About Nicki
Hi I’m Nicki Wakefield and I am a strategic marketing specialist who loves nothing more than finding solutions to systemic problems. I specialise in health and social care, multi-site and service businesses and organisations who need to communicate with a large membership, subscriber or customer base.
Call 07941 453896 now to discuss how I can help
Whether you’re a small organisation looking for a day of consultancy or a larger organisation looking for a contractor for a few days or more a month… or anything in-between… I can help.
How I got into social care
I set up Straight Up Marketing in 2010 when I’d just completed my Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and had decided to set up my own marketing consultancy business. I heard about the Personalisation agenda in social care and I realised that the skills I have gained in private healthcare and multi-site business services would be particularly useful for social care organisations looking to attract self-paying clients to supplement other revenue streams.
I soon found myself talking about the importance of sales and marketing to chief executives of learning disability charities and getting enquiries from care homes and domiciliary care providers who wanted to increase their share of the self-pay market.
I want to help good organisations who lack the skills I possess, to survive and thrive so that their clients receive the service they want and deserve.
I bring a breadth of experience to my clients
Over the past 25 years I have worked with dozens of private healthcare providers, social care charities, multi-site business services, recruitment, publishing, membership and other service organisations. I’ve helped them to see their organisations in a competitive marketplace as would-be customers do. I’ve helped them to clarify their strengths and weaknesses; see where their systems, staff and processes are unwittingly creating barriers to winning business; work out what to do in what order; identify the target cost per customer; set up mechanisms to track what is and isn’t working so they can ensure they get the best possible return on investment and oversee the implementation of their marketing plan.
What I bring to my clients is my strategic thinking, direct and operational marketing expertise, project management skills and pragmatism. I am used to getting the most out of limited marketing budgets and tend to come up with dozens of small changes that each cost very little, are easy to implement and which combine together to have a big impact on the bottom line.
My work history
As an employee I have led several small marketing functions at multi-site service providers including Bupa, BMI Healthcare (one of the UK’s largest private hospital groups), MWB Business Exchange (a multi-site serviced office provider) and Choice Support (a medium sized social care provider). I started my career working in direct marketing at the Financial Times and Warner Brothers and have also been Head of Membership at Kew Gardens.
I’ve headed up central, regional and divisional teams and have been responsible for marketing directly to consumers, organisations and intermediaries. I have worked hand-in-hand with sales teams, call centres, operational staff and colleagues in other divisions to ensure that the customer journey is seamless, and sales and marketing is effectively integrated into day-to-day systems and processes. This breadth of experience helps me to see things from several different perspectives and this has proven invaluable for organisations with a mix of revenue streams; providing different types of services to different groups; needing to talk to a range of audiences and offering services across multiple sites or geographical regions.
My social care clients support older people and those with a learning disability, mental health or other social care need. They include charities and private businesses; franchises and franchisees; multi-site care providers and those with a single care home or small home care business.
I have also applied my expertise to property services, training providers, membership organisations, coaches and recruitment companies.
Organisations
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Resolving issues like yours
Over the past few years, many organisations have found the market has got harder financially. They’ve seen the competition for paying clients increase and I have seen a widening gap between the larger organisations that understand are able to commit resources to marketing and the smaller providers who lack the time and expertise. And that was before COVID-19 had a devastating impact on people needing care, staff members and organisations.
I help clients who are developing a marketing strategy, often for the first time, and can provide ongoing strategic marketing advice and project manage the implementation of your plan if required.
Using skills learned over the past 25 years I understand what type of promotional activity works and in which situations, and I know what helps and hinders enquiry conversion. And the best thing… most issues usually cost little or nothing to resolve!
Unlike many other marketing specialists, I have no vested interest in selling you a specific “type” of marketing, I just want to help you to grow and sustain your business.
Areas of expertise
Marketing strategy development and project management
As a consultant I have provided strategic marketing advice and created sales and marketing strategies for dozens of service providers including single and multi-site care homes, medium sized social care charities, domiciliary care and live-in care providers.
