Aycliffe Today Business Aycliffe Today Business Issue 41 | Page 25

The magazine for Aycliffe Business Park | 25
COOL
CUSTOMERS
Thrive give Baltic
marketing strategy
a boost
Baltic Apprenticeships marketing manager
Brooke Urwin with Thrive director Johnny Woods.
Aycliffe Business Park’s very own Baltic Apprenticeships is well-established
across the UK as a specialist provider of tech and digital apprenticeships.
F
or the last 12 months they’ve been
busy behind the scenes working on
overhauling their marketing strategy
and output with the help of business
park neighbour, Thrive, a full-service
marketing, web and design agency.
Baltic’s relationship with Thrive actually
dates back further in history as they
provided the agency with a digital marketing
apprentice, Rachael Farley, in 2016, who
remains at the company today as a full-time
employee.
However, Baltic reached out to Thrive
in 2018 enquiring about the agency’s
specialism in content marketing strategy and
HubSpot Agency Partner expertise.
The learning provider made the decision
after some internal reviews recognised
the need to shift from their existing ‘Baltic
Training’ identity to the clearer ‘Baltic
Apprenticeships’ that best reflects their
organisation’s core service.
Brooke Urwin, marketing manager at
Baltic Apprenticeships, said: “We initially
spoke to Thrive about producing a content
marketing strategy and supporting us with
buyer persona creation, which was an
amazing revelation for our organisation.
“From there, everything just snowballed
into this fantastic new, all-singing, all-
dancing, website!”
The two companies have been working
closely on the implementation of HubSpot’s
comprehensive marketing capabilities and
Thrive has walked Baltic through the inbound
marketing methodology, providing lots of
knowledge transfer to Baltic’s enthusiastic
marketing team.
Thrive director Johnny Woods said: “A lot
of organisations can view marketing as a
‘necessary evil’, so to work collaboratively
with such a fantastic attitude has
overhauled the whole process and made
for the beginnings of a fantastic working
partnership.
“It’s been brilliant as a business to offer
lots of ‘knowledge transfer’ meaning that
Baltic’s team are now well-prepared, with
support waiting in the wings, to deliver a lot
of their own in-house marketing activity - it’s
the best way for such a proactive, innovative
organisation.”
The marketing and sales teams at Baltic
Apprenticeships are now implementing
their new-found knowledge using
HubSpot’s marketing and sales platform,
a comprehensive, automated tool perfect
for proactive, resourceful companies such
as Baltic, as well as producing masses of
relevant, high-quality content to best suit
their target customers – businesses that
require apprentices – that can be uploaded
By Sarah Burns
as part of automated workflows, taking the
extensive resource requirement usually
needed in the marketing process.
Brooke added: “Over the last 12 months
we have worked with Thrive to improve our
inbound marketing strategy and to better
position Baltic within the apprenticeship
market, their team has gone above and
beyond to help us with the Thriveability Plan
and the development of our new website.
“No request has ever been too big or
small and they continue to go out of their
way to make sure we are happy and offer
their support in any way they can.”
Baltic Apprenticeships hope their new
website will be a powerful tool for both
employers and apprentices to increase their
knowledge of apprenticeships, as well as
supporting the organisation’s brand values of
change, heroic support and digital dedication.
Johnny added: “It’s been a delight working
with Baltic through the HubSpot and inbound
marketing phases – Brooke and her team
have been so enthusiastic and proactive in
making every step successful and acted
upon.”
Both organisations are confident about
their partnership and are looking forward
to working collaboratively on other projects
going forward.
Thrive is a digital marketing agency based at the Xcel Centre, specialising in branding,
UI/UX design, web/app development and marketing services - www.thriveability.co.uk