Broederstroom Butchery

Challenge

The website was old and had not been updated in years. The content was boring. The images were dated, and the site did not in any way accurately reflect the true nature of the business, which is a dynamic, country-style butchery specialising in superb cuts of meat and many brilliant meat products. To make matters worse, the website had been built using a “free, childlike theme” which did not help SEO wise, in fact, if anything, it hindered our doing any decent SEO on the site. A complete website rebuild was required. It needed to powerfully brand and position the business as being a highly innovative, entrepreneurial, customer centric operation.

Strategy

Broederstroom Butchery has a wonderfully rich family history to it, yet this was a best kept secret. We decided to intelligently weave this dramatic family into the website content so that customers would connect, emotionally, with the success journey of this business. Many visually appealing photographs would be taken, not only of the meat products but of the team too. Afterall, what must always be remembered, is that this butchery is a people business! Website content would be written in such a way that it would enable local and regional SEO work. Relevant website categories would be created for ease of online searching.

Approach

The approach was to get very hands-on; to get inside the business and to fully understand what made it tick as this level of understanding would be critical when it came to content writing. Owner interviews would be conducted in order to ensure that the site was fully aligned with their larger overarching business strategic plan. Staff would be asked for their informed opinions on what works with client’s communication wise and why this is so. Competitor sites would be analysed to understand why they were doing “so much better” in certain market segments.

The Process

Storytelling · Rich Photographic Content · Sontent Marketing · SEO

Story Telling

Everyone loves a good story. Especially a memorable one which tells the real life, ups-and-downs, of the success journey from then to now. That is clever branding! Why? Because it instantly locks in a positive emotional customer experience around the business. Somehow, the customer now feels much more connected. So, we spent many hours on site, understanding the exact nature of the business, and piecing together exactly what it was that made it so attractive to its loyal clients. We then researched the family history of the business, creating an accurate, story-driven timeline of how it grew from then (humble beginnings) to now (a respected, leading country butchery).

Rich Photographic Content

We used photos of beautifully prepared meat products and took photos of team members doing what they do every day, but, with a welcoming and engaging smile on their face (the people business!). We designed the website as image rich, we lent itself perfectly to what we desired to achieve. This was to create so much visual online intrigue which, in turn, would convert into a visit to the physical butchery. Once they were through the entrance doors, intrigue would convert into spend and income for the business.

SEO Optimisation

The new site was built using a superb, premium WordPress theme, which lent itself to great SEO work. The content was written in such a way such that key search phrases could be driven back-end wise. The content also strategically targeted those competitive spaces where the butchery’s competitors had gained a stronghold (e.g. wholesale meat supplier). All images posted on the site were SEO optimised too. The upshot of all this is that within just 3 months of the new site going live, its SEO score was well over 80% and is still rising monthly.

Content Marketing

The butchery had a digital footprint but this was in need on a facelift. The Google My Business profile had imagery dating back to 2010 and it wasn’t acceptable for the brand today. We resolved issues with Google and updated the profile, replacing old outdated images, with new, in-store ones. The Facebook page had a decent amount of followers and was updated and optimised. We then leveraged this new look and feel to start proactively engaging with the existing Facebook community. A few fun competitions were run. Good signage opportunities on the premises were used to advertise the Facebook page which increased numbers.

A WhatsApp community group was created on the back of the Covid-19 panicked hard lockdown. The social branding success which this has brought about, through email orders being processed a delivered right to the home, has been huge.