Develop your wider business plan
As Marketing Director at Choice Support (a medium sized social care charity) I led on the creation of the 3-year business plan ensuring that it was a live plan informed by staff at all levels of the organisation and where individual staff members’ could see how their jobs were aligned to a shared sense of purpose.
Convert enquiries into customers
By creating centralised enquiry handling I have helped many organisations including Bupa, Care UK, BMI Healthcare and Dimensions to drastically increase the numbers of enquiries they convert into customers, generating millions of pounds in additional business. I have done this by ensuring no call goes unanswered, enquiries are handled effectively by the best qualified person, IT systems are configured effectively, staff understand processes and the organisations can report on effectiveness.
Recruit staff and volunteers
The recruitment of customers, staff and volunteers all go through a similar process from awareness through interest, contact and then taking up the role. Whilst your primary objective may be recruiting customers, I am able to bring my experience leading the marketing function for an occupational health recruitment organisation and the development of a volunteer programme at Choice Support to look at the challenges you face more holistically.
Track return on investment
I can help you cut out any ineffective marketing you are doing, help identify the types of marketing that is likely to produce results and set up mechanisms so that you know what is and isn’t working and where things are falling down. Having started out in direct marketing, getting behind the numbers has been at the heart of everything I did long before online marketing was a thing. I have been testing and analysing the effectiveness of marketing activity for over 25 years as well as developing IT systems and using a range of tools to track return on investment of different channels for over 15 years.
“Technology changes present an opportunity for rapid improvement in health and care, but services don’t always understand or implement them well.”
(CQC State of Care, March 2020)
Improve the effectiveness of your website & online presence
I have extensive online marketing experience leading the implementation of online marketing campaigns (including pay per click, search engine optimisation, social media and directories) and websites. I can help ensure your online campaigns are working, your website is generating visitors and turning them into enquiries and how this compares to your competitors. I can help you to work out whether you’d be better off creating a new website, making adjustments to your existing website or simply relying on online directories. I have led on the production of websites for multiple organisations ensuring that amongst other things they tell great stories, are focused on generating leads and are search engine optimised. For instance, I was part of the project team involved in creating a previous iteration of the main Bupa website, and the creation of a new website was critical in establishing a new direct online channel at MWB Business Exchange (a multi-site serviced offices provider) which significantly reduced the spend on referrals from intermediaries.
Use research to better understand the market you operate in
I can help you to better understand your competitors and the marketplace you operate in so that you can more confidently stop and start delivering services, adjusting your revenue streams and test new marketing channels. Using online research, telephone and face-to-face mystery shopping, data analysis, questionnaires and freedom of information requests I have helped organisations to understand their competitors, assess demand for their services, stop wasting time on tenders they would never win and feel confident investing in new marketing channels.
Increase awareness through third party sharing
Getting third parties to share information about your organisation is a great way to hugely increase awareness of, and interest in your organisation. But getting them to do so and in the way you want can be a significant challenge. I have a lot of experience getting messages to end users via their employer or membership organisation and can bring this experience to help identify opportunities and ways to make this effective.
Integrating marketing into day-to-day operations
When it comes to integrating marketing into your organisation it’s all about having effective systems and processes. COVID-19 may have forced you to do things differently such as change the ways you communicate with different audiences and work more closely with other organisations. It may be possible to leverage these new processes to help you to win more business.
“While we have seen some examples of good collaboration in response to the crisis it has not been evident everywhere and barriers to effective system working have been clear. Governance structures, leadership, working relationships, communication and finance remain key factors in the development and implementation of system working”
(CQC State of Care, March 2020)
Learn how to market your organisation
From 2013-16 small and medium sized care providers attracted more clients and built their business through using my Care Marketing Toolkit. The toolkit included over 80 videos and supporting materials specifically tailored to help care providers to market their organisations themselves. While the toolkit is no longer available for purchase as an online resource, I regularly share the tools and learning with my clients.
See what more of my
customers have to say
Read about how I’ve helped organisations like yours
Contact me now to discuss
how I can help