Marketing communications (or marcomms) can be broken down into several key areas,
each employed for different reasons and with different benefits.
At Metrix we utilise each component in the right way at the right time to achieve
your desired outcome, whether that's generating sales, informing your target audience
of important changes or trying to keep some not-so-good news out of the press. We
don’t just vaguely aim at that ‘desired outcome’. We work with you to define it
in measurable terms and then help you put systems in place to measure progress towards
achieving it.
Click on the triangles above to find out a bit more about what we do and how we
do it.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the services we provide or the results
they can achieve but it’s a good starting point. If you would like to find out more
about what we do and how we can help your business achieve its marketing communications
goals, please do
get in touch, we’d be happy to help.
Marcomms Strategy
A marketing communications strategy is the starting point for it all. Without a
strategy in place, how do you know if you’re achieving your goals or even heading
in the right direction?
Issuing press releases, sending out newsletters, writing a blog – it’s all good
stuff but are your efforts sporadic or planned as part of the bigger picture? Whether
you’re looking to expand into new markets or to further cement your reputation in
your current market, you need a strategy to guide and inform your marketing activity.
A strategy is about bringing your marketing communications efforts in line with
your business objectives – and with each other. A consistent message will ensure
the customer gets the right idea every time – and a good strategy will include systems
to measure performance, to ensure that is exactly what is happening.
Follow the links below to take a look at our case studies to see how we’ve helped
other companies with their marcomms strategies. If you would like to find out more
about how a marketing communications strategy can help you point all your communications
efforts in the right direction, please do
get in touch.
To find out more about how we have helped our clients to achieve their marcomms
objectives, take a look at the case studies below.
Litre Meter
Marketing Communications
Marketing communications is about doing what it says on the tin – communicating
with your market.
We don't necessarily mean 'market' in the traditional sense. Maybe you're a social
housing provider looking to communicate with your tenants. Those tenants are your
market. (We think 'audience' describes it better than 'market' but we don’t think
the term 'audience communications' would catch on!)
There's a whole host of techniques and services that all come under the umbrella
of marcomms – websites, online communications (think social media, e-newsletters,
blogs, email campaigns), media relations, direct mail, advertising, exhibitions,
competitions, events, etc.
At Metrix we do all of this and more, designed to fit your requirements, with defined
objectives and measurable outcomes.
Your message and your audience are unique to your organisation. An 'off the shelf'
marcomms package may be fine for the average organisation – but who wants to be
average? We don't! And neither do our clients.
Follow the links below to see how we’ve helped some of our clients to communicate
the right messages to the right people. To find out how we can help you,
please get in touch.
To find out more about how we have helped our clients to achieve their marcomms
objectives, take a look at the case studies below.
Petainer
Larkfleet Group
Public Relations
Public relations (PR) is often pigeon-holed as media relations and little else.
There is more to a successful PR campaign than issuing press releases.
“Like what?” we hear you cry. We're glad you asked.
Among other things, a PR campaign can include public consultation, sponsorships,
lobbying, conferences, events and, yes, press releases (for which we have developed
a bespoke performance measurement system called the ‘media matrix’ that we would
be delighted to share with you).
At Metrix we tailor PR campaigns to meet our clients' needs. There is no 'one size
fits all' solution and no two campaigns are the same.
So what’s the difference between PR and marketing communications? In a nutshell,
PR is a subset of marcomms. That is to say, many marketing communications strategies
will involve an element of PR, although PR is often thought of as a stand-alone
activity.
Rather than worrying about whether you need a PR or a marcomms campaign, focus on
using the most appropriate tool to achieve your objectives. At the end of the day,
it matters not what it's called as long as it works!
For case studies on how we’ve worked with other clients to ensure their PR campaigns
are ticking all the right boxes, follow the links below. To find out more about
how using the right PR tools could increase awareness for your company and achieve
your business goals,
please contact us, we’d love to hear from you. To find out
more about how we have helped our clients to achieve their marcomms objectives,
take a look at the case studies below.
Coloplast
Dutch Produce Association
Waste Action Forum
Drain Doctor
Crisis PR
A crisis PR plan is rather like car insurance: you hope you'll never have to use
it but in the event of a crash it could save you a fortune.
You may not be able to prevent a crisis from happening but you can be prepared.
We know it’s a cliché but when Ben Franklin famously said, “By failing to prepare,
you are preparing to fail”, he hit the nail firmly on the crisis PR head.
At Metrix we work with you to create a crisis PR management plan that can help you
to handle the unexpected. We assist in the creation of a crisis team that works
to a pre-defined plan the moment a crisis hits. Communication plans, statements
to the media, media monitoring so you know who is saying what and when, a social
media crisis strategy… it all comes together to minimise the impact of a crisis
on your organisation.
We even provide media training to ensure you avoid the ‘rabbit in the headlights’
look if the media come knocking.
Want to know more?
Talk to us, preferably before the crisis hits you – but if you’re already
firefighting we can help with damage limitation.
To find out more about how we have helped our clients to achieve their marcomms
objectives, take a look at the case studies below.
Beaumont Healthcare
Larkfleet Group
Marketing Audits
If we said one of our experienced marketers could come to your office, talk to you
about your current marketing communications activity and show you ways of making
your communications more effective, and that it could be free, what would you say?
“Yeah, right”?
Yes, right!
