60. A camper company that wants to beat competitors
How do you promote an experience that’s completely individualized? 🚐 In this episode, Phil and Lauren meet with the owner of Happy Campers to discuss just that. Happy Campers offers completely individualized camper designs that needs to be experienced to understand its full value. We discuss the importance of conveying the in-person experience, storytelling on Instagram, offering Instagram takeovers, and maximizing user-generated content.
Episode transcription
Phil
Well, hello there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren and this is a podcast where we take your branding or business challenge, unpack it all and come up with a solution. We talk through it in about 20 minutes and we don't leave you unless you're a satisfied customer, not really a customer because this is free advice.
Lauren
Speaking of satisfied customers, today's episode is really interesting.
Phil:
Yes it is. I mean we all know the importance of marketing. If you knew it wasn't important, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. However, in all the episodes we've done, which is tens of episodes, this topic has not exactly come up yet. We market our businesses as important, but what happens when someone else markets it for you, particularly your customer, a lot more convincing case if you ask me.
Lauren
Totally. Especially in this day and age where you can buy reviews and buy fake things and you never really know what's real or what's fake. In terms of a testimonial, a picture of your customer actually using your product or service is really powerful and really rare.
Phil:
I love it. Yeah, I mean this, I would say this has come up in my business recently, specifically on platforms like LinkedIn, right? You know, I work as a speaker at conferences around the world, but I can tell you when I've got someone who's given me an endorsement or a testimonial on my profile that speaks so much more than me saying, oh, here's a testimonial on my website that I could have written myself. So that's one example of proof of concept is something we talk about a lot on this podcast. We touch on that topic with our guests today, Lindsay and I love this chat.
Lauren
Yeah, totally. Out of curiosity, have you ever been in a camper?
Phil
Yes, I have. I have not gone very far in a camper. It's just been like friends of mine that I've had campers. I'm thinking of last summer actually, my friend in France. Really? Yeah. My friend in France, his parents own a trailer park and I got to go hang out there for three days. I mean you hear that right? It has a connotation trailer park, but actually it was really fun. They were luxury luxurious campers and it was a blast.
Lauren
I mean a French trailer park. I imagine it's the epitome of elegance and nomadic lifestyles.
Phil
Croissants every morning, Rose’ in the afternoon. It's exactly what you imagined. Well, no, I know. It was my last summer.
Lauren
You don't have to imagine, you saw it! I'm imagining.
Phil
You should while you are imagining this, shall we get to our very exciting riveting conversation with Lindsay?
Lauren
Yeah, let's get to it.
Phil
Here it is. Here's our chat with Lindsay.
Lindsay
Hi. So my name's Lindsay and I am the co founder and now the marketing director of a camper van agency who specialize in renting out beautiful handmade camper vans around the UK. And my biggest challenge right now is that for a long time we were the only people in this space and now there are lots of other international contenders coming along with huge budgets and funding and I just want to make sure that we still maintain being like the GoTo people and we make it really clear what it is that we offer that's different. Yeah, without those huge budgets.
Phil
Camper vans now this is a first on Brand Therapy. Welcome Lindsay, I'm happy you’re here.
Lindsay
Yeah. Well I'm very happy to be here.
Phil
How do people normally even react to this? They must get a little bit excited even if they aren't campers themselves.
Lindsay
Yeah, I mean it's kind of impossible it seems not to get excited about camper vans, especially the ones that we have on our website because they are, I mean the design, if I do say so myself. So each one is uniquely imagined and created and converted and you know, it's just something so exciting about tiny spaces, especially tiny spaces that are really beautifully done.
Lauren:
Oh my gosh. I go crazy. Phil does too. For any kind of tiny home, tiny space, tiny anything that has to do with interior design. That's amazing. Are you, are you guys currently doing anything for social media? I'm imagining Pinterest or little videos that show the features?
Lindsay
Yeah, so we are across all social media. Pinterest has been a big driver of traffic for us and if you search the camper vans on Pinterest, you know, you'll find a lot of our vans. And yes we do, we've got a lot of beautiful photos. We encourage all of the owners on our site to have professional photo shoots and we also send our vans out with lots of photographers and bloggers and stuff. So we've got loads of really, really beautiful photos. And then we've also, as often as possible, we will film video tours of the vans. We have them on YouTube as well and on our website. So yeah, so we're definitely making full use of social media and because it's something that people love, then you know, we are lucky to get a pretty good organic reach on our social media.
