Episode 94: Driving digital with the personal touch

00:03   

Intro:  

Welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.   

00:16   

Host:  

Hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. And today we have a very special guest with us, an award winner, Miss Sarah Crabtree, who is Sales Director of Evoke Classics. And she's something of a TV star, so if you're watching on YouTube, you will recognise her, probably from bangers and cash. Sarah, how are you?  

00:37 

Sarah: 

I'm very well. Thank you.  

00:38 
Host: 
It's great to have you on the show.  

00:40 

Sarah: 

It's great to be here. Thank you.  

00:44 

Host: 

Great for coming so far as well from the Yorkshire Dales.  

00:46 

Sarah: 

Yeah, yeah. About 18 trains, nine aeroplanes to get here. But it was worth it.  

00:51 

Host: 

And you're now in sunny Berkshire.  

00:55 
Sarah: 

Yeah, what a lovely part of the world. Well blessed.  

00:56 

Host: 

It is. You come a long way from one beautiful part of the world to another. We're also joined today, I'm glad to say, by Mr. Noel Anderson, who is founder of Nerd digital, he's come not quite as far from Beckenham Kent, but still great to have you Noel, how are you?  

01:10 

Noel: 

Very well. Very well. Thanks for inviting us up. 

01:13 

Host: 

Good to have you on the show. Evoke classics. Tell us a little bit about it before we go further.  

01:18 

Sarah: 

Evoke classics, we are an online classic car auction company with a little bit of a difference. We're also more of a community website, rather than just an auction website. 

01:32 

Host: 

So you buy and sell for people to trade cars? 

01:35 

Sarah: 

We don't buy and sell, no. We find vendors that want to sell their vehicles, and they use our platform, our online services, to sell their cars.  

01:45 

Host: 

So you probably hate this stereotype, but are you an auto trader for classics? 

01:50 
Sarah: 
No, we're much, much more than that. That's very rude (laughs). 

01:56 
Host: 
I feel we're gonna find out why, I’ve planted the seed. (Laughs) 

But the interesting thing about this is why you won the award, you went from an almost zero digital footprint, at evoke classics, to something that is now digital first, wholly digital business, or nearly wholly digital business. And I suppose the interesting thing is, how you've gone from that position to the new digital position in such a short space of time?  

02:29 
Sarah: 
Yeah, that's all due to this wonderful man sitting next to me here. 

02:33 
Noel: 
Thank you, Sarah. 

02:36 
Sarah: 
(Laughs) Well, it is. 

02:39 
Noel: 
Yeah, sure. So evoke classics started out with doing restoration of some classic cars, selling some of those on a forecourt. The guys behind that business saw that Sarah was available, contacted her online with a concept, you know, we believe that there is an opportunity for a female led classic car online auction and community, will you come on board and sort of be ambassador, the face of that and test this hypothesis and see if we can grow? And the guys behind that also recognised that today you need to be very good at digital marketing, and that's the way in which you can reach that audience first, to then hand over to a team that can give it a much more personal touch. A lot of the auction houses are quite prim and proper. And you don't really see the people behind it, maybe than the person sort of hitting the hammer at the end and that kind of stuff. So the community concept was very, very, very strong from the start. There's a huge classic car community, and so for us to be approached, we went through a tender process, but the guys came with a very clear brief from the start. Can we do this? And can we reach these people digitally? So our job at the first stage in the sort of tender process, if you like, was to go away and do our homework. And I've got a background in market, customer research, social media listening and that sort of thing. So we went out there and, can we do this digitally, enter the market as a challenger brand? And, the award was won, and it's been a fantastically successful launch. So the answer is yes.  

04:42 
Host: 
It's amazing. What's really sort of noodling my head is the fact that you've gone from, you use this word community, so lots of it was all about the personal touch. It was like-minded people who had shared a passion for cars coming together, mostly, presumably in person, and you had to try to recreate that feeling in a digital sphere. I got chastised earlier for mentioning autotraders, that's the most impersonal way of buying a car ever. I mean, it's effective in terms of connecting buyers with sellers, but there's no community feeling there. So I'm kind of wondering how you manage to evoke, excuse the pun, that community feeling in in the digital space? 

