Jason Doggett, director of Muddy Plimsolls, explains why the business should win the marketing and PR category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
We’re a boutique fitness agency offering outdoor personal training in London. Run with my wife, Fiona, most of our marketing efforts are through our website, because it is a low cost strategy. Our most successful digital marketing campaign came to fruition in 2014.
Deciding to follow the recommendations of the SEO gurus, to create valuable content to attract traffic to our site, we came up with the idea of a free online map of outdoor exercise gyms - also known as trim trails - in London. Being fans of the old school trim trails, we knew many aren’t even properly marked on local park maps. So Fiona and I spent a summer travelling across London with our new baby in tow, testing, photographing and rating numerous locations, from Wormwood Scrubs to West Ham Park. When we published the map, nothing really happened. However, a few months later, when we promoted the map to fitness bloggers, the resource started to gain momentum.
The map has now attracted 26,000 visits to the website and enquiries into our business have tripled. Our Google rankings for outdoor exercise keywords have been boosted and we’ve had bookings from overseas clients visiting London.
The pinnacle of this experience, for me, came a couple of months ago when walking across Primrose Hill, north London. A young man came over the brow of the hill and stopped me to ask if this was “the direction to the trim trail”. I said it was and he went off. I knew he’d seen our map.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