Phil
When I look back at all of the projects I've had the most fun on in terms of doing social media and content creation, it's the ones that have the most visual opportunities. First one that comes to mind was a Marine biologist and we literally grew her accounts into the hundreds of thousands because we got to tweet about dolphins and marine mammals all day and people absolutely loved it. And I feel the same kind of excitement about your brand. And I know you've already discovered a lot of this. You're pretty savvy when it comes to your social media, and so the, the challenge is standing out against those big players. This is a real challenge.
Lindsay
Yeah, exactly. So I think, I feel like we've got all of the substance and we just need to, you know, just me and then my little team. We just need to be really, really clever and make sure that we're making the most of all the opportunities out there.
Lauren
Who is your audience?
Lindsay
So I mean it's really, really broad. The way, you know when I'm kind of posting, the way that I think about it is that our Facebook audience is primarily, more women, late thirties often with families, often professionals, but kind of looking for a way to, you know, like really get away from it all, do the whole digital detox thing and really have that connected time with their family. On Instagram. It's a bit of a younger audience. Again, lots of professionals, but who kind of want to leave the city and just go on big adventures. And so those are the people that rent our vans and also a huge part of our audience are people who are doing their own van conversions. Some of whom will then go on to rent their vans out to us, but others of whom are just looking for Inspiration.
Lauren
Got it, got it. That makes sense. This is an interesting challenge because your brand is so cool that, I can't imagine a competitor. But I wonder, it looks like you're active on social media. What emotional response are you hoping to get from people when they see your posts?
Lindsay
We are hoping to remind people, I guess that there is more to life than work that can sometimes feel like the daily grind, but also that you can, that the advantage can be very easily accessible. That's one of the things I feel really passionate about is the accessibility of adventure. So which there is a whole load of people who are giving up their jobs and their houses and living in vans full time, i mean that's really cool. But that's not for everyone and that's okay. You know, you don't have to give up your job and your house in order to inject some adventure into your life. And so I guess it's that thing of like it's okay just to go away for a weekend or a week and you can get that real, yeah, that real sense of adventure, that real inspiration that can then, you know, you can then take into other aspects of your life. And also even if you've got young kids, you can still have adventures. You know, even if you have disabilities or other things that can get in your way actually can provide is a great way to have that real sense of freedom with the comfort as well.
Phil
You Lindsay, when you listen to the recording of this need to write all the beautiful sound bytes you just said to us conversationally in the last two minutes there were about six of them and what you said conversationally could literally be cut and paste onto your about page onto a quote card. Even though quote cards are kind of tiny, but you know what I'm going with this. You and your ability to kind of humanize the excitement around this industry in this space, I think is really valuable on social media. So I want to bring it up, not talk about it yet, but you as a role with this brand. You know that's coming. You know where I'm going with this. First I want to know from research that you've done, Lauren asked about your audience. Now I'm asking about your competitors. So I want to know who are specifically, I'm after three groups of people and you can tell me them in whatever order. But I want to know who are your competitors, who are your like brands? So maybe you're not competing with them, but they may be, are in a similar industry. And then finally, who are your brand heroes? Who do you look up at and go, “Oh my God”, I want to be like them one day. So who comes to mind with names and everything?
Lindsay
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So in terms of our direct competitors, there is a big company called Yescapa who have very recently moved into the UK. I can’t remember when they started, but it was somewhere in Europe and I first became aware of them because they were in my Facebook newsfeed for weeks, weeks, and weeks and weeks with sponsored posts. And so, you know, they grew that Facebook following to 60,000 in a year or something. And I'm looking on enviously knowing that I've had to fight for every one of our followers that come about organically. And so they do a whole, they're the only other company who also do handmade conversions, but it's not a feature and their handmade conversions don’t really that we meet the standards that we would have on our website. So yeah, so they're really big. And then there's a couple of other camper van companies out there, all of whom who have come from either elsewhere in Europe or from the States or from Australia and kind of grown there and then come over here. But nobody, I mean you can't find vans like ours on any other websites. So they are, they are competitive, but there's still nobody doing what we do.