05:22 
Sarah: 
Lots of little tricks, really, which we learned from you, simple things like when we send out a newsletter, making it personalised to that person. So every newsletter is written by myself, as if I'm speaking to one person. I never say hi everybody. You know, it's always to the one person, as if that person's getting, and people actually respond to the Oh, thanks for letting me know, Sarah, what you're doing this weekend. So they actually do feel that personal touch, just little things like that, which I think has really helped. There will be loads more, but that's the one that comes to mind.  

05:56 
Host: 
How do you do that? Do you amend the letters to constituencies of people or trying to customers?  

06:05 
Sarah: 
How do we do that?  

06:06 
Noel: 
I mean, there's a number of different ways that evoke classics and Sarah communicate with the audience now, which is, now more than about it's around 40,000 people that are involved in this community now, which it's huge, right across all like key digital channels. And the first thing people are interested in is Sarah. People want to know what Sarah's about. She's a real advocate for the classic vehicle sector, full stop. And, we were just talking before we went online there about a trip where Sarah went from, flew from Ireland with someone who was into fiats. They went to Malta, bought a panda, not the animal, the car with red and a green number plate, and drove all the way back through Europe like, there's not many people who do amazing things like this. 

And so Sarah's out and about all the time. So that personalisation is letting people know what's going on in the classic community from someone who lives and breathes it every day. So you communicate that digitally, but the minute that somebody becomes interested in something that's happening at evoke classics, the baton is handed over to the people. So it's the it facilitates that, and it's one of the reasons why it works so well. And everything is built around that trust, people feel like they know Sarah and trust her and what we need to be able to do is project that digitally, and that's the means that people can get involved in the community, but it's also handed over to real people, and everyone behind the team are experts in that field, live and breathe the brand.  

07:56 
Host: 
So as a digital marketer, you've had to show some really admirable restraint, because you could have thought, well, they want a digital platform so let's just digitalise everything? 

08:04 
Noel: 
You could have click baited this to death. You could have put out some dreadful ads and oversold it and things. The team and the brief, it was exceptional from the start, people really clearly had a vision for what we wanted to do, so we just had to rationalise that and see if it was possible. And we did it in steps. So the first thing was to let people know that Sarah was involved in this, and we created a little bit of mystery around it. What's Sarah doing next? And so we built out some landing pages, and did testing on those, just to see what resonated. And could we start to build an audience, and capture people's emails, details. From that along the way, people show lots of interest in different things, and we know the different types of things that people are like, the different types of cars that they like, the shows that they go to, and things. So that's where we're able to do the personalisation piece. But not for like ill gotten means. Somebody today isn't interested in a classic vehicle, they might be interested in three years time, and it's sort of long, like long term vision for this project. So it's about knowing as much as we can about the customer, but using that in a in a really positive way, in order to write information at the right time.  

09:28 
Host: 
It's an interesting challenge, though, isn't it, as a project Sarah, because classic cars fans, I’m probably right in saying are traditionalists, mostly, that's why they're into classic cars. They love tradition. They love the golden greats. They love history. They're interested in that, and you're trying to take them on this journey to this sort of digital space.  

09:48 
Sarah: 
Ah, well, we had a little bit of help, really, because when COVID hit everything kind of went online. So you couldn't go to an attended auction anymore during COVID. So all the auction houses that had what we call a normal Auction House, where you attended in person, and you stood there and you did your bidding however you wanted to do it. You know, you couldn't do that anymore. Exactly. It's yours, sold. You couldn't do that anymore. So all of those auction houses had to change the way they operated and went online only. So people were used to that. That became the norm way of bidding for a vehicle.  

10:38 
Host: 
So you'd broken that barrier straight away?  
 
10:40 
Sarah 
The barrier had been broken by the good old pandemic. During that the pandemic, people had to go online shopping, everything was online. You couldn't go to the supermarket, or you didn't want to go to the supermarket. So our way kind of changed, didn't it? Norm for everybody changed, and especially in the classic car industry. When you couldn't go to an auction, they went online, and we just thought, well, it's the norm now. People are beginning to get used to this idea. Let's just go with it. 

