Become Famous Locally

by admin | Jan 21, 2021 | Marketing, Promotions

Save on getting noticed

A band of supporters await your next move

Your community getting back in the groove

This time with a twist, now choosing to shop

with those locally found, their preferred stop

‘Support local’, they chant. So now up to you!

Be just what they need, front of the queue

With pride in your work, new-found loyalty to repay

Serve them well, bring them back, more every day

Shopkeepers, makers, hospitality and the trade

Neighbourhood businesses, it’s time to parade

Your audience is listening, stand up tall, raise a hand

Take action, demand attention, shine light on your brand

Blow hard on your trumpet, get praise sung vocally

Be the talk of the town – Become famous locally.

Take advantage of our print, fabric, signage and gift deals to help
your business become the place to go this year.

View all deals

Virtual is really here to stay.

Even when things are back to normal, much of your new audience will stay online.

Many businesses have been able to adapt to the pandemic challenges by going online. Food and drink providers are offering takeaways; retailers are offering online ordering and click and collect services; educators, fitness experts and healthcare providers are running virtual sessions; live music is live-streamed and galleries have gone virtual.

And there’s no reason for this new technological revolution to stop when the lockdown ends and pubs, shops and gyms re-open. If you’ve gone ‘virtual’ you have probably discovered a whole new audience. Not only have people been bored and searching for things to do online, they’ve been sharing experiences and recommendations on social media.

There’s also been a massive boom in ‘Listings’ sites. We started two ourselves at the start of the first lockdown: Support Wealden, a free listings site for local businesses, organisations and charities; and Support The Arts, free listings for all forms of the arts in the South East. And there are lots more out there, all helping to encourage customers to use websites to find services and products.

It will take a while for confidence to be completely restored. A trip to the pub or High Street will feel daunting to many for quite some time even after a vaccine has been rolled out. Online offerings will be a lifeline for those and will help keep your new virtual audience engaged. A new string to your bow!

So, if you haven’t yet thought about offering E-Commerce, Live-streaming, Click and Collect or Takeaway, Zoom or Skype courses and sessions, now is the time. There is funding available to help businesses to adapt by using technology – ask your local council. And there is a real ‘sharing’ culture out there as everyone wants to help businesses to survive.

Ask about Websites

Competition time!

by admin | Sep 23, 2020 | Promotions

Did you see it?

Look closely at our latest mailout for a chance to win

Hopefully one of these will have landed on your doormat – a nice, glossy brochure showing some of the latest things we can offer for promoting your brand.

If you haven’t had yours, download a copy here.

Now the fun bit

Have a look inside and tell us what breed of dog is sitting on the beanbag chair. Fill in the form below before 6pm on Sunday 27th Sept and we’ll enter you into a prize draw. We’ll pick the winner at random and announce the name on Monday 28th Sept 2020. The prize is a little bit of fun – a CD of the album, New Dogs Old Tricks by the Cajun Dawgs.

We won’t keep your details unless you ask to be added to our mailing list, we’ll just use them to process your entry into the prize draw. The winner will need to provide us with a postal address to receive the prize.

Enter the prize draw

Click and Collect

by admin | Sep 22, 2020 | Marketing

EXPECT TO COLLECT … by bike?

We shop differently now. And it won’t go back to being the same.

Your customers have new expectations you should know about. Discover why global brands such as McDonald’s have embraced click and collect. Learn how to harness the same strategy with our 10 insider tips.

And one more thing to consider, with regard to the Click and Collect option – the environment

Our Need for Speed, the rush to get everything delivered today or even same day, is leading to less than environmentally friendly carriage practices. The ideal would be to wait until a van has sufficient deliveries in one area to make a route that would please the time and motion study monitor. If customers are happy to wait, that’s wonderful. But what happens now is one driver will have deliveries in several different areas, often back tracking on themselves later in the day as parcels are not loaded in location order.

But for those who want a product now without making an environmental compromise, the option to collect by bike or on foot could be very appealing. Rather than assuming every customer wants to roll up in a car, anticipate and encourage your customers’ green credentials by offering bike parking and a safe route on foot to the collection point – after all, we’re all into exercising these days! For safer times, let them know where the nearest station and bus stops are. Suggest they team up with friends and neighbours to collect their items too – if the local neighbourhood WhatsApp group has a message offering a collection from your store, that’s a nice bit of free publicity.

Read on for some tips on how to make the most of selling online.

7 minute read

Time out

by admin | Sep 11, 2020 | Article, News

Time to re-charge

A well earned wellbeing day

We are taking a day out of the office today.

Keeping our business going and moving in a new direction over the past few months has been exciting and challenging. We have stretched the capacity of our grey cells to their utmost as we have learned new skills. To fit everything into the days, including work as well as growing veg, taking daily exercise and keeping up with our musical career, we’ve been waking with the lark.

What we have achieved has made us extremely proud – the SupportWealden.co.uk site is helping local businesses, we have met with new and existing clients both virtually and socially-distanced, we have several new websites under our belts and have kept busy with branding, identity, design and print jobs.

The music in our lives (see MiltonHide.com) has kept us sane – don’t ever underestimate the power of music – but we need a simple day out, away from the home office and the ‘phone. New sights instead of websites and fresh air instead of the office fan. To that end we’re closing the office today and heading off to get lost in a forest.

We’ll be back, refreshed and recharged next week.