Berkeley and Stonehouse are two market towns in Gloucestershire that are very different in character and retail/tourism offer, yet they both share similar problems of disappointing footfall and concerns over the fragility of their town centre retail sectors.

As part of their wider regeneration strategy, Stroud District Council invited Read & Woolf to create a high quality marketing strategy for each town that would support the economic development of these important service centres and the Stroud District.

What we did

Key to our approach was to proactively engage with stakeholders and community representatives from Berkeley and Stonehouse. We gathered information through a series of focus groups and one-to-one consultations, identifying how their ideas might fit into an achievable marketing strategy.

Through our own market research, we also examined the unique socio-economic and demographical aspects of each town, their current marketing activities, trends analysis, target markets and competitive factors - all in all, a complete marketing audit that helped to develop our understanding of current and potential attributes of each town.

We then utilised this insight to present back to the community a unique set of marketing objectives, followed by a marketing strategy and activity plan for each town with recommended communications, dependencies and timescales. The marketing activity plan detailed specific campaigns, recommended media channel usage (e.g. online / offline activity, events).

Results

Both marketing strategies have been very well received by relevant community members because they are realistic to each towns respective situation and identify how to meet the expectations of their citizens, visitors, businesses and investors.

Stroud District Council are now proceeding with funding applications for the delivery of each Marketing Strategy.