MEDIA AND MARKETING:AMONG THE finalists in the recent All Ireland Marketing (AIM) Awards was Teamwoodcraft, a joinery firm in Co Laois. The company didn't win an award but director Aisling Hurley believes that entering such business awards schemes constitutes smart marketing practice for SMEs.
Teamwoodcraft was established by Hurley and her husband Liam in 1995. The firm employs 27 people and has won business in Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland and the US.
Most of the Teamwoodcraft’s work involves fitting out hotels, pubs and leisure centres, but it also does bespoke one-off commissions such as home studies and office and shop fit-outs and games rooms.
Period joinery restoration is also a significant part of its business.
“Entering awards is a no-brainer for any small business,” Hurley says. “Unless there is an entry fee, all it’s costing you is your personal time. The benefit is all the ancillary publicity and it puts an onus on staff to work harder and better because you never know for sure when the judges are going to make an inspection call.”
Once your company is on the awards circuit, you may be noticed by other award organisers, as happened with Hurley this year. The organisers of the AIM awards spotted that Teamwoodcraft was a finalist in the annual Small Firms Association awards and invited her to submit an entry.
As a finalist in the SFA awards, Hurley was put on a strategic management course and credits making the awards shortlist with helping her company secure some new contracts.
However, Teamwoodcraft is prepared to write some marketing cheques too. Last year, the company spent €20,000 sponsoring the national conference of Network Ireland, which took place in Laois.
This event brought Hurley to the attention of the RTÉ television show Not Enough Hours. “When the episode featuring my story was broadcast, we got 2,500 hits to our website from as far afield as China and Dubai,” Hurley says.
This year Hurley’s €30,000 marketing budget is being spent on her new shop and showroom, as well as two trade shows in Dublin. However, she concedes that as customers take much longer to make purchasing decisions, it makes it harder to put money aside for marketing.
“Four of our customers have stalled on projects because they cannot get the finance to proceed. One of those contracts is worth €650,000. We have 27 staff and right now we are trying to keep everybody in a job and that’s what it’s all about.”
For any company reviewing its marketing spend, it is important to know how the economy is actually performing and in particular, what the trends are in consumer spending. To this end, the Marketing Institute of Ireland has teamed up with the Smurfit Business School at UCD to produce a quarterly Consumer Market Monitor.
The research is designed to track key indicators of confidence and activity in the Irish consumer market as a resource for marketers and the wider business community.
The publication starts by reviewing consumer confidence, which has a key influence on the level of spending in the market.
It then reviews consumer expectations with regard to future purchases of big ticket items including houses, cars and home improvements.
This is followed by a review of actual spending, saving and borrowing of various types. It also provides information on retail spending in total and for several major product categories.
According to UCD’s Prof Mary Lambkin: “The monitor delivers significant value for marketers and business planners by bringing key data together and presenting it in a way that is easy to interpret and use to support decision-making.”
For instance, the first monitor reveals that consumers spent 16 per cent less using credit cards during the first three months of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. This won’t be news to any retailer, but at least by keeping an eye on such trends they can decide whether to batten down the hatches completely or keep persevering.
The monitor describes as “encouraging” the fact that there was a slight lift in consumer confidence in March and April.
The monitor contains a lot of historical trends and is slightly less impressive at analysing the most recent data.
The first edition, unveiled on the MII website on May 25th, does not take account of retail sales data published by the Central Statistics Office on May 21st. The monitor can be downloaded from www.mii.ie/cmm.