11:15 
Host: 
So you recognised your customers have been forced across that Rubicon because they had no choice. Necessity became the mother invention. And then what you decided to do was we're gonna lean into this, but we're not going to completely lose the common touch, the personal touch we had before COVID.  

11:29 
Sarah: 
That's the difference that we try to offer or we do offer. We are constantly hand holding our customers, which is what we want to do. We don't want to just be a tennis match of emails backwards and forwards to a customer. I want to pick up the phone and actually speak to that person. And you get a real feel for that person, that vendor, how much they love that car, that they want to find a new home for. And you build a relationship with that person. This person may have owned a car for 50 years, and they're coming to you to sell it. Why wouldn't they want to speak to a real human who's got some immersion and understands the passion and the upset and everything else that's going to go along with that sale of that vehicle? So yeah, it's really necessary.  

12:20 
Host: 
I find it fascinating from sort of case study point of view, a business point of view, looking at it through a marketing prism, that what you've done there is you, whether implicitly or explicitly, you've agreed to trade some efficiency for personal warmth. So your brief was, originally, we don't want this to be an all singing, all dancing, turnkey solution where nobody has to speak to anybody.  

12:42  
Sarah: 
That was the last thing we wanted. It was completely opposite. We want to get engaged with people. We want people to come to us and feel like we care. 

12:53 
Host: 
So on the supplier side, on the agency side, you're thinking, this is a genius brief. This is really unusual. 

12:58 
Noel: 
Absolutely, yeah. 

13:01 
Host: 
Presumably, I'm going to hazard a guess that most of the briefs that come to you are about digitizing our entire business. 

13:05 
Noel: 
You could say that. There's a there's a number of those, but again, that comes down to the branding for that particular organisation and what they're looking to achieve. This was a beautiful example where you could see that the market was there, that you could test the hypothesis to see if that would be accepted by the consumers coming in. People would never have bought a vehicle online 5, 10, years ago, like this. Now I remember in the early days, you were getting some people sending in emails saying, I'm based out in the middle of nowhere. I can't go and see these people. I can't see these things anymore. I've loved this type of vehicle for years, and you'd be able to reassure those people that if they made that purchase nothing would go wrong for them that way. And the reviews that you get just reflect all the way through. 

14:01 
Host: 
It is interesting, isn't it that by digitising it, you've actually democratised it. You know, if you if you live miles away, if you're maybe in Fern or so on and so forth, you can't actually do the legwork that you used to have to do, because it was a bit like love joy with cars, wasn't it? The classic car market before? Shows, shows, shows, meeting vendors. 

14:21 
Sarah: 
Yeah, some people are very, very precious about their vehicle. They don't want to send it off to an auction house and let it out of their grasp for a few days. With those with a with an online platform, they're the custodian all the way through the duration of the auction. So the car stays with them. It's still within their sight. They don't have to let it go anywhere and worry about it.  

14:48 
Host: 
The platform's created a really good shop window, which is obviously clearer and more transparent. You can see more through it, but it's also much wider presumably, it's allowed you access to a greater customer base, I should imagine? 

14:59 
Sarah: 
Yeah, it really has. And I think, I think our just going back to the reviews, just about all of our reviews actually mentioned communication, don't they? The communication was great. Joanne did this. Sarah said that, blah, blah, blah. That's what we get recognised for the most. And I think that just shows how well it's worked. 

15:23 
Ad break: 
Looking for more ways to learn and upskill? CIM members can register now for our upcoming member exclusive webinars. More details available at cim.co.uk/content 

15:36 
Host: 
What do you think are the key parts of your brand that the things capture, because if you go back to before COVID, you had a brand proposition, it may not have been explicit, but it was something you were known for. You then had to go through a digitalisation process. When you were talking to Noel, what were you trying to explain about the key tenets of your brand that have got to go through into the new world, the digital world?  

