Keystone Marketing

Before you promote your event, ask these five questions

Katherine Hesketh — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:35:57 +0000

Venue booked. Date set. It’s finally happening. After months of planning, it is time to start selling tickets.

Your next job is promotion. And tempting as it might be to fire up Canva and create something you can quickly share on social media, it is worth pausing first.

Because after spending so long immersed in your event, you may have become, in the words of the Febreze advert: noseblind.

We’re not suggesting your event stinks, far from it. But you may be too close to it to see it as your audience does. Rush to “just get it out there” and your promotion could miss the people most likely to respond, leading to fewer ticket sales than your event deserves.

Taking a step back can be difficult when you are fizzing with enthusiasm. But these five questions will help you find renewed clarity: who you need to reach, what matters to them, what information they need and where they are most likely to notice your message.

There’s no secret sauce here. The value of the exercise lies in its simplicity. When deadlines are tight and excitement is high, it is easy to skip straight to outputs. Focusing on your audience first could save time, sharpen your message and make every channel work harder.

Q1. Who are you really trying to reach?

You may already have considered this while planning your event. Now is the time to look more closely and map out three types of audience using this simple framework:

Core: the people most likely to attend
Growth: the people with the potential to become interested
Support: those who can influence or enable attendance

For each group, note down as much detail as you can about who they are.

The truth: Your event is not relevant to everyone. The more specific you can be about your audience targeting, the more relevant your promotion can become.

Q2. What might encourage them to take part?

The big thing here is relevance. If your event doesn’t feel relevant to someone, they’re not going to attend. Think about what your Core and Growth audiences will gain, as well as what might motivate your Support audience to promote the event. Does your event provide entertainment, connection, confidence, discovery, practical value or simply an enjoyable way to spend their time? If so, tell them.

The truth: People will not attend simply because your organisation wants them to. Show them what is in it for them.

Q3. What could get in their way?

Barriers to attendance come in three main forms – practical and emotional and social.

Practical barriers:

Cost: Can I afford it?
Transport: How will I get there?
Timing: Does it fit into my day?

Emotional and social barriers

Uncertainty: What should I expect?
Belonging: Is this event for people like me?
Confidence: Will I feel comfortable attending alone?

Address the barriers you can and explain the experience clearly. Practical information and welcoming, inclusive language can reduce uncertainty and help people feel more confident about booking.

The truth: Leave out a crucial piece of information and a potential attendee may walk away. Make the decision as easy as possible for them.

Q4. What is the clearest reason to care?

You probably have a long list of reasons why someone should attend. If you try to include them all, your strongest message could disappear into the noise. Focus on the one thing you want your audience to understand. Test it by asking: if someone remembered only one thing about your event, what would you want it to be?

The truth: Clarity beats completeness. Give people one strong reason to care, not ten competing reasons.

Q5. Where would they expect to hear about it?

You have identified your audiences, understood what matters to them and clarified what you need to say. Now you can decide where to reach them. Go to the places your audiences already use and trust. Think beyond social media. An email newsletter, a poster in a familiar community venue, a WhatsApp group or a recommendation from a trusted organisation could be more effective if that is where your audience looks for information.

Truth: It’s not about where you like to communicate. It’s about where your audience is most likely to notice and trust the message.

We originally developed these questions to help a group of young event producers turn their ideas into practical marketing plans. But they are just as useful for experienced organisations, particularly when enthusiasm, familiarity or pressure to launch makes it difficult to step back.

If your organisation has become a little “noseblind”, Keystone can bring the outside perspective you need. Through practical workshops and collaborative planning, we help teams understand their audiences, sharpen their messages and make more confident marketing decisions.

Whether you are promoting an event, launching something new or helping non-marketers communicate more effectively, let’s start with the questions that matter.

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Cambridgeshire ACRE

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:54:57 +0000

Turning limited capacity into momentum

Client: Cambridgeshire ACRE

Nonprofits

The challenge

Cambridgeshire ACRE had strong expertise, established relationships and plenty of stories to tell. It supports rural communities across affordable housing, community buildings, health and wellbeing, environmental projects, volunteering and community development.

Our challenge was to create a more proactive, structured and focused approach to communications, aligned to their priorities but within an allocation of just a day a month. The charity needed strategic direction, but also dependable marketing expertise to help build trust and strengthen their position with their audiences as rural community specialists.

Our approach

We had already had a trusted relationship with Cambridgeshire ACRE through previous work, including the development of a practical tone of voice framework to help staff communicate more consistently and confidently, including the use of AI.

We began with an in-depth workshop to explore Cambridgeshire ACRE’s audiences, positioning, priorities, projects and communications challenges.

