Marketing Articles

For many who aren’t able to travel abroad – 2020 is the summer of the staycation.

For those who’ve spent months cooped up at home, there’s finally a chance to have a change of scene, whether choosing the beach, countryside, a city break, or even just a day-trip.

It’s easy to forget when you live here that the UK is a wonderful country filled with beauty spots ripe for discovery, from the historic likes of the Lake District to hidden glamping gems in North Yorkshire.  The UK offers a huge choice of holiday options from hotels and B&Bs to holiday villages, camping and glamping to fantastic ways to spend a day out from amusement parks to national parks!

MAKE YOUR BRAND PART OF EVERYONE’S SUMMER

After all, it’s not just people who deserve a great summer, businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic too.

The UK’s hotel, leisure and tourism industries are experiencing a surge in business.  What better way to leave a lasting reminder of your brand than to provide your guests and visitors with a branded merchandise gift that they can use all summer, on their staycations, and in their homes or gardens.

A promotional product with your branding on it will be highly appreciated and can link your brand with memories of a great day out or a treasured holiday.  It could be anything from a frisbee to use at the beach or the park, to headphones for long journeys. Then, of course, there’s our famous British weather, predictable only in its unpredictability. Umbrellas and ponchos are as important in any British summer preparations as sunscreen and shades! The options are endless.

BRANDED PRODUCTS CAN ALSO BE HIGHLY PRACTICAL

If people are going out and about, they still need to stay safe and prepared, including on public transport where they must wear face coverings.  Social distancing means there are frequently queues for shops we’d normally nip in and out of.  At tourist spots and public places, queues are likely to be even longer, especially on a hot day.  At times like this, or on picnics, items like water bottles and cool bags can come in handy as well as fans, suncream and refreshing face spritzers. A promotional gift that can be used in the summer will definitely make someone’s day and leave a long-lasting impression of your brand.

STAYING IN IS THE NEW GOING OUT

As not everyone is going to be able to get away, there’s plenty of enjoyment still to be had at home.  A back garden barbecue with some friends, something we might’ve taken for granted last summer, suddenly seems like the highlight of the social calendar. Barbecue and garden-related merchandise will be used all summer giving your brand countless opportunities of exposure.

For families trying to balance working from home and school holidays, finding ways to have fun together can be tricky to say the least.  It’s important, however, to maintain as much work-life balance as possible, even if your work and family lives are happening simultaneously in the same space.

Here are some simple ideas to make your ‘staycation at home’ more memorable:

• treat yourself to a home spa day
• host a movie festival in the garden
• hold a cooking masterclass
• reach your fitness goals
• build a fort
• enjoy a craft night
• get stuck into board games and puzzles
• catch up on some much-needed sleep
• start (or finish!) those DYI projects you’ve been thinking about

MAXIMISE YOUR ROI

ROI of promotional merchandise is higher than any other promotional medium. As many businesses may be experiencing budget cuts, it is more cost-effective for businesses to invest their marketing budgets in branded products rather than in other promotional mediums. For example, the cost per impression of a promotional drinkware product that is worth £5 can be as low as £0.035

At GeigerBTC, we have the capability to get summer promotional gifts straight to you or your customers and contacts, helping your brand to become part of someone’s well-earned staycation.

Missing the Office?

Those of us who’ve been working from home are now familiar with the pros and cons: the lack of commute, comfort of familiar surroundings, and option to work in your slippers are balanced out by children running around, the temptation of a lie-in, and the lack of IT support when your online meeting tools are not working properly.

We are also well-acquainted with the ups and downs of office life — and there’s plenty to miss: the weekly lunch with friends, the banter, the watercooler chats, the immediacy of asking questions and getting answers in person, the creative energy of meetings, and basic interaction with other adults to name a few.

With teams working remotely, ad hoc conversations and quick decisions have been made far more difficult.  The sense of community, of all being in this together, may still be there, but it is harder to maintain when everyone is working at different times in different places.

