When business began to dwindle at McMurray & Co, an 80-year-old family-run drapers in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, brothers Steven and Alan McMurray knew they needed to act fast to ensure their business survived through a period of rapid change in the retail industry.
The brothers had been selling a small range of hockey equipment from the draper shop since 2001, and over the next few years it began to take over the old business. Eventually Total Hockey was born, a dedicated sports retailer selling hockey equipment, from sticks to shin pads and socks to shoes.
“We’ve never looked back. We were already established as a [draper] business and just transferred the skillset over. Our goal was simple – if we could sell a stick a day we’d be doing OK,” Alan McMurray says.
While transitioning from selling cloth to hockey gear may have been unorthodox, it wasn’t incidental. Steven had always been a huge hockey fan and Alan was a keen goalkeeper from the age of eight, playing for Banbridge and Annadale hockey clubs. “In 2010 we expanded our goalkeeping department to become one of the largest in the UK and Europe. As an ex-goalie I can do fittings for customers both in store and online,” he says proudly.
Fifteen years since its inception and Total Hockey is the largest specialist field hockey retailer in Northern Ireland and one of the biggest in the UK, with a state of the art bricks and mortar shop, a hugely successful online store – developed with Belfast-based Export Technologies – and widespread recognition. Last year Total Hockey won retail website of the year at the Digital Advertising Northern Ireland Awards and came runner up in the social media category. It has also received funding from Invest NI, Northern Ireland’s regional economic development agency.
The brothers have had help along the way to get where they are. They started using Facebook to grow the business just before the London Olympic Games in 2012 with the help of Des Mulholland, CEO of The Retail Consultant, an organisation that helps e-commerce businesses with social media strategy and online customer engagement. “We put together a plan for the Olympics and increased our [reach] over the two weeks by posting and running competitions,” McMurray says. The strategy has been game-changing for the company’s online business, which has seen its online community grow exponentially.
“This was achieved by taking the business decision to make their Facebook page very much the social side of their business,” explains Mulholland. “They only post about 20% of content related to their products, sticks, shoes, etc. The rest is dedicated to the world of hockey.”
The company posts a lively mix of pre-match build up, post-match comment, topical hockey references, funny memes and fan callouts. It’s this content mix that has customers coming back to the company’s social media pages for more.
For the last year or so, the company’s focus has shifted towards Facebook paid adverts, especially using the Facebook conversion pixel, Mulholland adds. This tracks when a customer lands on the website and their actions while there – whether they view a product, add it to their basket, pay for it, etc.
The success of the company’s adverts has been in their simplicity, Mulholland says. “We design easily digestible Facebook adverts that attract consumers’ attention when they’re scrolling through their timeline ... We make sure each advert passes the three-second rule – will this advert attract someone’s attention in three seconds? – before it’s published. We also set up a series of dynamic product adverts that run continuously every day during the month. These re-target customers with the products they viewed on their last visit to the company’s website.”
These focused adverts drive traffic to the website and make it more likely that a visit will result in a sale. From July to the end of October this year, the business saw an 88% increase in online sales from the same period last year. “This growth is phenomenal for a small high street bricks and mortar store,” Mulholland adds. “It shows the business is bucking the trend when it comes to the national debate about the so-called death of the high street.”
It also makes Facebook Total Hockey’s most worthwhile marketing channel by far, McMurray says. The Facebook ad campaigns are delivering a return of £23 for every £1 they invest. In 2014, the brothers were invited to the launch of Facebook’s council for small and medium businesses in Europe, Middle East and Asia to talk about their experience.
“Our biggest successes have been the campaigns we plan for, like the Rio Olympics, which we started planning from December 2015,” McMurray says. In the company’s tongue in cheek video campaign, a goalkeeper named Rio is rejected from Britain’s Olympic team and resolves to try out 10 other Olympic sports instead.
By promoting the videos through its social media platforms – mainly on Facebook through adverts – the campaign received over 53,000 views over the two weeks of the games and saw a growth of 61% in sales.
“We’ve had challenges along the way, particularly keeping on top of the social media and advertising. We work hard with Des on this,” McMurray admits. “The other main challenge was for me to convince Steven to set up a dedicated budget for adverts at the start, but now there’s no issue because we see such a high return on investment.”
It hasn’t always been plain sailing, but with a new year ahead, and a tried and tested Facebook advertising and social strategy up their sleeves, the future looks bright for Total Hockey.
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Facebook sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Connected for Success hub.