From those insights, we developed a structured and tailored communications approach combining strategic direction with practical delivery. Our support included content and campaign planning, organisational messaging, social media consultancy, content creation and copywriting, and practical guidance to help the internal team create stronger content.

We looked closely at how Cambridgeshire ACRE was communicating with its different audiences and recommended a more targeted to reflect that different audiences had different needs, motivations and relationships. We also helped the Chief Executive develop a more consistent LinkedIn presence, giving the organisation a stronger leadership voice and additional opportunities to highlight its work and impact.

We also created targeted content around key moments, including an article for Volunteers’ Week bringing together stories from across their projects, and presented at its Community Buildings Conference, sharing expert, practical advice to help volunteers increase visibility of the village halls they supported. As a bolt on resource, we also developed a closure and legacy content plan for the New Life on the Old West (NLOW) programme – designed to keep the achievements, knowledge and resources visible beyond the funding period.

Impact

The year-long retained partnership gave Cambridgeshire ACRE access to strategic marketing expertise, trusted advice and dependable additional capacity; creating an established communications rhythm and providing strategic confidence that helped strengthen the charity’s own internal capability going forward.

Across the retained period, Cambridgeshire ACRE’s combined social content generated more than 259,000 impressions and 5,500 interactions, while its website recorded 25,760 views. Its combined social media audience grew by 8.8%, including 13.7% growth on LinkedIn and 7.3% growth on Facebook.

Hayley Neal, Chief Executive, Cambridgeshire ACRE said:
“The session at the beginning, working through our marketing strategy and thinking carefully about audiences, positioning and priorities, was incredibly useful. As someone relatively new in post at the time, it really helped me to cement my thinking and gave me confidence that we were heading in the right direction.

“We were supported thoughtfully and professionally, particularly through the transition of losing our in house marketing expertise. That continuity and reassurance meant a great deal and has helped us maintain momentum during a period of change.”

Services used

Strategy
Campaigns
Content
Digital
Engagement

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Keystone chosen to exhibit at HSBC’s national Women’s Business Growth event

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:37:14 +0000

HSBC UK’s Women’s Business Growth Initiative two-year anniversary event takes place in London on 23 September, and we’ll be there.

This national event will bring together women business owners to celebrate two years of the initiative, make new connections and explore resilience, growth and the power of strong networks.

Keystone is one of six businesses selected from the Women’s Business Growth Initiative community to host a dedicated stand on the day. And rather than use that space simply to talk about ourselves, we want to use the opportunity to share something useful with the 120 guests.

Our Build Your Marketing Momentum stand will invite business owners to take a closer look at their own marketing through an interactive self-assessment, designed to help identify what’s working, what might be getting in the way and where to focus next.

And for anyone who wants to take that thinking a step further, we’ll also be opening up our Three for Free consultancy sessions, giving organisations an opportunity to bring a current marketing challenge or opportunity to the table and get some independent strategic thinking in return.

Keystone’s Managing Director, Hayley Williams said:

“Being selected to showcase Keystone at the anniversary event is a real privilege. But what I’m most looking forward to is bringing some of our thinking into the room and sharing it with other business owners.

“Whenever someone spends time with us, we strive to leave them with something useful, whether that’s a fresh perspective, a question that makes them think differently or a clearer idea of where to focus next.

“It feels very much in the spirit of an event that’s about celebrating business growth, sharing experiences and recognising the power of a strong network that we take this ethos to this special event too.”

You don’t need to be at the event to build your own marketing momentum. Our Marketing Momentum self-assessment and Three for Free sessions are available more widely too.

If you’d like a copy of the assessment, click the button below to download.

Or, if there’s a marketing challenge or opportunity you’d value an experienced outside perspective on, book a Three for Free session. You’ll get a focused 45-minute consultancy conversation with Hayley, followed by three tailored recommendations you can take away and act on, with no obligation.

The post Keystone chosen to exhibit at HSBC’s national Women’s Business Growth event appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Stop. Start. Strengthen.

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:10:34 +0000

Taking a break and experiencing something different can give us a fresh perspective. September often brings renewed energy and the temptation to charge into the final part of the year with a longer list of things to do.

But progress does not always come from adding more. The final quarter of the year can offer a useful moment to reflect on your marketing and decide what to stop, start and strengthen, so your time, effort and budget are used more effectively.

Stop

What are you doing because you have always done it that way?

Businesses can easily become attached to the status quo. We have all heard the phrase, “But we’ve always done it this way.” There’s always an argument for not fixing something that isn’t broken. But what if the longstanding, familiar ways of operating are no longer producing the results you need?

Is the regular newsletter you started 3 years ago receiving little meaningful engagement? Are the right people no longer seeing the content you share on your LinkedIn channel? Do you devote regular time on recurring tasks that don’t deliver clear outcomes?

