The Whisky Baron is an independent whisky bottling brand offering a premium high-end experience founded three years ago by Jake Sharp and joined by Stevie James.
The company integrates augmented reality technology which brings bottles to life and gives customers an experience beyond the liquid. Customers can find out about the whisky and what food to pair it with by scanning the label with an app.
As a small startup company, Stevie explains why The Whisky Baron approached Thunderbolt Digital, a Surrey marketing agency, for support, “Despite having run a social marketing agency in the past, as a small start-up company, we didn’t have the time to do our own social media marketing and Google Ads.”
“We searched online for local companies and Thunderbolt Digital was one of the agencies we approached. It was encouraging to be able to speak to Thunderbolt on the phone the day we enquired. We also chose to go with Thunderbolt because they are much more reasonably priced. Some other local agencies quoted us silly central London prices!”
Stevie is delighted with the results Thunderbolt Digital is achieving for The Whisky Baron, “Since working with Thunderbolt on our marketing, we’re more than happy with the direction we’re moving in. We’ve experienced more growth in the last few months than we’ve ever seen before!
“We’re happy with our advertising spend to ROI (return on investment) as it’s not easy to sell £150 bottles of whisky online. This would be a challenge to anyone. Yet, our account manager, Erin, focuses on the products we want to sell and they have sold consistently week on week. This consistency is more important than the amount we’re spending on advertising.”
“Working with Thunderbolt has been fantastic. The team is really attentive. Our account manager gets back to our emails on the same day and is very friendly and positive in all our communications. Saybhan, the Managing Director, is very friendly, and the whole team is in high spirits.
“It’s a real difference to other agencies that we’ve worked with that can be stiff, cold and corporate. We wanted a marketing partner that was approachable, that we could have a chat and a laugh with, and Thunderbolt’s Surrey marketing agency has that friendly culture.”
Stevie concludes, “If we continue to grow our online sales the way we are, we are going to have to put out our new releases soon, or else we’ll be sold out of stock! Knowing that Thunderbolt will continue to sell our products consistently helps our business planning. We can plan to sell out of a particular range by Christmas and that means we can move onto other products.
“Thunderbolt’s successful online marketing has also helped us to grow our mailing lists from sales for repeat customers, and increased our brand exposure.”