Leading the Marketing & Communications Team
Business advice
Project success
Team working
Achieve Results
Team leading
Motivating the team
Business and engagement lead
Business Review
Brand development
Strategic drive
Communications improvements
Transforming marketing
Lead through change
Marketing operations
Marketing the brand
Sales Growth
Inspiring Teams
Marketing developments
Working across teams
Marketing
Leading teams
Supporting young people
Leading engagement
Project support
Marketing for customers
The change agenda
Marketing and recruitment
Brand development
Change leadership
Supporting the customer
Leadership
Assessing business growth potential
Customer Service
International Business
Establishing the Engagement agenda.
Implementing effective internal communications
Establishing a Brand
Reviewing key partnership working and contracts.
Contact centre for university courses
Selling to the indirect customer
Business start-up in Northants
An annual review of company progress
De Montfort University in 4 places - a branding challenge
Creating a new brand message and position
Ensuring Compliance with the Consumer Rights Act
Building one team from three functions
Lead through change
Contact Us
To request a consultation or discuss your business needs please call 07917 868263 or complete the form below and submit
Bulletin
Testimonials
Case Studies
Business Development
Do you have clear plan to develop and grow your business?
Is it time to review the goals you have set in the context of a changing external environment and customer expectations?
Has another organisation/product/service created waves in the market?
Should you be changing direction, responding to competition or carving a stronger niche for future security?
At Oysterjam we understand that time to review business plans and strategy is often precious and routine performance monitoring my not address development needs as you would wish. We believe that a review is helpful in judging performance and how to follow the chosen strategic path (or revise it.) Any review, preferably at least annually, enables you to fully analyse the marketing and sales strategies you have implemented.
Contact Oysterjam to undertake a review of your business plans and your marketing, sales and growth strategies and ensure that you do not continue to do the same things and achieve the same outcomes.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Strategy and Change Leadership
How often does your strategy develop? Is it maximising your customer and market knowledge, best portfoio of products and services, effective use of technologies, knowledge of past history and activities and views of the future potential?
How often do you adapt and/or change direction in order to achieve your organisational goals.
The most successful strategies include operationl plans which also ensure that the culture is supportive, resources are in place, staff are competent to handle changes, and the leadership team united behind developments.
Oysterjam will help you to review and/or revise your current strategies,your current operations against performance. We will analyse any changes experienced and needed and enable you to bring your strategy up to date.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Branding, Marketing & Sales
Developing and implementing a Marketing Strategy.
Even with developed business strategies, (whether explicit or known only to the senior leadership team) knowing how to achieve goals of profits, growth, developments, competitiveness etc and the operational processes and plans which support them is vital, in order to succeed. Without a marketing strategy in place the appropriate resources, branding, communications and customer relationships ( to name but a few) may not develop in the right direction.
Once the business strategy is in place have you implemented the right marketing strategy to help to achieve your aims.? Have you good insight into the competition, customer preferences and behaviour, external constraints and your own successful and less successful previous marketing performance?
The marketing strategy will define: the markets you are aiming at, the products and services you wish to provide, their prices, how they will be distributed to customers, how they will be packaged and promoted.
It will include sales targets and predictions, operating costs (including marketing costs) and profits likely to accrue.
It may break down different markets segments, types of customers and even individual products.
It will be monitored and have key performance indicators and timelines on which to routinely report.
Fixing performance measures against marketing activities, targeting, service/product delivery and campaign management will give leaders a clear view of whether the business strategy is likely to be achieved and how.
Oysterjam has developed many different marketing strategies in support of business strategies across private, public and third sector organisations. Whether Business to Business, (B2B) Business to Consumer, (B2C) international or home market we can develop, implement and monitor your marketing strategy.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Marketing planning and review
Whether starting a new venture, entering a new market, or implementing your business plans for the short, medium and long-term, planning the marketing activities to help to achieve targets is essential. Depending on how ambitious your goals are, you will need to map the resources, timing and content of the marketing activities which will provide maximum impact towards achieving those goals.
Do you need to communicate differently, to target new customers, in new media, at different times, with new messages?
Have you run a successful marketing campaign which now needs to be changed, reinforced and followed up?
Oysterjam will plan your marketing with you in the context of your business goals and resource allocations.
We will review the success of previous marketing activities and recommend future marketing plans and support.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Brands- what do they mean, how to manage them and why are they important?
The success of organisations, services and products is often dependent on the strength of their brands.
Do you understand the brand image, personality and values that your brand(s) represent(s)?
Are they distinctive, relevant, engaging, competitive and easily understood?