Lauren
I have an idea for you because basically I think that you have a really solid sense of your brand. I think that you're really active on social media. I think you're doing everything great. And really the next level for reaching more people lies with partnerships. So I would love to see you identifying each of the different types of audiences that you could offer an adventure too. Like you mentioned young families. I'm thinking of couples in love going like, you know, selling everything and going around the country for a year, whatever it is. I think it, you should identify those people and those customers and actually have them take over your Instagram account and show their adventures in an authentic way. So Man Repeller a blog that's really popular out here is doing this for fashion week right now for New York fashion week. So all of their different writers and editors are each doing shifts on Man Repellers Instagram account and they're kind of walking you through their day. So, one of the editors who I love started off today, she goes “Hi, for breakfast I'm making this and I'm thinking about wearing this today. What do you think? Do you like it? Yes or no? Now I'm on my way here. Look who I bumped into. It's the other Man Repeller team members.” So I think that angle could be really, really cool because again, it's showing how accessible adventure is through your camper vans.
Lindsay
Yeah. Nice. I like that idea.
Phil
I like it too. Um, Lauren, this is a question for you. Why are you paying attention to Man Repellers account this week during New York Fashion Week? Why are you taking note of them and engaging with them? I think there's an interesting lesson in that.
Lauren
Well because they make you feel like you're right there. It's bringing New York closer to me from sunny Los Angeles and I really get excited when they let other people take over their accounts because it's fun to hear different perspectives within the same brand umbrella. I want to hear the voices of the different writers in Man Repeller because they're each quirky and charming in their own way.
Phil
Interesting. Okay, Lindsay, now with your question.
Lindsay
Yeah, so I was just wondering whether there's any, in fact this is often a question I have, because each of our vans has its own look and its own personality and images, It's how do I make sure that I maintain that sort of brand coherence even with having say different voices and different styles of pictures and different styles of vans?
Lauren
Well there are a few things you could do. First is you could actually just ask the individuals to send you their content and you could post it to the Instagram stories. I mean, it doesn't really matter if the stories are posted on time and now you can schedule them. So if, if your person is talking about a Saturday, just post it the next Saturday. So that's an easy way to filter out content. If that becomes too large with coordinating, I would before giving your account credentials, make it very, very clear what the standards are for your brand and what's really important. Because if they don't follow it, you just change your password and then they can't get in and then you go on your merry way.
Phil
Yeah, and you'd want them to sign something beforehand and go over your social media. But one easy way to do it, and maybe Lindsay to star may be only one day of the week is a takeover. But that just means it's like one less day that you have to worry about pumping out your own content. Obviously you have to moderate whatever they're posting. But if I were you, if this was me, I'd create a Canva pro account. They don't sponsor this show, but I wish they would. I’d create a Canva pro account, upload your brand colors and your brand fonts into there and I'd create like three templates or less. Let's make this simple. I create one Instagram story template with your colors, but then place holders where they can add their own images and that way it's easy for them. You could even text them like here's a template or maybe to start like maybe for the first four takeovers as Lauren said, you gather their assets and create a template from that.
And then once you feel comfortable that what you can provide your guest makes their life easier, then you make that switch. One brand that I want to add to your list of like brands and brand heroes, it's called Flytographer. It's travel photography all around the world. And the CEO is a great friend of mine, Nicole. She's amazing and they do a really good job of posting consistent content on their social media channels, specifically their Instagram stories, using other people's content. But they brand it so you know it's them.
Lindsay
Okay, yeah, I will check it out.
Phil
And I always believe the minute you're spending a lot of time on your own ideas and creativity, stop for a second and reduce that amount of time in half by looking at someone else who's already painstakingly thought this through. Do you know what I mean? It's like how do we go to a like brand, a brand hero or a competitor's account and not rip off what they're doing but kind of rip off what they're doing and make it yours. And I remind myself this too, it's like I get caught up in my head, Oh my God, what's my template gonna look like? What colors are you? Just stop for a second. Someone before you has already made these decisions. Go find them on Instagram. And we're using Instagram as an example, but go find them on Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn. What are they doing? What decisions have they made? And just be strongly inspired by what they've done, well. And don't overthink it.
