Business Surgery: Howkapow

Year established: 2010

Where the company is based: Stokes Croft

Sector: Retail / Distribution

Number of staff: 5 Full Time

Owners: Rog & Cat How

Key clients: Members of the public through retail sales. We also manage distribution and fulfilment for Minirig / Pumpkin Interactive / Niche Framers

Website: www.howkapow.com

Company overview

Howkapow is a colourful online shop based in Bristol, England. They stock home and kitchenware, ceramics, lamps and lights, prints and posters, accessories, kids stuff, jewellery and unique gifts from independent designers and illustrators. Opened in December 2010 by husband-and-wife team Rog and Cat How, their mission is to sell quality products with a stand-out, smile-inducing style.

Howkapow stocks innovative, fun and interesting work from breakthrough talent as well as a few carefully-chosen independent, family-run brands. Perfect for those who covet unusual gifts at affordable prices, they have new pieces in store every season from a regularly changing collection that has seen us named ‘Best Online Shop For Stylish Homewares’ by The Guardian and named a ‘Top Online Shop’ by The Sunday Times. Our six month pop-up shop over Christmas 2012 and Spring 2013 was also named by The Guardian as the Best Shop To Visit in Bristol.

The Challenge

Ultimately in 2016 we want to reach more customers, and expand our client base. As a solely online design shop – how do we do this effectively on a budget, and which platforms would be most effective for our marketing spend? Online through CPC and Google Ads, Print Media or Social Media? 

FEEDBACK

Oliver Vernon-Harcourt, Director at Deloitte

There are a lot of things you can do that are free prior to dipping into your Marketing Budget. Firstly, you could review your SEO to see whether there are gains that can be made simply and for free. Secondly, you could look at other free marketing techniques such as referrals through bloggers, refer a friend scheme, Periscope events, product reviews or designer of the month slots. Your social media presence has plenty of followers to work with so could be tapped into using some of the ideas above to increase reach.

For your marketing spend you could review your traffic sources in Google Analytics by location and channel of arrival. If your traffic is local (Bristol) you might want to look at targeting on Google Ads and local campaigns in print media. If your traffic is national you could look at widening your Google Ad spend. Volumes by channel of arrival could give you an idea on where to place your spend (e.g. spend more in channels driving higher volumes).

Helen Carpenter, Marketing Manager at Hayes Parsons Insurance

When working with a limited budget, social media advertising can offer the most flexibility in the first instance.  It gives you the option to try several different platforms, at a relatively low cost, and test which is the best at driving your target customers to your website.

It also allows for more creativity; perhaps you could set up some fun social media competitions or hash tags that fit with your “smile-inducing style?”  Print advertising can require a higher initial investment and is less agile in comparison; ultimately you need to establish which channel is going to bring the right people, at the right time to your shop.  Whichever channel you choose, remember to keep track of all your activity and corresponding sales so you can assess whether the investment is working for you.