Hillarys

Giving Hillarys a video strategy to run with

Team Involved

Laura Cohen
Jonathan English
Merrin Jensen

The brief

Hillarys’ vision was to become the lead supplier of made to measure window furnishings. They were already putting video content out there to achieve this, but knew a video strategy backed by insights, data and research was needed to gain the most out of their efforts.

Hillarys were after a strategic video agency that could review their current activities, look at their goals and objectives, and give expert insight and recommendations. Enter Skeleton.

Business insights

The marketing objectives of this project were to raise brand awareness of Hillarys and enhance their customer journey to increase the number of customers who repurchase.

First off, we created a Pre-Flight Checklist, which is a highly-detailed document collating all the information we needed to immerse ourselves into the Hillarys brand and make sure all the key stakeholders were a part of the project. The checklist covered their organisational structure, audience personas, analytics, brand documentation, marketing plans, trends, suppliers, sales process and much, much more. This was a key, kickstarting step to the process.

We then hosted a workshop with Hillarys’ key stakeholders to document their vision, their objectives, complete a SWOT analysis, and plan their 6 months, 1 year, 2 year and 3-year goals. During this workshop, we did an exercise to explore how they’re perceived in the market, create some needs-led messaging, and ensure the adoption of video can be tied into all the marketing channels they use.

Through these business insights, we identified three key issues which we could use to form the basis of video goals and strategy for Hillarys. The first was the core understanding of the role and importance of video within their business.

To tackle this, we recommended creating a refined briefing process and supporting documentation for video, defining how to measure video performance to prove ROI and marketing objectives, and present a ‘test and learn’ approach which focuses on their key marketing objectives.

The second issue was the adoption of video needing to consider all stages of Hillarys’ customer journey. For this, we needed to address the impact of implementing video at different stages of their customer’s journey, devise video concepts which compliment the entire Hillarys’ contact strategy, and create an approach that can be replicated consistently and cost-effectively to create cohesion between products and ranges.

The third and final issue discovered was communicating Hillarys’ core messages and the role that video can play in that. Traditional media has always struggled to get across some of the key communication messages so, Hillarys were looking to video to help change the perception customers had of the brand and attract new people to it.

Customer research and external market audit

Our market research came in two phases. First, we conducted an external market audit to produce a detailed market overview. This included market trends, research and analysis of competitors’ video content, a SWOT analysis of Hillarys’ own content, and a video content gap analysis.

Then, we talked to Hillarys’ customers and gained detailed insights into their buying habits and preferences for how video content could assist or influence their customer journeys. These findings were presented in our customer research report.

Through these two activities, we assessed Hillarys’ video marketing position and identified the kind of content we think would get the highest views and engagement for the brand.

We conducted customer research via telephone. Interviewing their customers directly meant we could find out things like what topics they would find useful and interesting, how and if they use video, what they think of Hillary's as a brand and their competitors, the channels they use, and how they feel when making buying decisions.

Tapping into the emotional state of the customer, their goals and rational thinking helped reinforce the need for video across the buyer journey, reveal some serious opportunities, and provide further recommendations for video content.

What they said

“As the importance of video continued to grow, we knew we needed to define a coherent strategy that gave us the tools and understanding to help us fully integrate video across our marketing.

Skeleton have been a real asset to helping us develop everything we needed and have supported us through the process with their expertise and insights. It’s been a pleasure working with them!”

— Christopher Mckay, Head of Brand Engagement at Hillarys

The results

We completed this strategy and broke it down to present back to Hillarys. We created a list of our video content ideas and prioritised the ones that will lead to an increase in brand engagement.

We’ve also focused on content that could be evergreen or, at the very least, have longevity onsite.

To maximise their budget, we also recommended ways that content could be amplified further in order to increase their ROI. Since receiving our video strategy, Hillarys have implemented many of our recommendations and are well on their way to creating remarkable videos that drive the results they’re after.