Lindsay
Yeah. What decisions have they made? You know, having had those budgets have maybe got lots of very high quality professional advice.
Lauren:
Definitely.
Phil
I'm less worried about budgets and quality and more interested in the opportunity to tell this really exciting story. Specifically, I'm excited by two things. I'm excited by the personality as you put so eloquently of each camper van and the story that each customer will tell with that camper van. That really excites me. The other thing that excites me is you and your energy and passion for this industry and this brand. I think you get excited about it in your voice because you know how much fun and maybe even how people's lives have been changed by this, right? I can hear that and so I just don't really want you to keep that as secret as you are right now. I think you should be pitching yourself once a month to local TV stations. Since your market is probably the UK, right? A lot of people pitch, but a lot of people pitch bad ideas. Think for a second over the next two, three, four months, what might they want to do a story about, three ideas for adventure, or our staycation or three holiday ideas without having to leave England, you know, something like this and you are made for television in the way that you speak and the way that you share the passion. So have you done that before?
Lindsay
So I've never done any tv or radio for the camper van business.
Phil
You’ve got to do it and a lot of the times what you'd pitch successfully in those mediums, are things that you've already written blogs about, right? Is you've written blogs inspired by questions that your customers ask you and you're really listening to what it is they want, and what they react to, that's the kind of thing that will work well on television. And it's very rare that I give people advice to go on television. It feels like 1997 but actually given that your market is local and your market is within the country, at least for now, that's exciting to me and those pitches, if they don't get accepted, then turn it into a blog post or make it the theme of your week on your social media and jump on and be active and tell these stories. I want you to write down the first five examples that come to mind when you think about the question, how have my camper vans changed people's lives or left a lasting impression on their life?
Lindsay
Okay.
Phil
Even if you've told those stories, I want you to retell those stories. I just as an example, I emailed every client from the last few years that we built brands for and I said, tell me a quick anecdote or a story in a few sentences about how your brand has helped your business. Keep it simple. One question and almost every client that I emailed, emailed back within two hours and said, Phil, I landed this conference. Phil, people are taking me more seriously because our brand looks more professional. I couldn't believe the response. So now I'm all hyped up and excited. I mean all you gotta do is ask the question and it's gonna give you just so many ideas for growth and for storytelling. I'm not worried about your competitors. I'm not worried about people with bigger budgets. I don't think we need more budget. I think we just need to humanize the brand and tell those stories and be really tuned in to those viral moments. So I've got your top nine up on your Instagram and I'm looking like, what are people responding to? I would, for every moment people have responded to something, I would analyze why. What was it about this photo? Was it a hashtag? What was it about the color? Was it, what was it about the caption? I would make sure that comes up once a week on your social media if possible.
Lindsay
Yeah.
Phil
Yeah. Again, I know we're throwing a lot of ideas at you.
Lindsay
Is there anything that caught your eye when you look at it?
Phil:
Yeah. Let me pull it up here right now.
Lauren
Well, all right, we've had a good conversation, but we're going to stop that conversation temporarily. Let's talk about some free things for you.
Phil
Do you know what pause is in Spanish?
Lauren
What is it?
Phil
Descansa.
Lauren
Let’s descansa to talk about our free download and our blog post this week.
Phil
Yeah, cause this is not just a podcast. There's more, there's more here. Lauren, tell us what's behind the curtain.
Lauren
With pleasure. So our free downloads are going to be the best user generated content examples. You can find this on philpallen.co/resources and if you're a business that sells experiences, you've got to get this. You really need this because your customers could be creating tons of content for you and not even be aware of it.
Phil
I mean why do it when someone else can do it for you? That's my philosophy. Yeah, exactly. And the blog post also is a nice complimentary resource to the free download. It's an easy user generated content strategy. So if you don't know where to start with getting content from your customers or encouraging potential customers to provide you content, this breaks it all down. All right. That's all I had to say. That's it.
Phil
Okay. Go check it out. philpallen.co/resources and in the meantime we're going to get back to our conversation with Lindsay.
Lauren
Great.
Phil
Let me pull it up here. Right now. A lot of interiors, a lot of interiors of the camper vans, a lot of dreamy aspirational type photography that is something photographed where I am not right now, but wish I was.
Lindsay
I feel the same every time I do it.
