Last year, we launched a mattress brand, Dormeo Octaspring, to the UK market.

Whilst we were lucky that our product offering was new and exciting, making our conversations with retailers and B2B clients much easier, this alone was not enough to make us a recognisable and viable brand with the consumer.

Unlike many of our competitors, we realised that consumers’ purchasing power, and how they access information, has dramatically shifted in recent years. To deal with this, we invested heavily early on in the launch, to talk directly with the customer.

When I say, ‘promoting directly to the consumer was our best business decision’, many of you may question what is revolutionary about this for a product-based business. However, I do not mean this in the traditional sense, via advertising or direct marketing practices for example.

Of course, these practices have formed part of our marketing mix, but instead we have focussed our efforts on online activity, communicating with potential customers on social media platforms, forums and news sites.

The consumer is intelligent, and we therefore felt our B2C marketing and communications strategy had to echo how we communicate with our B2B customer.

More on Best Business Decisions:

• Jeff Hughes – Switching operations to purely business-to-business
• Philip Letts – Listing on the Alternative Investment Market
• Tom Galvin – Diversifying our client base
• Katie Small – Buying out a business partner

Within a market like ours, which usually talks to an older demographic, this has enabled us to stand out from our competitors. We realised very early on that it was imperative to recognise the importance of social media, or as we call it ‘social influence’ – engaging in current conversations with your customers or potential customers goes a long way in building brand loyalty and trust.

This in turn, directly leads to increased sales. Whilst not an exact science, it is common sense that people buy from trusted brands, and we have found that using online platforms to communicate directly with the consumer has been one of the most cost-effective and influential ways to engage with potential clients.

Honesty and realism has been an essential undertone when speaking to B2C customers, especially since most companies have automatic distrust with consumers. We were quick to refine our customer service and remain transparent online. This enables us to efficiently answer any queries about our product, and also ties in with our mission to build upon our brand loyalty. We are a brand who puts our customer interest at the heart of everything we do.

Since launching last year, we secured a total of 280 stockists across the UK – a monumental achievement for a mattress brand. We have also sold a huge number of units, which means we are far exceeding budget predications.

If we had not decided to focus our B2C communications in the way we did and still do, I do not believe we would have achieved the success we had in our launching year.