16:03 
Sarah: 
They were all about it being hands on, really, and making sure that we didn't kind of lose sight of that. When we put the tender out and Noel’s came in, I had to go meet him, because and I think I said to you, before we make a decision, I want to see the whites of your eyes, so that has run from day one that has run through. 

16:35 
Host: 
You must have hated COVID. Sarah, 

16:36 
Sarah: 
(Laughs) Absolutely. And I did, we came down and until I'd met him and looked in into the white of his eyes and seen what kind of a person he was, a decision wasn't going to be made, because that interaction and personable touch just makes everything I think, really so. 

17:02 
Host: 
It’s interesting, that is the core of your brand really, a personal touch.  

17:07 
Sarah: 
Yeah otherwise we’d have just picked one and said yeah we’ll have you. 
 
17:09 
Host: 
You’re the cheapest, we’ll take you, yeah. How do you communicate to your business when you're talking to your agency and you're trying to get across, this brief’s a little bit different from the norm, this lady is not asking us to digitize every inch and square foot of a business. She is asking us to create a bigger shop window that people can access, which will connect them to like-minded people. And thenwe're the facilitator. How do you communicate that to presumably, most of your team were very digitally savvy folk, digitally minded people? 

17:48 
Noel: 
Well, I mean, everything there needs to be around trust, engagement and service effectively. So in those early days of testing things out, we did a lot of multivariate testing like with social media advertising and things like that, to see which types of images most resonated if that hypothesis was correct, which it turned out to be. So it sounds quite fancy terms. This is different, and Sarah her own classic cars, seen out and about in them, and images of her like in the showroom, immediately people like, click with that, she lives and breathes classic cars. You don't get this on any of the other online platforms, there's no personality, there's no human interest. The car’s the star, rightly so. But people want that engagement. Any good campaigns, people buy people first, right? And so that lowered the barrier to entry in some ways, because Sarah was known but what we needed to know as well is that it wasn't just some quick, cheap stunt to get, we equally needed to know that Sarah is passionate about this business, and is in it for the long run. And so that made that a lot easier for us. And then, we went through any sort of standard marketing plan that we put together, and ran through all of those key steps, and we're constantly tweaking and changing. 

19:29 
Sarah: 
Oh yeah it’s forever changing isn’t it? 

19:29 
Noel: 
Yeah, there’s new things that we're looking to do now as well, and it just builds and builds and builds. 

19:36 
Host:  
Does anything really surprise you when you looked at the customer responses to some of the things you were doing, did you get any real surprises? 

19:44 
Noel: 
Before we take on a project, I need to genuinely feel that there is an opportunity for us to make this work. So again, I'll look at the size of the market, I'll look at the competition. I'll look at how keywords perform in the different areas. I had a real, real strong positive feeling that this is going to work.  

20:10 
Sarah: 
He was very excited. 

20:11 
Noel: 
I don't get excited about it and so, but, equally, to answer your question there, once we got a lot of like, Sarah was, you know, sorry, but you were like, there's no way people were gonna sell out, just send in from social media, their cherished vehicles to sell. I was like, they will. And I firmly believe that if we take this approach, but it's not until you press the send button for the first time and start spending your client’s money on advertising, outreach, all of these sorts of things that of course, you're a little bit, you worry, is this going to work? I mean, it was pretty much instantaneous, and we got like vehicles like the noble came in, which was the first one to sell, which is like a classic super car, we very quickly were able to look at how we could build up a funnel and what the conversion metrics were for that from the supply side, if you like. So there were a number of different stages, and so we needed to know that we could attract the vendors who would like to sell on the platform, not knowing it from Adam, the thing never existing. It took a little bit longer to launch because there were a few things we needed to do. We were looking to launch a little bit earlier. We officially got the auction opening in the December, Christmas week, Christmas Eve. It was exciting, and it was really good. And then the vehicles started to convert straight away. And that was the beginning. It's been roller coaster.  

21:57 
Host: 
It’s a bit like launching a dating service for car owners isn’t it. You're trying to pull on the heart strings by selling this stuff online so they can meet each other and then make the trade.  

