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Josh Mitchell on methodical marketing

By Josh Mitchell

MD of Mitchell & Stones | Event Director of Hampshire Business Show

Mitchell & Stones was founded in 2018 by Josh Mitchell and Chris Stones, who, having met at the University of Winchester, used their experiences of using social media to promote university events, and from just £60 created a digital marketing agency which three years later has grown exponentially.

The success of a business that has been built methodically from the ground up is testimony to their down-to-earth hard work and desire to support others. The company’s vision, ‘To become leaders in modern marketing by empowering our people, clients and partners to achieve the extraordinary’ drives real purpose in what they do every day. The pair are also founders of local B2B exhibition, The Hampshire Business Show.

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What’s your process when coming up with marketing solutions for clients?

The first thing we need to understand is what are the objectives and what are we looking to achieve. Is it brand growth, sales activation or potentially exploring an untapped audience with a new offering?

This followed by in-depth audience segmentation mapping along with identifying the emotional buy-in triggers allows for the set up and ongoing optimisation of successful, measurable and repeatable activities.

To me, good digital marketing is about creating good processes because once you find, refine and optimise those processes that generate consistent opportunities for your pipeline, then it's almost like a gift that keeps on giving and allows you to forecast sales more accurately.

Where possible we try to avoid features and benefits within marketing communications. The three dominant buying emotions are pain, fear and pleasure and as marketers, it’s our job to deep dive into the problems and challenges that our clients actually fix.
Once this is understood, we have found the tone and messaging we want to broadcast to our clients audiences.

Marketing is a fast-moving field of expertise; how do you stay ahead of the game?

We've got a team of 9 and we’re about to grow to about 10-12. We do lots of things internally, knowledge sharing and training twice a week. Each member of the team is assigned a certain specialism when it comes to online marketing to act as the internal newsroom for the latest trends.

In our sector, there is a real risk of falling behind because the space moves so quickly so we're constantly working hard to ensure we remain ahead of the curve.

What do you foresee to be the marketing trends of the future?

There are a lot of exciting new things happening in our world as well as some challenges. The new iOS update will give iPhone users more insight and control over their privacy which I think is a good thing. It will present challenges in the paid social environment but I think it's a good headache for agencies because it means we're going to have to think a little bit more creatively before we can launch campaigns and retarget individuals.

I can see AI being absolutely dominant in the future of marketing. Even now, there are some incredibly advanced AI tech opportunities out there which are optimising paid ad campaigns, blogs, social media content etc. The fact of the matter is in many cases, AI is smarter, faster and more efficient than us humans.

I think the next tech giants of our era will be organisations who develop software and programs which can dynamically laser focus media based on interests, behaviours and likely wants/needs based on how we as individuals navigate the world.

With the accuracy of targeted communications these days, I can also foresee some areas of the communication world ceasing to exist due to not being able to report back efficacy or measurable results.

In summary, I suppose it’s exciting as a shed load of change is likely to be on route.

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Do you have any top tips for businesses wanting to promote themselves?

When we look at marketing it’s important to understand what we’re doing it for. Is it how well known the brand is or is it how many customers and opportunities we bring into the business?

Bigger businesses can probably afford to allocate a proportion of budget towards brand awareness in their sector, geographic or demographic.

But for a smaller business to focus on how your brand’s perceived is not something that you can directly attribute revenue to straightaway. If the objective is potential for new customers, then the marketing needs to be focused on more short-term activities such as lead generation.

Can you tell us about the forthcoming Hampshire Business Show?

We launched the Hampshire Business Show in 2019. It’s a business-to-business expo taking place on 14 October this year at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton. The show attracts C-suite senior level decision-makers, for some it’s an ROI activity, for others it’s about brand awareness. We’ve got some really high-profile speakers including Karren Brady, and panel seminars with local experts from a variety of sectors – IT, HR business development, marketing. There are 100 exhibitors and we’re expecting 1000 attendees this year.

"To me, good digital marketing is about creating good processes because once you find, refine and optimise those processes that fill up your pipeline, then it's almost like a gift that keeps on giving."

Josh Mitchell, MD of Mitchell & Stones | Event Director of Hampshire Business Show

What is your strategic direction for the future?

We’ve had a huge growth spurt in a very short space of time, which is exciting but also presents challenges. In the short term our direction is recalibrating, making sure that we’ve grown in the right way, clients are getting the service they deserve, and nothing’s falling behind. That ensures we’re ready for that next step because we’d like to expand our team and make sure that when we’re ready to make that jump, it’s from a place of strong foundations.

Is there a brand that you admire in terms of its ethos and creativity?

I used to work for Apple and the biggest inspiration for me from working there is that they don’t talk about good customer service, they talk about creating experiences for their clients.

They understand how all their products fit into different people’s lives at different stages of their life. From children with their first iPad for games and education to getting their first entry-level iPhone.

They have their model store in Cupertino and map everything out before they roll it across the world.

They have a real emphasis and focus on their people, and their people retention rate is through the roof.

"I can see AI being absolutely dominant in the future of marketing. Maybe even in some cases, humans will become a little redundant, even in digital marketing, because AI is smarter and faster."

Josh Mitchell, MD of Mitchell & Stones | Event Director of Hampshire Business Show

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