When we do go back into the office, all those things we miss will return but take place in a new culture of social distancing and PPE — two terms most had never heard at the start of 2020.  If we’re going to return to our desks or workstations and discuss what we’ve been binging on Netflix whilst grabbing a coffee, it’s got to be in a safe environment.

The Importance of Offices Being COVID-Secure

The British public is being urged to do their duty in tackling the spread of coronavirus.  Now those who will be venturing back to work will reasonably be expecting their employers to protect them as best as possible.

Based on government guidelines, the British Standards Institute (BSI) have set out new guidelines on safe working that can be downloaded here.

But what will a COVID-secure workplace look like?  In terms of staffing, it will be quieter for the foreseeable future.  Teams of workers are likely to work in rotation with staggered start and finish times; some people will alternate between the office and home.

Workspaces are starting to look different, social distancing meaning that desks must be kept far apart, one-way systems need to be put in place, screens must separate those in spaces that cannot be distanced.

We’ve probably realised when out shopping that we’re always touching communal surfaces.  Some of the more hi-tech offices will be countering this with technology.  Apps will be able to open doors and order coffees.  We’ve had contactless payment for some time; and many businesses are moving towards contactless working environments.

Where contact cannot be avoided, PPE will have to be used; people will need gloves, hand-sanitiser, and the tools to regularly clean their workspaces.

It will all seem very unusual at first, but will soon become a natural way of working.  At GeigerBTC, we have considered your wellbeing by offering PPE alongside the promotional products we’re known for.  Take a look here.

Use the Power of Post to Stay Connected

As business slowly and carefully resumes, reaching out to existing and potential clients and customers is more important than ever.  With remote working increasing email noise to unprecedented levels, one sure way of cutting through and connecting is by using promotional merchandise — proven to be more effective than any amount of email or social media marketing.

Promotional merchandise has multiple benefits.  For clients or staff working remotely, receiving a surprise in the post could make their day, helping them feel valued and connected to you.  This, in turn, can boost morale, something precious in these turbulent times.

You can check out our extensive range of working-from-home merchandise ideas for everyone from customers to employees here.

The Right Promotional Merchandise, Safely Provided

The new regulations apply to almost every workplace for the foreseeable future.  At GeigerBTC, we’ve adapted our day-to-day processes and working practices to make sure that we are completely certified and compliant with relevant guidelines.  We have the capacity and workforce to dispatch premium PPE and branded products or promotional clothing to your door, wherever that door is.

Contact us

Whether your needs are social distancing measures for your workplace or PPE, safety or wellness products for your teams, or corporate merchandise please get in touch with us on [email protected] to discuss your requirements.

Hand sanitiser gel – a key commodity

 

We have been working with our supply chain to very high ethical standards, all the way down the line. 

GeigerBTC are still open for business. During this time, we will be continuing to support businesses and help ensure your requirements are met efficiently and safely. 

As we supply products for organisations with key workers, our factory has also remained open during this period to ensure the supply of essential goods can be maintained. However, we are adhering to government guidelines to ensure that our workplace remains a safe environment for all members of our team. 

Stand Sanitiser is the ideal choice to help your teams and your customers stay safe and protected.

• Touch-free dispensing.
• Recommended for shop entrances, educational establishments, sporting venues and all public places.
• Drip catcher keeps floors and sink areas clean.
• Wall-mounted or freestanding station options (push action). 

Our aim is to offer high quality, safe and compliant hand sanitiser gel and PPE products at the best market price possible.
Please get in touch at [email protected] if we can help in any way.

We’re all in this together

As we all try to adjust to the unprecedented times we are facing, we at GeigerBTC are trying our very best to respond to the fast-changing environment while staying committed to our purpose.

It’s business as usual at GeigerBTC and we would like to reassure you that we are confident that COVID-19 will not significantly affect our business. With the collective experience, training and skills across our team, we hope to continue to provide the high levels of service and quality our customers and partners have become accustomed to.

Sadly, we are seeing many events around the world being cancelled, and the widespread impact of the virus is reaching all industries. Please do keep talking to us about your changing circumstances and your concerns, and together we will try and find the best solution for you and your business.