There’s so much to managing a successful brand that determines the potential success of its market performance but we often do not take the time to either clarify what our brand should be and/or actually embodies.
Large corporations often have teams of experts monitoring their brands; performance, updating when required and actively managing them. Whatever the resources we have on hand to do this the brand is not just a pretty logo or clever website- it’s a lot more besides. Market research has developed alongside multiple customer awareness, sophisticated Customer Relationship Management systems and 24 hour monitoring of digital media communications- to mention just a few tools available to scrutinise brand performance.
The way you manage your brand, how you communicate, how your staff perceive and live the brand and how you appear to potential and current customers should not be left to chance.
Oysterjam will help you to understand the brand, what it stands for,the impact it has and how to develop and enhance it in the way that best meets your business and cultural objectives.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Marketing management
With or without a plan do you have someone to manage the implementation of your marketing activities?
Are there performance measurement tools in place and are staff trained and competent to handle any marketing challenges that you and the customers throw at them?
At Oysterjam, to underpin the agreed marketing strategy we can specify the skills needed and recruit your marketing team, training where required. We will review and implement measures to try to ensure you get best value from your marketing activities – whether in-house or out-sourced. We will help with the day to day management and progress chase planned activities and campaigns.
And when the unexpected hits and you have to take remedial action (manage communications, media relations, or take quick marketing steps to deal with new circumstances for example,) then Oysterjam provides the capable hands to deal with the issues.
Marketing management services embrace all aspects of media: Advertising, Direct marketing, PR, Web development, market research, social media, marketing collateral and events. We also develop and implement strategies and plans to cover internal and external communications and sales (see also Sales section.)
Oysterjam provides marketing management services on a project or regular basis- contact us to discuss your needs.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Training in Marketing
Do you have gaps in your marketing expertise?
Are you developing an in-house marketing team, recruiting and developing new team members,
Do you need to help colleagues to understand marketing and how its helps to support the business?
Do you provide services for new staff, new or growing businesses and would like to add marketing to the training and development you provide?
Oysterjam can help with marketing training, from introducing marketing concepts to practical steps to get your marketing activities up and running.
Commissioning and managing marketing agencies
Do you need to purchase marketing services or materials to support your strategy? It could be PR, digital developments/social media or printed leaflets, for example.
Can out-sourcing boost your capacity to improve performance ?
Do you need to set up a procurement and/or tendering process to select preferred suppliers?
Are you comfortable with procurement processes, managing contracts and ensuring that the out-sourced services are of high quality and value?
Oysterjam can help you to determine the nature and scale of your need, source and commission external agencies for you. We will also manage those agency relationships if you need us to.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Sales Planning
Determining what you have to sell and that there is a customer base to sell to are just the first steps in planning your sales activities. How to price, promote, package, distribute and target are key and may require flexible approaches as the market changes.
Whether you have a contact centre at your premises, use a field force, direct sale on-line , external appointment making agencies or all of these, then it will need planning.
There are cyclical markets which peak at certain times of the year and you might have planned, timed, specific marketing campaigns to drive up sales so it is important to consider this in the planning of resource allocation.
What about when and where your potential customers might be accessible, contacting past and current customers and new potential customers who may have emerged since you last planned a sales drive?
Have you planned the sales process- getting the goods/services to the customer, after sales support and follow up for repeat sales?
Oysterjam will sit down with you to plan how the sales function needs to work to achieve targets and capitalise on marketing campaigns.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Sales management and targeting
Managing sales can be closely tied to information gathering and performance measurement. What do you know about sales patterns, top clients, why and what they buy, when and how much?
Do you have a Customer Relationship Management platform and ways of analysing data to understand the key profiles of good and potential customers?
Once you know who you want to sell to how do you manage the sales force or sales media and set realistic targets?
Oysterjam will analyse your key sales requirements and help you to introduce the right management systems to suit you and your customers.
Whether setting up sales processes and practices (calls made, conversion from calls to sales etc.) or introducing commission schemes we can advise.
If you need to contact past and/or inactive clients we can help too.
We can help to establish contact centres for both outbound and inbound calls.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Client relationship management
Whatever your system of managing client sales records Oysterjam will help you to establish best practice in the frequency and methods of client contact to maximise keeping even inactive clients “warm”.
You might want to establish regular newsletters, e-zines or other methods of keeping them informed but also ensuring that the field force do not lose contact with their clients.
Most customers buy from people and people with whom they have an active and good relationship. We will recommend processes to help you to build regular customer contact into the day to day business, be able to adjust and monitor performance and ensure that you retain and grow your client base.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Communications & Staffing
Communications reviews
How good are you at getting the messages across to:
your customer and external stakeholders?
your staff?