22:10 
Noel: 
The guys who interview the vendors and put the descriptions of the vehicles up as well, they're not flat, dry articles. They put a lot into it. So it is. Every single one is individual, and each one has got that human touch to it, right? And that's commented upon, and that feeds into the sort of core values of the brand as well. So yeah, scary. Will it work? The data from day one said that it would, so I always trusted in that, but until you press the button, you never quite know.  

22:49 
Host: 
So you're not humanising digital. You're digitising human in this project, which is what I find very interesting about it. And it's a really good model for the people who are trying to do it. I'm going to have to mine your top tips for people who want to do a similar project themselves, there's lots of these businesses out there who have loyal customers, passionate customers, hobbyists and so on and so forth, people who live and breathe this stuff and maybe want to open that business out to a bigger audience. Connect more people, do more matchmaking to extend the analogy. What are your three top tips?  

23:30 
Noel: 
Number one, understand the audience. If you've got that audience, and it's a local audience, or it could be for a product that you have, that you're looking to take an existing product into a new market. Do your research first, understand the audience. There's so many different tools out there that you can use to find that out from the smallest so SEMrush, Spark Toro, you can get access to Neil Patel's tools online to just find out what's going on there. What are people searching for? How much does this happen? What are the websites that people are interested in? Find all of this out, model the audience, and you'll very quickly be able to work out if there is a market there. So do that. The framework that I learned, I started off with the CIM doing exams back in 2001, I think some of the earliest things I learned are the things that have stuck with me forever. So analysis, planning, implementation and control. 

24:33 
Host: 
Evergreen lessons. 

24.34 
Noel: 
Right? So you know that number one, analysis is key. If you just go in blind and launch something it may well work, but you'll create a lot of problems for yourself.  

24:47 
Host: 
Did you know much about classic cars before you went in? 

24:48 
Noel: 
Interestingly, not a huge deal. 

24:53 
Sarah: 
Can I just interrupt there actually, because, when I first ever met Noel he was chaperoned by his father who is a massive classic car, well, motorcycle and car fan. 

25:11 
Host: 
So your dad won you the account? 

25:15 
Sarah: 
Yeah so basically I fell in love with his dad, and thought I’ve got to give Noel the gig. (Laughs) 

25:19 
Noel: 
It will be the first and the last time I think my dad, but, you know (laughs). 

25:26 
Sarah: 
He was a brilliant wingman, sorry. 

25:29 
Noel: 
Yeah, I think I need to do it more often. But  because my dad actually rebuilt triumph Herald for my mum, and he used to be a tool maker and engineer, and he rebuilt the engine, and he's got a Caterham seven, and he's got some bikes and things like that. So I know about classic cars from that and I was like, Hey, Dad, Do you fancy coming along to the auction in ascot? I need to meet a prospective client. Thanks, Dad. 

26:02 
Host: 
That’s a great story. You had a little bit of learning that helped a little bit, but you need to do more.  

26:10 
Sarah: 
It really did help. Because, you've already got an insight into the world of classics, you can see the passion from your dad and how he behaves around cars. So you've got an insight into how our customers will behave around cars.  

 
26:24 
Noel: 
Yeah, and I even bought a 20 year old mg off the platform myself, put in a bid and got the bid on it first so I got a great deal. So where I can with any clients I like to sort of live the brand and go through the experience myself as well. But, I think from like agency client relationships, I think where the best ones work, it needs to be logical at the start. So, logic from our side is, do we genuinely believe we can do this? Yes or No. I think from from the client side, it needs to be, do they understand the sector? Can they be passionate about this? And do they have the skills and the tools and the backing to do that?  

So I think you've got that logical side, and I think we're very closely matched there from the start. Then the next one, arguably the most important, is the emotional side. We're going on a journey together, can we work with one another and make this work, knowing that there's going to be tough times and demands? And then the third one is the timeliness of something, when is this happening? Is it all planned out? And so all of those three things aligned very, very well for this project. And my dad helped me get it over the line.  

28:03 
Host: 
If you're a client looking to tender this stuff out, if you get a business a bit like yours, heritage business, one that invokes lots of passion, and you're looking to create a sort of digital shop window, from a client's perspective, what should you be briefing? What should you be looking for in an agency? 

