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PR Discussion Document Prepared by

Contents

Present situation Desired situation Marketing and Comms Toolbox - Pick and Mix Communications options About The LaunchBox Appendices

The present situation Where you are right now : Marketing Centre midlands ‘branch’ - Nigel at the helm as new Regional Director for the West Midlands Some marketing but at a low level – paid for lists primarily purchased by the Centre which drives some sales. Some referral but no real strategy in place for either recruiting new directors or promoting the Centre No PR – an area Nigel would like to test. No other region is doing any at present 100 Marketing Directors on the books – portfolio careers Some prospect meetings with businesses have been taking place Ideal business client - turnover of circa £3m-£30m who are looking for strategic senior marketing skills without long-term commitment Businesses can ‘buy’ director’s time - often 1/2 days per week at a fee of circa £1,200 per day(Regional Director gets 10% of billing). Some regions are turning over circa £1 million This Centre’s approach usually suits businesses that have small marketing teams with no director or no budget to have a FT senior Marketing Director role Key USP: The Marketing Centre offers businesses a flexible and affordable approach to buying in senior marketing skills The Centre currently generates around 30-40 leads for the West Midlans region. The rest comes from the Directors themselves 3

The desired situation What you need (based on the feedback you have provided): An increase in local visibility to the right types of business (those with the right level of turnover) An increase in clients More Marketing Directors on the books Your stakeholders/audiences Businesses with small marketing teams and turnover of £3m -£30m Senior Marketing Directors looking for a portfolio career (need to ‘play’ where they ‘play’) To Note: Nigel will be funding any PR/Comms himself. He’s looking to drive an income of £100k as Regional Director Nigel will be doing around 2 days p/w initially for the Centre with the aim of growing that as income from the increases Regional director acts as the facilitator and ‘matches’ the business brief to the right Director’s skills 4

The desired situation Efforts need to be centred around amplifying your brand and market positioning: Brand amplification – re-establishing The Marketing Centre as the MARKET LEADER, voice of authority and trusted partner - visiting brand messaging and using it more overtly in all comms Informing potential candidates about the work of The Marketing Centre - engendering TRUST Sharing positive outcomes from existing customers and attracting new ones – GIVING CONFIDENCE Improving business outcomes - DELIVERING AND BEING PERCEIVED AS QUALITY Enhancing relevancy to organisations of target size – GROWING REACH AND IMPACT Highlighting the work that The Marketing Centre has undertaken - DEMONSTRATING GROWTH AND INNOVATION AS MARKET LEADER

Marketing and Comms Toolbox - a Pick 'n' Mix Approach Strategic communications options and tactics that can be flexed to suit your organisational requirements and priorities. Sit back - there are quite a few!

Communications options fuelling the customer pipeline Networking and events – virtual and F2F: Harnessing the power of LinkedIn marketing via targeted groups and forums: See end of slides for examples. There are many regional business groups on LinkedIn with thousands of members. These are generally easy to join and start conversations in and could be a great route to new business audiences in the region. By generating new content relevant to the Midlands such as new case studies this will give you a strong narrative to share with these audiences Visibility at F2F events and networking meetings is very powerful and shouldn’t be underestimated. Nigel has advised that Chamber of Commerce has not been historically successful for the pipeline but there are other avenues – some of which would require a membership fee e.g. -Business Networking Events and Exhibitions in the Midlands | The Midlands Business Network – offer a range of live and virtual business networking events, business exhibitions and has a network of over 65,000 businesses. Membership fee is £39.50 p/m - FSB The Federation of Small Businesses | FSB, The Federation of Small Businesses – might not have the right turnover clients but equally, could still be a good place for some visibility

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Communications options fuelling the customer pipeline

Case studies: Content is King – there is a lack of West Midlands case studies profiled on the Marketing Centre website Creating a set of regional case studies that demonstrates the impact The Marketing Centre has had on both the bottom line and on the marketing strategy of local businesses, is important. This will help drive confidence and interest from new clients These case studies will also be highly PR-able in key B2B and B2C business focused media The Marketing Centre can profile these on their own social channels and Nigel can use on his