All we ask from you is the time of one or more of your senior people and the facts
and figures we need to work with.
In return, we will work with you to identify target markets, key communications
messages and ways to deliver the messages to the markets. We will look at all channels
of communication from conventional advertising and media relations through to the
latest in social media. And we will suggest ways to measure the return you could
be getting from your marcomms activity.
Naturally, we’re hoping you’ll give us the opportunity to help you implement the
improvements we are suggesting. However, if you decide to take the suggestions and
put them into action yourselves, there’s no hard feelings. That’s the risk we take.
We charge a nominal marketing communications audit fee of £500 plus VAT to organisations
within 50 miles of Peterborough which have at least 20 staff and/or a turnover of
at least £2 million.
If you then place work with us to help you implement the recommendations in the
audit, we will discount our normal fees for this work by 50 per cent until the complete
£500 audit fee has been returned to you in discounts – making the audit effectively
free of charge.
If you don’t qualify for the nominal fee offer, please
contact us – we offer
other fixed-price options depending on the location, size and nature of the organisation.
If you’d like to book your marketing communications audit please
contact us with your name
and job title, company name and website, number of employees, approximate turnover
and your contact details. We’ll be in touch to sort out the rest!
Partner Services
Through our network of partners we are able to offer an integrated service – in
a nutshell, we can meet all of your marketing communications needs.
t2 Studios is a specialist in advertising and design, web
and multimedia design and media delivery and fulfilment. t2 blends traditional creativity
with the latest technologies across all channels, delivering real results for clients
and their brands.
That’s external communications sorted – what about internal? How do you communicate
with your employees about changes within the company or improve employee engagement?
By working with Metrix and PFK Creative.
Internal communications isn’t just about keeping staff up-to-date with company news.
Your staff are your most direct line of communication with your customers. If they
don’t know your company’s key messages, how can they communicate them to the customer?
PFK Creative helps you to communicate with your employees,
through newsletters, events and other campaigns which PFK Creative and Metrix will
research, plan, manage and deliver.
For clients requiring marketing communications campaigns in the USA, we work with
Ohio-based
TDH Marketing. TDH provides business development and strategic
and tactical marketing for clients around the globe.
Across Europe, we work with
AdvConamole. Based in Turin, Italy, AdvConamole
provides similar services to Metrix (but with a slightly more glamorous office location.
Peterborough vs. Turin. No contest!) meaning that we can provide Europe-wide communications
services.
No matter who your audience (or where in the world they are), we can help you communicate
with them effectively, without the need for a range of suppliers. We are your one
point of contact –
tell us your communication issues and let us and our partners provide the
solution.
O&H Hampton
Social Media
We understand when clients say they’re “not sure about social media” or that they
don’t know how to start or what the benefits are. We also understand the potential
impact it can have on your business.
There’s a huge buzz around social media marketing but it’s coupled with a lot of
fuzz. Social media gurus have populated the online arena with words and phrases
that can be confusing to say the least. Do you measure your Klout? Do you tweet?
Do you utilise #hashtags? Are you linked with LinkedIn? Or just plain confused?
By including social media marketing in your overall marketing strategy, you can
spread your message – whatever that may be – further and faster than with traditional
marketing alone. From all of the statistics to come out of Socialnomic’s ‘Social
Media Revolution 3’, the real eyebrow raiser is this: 90 per cent of consumers trust
peer recommendations, while only 14 per cent trust advertisements. The statistics
may be slightly different in the business-to-business environment but the message
remains the same. There is no bigger platform for word of mouth recommendations
than social media.
The social media facts (not all from Socialnomics) speak for themselves: Two new
users join LinkedIn every second; nearly one in every five minutes spent online
is on social networking sites; more than 12 new Twitter accounts are registered
every second; 34 per cent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter and 20
per cent have closed deals using Twitter; there are 340 million Tweets per day.
That last one’s a biggie. 340 million Tweets a day. How many of those are about
your business? How many are people asking for recommendations about the very product
or service that your business provides? Probably more than you think.
At Metrix, though, we don’t believe social media is the answer to every marketing
communications problem. It isn’t. If you work with us, we’ll take a strategic view
of how, when or if social media will work for you. Then we will help you put in
place systems to measure and monitor its contribution to your marketing success.
If you would like help or advice on how to join in the social media conversation,
come and
talk to us. Or send us a
Tweet@MetrixMarcomms. Or find us on
LinkedIn
. Or
Facebook. As well
as mobile apps and iPads, we do still have one of those traditional telephone things,
so please feel free to pick up the phone and
call us!
Measurement
Many agencies shout from the rooftops about how passionate they are about marketing
communications. We’re not going to say we’re passionate about it because, let’s
face it, it’s a pretty sad thing to be passionate about. What we are, is damn good
at it.
We know we’re good at it because we measure the results – not just against our own
targets but against the client’s objectives.
We use a range of tools for measuring social media results, we conduct market research
and opinion polls, we track blog hits and website traffic.
We have developed a tool for measuring media coverage that we call the media matrix
– it matches your key messages with the coverage we achieve in your target media.
We’ve even colour-coded it. We don’t measure column inches (because size doesn’t
matter…), instead we look at the message or messages within the coverage and the
audience that will read it. It’s about making sure you say the right things to the
right people.
Want to know more?
Talk to us and see how well we measure up.