28:24 
Sarah: 
I think you've kind of hit the nail on here with everything that you've just said there Noel really, that passion, that caring, that understanding the needs, and actually probably, I think I remember you saying, I really love, I love what you're doing. And I think that, find somebody who feels the same about your own job, because there's no point in doing a business unless you actually love what you're doing. You're never going to make it work, because you can't, surely, you've got to have that passion there for it, and the understanding of what your customers needs are. And that has gone kind of down again a level, because Noel understands the passion of us, as much as I understand the passion of our customers. So it's the same, it's just down another level, isn't it really?  

29:27 
Host: 
Yeah I’m going to pick up on that part, that's a really interesting point is that if you're putting something out to tender, you've got, four or five agencies in the mix. One of the key criteria you're saying that you're looking for is somebody that genuinely shares the passion for what you're doing. 

29:41 
Sarah: 
Exactly, or understands it, or is enthused by or gets excited by it. And from day one, noel was like an Andrex puppy running along with that toilet roll, getting really excited, and he’s still doing it. Still the passion hasn't waned, and it's great to see, he’s still excited. And we all work remotely, even our team. We’re all different parts of the country, you know, based in Essex, Yorkshire, and then we speak to you regularly, and you're always there. He's always happy to help, or got an idea or enthusiastic, that hasn't waned. That's just fantastic, because it could with a lot of companies. It could just be like, Oh, it's just the paycheck coming in. What do they want this time? But it's not like that with you. I don't ever get that feeling that we're a burden or anything that I ask is like a stupid question. 

30:51 
Host: 
We say it on the podcast all the time, it shouldn't be client supplier. It's got to be a partnership. You're in it together. Because when you're working on a project, you are going to hit difficult times. Sometimes you're not going to even agree with each other, and that's natural, but as long as you're sharing the same passion, you're pointing the right direction that's usually the route to success. And I think that was detected when, of course, you came in the autumn I want to say, to win the CIM Award. Which is no mean feat, it's tough to win a CIM award.  

31:23 
Sarah: 
Well, it's all down to Noel isn't it, really?  

31:35 
Host: 
Well, is it? 

31:27 
Noel: 
No, it's a true partnership, genuinely. And I think as well, whilst the brief was clear from the very, very start, we were given the freedom to go away and do things and test and there's no like restrictions. As long as we all agree what we're going to do, it's enabled us to be very experimental and do things that way.  

31:57 
Sarah: 
I think that's probably a two way thing as well. I think if you hadn't shown such passion and commitment, we might have been more restrictive, but because you are who you are, and you've shown us how excited you are about it, we were like, yeah, we're just happy to let this guy, he obviously knows what he's doing, and he’s away with it. It's brilliant. So that's a two way thing, I think. 

32:24 
Noel: 
Yeah, and the award is the icing on the on the cake, because I think I sort of started my journey with CIM back in 2001 going through the exams and from charter and getting involved in lots of different things. The CPD, I did a distance learning masters, which I handed in the day we went into lockdown. I didn't get the time to ride it up when we were in lockdown. Thanks for that one. So really, all of that work, all of that journey, getting the award, and that buzz is great, but it actually, it symbolizes a life dedicated to learning and trying really hard to take wonderful new businesses and interesting ideas and bring them to life. And that's the kind of the essence of what we're trying to do at Nerd digital anyway, so for us, it's that recognition from, somebody said ‘that's a proper award that is’ (Laughs) 

33:26 
Host: 
The Oscars of marketing. No mean feat and well deserved. What a great story. It's been great to have you on the show today. Are you gonna come back on the show at some point? Tell us how it’s going? 

33:37 
Sarah: 
Yeah course I will. Can you get a helicopter on for me next time? It is a long way. 

33:46 
Host: 
Sarah Crabtree, Noel Anderson, thank you for coming on the show. 

33:51 
Both: 
You're very welcome. Thank you. Cheers. 

33:56 
Outro: 
If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the CIM marketing podcast on your platform of choice. If you're listening on Apple podcasts, please leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback. CIM Marketing Podcast.