1. Make your mark online:
Local business edition
WILL CRITCHLOW

2. Today‟s a great time to be a brand
We just launched our report on big brand content marketing

3. You get all the links

4. PR is easy
…or, as bad-pr.tumblr.com put it

5. „Time to start buying food
for Christmas‟ says
supermarket chain
bad-pr.tumblr.com

6. You rank for all kinds of things
This is [sheds]
And if you push the boundaries you get a gentle tap on the wrist (I don’t mean Argos)

7. Many updates seem to have
reinforced this bias

8. Back in 2008
Brands are how you sort
out the cesspool
-- Eric Schmidt (as Google CEO)
Led directly to the “Vince” update in February 2009

9. This is what you get when
you search
“Google Vince”
now

10. Caffeine enabled Panda and Penguin

11. “Brand update”
Allowing multiple listings from the same domain
August 2010

12. What about Hummingbird?
Human language = brands win (again)

13. The layout changes are just
as bad

17. Dr. Pete has 114 slides of this stuff:
http://dis.tl/beyond-blue-links

18. What‟s the little guy to do?

19. Firstly, it‟s not all rosy for
the big guys
(that‟s another presentation)

23. …and you have some
advantages

24. Agility

25. Passion

26. Humans with deep expertise
everywhere in the business

27. Sure. Sure. Whatever.

28. No. Really.

29. I want to tell you a story about this
guy

30. When I met him in 2007 he was a
restaurant consultant
“Keep an eye on these shining stars; you’ll be seeing a whole lot more of them”

31. and he‟d just opened a steak place in
Shoreditch

32. Will Beckett

33. The restaurant is Hawksmoor

36. He isn‟t a client of Distilled
(I wish! – here‟s why)

37. Remember
this result

41. Many of these searches
have embedded map / local
results

42. Will‟s restaurant is the furthest one
from the centre listed here

43. In fact, he‟s subsequently opened
more. He has two in this set

44. I said brands have the
advantages building links

45. They‟ve not done so badly
Guardian
TimeOut
Bloomberg
Evening Standard
Forbes
CNN
Telegraph
Jamie Oliver
Zagat
The Metro
Wired
Huffington Post
Tatler

47. I think they might have cheated

48. http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
Quite simply the best
steak you can get in
London
Zagat

49. http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
The best steak we have
ever eaten
Esquire

50. http://thehawksmoor.com/archives/press/tag/steak
Five Stars – tremendous
steaks
Time Out

51. Oh. And…

52. some of the best cocktails to be found in
the capital
– Ask Men

53. If you don‟t have great
product, I‟m not here to help

54. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/issie-lapowsky/how-paul-graham-becamesuccessful.html
start-ups fail for the same
reasons restaurants do:
Their food is bad
Paul Graham

55. …and yes, Hawksmoor may
not be particularly “small”
or “local” any more

56. The best article I‟ve found:
http://dis.tl/hawksmoor-sale
valued at
£35m

57. …but they were

58. So what‟s worked for them?

59. Apart from this…

60. …and this?

61. Nothing about restaurants
is replicable online
-- Will Beckett, Hawksmoor

62. Take the online offline
and vice versa

63. They have a book

64. They invite bloggers for steak
In fact, they started in 2009

65. Make it personal

66. Brand monitoring is HUGE

67. Will runs the Twitter account

68. No need for fancy tools
Of course these tools have their place, but small businesses manage without

69. Except in the core business
OpenTable lets them treat regulars and VIPs appropriately across multiple locations

70. Unsurprisingly
they win
plaudits for
their service
offline as well
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/443d5068-cc34-11e1-839a-00144feabdc0.html

71. Expect early results if
something is going to work

72. Most posts look like this
“431 people like this”

73. Photography is huge
Marketing team is now 4-strong – 1 is a photographer

74. Some Twitter use is similar to FB

75. More often it‟s about 1-1 service

76. And conversely, relatively
little engagement when it‟s
not going to work

77. They thought Instagram would work
like Facebook for photos
Apparently they saw little engagement

78. They have dabbled with Pinterest

79. They‟ve tried a few things on
YouTube
The Julep – 397 views

80. The most successful was also the
cheapest
Time lapse of the opening of Air Street – 4,815 views

81. They have a high bar for
spending money

82. Every £ is compared to hiring someone who can
“go to every local business and invite them in”
I have no particular reason to believe that they do this on butcher‟s bikes, nor wearing cravats

83. We spend about £500 /
month on Google and
£500 / month on Facebook
-- Hawksmoor

84. For this reason, evergreen works
Where do the best steaks in London come from?

85. Is it only Hawksmoor that
can do this?

86. Nope. BrewDog have done a great job

87. They love penguins
And video has been great for them too (260k views)

88. They have, um, a unique sense of humour
60k views on YouTube and another 165k views on Vimeo

89. Equity for Punks is genius
Equity for punks

90. 2012 achievements
Fastest Growing Company
in Scotland and … the
fastest growing food and
drink company in the UK
-- James from BrewDog

91. Real 2012 achievements
We projected ourselves
naked onto the houses of
parliament
-- James from BrewDog

92. OK.
Just steak and beer then?

93. Let‟s look at Lush

94. She also maxed all her
credit cards so she could
buy paints and varnishes
to revamp the shop
From “Cosmetics to Go” – the story of Lush

95. There’s a
book

96. All kinds of visual content works
Pinterest

97. All kinds of visual content works
Instagram – 200k followers

98. All feeding into Facebook

99. They‟ve also made video work

100. Just B2C?

101. Check out what people like
Geckoboard are up to

102. And Server Density
Full disclosure: we‟re investors

103. Let‟s end with some tips

104. Find a way to invest in photography

105. Video helps you “scale humans”
[Thanks to Chris @wistia for the example – see more here]

107. While traffic is low, use others‟
networks for feedback
FiveSecondTest / FeedbackArmy

108. Give access to people
(Including founders)
Qualaroo, Olark

109. You must have at least one of
TIME and MONEY
The founders of ponykit.co.uk fold gift vouchers into origami horses

110. Feed scarcity
See this on Facebook

111. Delight your existing customers

112. Build flywheels
I still really like Launchrock

113. To wrap up

114. Take the online offline
and vice versa

115. Make it personal

116. Focus on things that work
immediately

117. Keep your high bar for
spending money

118. Aim high

119. Thanks.
Any questions?
WILL CRITCHLOW
will.critchlow@distilled.net
@willcritchlow

120. Ingredients
Hawksmoor
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q3gJeCPp7Hs/TRCRCQfc3FI/AAAAAAAAApQ/9sf9djAqLgA/s1600/hawksmoor+outside.JPG
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TODza-6pmvg/UVd8v8tk1zI/AAAAAAAAABY/PhSFKQUwPac/s1600/The+Internship+Intl+Poster.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kessop/3987243989/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/texaseagle/9621931347/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/singapore2010/4916726882/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zense/1439805907/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparker/4754031315/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusjb/4507576159/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeegeek/3198844118/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjmartin/8869357235/
Thank you to Will Beckett for his permission to share all the juicy details