Published by isobel.regan@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 05.07.2023 
Here at Cariad Marketing, we believe there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution to digital marketing. Every client’s needs are different and whether they need SEO, PPC, social media, copywriting or design, each of our teams work together, constantly updating bespoke solutions that meet our clients’ business needs and help them achieve their goals.
One client in particular presented us with a full service challenge that needed the entire team to work together on – SEO and content, PPC, Social Media and a new website build. The campaign was hugely successful and formed the basis of our entry into the UK Content Awards.
Working with Chilli Pilates
Chilli Pilates is a local fitness chain that specialises in Reformer Pilates. It currently has ten studios in and around Hertfordshire (and still growing!), though when it became a new client, it had just five studios. Part of our remit was to promote the opening of the three new studios, attracting enough new sign ups to make each a going concern. Our overall KPIs have been to grow membership of every studio, targeting women over the age of 35 living within a 10 minute drive of their nearest studio.
The client wanted Team Cariad to have a good understanding of their business, so everyone working on the account was given the opportunity to try the Chilli brand of Reformer Pilates out for themselves. This kind of hands-on experience isn’t possible (or indeed offered!) with most of our clients, but makes such a difference. With a greater and more detailed knowledge of what a client’s offering, and having experienced the benefits first hand, the key selling points were much easier to identify. Indeed, such familiarity made our content so much more effective.
Positioning trust in the client
As the client’s target market is circumspect about their purchases, we positioned Chilli Pilates as a trustworthy thought leader. As part of our campaign, we wrote blogs about the equipment, exercises and health benefits of Reformer Pilates, backing this up with images, videos and explanations on social media. This meant that the people who signed up for trial classes were highly motivated and more likely to sign up for membership. As the client confessed: “Initially I was sceptical about the need for blogs, but they have actually helped to bring a lot of traffic onto the website, contributing to the number of people signing up for a trial session.”
For the uninitiated, Reformer Pilates seems intimidating so in our social media posts, we used real people to help dispel the myth that Reformer Pilates is difficult or painful. We took care to make sure our content was inclusive and friendly. By using real people with a range of body shapes and ages in the photos and videos, we could reassure potential customers that Reformer Pilates was for them. This sparked user generated content from members and potential members trialling Reformer Pilates alike.
Overall website traffic rose by 251.54% and our goal conversion for class bookings rose 236.4%. Net result? One very happy client!
Being flexible on film
The second advantage for us was that Reformer Pilates is extremely visual and therefore very shareable. The reformer beds with their springs and pulleys look intriguing and videos of people using them make great content. We searched for local micro influencers who would appeal to Chilli’s target audience and organised regular photo shoots – filmed at different studios – to get some great photography and video content. In fact, it was exactly the kind of footage that we knew would do well on TikTok; however the client was extremely reluctant to create an account, wanting to stick to the tried and trusted Instagram and Facebook.
Show don’t tell
In this situation, we knew we had to push back. On our first photo shoot to get photos for the new website and social media channels, we also took video footage to create example posts that we knew would work well on TikTok. As soon as the client saw our suggestions and understood what we were trying to achieve, they gave the go-ahead for us to create a TikTok account for them… and we’ve regularly been getting thousands of views ever since.
This had an unseen bonus in that once Chilli’s instructors saw the videos and understood how their participation in them were helping to sell the classes, they began to create their own footage, talking about the exercises and the advantages of Reformer Pilates. This has helped the campaign massively by giving the client a friendly face while giving credence to the company’s positioning as a thought leader.
Chilli now has more than 3k followers on TikTok, more than 4k on Instagram, and more than 2.5k on Facebook.
About Cariad Marketing
Cariad is an independent boutique digital marketing agency. Our purpose is to help small and medium sized businesses outperform their online competitors, ethically generating results for our clients… and it’s something we’re rather good at!
We support the digital marketing needs of all sizes of SMEs through Cariad Marketing and Cariad Web Design (CWD). CWD offers low cost, pay monthly websites that have all the elements of bespoke websites – including the expertise behind them – but by using a range of pre-prepared designs, they are available at a price micro businesses can afford.
Cariad Marketing supports larger SMEs with full service digital marketing – SEO, Content, PPC, Social Media, Design and Web Development. We believe in a tailored solution to digital marketing, as a result of which, clients buy monthly packages which enables us to adjust our services wherever necessary. Every month, our teams assess every client’s progress, tweaking delivery in order to produce the best results within each package’s hours.
Many of our clients see us as more of an outsourced marketing department rather than a supplier, enabling us to form close and very successful long-term relationships with them.
Award winning
Team Cariad is no stranger to award ceremonies, with multiple regional and national business awards under our belt. This year, we have been placed as one of the Top 50 SMEs in the UK in Elite Business’s EB100. And, of course, we’re particularly proud of our place as a finalist in the UK Content Awards.
Entering the UK Content Awards was quite nerve wracking for us. In the past, we have entered and won many regional and even national business awards, but have not been confident enough to enter national marketing awards under the expectation that competing with agencies that have the kind of budgets we can only dream of would put us at a distinct disadvantage. We’re very grateful to the UK Content Awards for including a ‘low budget’ category that has allowed us to test the waters – and delighted that the risk has paid off.
As you’d expect, we’re on all the biggest social media platforms, so follow our progress in this and other awards on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