Our Distribution Centre in Hayes remains fully operational and dedicated to fulfilling orders and servicing our webshop clients. Our plan is to keep this facility open for as long as we are able to.

With regards to our supply chain, we are confident that our widespread supply chain can continue to fulfil all orders and meet with our clients’ high expectations and deadlines, however we are advising all our clients to plan ahead to minimise risk. We will, of course, notify clients immediately of any disruption to supply and orders as early as we can, and we will proactively find alternative solutions should this situation arise.

We are 100% committed to providing the safest working environments for our employees and we are fully adhering to the ongoing guidance from the UK Government. To this end, we have taken the following measures:

• We have seamlessly moved a large proportion of our employees to work from home. Our systems and processes are fully set up to function through remote use, bringing absolutely no disruptions to our day to day business.
• We are encouraging regular staff contact by video conferencing, particularly using Teams, to keep connected and in turn, enhance our employees’ well-being.
• Meetings with our clients are now being conducted on the telephone.
• All meetings with external suppliers and partners due to take place at one of our three UK locations have been temporarily postponed or moved to a video conferencing format.
• Any members of our team returning from overseas trips are required to self-isolate for 7 days in line with Government guidance.
• In our offices, we are practicing physical distancing by maintaining a 6-foot distance from others.
• Hand sanitisers have been placed throughout our offices and we are continually sharing advice and information regarding best health practices with our team.

Thank you for continuing to work with us.

We will continue to assist, service and inspire.

Stay healthy and safe.

#GeigerBTCteam

From left to right: Frank Murphy – Managing Director at GeigerBTC, Fran Stobart – Director at Shout Promotional Merchandise, Carrie Benn – Director at Shout Promotional Merchandise, Jo-an Lantz – CEO at Geiger, Chris McKee – Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Geiger

London, UK October 15^th 2019: UK Distributor GeigerBTC (https://www.geigerbtc.com), a subsidiary of Geiger, a multi-generational family owned and operated company in the US, announced it is acquiring London based distributor Shout Promotional Merchandise as part of their continued expansion strategy to support clients in the UK and across Europe.

Shout Promotional Merchandise has been in business since 2003 and has gained a reputation as one of the most innovative promotional merchandise distributors in the UK. GeigerBTC made the acquisition as part of their ongoing strategy to support the needs of global customers in North America, Europe and worldwide.

Shout Promotional Merchandise Director Carrie Benn said, “It’s such an exciting opportunity for us to be part of a global company. The facilities Geiger has will enhance the service we give to our clients”.

Shout Promotional Merchandise Director Francina Stobart said, “After 16 years of leading Shout, we are very much looking forward to a new challenge”.

“We could not be more pleased that Fran Stobart, Carrie Benn and the team from Shout are joining GeigerBTC,” states Geiger President Jo-an Lantz. “Shout has a creative, energetic vibe, with a large team of professional marketeers with the experience of working with premier international companies.”

Frank Murphy, Managing Director of GeigerBTC adds “Fran and Carrie are two exceptional business owners, they have built an amazing company, we could not be prouder to welcome them into the Geiger family”.

About Geiger and GeigerBTC

Headquartered in Lewiston, Maine, Geiger is the largest family-owned and managed promotional products distributor in the world. Geiger operates from offices across the US and London, England and is affiliated with over 450 independent sales representatives. Geiger is a socially conscientious company, providing proactive, comprehensive marketing solutions to their clients. GeigerBTC was founded in 1977 and is based in Hayes, Middlesex and has a staff of 80. A full service brand marketing firm, GeigerBTC offers on-site decorating, distribution, fulfilment, web development and customer corporate programs, and employee store expertise.

Following recent global contract wins, GeigerBTC has opened a Distribution Centre and office in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Ideally located for goods arriving from all points of the compass, the DC will act as a hub for deliveries throughout Europe and the Middle East. The office will also serve as a central point for customs clearance. The location inside the European Union simplifies compliance with value-added tax requirements for EU customers outside the UK, according to Geiger.