Lauren
And you know that makes me think too, you have a huge opportunity for sponsored posts or for at least featuring other brands in exchange for re-posts or sharing to their stories. I mean with a camper van, if interiors are what people are drawn to, you could do like a blanket or a throw company. You could do like a pillow company, you could feature a coffee brand, coffee mugs, the possibilities are endless. And if you were just to approach those brands and say, hi, we'd love to feature you in a post. Normally the fee would be this much, but we'd be happy to do this complimentary in exchange for our reposts to your followers. I mean, I dunno, it's free advertising for them and for you.
Lindsay
Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. Yeah. I haven't really thought about us in terms of us being promoters of others, although we have, we partnered with other brands for competitions. That's kind of been our main way of partnering and reaching other brands audiences. But I think that's really interesting because obviously we do have cookware and coffee as you say, and blankets and all those lovely things in our vans.
Phil
Yeah. To Lauren's point, it's interesting to think about yourself almost as you would an influencer. You know, we've got reach if you want your products in our vans and to reach our audience, consider this pitch. The one last kind of question for you and then we'll, I'll let you actually get to work on some of these exciting ideas we've hurled at your head. Um, when you think about the big international players in your field and they've got big budgets, we want to think about you. We don't want to look, we want to look at them and be aware of them, but we don't want to be distracted and putting too much energy in, into consuming them. Instead we want to put that energy into ourselves. What is it about you that sets you apart from them? Any ideas come to mind?
Lindsay
Yes, probably too many. I'll try it. I'll try and summarize. I think one of the big things is that, you know, this isn't just a business for us. This business was born out of the fact that my partner and I converted a camper van and we wanted to share it. And so, you know, we've got so much experience doing the conversion, owning, you know, renting out our vans. We still rent out our own camper vans, all three directors of the company. So we're not kind of like a hands off, we're right there at the front line doing exactly the same thing as our own. So they, when they call us up, we know everything that they've experienced, the things that we've experienced. So I think from the perspective of people wanting to rent out their van, that's really important. But also from a customer's perspective, I guess we just, so we feel very passionately that the whole experience should be a pleasure you know?
So actually a camper holiday, is not just the bit when you pick it up and go somewhere, but actually browsing a really enjoyable website and looking at beautiful photos and that whole process and having somebody there who will answer your question, whether it's on live chat on the website, whether you know at the end of a phone, whenever you call, answering your emails and then down to meeting an owner who is a lovely individual and it's not going to a big car park and hiring one identikit van. You know somebody whose job is just to hand over the keys. It's going to the person who created that van and who shows you everything and how it works because they made it or they commissioned it and they use it all the time. And so it's, I guess it's just kind of each of those pieces being very much part of the customer's experience and the customer's journey and all of that from the feedback that we get being a passionate thing, a really enjoyable process. And we're a really small team, so you know, if you call up about anything, whether you're a customer, whether you have somebody who wants to rent a van, whether you're somebody who wants to come to our festival, you’ll just speak to one of our small teams who know everything about everything and you cannot see your questions. Well, I guess there's a few of the things that set us apart.
Lauren
I love it. I love it. And I think what's interesting about what you just said is that what delights your customers isn't necessarily what they get, but it's more how they feel. So just keep that in mind. Even when you're posting on social media, think less about the call to action and more about how you hope to make that person feel.
Lindsay
Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. Cause we do genuinely care about people and that's why we do it, you know, is the look on somebody's face when they, you know, they turn up to pick up the camper van looking stressed and exhausted and they, and they come back looking light and joyful. That's what makes it worth it.
Lauren
I mean, maybe you could do before and afters too. Yeah. That's a funny idea.
Phil
Well and so what's interesting is Lindsay, you experience this day to day so it becomes a bit normal for you. But it's so important to audit those moments because it's not normal for us. Even in conversations like this where you tell a friend or you tell someone about a customer or something that happened, keep track of those ideas for the two seconds it takes, pull out your iPhone, record that idea as you're saying it to your friend and turn it into something.
Lindsay
Hmm. Yeah. And what do I turn it into?
Phil: Oh gosh. It can be a tweet. It could be a caption. It could be a blog post. It could be a pitch for a morning show. It could be all of those things because any time you're telling a story or in conversation with someone, that's usually what makes, that's kind of fuel for the fire that we're looking to create. We know our fire is smaller than the big global brands, but actually as you identify what your customer wants that smaller, more direct crafted kind of experience.
