Managing director of Classic Marble (Showers) Christopher Hackett shines a light on the company’s Spotlight campaign, explaining how it embraces video and social media to promote bathroom retailers to potential customers

Q: Can you tell us about your spotlight campaign?

A: The spotlight campaign is a way for us to digitally promote our retail partners, through video and target-based social media advertising.

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To do this we interview staff members and film their showroom premises, normally in the style of a walk-through.

The aim of the video is focused on the retailer and the services they offer. A

ll the raw footage makes its way back to our in-house marketing department where they edit and send it back to get approval.

Once approved, we then advertise locally through Facebook, targeting within a 20km radius of people who have been searching for bathroom-related product.

To top it off, after the first three days of the campaign, we then create a follow-up results video of the statistics, views, and click-throughs, which we share with our retailer.

Q: Why did you decide this would form part of your marketing and how much have you invested into it?

A: The idea came from Ian McDonnell in our sales team. Although he has been part of our Classic Marble family for several years, he had a background in television, so had good interviewing and recording skills.

With his skills, and what we had acquired with our own in-house video production, he thought it would be worth an experiment to see what would happen.

He initially used one of our customers as a sounding board and gave us the very positive feedback.

We already carried the costs of our marketing department and Ian in our overheads, and had all the equipment, so for this to work we just had to invest time.

Q: How do you decide which of your trade customers to feature?

A: A couple of things need to happen before we feature one of our customers.

They have to have a Senstec shower tray on display and crucially they have to have completed the online training.

The training is an overview of all things anti-slip, it is the same content that is delivered to architects in the UK and Ireland and runs six times per week over zoom.

The first one starts at 7:30am every Tuesday.

This is the trigger, the assignment has been completed, we have buy in, and now we are prepared to invest further.

Q: Playing devil’s advocate, what are you able to deliver that a self-video and upload wouldn’t be able to provide?

A: To our customers who employ ex-TV presenters and have in-house video editing, as well as social media expertise, probably not a lot. However, this is not the norm.

But when we are doing this, it creates a great deal of interaction.

Nothing is stopping retailers from doing in the future, and in fact I hope they do take something they have learned from us to create their own videos – the first one is always the hardest.

Q: What are the benchmarks of success for spotlight campaign and are you on target?

A: It is very hard to attribute success to any one part of an overall plan. The first measurement of success is that we have forged new relationships with our retailers.

They have allowed us to take over their showroom, we have interviewed staff members, we have created a buzz, and they have had interaction with our marketing department several times during the process.

It has all helped relationship building, and being new into the GB market for Senstec this is key. It is all about people after all.

For me the ultimate success is increasing sales. Did the sale come from that awareness generated from organic content across all social media channels? Was it word of mouth from another user? Was it an online search that took them to our online showroom finder? Was the sale led directly by someone who went through the online training?

The overall success of the entire marketing strategy is the increase in Senstec sales, and the spotlight finder is just one part of this overall strategy.

Q: What has the reaction been like from your trade customers?

A: The response has been amazing. When we explain how it will help both of us then all systems are go.

Q: Have you any analogies of where the videos have delivered tangible business for your trade customers?

A: We can see our first tangible results after the online training has been completed.

Not only does this increase the knowledge of anti-slip trays in general, it also gives bathroom retailers the maximum discount available.

So is it the training itself, or is it the maximum discount? I think it’s a mixture of the two?

So far on Facebook alone, the number of completed Showroom Spotlights has gathered a reach of just over 150,000 which, most importantly gathered 965 clicks to either the showroom or Senstec website.

All this website traffic is from people who have recently looked at new bathrooms online and live within 20 km of the showroom- quality leads.

Q: Sharing these details, aren’t you concerned you are giving away competitive advantage?

A: Thank you, I’ll take that as a complement. Not everyone will agree with what we are doing and not everyone will have access to the in-house resource that we do.

If other companies see the benefit in this and do something similar then, ultimately, it will help our retail partners and that is good for all us.

Q: How do you see Classic Marble/Senstec continuing to enhance its supplier-retailer relationship over 2023?

A: Simple – by listening and learning and trying new things. We also have increased our headcount, employing a second regional director for Britain from the start of this year, which in turn will lead to further sales appointments.

It is great to have a good digital marketing strategy but we also need people who understand the industry and our customers to help deliver that for us.