Frank Murphy, Managing Director of GeigerBTC said “Having our own Distribution Centre, and office in Rotterdam enables us to further improve services to our many clients with operations in EMEA. This also protects our clients and us from any potential consequences of Brexit, if and when it happens.”

Jo-an Lantz, President and CEO of Geiger, shared “Clients are demanding global services for their merchandising programs, with local marketing support. The ability to provide a global supply chain is critical, and the new Rotterdam location supports our international strategy”.

About Geiger and GeigerBTC

Headquartered in Lewiston, Maine, Geiger is the largest family-owned and managed promotional products distributor in the world. Geiger operates from offices across the US and Europe and is affiliated with over 450 independent sales representatives. Geiger is a socially conscientious company, providing proactive, comprehensive marketing solutions to their clients. GeigerBTC was founded in 1977 and is based at Hayes in Middlesex and has a staff of 76. A full-service brand marketing firm, GeigerBTC offers on-site decorating, distribution, fulfilment, web development and corporate customer programs, and employee store expertise.

Elon Musk is definitely a man who needs no introduction, engineer, inventor, magnate, billionaire, visionary… the list goes on! He is most recently renowned for being CEO of electric car company Tesla, and his aspirational aerospace program SpaceX which successfully launched the Falcon Heavy Rocket this week! Elon has stated that all his professional goals revolve around his want to revolutionise the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming, creating sustainable energy, reducing the risk of human extinction and taking life to the solar system through establishing a human colony on Mars. It is this amazing and eccentric desire that puts him in the forefront of the world’s influencers.

For starters we shall begin with the name of the company, a name he attributes it’s creation of, to his ex-wife British actress Talulah Riley, “The Boring Company.”  This is a name that not only explains what the company does, but also provides comic relief. The play on the word ‘boring’ is a fantastic example of great PR material, I have seen hundreds of news articles all using the word ‘boring’ in a different contexts, gaining exposure that he possibily would not have attained without the smart word play on the name.

The part that particular interests us here at BTC Group was his marketing ploy of using the sale of promotional branded ‘boring company’ hats to raise funds for his company. The hat is a simple black baseball cap embroidered with the company logo (a logo he attributes the creation of to director JJ Abrams!) Elon only advertised the sale of ‘The Boring Company’ hats on his through his twitter account, but again thanks to the PR power of ‘The Boring Company’ name, word soon spread, and it was featuring in articles across the world. According to Elon in his own words he was going to build that tunnel ‘one hat at a time.’ In just over a month the 50,000 baseball caps Elon had invested in sold out, raising approximately one million dollars through sales!

It is this combination of utilising his social media influence, the cleverness of the company name and promotional product marketing that makes this campaign the marketing masterclass it has become. Believe it or not he then moved on to fundraising through $600 flamethrowers, another complete success, although we’re not too sure how well branded flamethrowers would go down in the UK promotional market!

In last week’s ‘thank you blog series’, during the episode of thanking people for their business, I briefly mentioned the topic of giving the customer a personalised marketing experience. Personalised marketing can be summed up as when a company aims to deliver individualised marketing material to suit the specific customer’s needs and requirements. These needs and requirements can be based on website behaviour (e.g. which parts and/or products on the website a customer visits tracked by cookies), data profiling and personal influence.

Amongst those who know what personalised marketing is, there is a common misconception that personalised marketing only works in a business to consumer environment. This is totally incorrect as buyers in a business to business environment are people too and are influenced exactly in the same manner as consumer buyers do. Ultimately there is a decision maker in every B2C and B2B purchase, personalised marketing material just need to be adjusted to that decision maker.

Before the Digital age, personalised marketing on a large scale was nigh on impossible, but now with the introduction of computers and the internet, everything is measurable. Through the data from customer buying habits and yearly spend combined with customer profiling, you can really narrow down what your customer is likely to buy and when they are going to buy it. For example you know that ‘

Customer X’ spends Y on buying items in Category Z during April every year. Using this information in February/March you can send an e-mail to Customer X, asking if they are due to place their order in April, as there have been some updates in Category Z which also work well with items in Categories A, B and C.