Communications options fuelling the customer pipeline PR –able stats: WOW with some high impact figures Over the last 13 years what is the combined impact in £££££ uplift that the West Midlands region of The Marketing Centre has driven? If that’s not a figure that can be obtained, let’s find out what the national figure across the entire Marketing Centre and use that as a hook to sell in Nigel for some media interviews with local business media (B2B and B2C) and introduce Nigel as the new Regional Director on a mission to help businesses grow and flourish in the region. Some high impact figures that attract attention from key local media positioned around a thought-leadership piece from Nigel could be very powerful Survey the current pool of Directors in your region to get some insights about the level of value they bring to businesses. This could also include some quirky insights about their experiences and the impacts they have had. An easy and cost-effective survey Monkey could be set up with questions developed and agreed in collaboration with Nigel Marketing Maturity Score for the Midlands The Centre has these set up on the regional pages – can we find out an overarching score for the Midlands that can be used in some PR narrative for use on social media and across other content opportunities?

Communications options fuelling the customer pipeline Sell Nigel as a marketing spokesperson to regional media In collaboration with Nigel, design an easy to digest media biography that can be sent to key media offering Nigel up as a spokesperson on various business and marketing topics across the region Media are always looking for new spokespeople from a range professions and knowing they can call on you can often be a great opportunity to enhance profile and visibility across target audiences Webinars The Marketing Centre delivers a number of webinars. We would suggest Nigel leads one of these. This gives more West Midlands- focused content to use across social and PR channels

Communications options fuelling the customer pipeline In focus and in conversation features/sound-bites with the Directors in your region – fireside chats A great way to showcase the variety of talent and experience that the Centre has in its Marketing Directors – suggest focus on some from the Midlands region to keep it relevant Record a short video with them – quick fire questions and/or more relaxed chat – there are a variety of ways to approach them Share on your social media (LinkedIn especially to engage your 500+ followers) and ask The Centre to do the same across their social channels Opportunity to showcase sector and industry expertise within the Marketing Director skillset too which could then be used to directly target certain industries and sectors in the region Blog: Is there any way of starting a blog from the West Mids region led by you? Could it be hosted on your regional page on the Centre’s website? If so, this is another great way to use content to drive more interest and hopefully more leads

Communications options - targeting more directors and supporting existing Toolkit for existing Marketing Directors Create a downloadable toolkit and guide for Directors to use to help them Market themselves to local businesses Easy social media assets and pre-written post content to help them target businesses LinkedIn groups for Marketing Directors Encourage existing Directors to join these groups and talk about The Marketing Centre, championing the portfolio career from their own experiences This could also be a great place for Nigel to have visibility as the Regional Director to do the same Targeted Talent Acquisition Create a suite of targeted communications to send directly to qualified Marketing Directors to recruit

Communications options - targeting more directors and supporting existing Other Options Regular column writing in local publications Podcast and invite people to join Marketing Buzz live sessions - invite business people to join a live mentoring call as a group Create a Facebook Group / Linkedin Group of businesses to support and mentor each other Meet in different business each quarter to discuss marketing options and ideas - a network session run by The Marketing Centre Write a digital newsletter and share tips and ideas as well as case studies and “how to”s Case Studies using data as the driver for content - the % increase in sales etc Targeting content different marketing disciplines rather than just “marketing” - ie for Digital Growth / SEO Impact / The Use of Apps vs Websites etc

About Us

About Us We're a limited company, comprising two, highly experienced FT members of staff. We are not a big company and don't have plans to be; rather we are two highly experienced comms and marketing consultants with over 30+ combined years in the profession who provide both strategic and tactical delivery for our clients We only work with clients where we know we have great skills alignment and can make a difference Where we don't have certain skills ourselves (we'd love to say we can deliver every tactic for our clients personally, but we are the first to recognise that for some tasks, other people have those skills), so we work with trusted freelance partners to deliver certain actions/tactics if/as needed Our overall approach means clients receive a personalised service. Whoever pitches to you, is who you'll be working with on the majority of your account We own the relationships with our clients personally and, both strategically and tactically, deliver the outputs ourselves wherever possible. This helps us keep costs realistic and efficient for our clients The only downside is securing our time well in advance so we can make sure we deliver what you need when you need it

Our ServicesMary Bawn - Director and Communications Consultant: Animal Welfare, Pet, Vet Sector Expertise

Full-service comms support including PR, internal comms, marketing Digital marketing and management Social media management Crisis management Business growth strategies Research Strategy development Copywriting Website builds and ongoing management Creative services Paid advertising

Mary has worked for and with a number of animal welfare organisations and charities in the UK across both the Agri and CA&E sectors and has demonstrable experience in delivering highly successful and awardwinning communications work across the full spectrum of marketing communications skillsets.

