Guthy Renker’s Phil Haslam on the power of TV Advertising and targeting specific customer demographics (episode 008)

by Chloë Thomas
phil haslam guthy renker

Phil Haslam is the Managing Director Europe at Guthy-Renker, that puts him in charge of what Guthy-Renker do in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia and beyond.

Which includes 7 different skincare brands each with their own distinct Online Only eCommerce Business, including Pro Active (the biggest acne brand in the USA), and Sheer Cover among others. You’ve probably seen the TV ads!

Click to tweet: Guthy Renker’s Phil Haslam on the power of TV Advertising for an #eCommerce business on @eComMasterPlan Podcast

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About the business

Encompassing all the brands in Europe:

  • eCommerce Business Structure – Online Only
  • Product Range Scale – niche
  • On a Magento platform
  • 250,000 customers in the UK
  • 25 people in the London office, running Europe – strategy is to outsource to experts in each key area
  • Based in the UK, sell throughout Europe
  • Key widgets in the websites:
    • The tracking code that enables tracking the results of each TV advert
      to hear more about how this works and what it enables Phil and his team to do – listen to the full episode

Tips for finding the right Call Centre and making it work for you

  • Invest time in making your agents feel part of your brand, and training them
  • Ask them how they deal with traffic spikes
  • Ask what their distaster recovery system is
  • Ask how they recruit new staff
  • Find out if their weekend and nighttime teams are as good as the 9-5 team
  • Find the right size of call centre for you – you don’t want to be a minnow in their client roster, you want them to care about your business

Listen to more on this discussion in the podcast

Are celebrity endorsements powerful?

  • They give you cut through
  • Those who are used to being presenters rather than actors tend to be better
  • The celebrity should be a customer first, it has to be authentic (really authentic)
  • But really it’s all about the story – so a good customer testimonial can be more powerful than a celebrity

much more detail on this in the podcast!

Most Awesome Thing Right Now

That our products are high quality, and exclusive to us – makes marketing them much easier.

And the path that digital and TV are on curently – it’s a very symbiotic relationship that is evolving very fast in 2 areas:

  • Customer expectations
  • Technical changes

find out what this means for Guthy Renker in the podcast

On the Radar for the Coming Months

TV remains the primary route to acquiring new customers – but now moving to become more digital-led.

It’s a huge project and the biggest challenge for the company, including:

  • How to adapt the systems to give the subscriptions option flexibility the customer wants
  • Using social media for more than just customer service
  • Delivery
  • Recruit the right people to bring this nimble vision to life
  • Digital content

eCommerce Book Top Tip

  • Read what your customers say about you. Their emails, social media posts, reviews – then fix their problems.

eCommerce Traffic Top Tip

  • Urgency with exclusivity – it’s all about the power of the call to action. Every campaign should have an end date – that’s a true end date. Every campaign should have a unique & exclusive offer. (exclusive products help!)

Tool Top Tip

Start Up Top Tip

  • Start small & measure
    give yourself a chance to deliver to the customer, and measure the effectiveness of every marketing method. Then you’ll know how to grow.

If your business didn’t exist, which eCommerce Business Would you like to be Running?

Interview Links