This communication not only encourages the customer to purchase from you by putting yourself in the forefront of their mind, but it also encourages them to spend more with your company by introducing them to product categories they may not have seen before. This example is just using three measurable factors, imagine how personalised you can make the buying experience with more identifiable information.

How does personalised marketing work with promotional products? This form of marketing is all about providing a customer experience that is unique to that person. As I mentioned in the thank you blog, we are seeing more and more of our manufacturing suppliers investing in machinery that can individually brand names. This trend is laregly down to people wanting to provide this personalised experience for the customer. The great thing a personalised product does is, it adds percieved value to the product. In the UK I specifically remember in my school years how cool it was to have stationary with your name on it, we don’t lose this feeling years later, products just seem to hold, if not a higher monetary value, a higher sentimental value when they have your name on them. Here at BTC Group we obviously love branding, but we definitely love to see branding in unique ways, a fantastic example of this are these amazingly designed personalised calendars. Calendars are always useful, no matter who you are or what job role you are in, organisation is key! Each page has an different design incorporating your name in some way.

Your marketing strategy should be at the heart of everything you do; almost all aspects of a thriving business rely on a successful marketing strategy. Like every aspect of business, marketing has changed incredibly over the last 20 years. All marketers want to know what’s the next big thing, how do you keep up to date with such a fast paced infrastructure? In the same manner of keeping up to date with marketing it is just as critical to keep up to date with security protocols. As I stated previously cyber security threats are continuously changing, and evolving what you thought protected you yesterday, may not protect you tomorrow.

The first matter you should address is re-evaluating your policies to combating cyber security risks. Now I’m not saying all of your policies, but any that could help in the prevention against malicious attacks.  If you haven’t got one in place already I would thoroughly suggest the implementation a cyber security policy. The main purpose of this document is to have a resource that informs all employees, contractors or anyone that has been provided access to company technology, what the obligatory procedures are regarding all cyber security issues. The document should eradicate all grey area regarding how users are meant to protect their machines, and digital assets, outlining their privileges and responsibilities.

One of the methods of spreading a virus, I mentioned earlier, is through plugging in an infected device to your corporate network, one way to avoid this is by having a ‘bring your own device policy. This would dictate how and what devices people can use at the office, and whether or not they can plug in their own devices into their work computers. This may seem a little unfair to ban all use of BYOD, but in critical situations where this has been the gateway to cyber-attacks on more than one occasion within the company, it may well be worth doing so. Other policies such as your privacy policy and IT usage policy should also be reviewed and updated regularly.

2017 definitely has seen its fair share of cyber security news stories, this current day and age we live in is filled with a plethora of cyber security threats, from uncountable sources. It is partly because of these malicious threats that saw the need for an update in the ways company store and process data, hence the introduction next year of GDPR (to learn more about GDPR contact us to recieve our GDPR Whitepaper)

Just to give you a starting point statistic, according to a report from pandalabs, in Q3 of 2016 18,000,000 new malware samples were captured in that quarter alone, averaging out at approximately 200,000 a day. The scary part is this is the statistic only for the malware that was captured by one single company; the totality of malicious malware that bypasses the system is unknown, and continuously growing on a daily basis, which is why it’s harder and harder for companies to combat it.

Have you heard about the concept of ransomware? Ransomware is now the number one security concern for organisations across the world. It is a sophisticated malicious attack which unlawfully gains access to devices and files, it blocks access to them by encrypting them and displays message on the user’s screen to pay X amount to regain access to those encrypted files. It spawned in Russia between 2005 and 2006, and during its early years of conception mainly targeted smaller files like images and word documents,

To give you an example of a wide scale ransomware attack, it happened very recently. A cyber-attack known as ‘WannaCry’ caused an incredible amount of havoc across the NHS in May, which not only led to patients not being seen, but also caused for urgent operations to be cancelled. Within just 3 days ‘WannaCry’ had targeted around 200,000 organisations across the world. The hackers found a flaw in Microsoft software, and used this to spread across networks encrypting all the files.

Another enormous area for concern when it comes to company cyber security is phishing and whaling. We will discuss these areas in next weeks blog episode!