One of the principle areas in which strategies fail is through poor communications.
Whether failing to clearly get the message across to external clients and stakeholders or to staff and associates, communications can make or break good strategies. A secret to achieving successful employee engagement programmes is excellent communications, it is also the route to establishing and delivering good brand propositions.
Key to ensuring that improved communications are maintained is performance monitoring, utilising feedback, communications champions and an ear to all conversations.
Oysterjam can help you to plot the activities that constitute effective communications, exploring the channels of communication that you need and use, the target audiences, the frequency, content and style required to best get your information across and to ensure that important messages are understood.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
The best communications engage
Engagement is a useful term to ensure that not only are communications are clear, frequent , consistent and purposeful but actually engage with the chosen audience(s).
With the plethora of social media conversations around us, we can often detect which communications have got through, engaged in a way we would wish and/or need us to engage to promote our business interests through monitoring.
Oysterjam can review your communications, content, media, monitoring and processes to ensure that business objectives are met.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Staff recruitment
How do you specify and ascertain the skills/ experience and expertise you require from staff working in , marketing, business development or sales?
What are the job descriptions,role specifications, the selection process, interviewing, inducting or coaching processes and skills required?
Oysterjam reviews current and future staff needs, and helps to undertake the steps to ensure that you have the best qualified staff for your needs.
From structural planning to meet business needs to shortlisting and interviewing the right people.
Contact us now on 07917 868263
Our Services
Click on the sections listed on the left to find out how Oysterjam supports your business needs and helps you to succeed.
There are examples of how we help with strategy, developing new business, staffing, customer care, branding and marketing campaigns, communications and many other business areas listed. For a detailed discussion regarding your needs contact us directly.
About Us
About Oysterjam
Marianne Harris-Bridge came up with the idea to form Oysterjam in 2005. She wanted to provide marketing, business development, sales and communications support to companies in need of a fresh approach to their business needs. Working with organisations in the private, public, and third sectors Marianne determined that the challenges to delivering growth were not dissimilar in each sector. Even in the larger organisations with their own internal resources; they often value and need a fresh and objective review of their strategies (and how they are implemented), to grow business or move in a new direction.
In 2012 Oysterjam welcomed Phil Harris- Bridge to the company. Phil brings a wealth of experience focusing on global transformation projects, customer service and clients support, general management and in IT, Distribution and Manufacturing sectors.
Oysterjam provides one-to-one reviews, advice and support to companies and through extensive experience in business development and transformation, delivers wide ranging support across people, systems and operations; designed to grow business and deliver excellent customer services.
Marianne Harris-Bridge
Marianne is a successful marketing and business development director with over 30 years experience in the private, public and not for profit sectors. She has developed new corporate brands, managed in-house and external marketing resources, achieved growth objectives and created new markets for consumers, (pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, OTC, professional membership, fragrances and flavours, Higher and Further education, qualifications and training.) B2B products and services (change, leadership, professional management services, consultancy and qualifications.) Clients have ranged from SMEs to large multinationals in all sectors and Marianne has led teams of up to 200 staff across several sites. Particular expertise has been in circumstances of organisational change, where Marianne has undertaken change leadership roles (responding to merger, new business strategy, market direction, restructure for example,) forged new visions and strategies and led the performance and cultural changes- particularly emphasis on the customer experience and support processes.. Marianne has grasped the market context for each organisation and sector and used her influence and communication skills to motivate teams, colleagues and external stakeholders to achieve success.
Phil Harris-Bridge
Phil is a successful and experienced Customer Operations Director, with 20 years of experience in UK and International markets. He is also an experienced General Manager, having run three separate businesses in the distribution, IT and manufacturing sectors, developing and successfully implementing strategies for growth and improved financial performance. Successfully leading and delivering business change and transformation sit at the core of Phil’s experience set, based on strong insight into customers’ and suppliers’ motivations and behaviours as well as strong, effective leadership and people management and development skills.
Phil is an experienced programme and project manager, having successfully led and delivered a broad range of transformation initiatives. Examples include closing a warehouse in Denmark and establishing new supply routes into the Scandinavian markets; redesigning and implementing a Europe-wide customer complaints management process; leading a full SAP implementation over two and a half years in a large UK-based business and many more process evaluation and improvement projects to remove waste, reduce cost and improve customer experience.
Phil has expanded his sector coverage with public sector experience through Non Executive Director roles in educational and NHS health trusts.
