Is the Advertising for Otterburn Mills Ltd. Effective?

by Alan Pringle

The Edinburgh Academy is grateful to Otterburn Mills Ltd. for their co-operation in allowing both the research and the display of this project.

Introduction
Methodology
The Importance of Effective Advertising
Otterburn Mills Ltd.
The Graph
Analysis of Results
Action Taken
Photographs
Conclusion
Sources

Introduction

In this project I tried to investigate the effectiveness of the advertising undertaken by Otterburn Mills Ltd.  I conducted a survey to find out how customers at the mill had been attracted to visit it.

Methodology

Mr. Nigel Owen, manager of the mill, asked me to do a customer survey.  The aim was to find out how people had found out about Otterburn Mill.  In other words I was to find out how effective the mill's advertising was.  At the time, the mill was advertising in newspapers, tourist magazines and in leaflets distributed through tourist information centres (TIC), hotels and B&B's.  The mill is also well sign posted on the approach roads into Otterburn.  The advertising budget at the time was approximately £18,000.

I conducted the survey by using a questionnaire and over a period of four days I asked as many visitors to the mill as possible to answer the questions. The questionnaire was designed to find out where the visitors were from, how they had travelled to Otterburn, whether they were day trippers, tourists or just passing through and lastly but most importantly for me how they had heard about Otterburn Mill.

The Importance of Effective Advertising

Advertising is either informative or persuasive.  It uses newspapers, television and other media as a means of encouraging people to buy a product.  Without advertising the public would not know where a business is and what it makes or sells.  This is the importance of advertising.  Advertising is part of the marketing process and good marketing increases a company's chances of doing well.  Companies spend millions of pounds each year on advertising and it is very important that they use the best form of advertising to attract a wide variety of customers.

A company will spend a lot of money each year on marketing.  A good marketing programme will have a number of strands, which together make up the 'marketing mix'. The marketing mix is a combination of product, price, promotion and place.  Promotion includes all kinds of advertising, free gifts and other incentives to make customers want to buy the product.

There are very important reasons for spending so much on marketing.  The main reason is to make the company competitive so that it will do better than its rivals.  Good marketing must persuade customers to remember the name of the company so that, instead of only going once they will remember the name and come back again and again to the company.

Context

The village of Otterburn is situated on the busy A696 road in Northumberland and there is a continual flow of traffic going through the village.  This is the main route from York to Edinburgh, two of the most popular visitor cities in Britain. For hundreds of years there has been a working woollen mill in Otterburn down by the river.  However, in 1976 production of woven cloth ceased. Today, the old mill buildings have been opened up as a visitor centre and shop.  The shop sells a wide range of woollen garments, outdoor wear and the famous Otterburn pram rugs.  Visitors are also able to see authentic mill equipment from days gone by.

Analysis of the results

As we can see from the graph 3% of the people I interviewed had heard about Otterburn Mill from newspaper advertisements. 22% of the sample had got information about Otterburn Mill through leaflets.  The road signs outside had attracted 25%. 11% of the customers had been recommended to visit by hoteliers, landladies, friends etc.  Only 1% of the sample had read about the mill in tourist magazines.  Finally, a large proportion, 38%, said that they had heard about Otterburn Mill by "word of mouth" or that it was a place that they just knew was worth visiting.

From these results we can see that most people that I surveyed "just knew about" the mill.  The most effective form of advertising used was the road signs. The mill is extensively signed from all roads leading to it and running past it.  A lot of people had read leaflets about Otterburn Mill and decided to come.  This means that the leaflets were effective and it is important that they continue to be distributed through the TIC"S, hotels, guest houses etc.  After that it was just recommendation of the mill that had attracted people.  This is not really a form of advertising.  Finally the media attracted the least amount of people with newspapers attracting 3% of surveyed customers and Tourist magazines attracting just 1%.

All that this survey has done is to look at how advertising is affecting the number of people who actually walk through the doors of Otterburn Mill.  It has not compared that number of people with the amount of money actually taken at the tills.  This is quite a different question as benefits accrued do not really depend on visitor numbers but on how much each visitor is willing to spend.  The amount of money which thirty people on a coach tour may spend might well be less than the amount spent by a visiting couple buying cashmere to take home.  The management of Otterburn Mill is well aware of the difficulties of assessing this kind of question.

Action taken

With the knowledge of the results of my survey the management at Otterburn Mill decided to stop most advertising in Newspapers and Tourist Magazines although the annual sale is still advertised and some other special events.  In doing this, the advertising budget was cut by £6,000 to £12,000

Conclusion

Successful advertising is very important.  It informs the customers and persuades them to visit and to buy.  Tourists may only visit Otterburn Mill once on their holiday but, if they go to the area again, may remember to come back.  Locals and day-trippers may make it a regular stop if the marketing mix is correct.

The manager has to choose where to place his adverts.  As we have seen in this case, newspaper advertising was proving ineffective while advertising directly through tourist leaflets had a better effect.  Even better was "word of mouth" - landladies, tour bus guides etc. who knew about what the mill had to offer were persuading the customers to come along.  Once there, the other marketing strands, product and price would hopefully persuade them to buy.
 

Webmaster's note - the original project contained several more illustrations,  which have been eliminated in the interest of more rapid loading.