Lindsay
Yeah. Yeah, they do.
Phil
I know we've thrown a lot of ideas.
Lindsay
I was just going to say it's interesting because customers who've tried other companies report that back and likewise our owners who've tried to lift it, all the companies report that back. You know that it is time to be different, and that’s why they want to be with us.
Phil
There you go. I mean, that's so amazingly proven that you're on to something and that you've positioned yourself properly. Now it's just a matter of giving yourself a few minutes every day to have conversations like this and to get creative about where you take it next. So hopefully this several ideas that we've thrown your way will be useful for you.
Lindsay
I'm excited about going out and cracking on with it.
Phil
We're excited for you. You have to let us know how all of this goes. Promise pinky swear.
Lindsay
Yeah. Well you'll know because you'll be seeing me on TV every other week.
Phil
And that will bring me an immense amount of pleasure. Thank you so much, Lindsay, for your time today and for hanging, for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. We'll chat with you soon.
Lindsay
Thank you very much.
Phil
Cool. That was a first. I love Lindsay and I love how excited she is about cracking on in her own words.
Lauren
Me too. What a cool job. What a coal business. A cool adventures.
Phil:
I know, right? It's like when when you're in it day to day, you sometimes forget about how cool your work is, right? There's just such interesting parts. I feel like we, in this job we get to meet fascinating people and then build brands for them, but feel like we talk to really interesting people that I wouldn't otherwise be having conversations with. That's what I, what I love. Lindsay's one of them.
Lauren
Me too. We threw a lot at her. What was your favorite thing we talked about?
Phil
Well, I liked the idea of sponsored posts. She mentioned that this was something that she hadn't really explored only giveaways and contests, so I think it would be really interesting to see how she could go about getting her first sponsored posts.
Lauren:
Yeah. I think by thinking about her audience in terms of what they want to feel and then figuring out what sponsors would excite them. That seems like a good way to go about it. You know, like obviously they must engage and use a lot of different products and vendors already. That's just kind of the nature of the interiors in those vans. So I think it would be probably pretty seamless for her to start approaching people.
Phil
It's true. I had some fun on my Instagram account a few months back where the brand Gant reached out to me and wanted to give me clothes to make sure I wore it and then yeah, I wear them on Instagram. Then they make sure I post them, but just as we thought, right, if I could get an offer from someone, I could be approaching brands, right. For every one time that someone is approaching you, you could approach a hundred brands and there's a good chance they might say yes.
So actually make a list of the people that you already engaged with or the brands that you already enjoy and think about actually reaching out to them.
Lauren
Definitely, definitely, and I didn't mention this on the call with Lindsay, but usually the rule of thumb in US dollars is that you can charge 1 cent for every one follower that you have. So she has 28,500 followers, which means she could technically charge or try to charge $285 per post, which is awesome.
Phil
Yeah, that's really cool. Just to use as reference, of course it's going to change. And everyone has an opinion on this, but that's like some loose criteria for you to follow.
Lauren
Yeah. Yeah, and even if she like foregoes the actual like cash exchange and instead asks for exposures or re-posts or whatever, that's free advertising really.
Phil:
I love it. Have Lindsay good luck with your first sponsored post and implementing some of the ideas we shared that got very creative. I love when that happens. We'd love to also encourage you, good luck landing your first sponsored post if that's what you decide to do. Not just Lindsay, this advice is for you too. If you've got a brand or some kind of positioning that lends itself to also you know, sharing existing brands that are already out there. Maybe they're things you already wear, things you already use. As your platform grows and you work really hard on that. It's a good idea to figure out how you can leverage that.
If you enjoyed this conversation with us, let us know. I'm @philpallen
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
#brandtherapy is where you'll find us continuing this conversation. If you enjoyed the episode, let us know. Hop over to Spotify or hop over to iTunes and leave us a review and let us know, ideally five stars, that helps other people find this podcast that we work very hard to make. Well, we'll see you again on the next episode of Brand Therapy. Lots of fun, and I'm sure next time will be fun to look forward to it. See you then.
Lauren:
See ya
