“Not only have they delivered an excellent service, TMA’s knowledge and experience as well as their creativity and marketing expertise has ensured a smooth launch, high visibility with immediate promising ongoing results.”
CChES (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Enterprise Solutions) is a new enterprise unit from the University of Southampton’s School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. CChES as an organisation specialises in expert level consultancy within chemistry and chemical engineering, as well as project delivery. They partner with companies and organisations around the UK and rest of the world, to drive discovery, innovation and problem solving.
CChES provides clients direct access to the world leading research capabilities and expertise within the University of Southampton to power their industry requirements. This includes academic expertise, state of the art equipment and future ready technology. The CChES team has 17 experts in a range of disciplines, including crystallography, X-ray diffraction, materials synthesis, chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance, molecular simulations, and more.
What marketing challenges did CChES face?
When creating a marketing strategy for chemical and chemistry engineering firm CChES, there were various challenges to address. As the enterprise was brand new and had just received funding, we had to build the brand and marketing strategy from the ground up. Based on prior research, there was a clear demand for chemistry and chemical engineering solutions in the industry, but no solidified brand to address it, this was therefore the reason for the creation of CChES. The brand needed to be professional and public facing, to formally represent not only the team of expert scientists, the facilities and technologies and the school of chemistry and chemical engineering, but also the University of Southampton and its wider impact goals.
CChES was unsure on their messaging approach, the internal team were from scientific disciplines, and were debating whether to approach the market using technical terms and phrases, or to go for more of an explanatory approach to educate the market. The team wanted to engage the right industry experts, and filter out general and unsuitable enquiries, due to the limited resources.
Our strategic marketing solution
To launch the marketing strategy for chemical and chemistry engineering firm CChES, we researched the target audience and built a series of branding elements and messaging tactics suitable for the market. Once the target audience was defined, we explored audience profiling, PR opportunities within the market, and created sector appropriate content. We created a suitable communication strategy with a defining brand tone of voice. This is often an area when organisations in highly technical industries such as CChES will have issues, as they don’t want to assume their audience are absolute experts in every field, but they don’t want to simplify the content too much and patronise their audience.
We conducted a research project into a number of CChES competitor organisations and reviewed their products and services, financials, website, social media, SEO and general content. This allowed us to benchmark where the CChES offering could fit in the market, but also contextualise what success could look like, and how it could be achieved.
We worked with our creative team to create a new brand identity designed to put emphasis on the world-leading expertise of the CChES team, and highlight the unique and trusted connection to one of the top universities in Europe – the University of Southampton.
We set up the digital foundations to roll-out the marketing strategy, with LinkedIn as the only social media channel. LinkedIn was chosen as the audience research demonstrated that this was the best platform to attract the right attention, and it allowed us to work efficiently with the available resources.
Our creative team built the CChES website and worked closely with the leadership team to establish the key priorities services requiring promotion. Throughout the website the underlying message was to promote the key benefits of working with CChES. Working closely with the team allowed us to develop a site structure that provided users with a smooth and engaging experience.
We created a full content plan and marketing collateral to be used for the brand launch, as well as to ensure ongoing attention after the launch.
We hosted a launch event for academics and key industry professionals at the University of Southampton to introduce the new chemistry and chemical engineering firm, initiate market engagement and drive attention to the marketing channels.
We hosted a launch event for academics and key industry professionals at the University of Southampton to introduce the new brand and marketing strategy for chemical and chemistry engineering firm CChES, initiate market engagement and drive attention to the marketing channels.
The results from our marketing strategy
- Successful brand launch event at the university with over 80 attendees including senior individuals including the Vice-President, Faculty Dean and Associate Dean.
- Tabitha Beasley, Founder of TMA presented the new brand and strategy at the launch event.
- Suitable press coverage achieved.
- 5 new business enquiries received within the first month of launch.
- 86.2% increase in LinkedIn followers.
- 600+ unique and highly engaged sessions to the website in the first month.
Services we delivered for CChES
- Marketing Kick Off
- Competitor review
- Logo and brand assets creation
- Website build and launch
- Article and case study creation
- LinkedIn set-up, content creation and engagement
- Ongoing strategic marketing consultancy and delivery
Testimonials
“The Marketing Associates have supported The University of Southampton in the brand creation, delivery and management of the new Enterprise Unit for the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering ‘CChES’. Not only have they delivered an excellent service, TMA’s knowledge and experience as well as their creativity and marketing expertise has ensured a smooth launch, high visibility with immediate promising ongoing results”
Professor Sumeet Mahajan, Director, CChES, University of Southampton
Contact us to discuss how we can help drive business results with an integrated marketing strategy. At The Marketing Associates, we specialise in strategic freelance marketing support for professional service practices, providing excellent quality advice on your marketing strategy to develop and grow your business on a retained basis.