Essential Ormskirk needed a website that provided profiles for each one of its listed businesses. The major challenge was containing lots of information within a minimalist design. Each profile had to contain, map locations, offers bespoke to the business, client details such as opening hours, web domain and social media links. We also recommended each business have a content-based biography for SEO optimisation and more information for the card users.

Essential Ormskirk

We had to ensure that there was a level of automation. And each offer that was to be submitted through the CMS, needed to appear on the featured offers (if selected). Therefore the profile page of that specific business and the offers page under the selected category. We didn’t want to do this task multiple times. We needed a bespoke plugin that enabled the site to segment the request and places them accordingly on the front end.

For marketing, we needed to target a very niche area (Ormskirk/West Lancashire). We also had the challenge of making the local and regional communities care about the brand. In order for us to do this, we created a mystery campaign. Requesting that each business that joined the brand would be required to have several forms of publicity within their premises.

We placed business cards, table talkers, posters and flyers with the logo and QR codes as part of a mystery campaign. This linked to a discount and further information about the brand. We also created incentives to join the client’s social media channels. Over the first 6 weeks, we obtained over 1,500 organic followers/likes. And began to create marketing collateral and use it for paid adverts for the local businesses to utilise.

We provided bars and restaurants in the local area to stock them at 60% of the retail value. And they sold over 2,700.

Further to this, we also optimised the website and each page to become the first listing for each phrase. Including the businesses themselves. As a result, this enabled our client to increase its leverage over each business as part of a campaign over increased digital visibility. We then approached each client to show them that Essential Ormskirk would be top for phrases. Such as ‘Indian Restaurants in Ormskirk’. And then use this to get paid adverts within our client’s site.

Overall, Essential Ormskirk was bought by NSW Properties in 2016 and merged with NSW Rewards. Its social media channels were bought and its website was migrated. The platform was a resounding success with business and customers finding the site easy to use, clean and helping the local economy reach a young audience. Essential Ormskirk sold 6,400 cards in Ormskirk alone.