Shadow Foam, a Cheshire based manufacturing business selling foam inserts for tool control and equipment organisation, have credited their recent growth to their YouTube channel.
The product is for both home users and trade / commercial applications alike. Producing a weekly video showcasing their product in a variety of different uses has proved a highly effective marketing tool for the firm. MD Jonathan Shone attributes this approach above any other as the key to growing their business. The idea being that the channel can be used to inspire and guide end users to create their own storage creations.
In the firm’s early days a little under ten years ago, the business was run from the owner’s garage, but quickly grew to the million pound operation based in Northwich that it is today. Now housed in a large business unit, and employing a dozen-strong team of local people, the firm continues on it’s path of sustained growth based largely around it’s video channel.
“We’ve tried it all over the past ten years, even working with four great and very different Marketing Managers. It was only in more recent years when I decided to plough our resources into building our YouTube channel, that we really started to see positive results.” says Johnathan.
Shadow Foam upload a new video to their YouTube channel, for free, every Friday evening. Since starting the channel seven years ago, it’s amassed over seven million views and generates thousands of pounds in sales revenue every month. A figure that is on the rise as the channel’s popularity and it’s subscriber count continues to grow.
Jonathan added, “Customers are looking for transparency in the businesses they buy from nowadays, so we find our YouTube channel ticks all those boxes. It gives our fans and customers an in-depth look at the product in use, and a real sense of the business that they are buying from. We also try to answer all questions and connect with our audience in a way that traditional marketing techniques just don’t allow, so YouTube is increasingly becoming a very easy choice for us. It’s allowing us to grow a really engaged and active community.”
According to a 2021 report by Social Media Examiners, YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world, after Google, as well as being the second largest website in the world. With 62% of it’s users accessing it daily. Yet according to the report, only 50% of marketers use the platform.
It’s something Jonathan is hoping to inspire other businesses in the region to adopt as part of their own growth strategies, having seen his own business grow by around 70% year-on-year since leveraging YouTube to reach his customers.
“Video, especially Youtube has been integral to our growth. It can also be a very inexpensive means of getting your business or product in front of millions as most people in business have access to a smart phone and simple editing software, which is all you need to start out. It doesn’t necessarily need the team and equipment that we have amassed to support it, especially in the early days. Just a little time, planning and confidence to get started. I really do hope others will be inspired by the growth we’ve been able to achieve using this massively under-used resource”
You can see all Shadow Foam’s video content, on their own channel via: https://www.youtube.com/ShadowFoam
