exploring Family Business Podcast with Mazars to a close. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe to the series and leave a review on iTunes. It will help us to extend our reach to the family business community, so we can continue to share our knowledge, and that of our guest. If you want to know more about anything that we've discussed today, I did tag links in the show notes to the resources that Fiona mentioned along with her contact details.