Mary would be the primary Comms lead on your account; her experience includes holding the post of Head of Communications at the UK’s leading Veterinary Charity, PDSA, overseeing all marketing communications and press relations strategies for 18 years, covering both B2B and B2C communications across a diverse range of projects and campaigns. Today, she is a founding partner at The LaunchBox leading communications management for a number of vet/animal sector clients including RUMA CA&E and RUMA Agri. She has also worked with Joii VET AI and AMTRA previously. Mary is also a Trustee for RCVS Knowledge.

Tracy Cross – Director Tracy brings over 30 years of strategic marketing, business change and business growth experience to the table. She has worked with large organisations such as HSBC, B&Q, Amersham Healthcare at board level and worked for 2.5 years at PDSA as Group Head of Marketing responsible for brand development and transforming the 15 marketing function.

How we work and what we offer Full-service comms support including PR, internal comms, marketing Digital marketing support Social media support/management Crisis management Business growth strategies Research Strategy development Copywriting Website builds and ongoing management Creative services Paid advertising

We work in partnership and collaboratively with our clients - we very much see ourselves as an extension of your team. You are experts in your business field, and we can’t possibly know everything. But bringing your expertise and our Comms and Marketing skills together, that’s where the magic can happen - but it’s a two-way street We are more than just Comms/Marketing – our experience means we are a critical friend to our clients Collaboratively agree KPI’s, activity plans, budgets and sign off on these before work commences We find it works best if there is a nominated lead in an organisation who is responsible for working with us. This ensures consistency in managing the account and it ensures tactical ways of working such as agreeing approvals paths, signing off on activity plans etc can be managed efficiently and seamlessly We work with clients on both a retained or more flexible basis and will work with you to agree what works best Agreeing scopes of work and likely time commitments in advance is important; we can be agile, but we also want to make sure we’re available for you which is why planning ahead wherever possible is important We encourage open, honest feedback. It’s how we all learn

Our values Our values form the foundation for how we work and what we stand for. And because we’re a creative team and like lots of integration and synergy, it will probably come as no surprise that in true marketing cliché style, we’ve aligned our values to the acronym of our company name, The LaunchBox (TLB).

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Paul Hallett Director Joii Pet Vet / Vet-AI totally hing she does. She is yt er ev in l na sio es of Mary is pr s with efficiency and tie du r he t ou s ie rr ca dependable and perience into not just ex d an ht sig in er H of an . expediency rategy and planning st e th so al t bu s, ue communication iss le. MA has been invaluab RU e lik n tio sa ni ga or -one ith Mary on a one- to w ng ki or w d fin I , t te On a personal no r knowledge, suppor he ith w b, jo y m of s sure ideas. basis one of the plea d bouncing around an g sin us sc di of s and openness in term Chris Lloyd Secretary General RUMA Agri

The cost of our support At The LaunchBox we work to tight protocols of delivering agreed KPIs against budget spend. Communications has to deliver against agreed objectives, and we work closely with all our clients to agree these up front and report back on a monthly basis. Our daily and hourly rates are as per the table below. For all our clients we provide monthly invoices and itemised breakdowns of all work delivered so that you have full transparency. At this stage in our discussions with AMTRA, it is hard to say exactly what costs will look like until we have agreed what tactics fit best with your organisational objectives, but we would be happy to work with you to define a package that works within your budget. Activity

Cost

Director – standard day rate

£650

Director – standard hourly rate

£85

Creative support – hourly rate

£45

We offer a wide range of other services including - campaign and project delivery, digital consultancy, data acquisition strategies, market research & marketing strategy, internal and external comms. For more details of our services visit: Marketing Consultancy | The LaunchBox. Tailored quotes can be provided for any other requirements. Please note that for the creation of bespoke assets such as videos or animations, these would need to be costed out separately. For any travel to client meetings costs will be charged back for travel, subsistence and accommodation.

For specific projects we can discuss fixed fees for delivery of these and are open to have discussions with our clients to discuss financial arrangements to meet their budgets.

NB All costs are exclusive of VAT. We are VAT registered so VAT will be added to all invoices Terms: net end of month for payment (14 days).

Appendices

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