This is not about stopping activity for the sake of it. It is an opportunity to look at the evidence and decide whether the time, effort and cost involved are still creating enough value.

Start

What important activity keeps being pushed to the bottom of the list?

Perhaps you have wanted to gather more insight from your audiences, capture stronger stories, improve your follow-up or put the next stage of a plan into action.

These activities may feel less exciting than launching a shiny new campaign, but they can strengthen the foundations beneath your marketing and give future activity a better chance of succeeding.

Make September the month when one important idea finally moves off the list and into action.

Strengthen

What is already showing signs of working?

Take a closer look at what you are doing well and what is delivering as intended. There may be an opportunity to build on content your audience values, put more weight behind an effective communications channel or use strong key messages more consistently.

Where you identify something promising, consider what it could become with additional time, focus or support.

Whatever you choose to stop, start or strengthen, ask:

Are the right people paying attention?
Is the value of what we do clear?
Is there an obvious next step?

Our Marketing Wheel of Momentum can help you identify what to stop, start and strengthen, showing where small changes could make a meaningful difference.

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Creative does not have to be complicated

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:46:50 +0000

Complex isn’t the same as clever, so says Chantal, our Head of Brand and Creative Strategy.

A piece of communication starts life with one job. Well, it should do. There should be just one thing you want the person reading to think, feel or do. But we all know the temptation to make the most of that beautiful white space by oh, I don’t know, cramming in one more teeny tiny little message, just one more call to action. Before you know it, whatever that communication was, it’s bursting at the seams, it’s the Tardis, trying to be so much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Complexity is so much easier than simplicity. The clever bit isn’t adding more, it’s knowing what to take away, stripping back all the other noise that you’re tempted to add.

Mark Twain probably said it best “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” (although did you know it was actually written by Blaise Pascal in 1657? Who knew)!

Fight it, fight the urge young Grasshopper, to make your communication that much more complicated than it should be. Your reader will thank you for it.

Simple is not the same as basic

‘Simple’ means that whatever you’ve created is easy to understand. Think of your communication like a guided tour. You lead your reader around, pointing out all the fabulous landmarks, give them just enough information to interest but not overwhelm, and finally send them on their way with a hunger to find out more.

That isn’t basic, that’s hard to do. Just because there is less on the page, doesn’t mean it was knocked up in 5 minutes.

Your visual can be bursting with colour, it can be playful, interesting, expressive, cryptic even, but everything on the page has to serve the function of the communication, the concept of the message, not fight it.

As a designer at heart, I love the Bauhaus of it all. Big, bold graphics light my little designer heart on fire, but the temptation towards minimalism has also got to be fought. Too little information is just as bad. You’ve got to think like Goldilocks and go for ‘just right’.

The three-ingredient test for a better creative

While you’re thinking of Goldilocks, you can also think of your communication like a cake. It needs all the ingredients, in the right order, and the right amounts, to turn it into something you want to eat, and not bin!

01 Give your communication a job before you give it a look

I always witter on about ‘Needs not solutions’. Figure out first what your communication needs to do first, unencumbered by preconceived ideas about how it should look.

What does your reader need to notice first? What has to stand out more than anything else? What do you need to include to get the idea across? Is it the problem, the benefit, a question, or the call to action?

The ‘So what?’ test

Give your thoughts some structure. Write down the hierarchy, from top to bottom. Then ask, of every element: ‘so what’. Does it have a purpose? Does it help move your reader towards the conclusion?

If it doesn’t, cut it. Remember, if everything is shouting, nothing is shouting.

02 How do you want your reader to feel?

OK, ‘feel’ isn’t as fluffy as you think. By ‘feel’ I mean creating that little moment of recognition that tells your reader this is relevant to them.

Relevance comes from connecting the message to a problem, goal, worry, benefit or practical need they already recognise. The temptation is always to start with what you want to say. But that’s the catch, this isn’t about you. If you want your reader to feel something, you need to put them first.

Aim for eliciting the thought:

“That’s me.”
“Finally, someone gets it.”
“I should probably know about this.”
“That looks easier than I thought.”
“I trust these people.”
“I don’t want to miss that.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I can do this.”

You’re trying to give your reader a reason to care about what you’re saying. You can’t bore them into reading it : )

03 How are you going to make it easy for your reader to take the next step?

It’s the final ingredient in your communications cake. It isn’t just about what you want your reader to ‘do’. It’s also about how easy you make for them to do it.

The creative needs to have laid enough groundwork that the next step feels obvious, rather than a leap into the unknown. Few readers are comfortable with a leap of faith.

What happens when one of the three ingredients is missing?

Notice without feel
Gets attention but gives your reader no reason to care.

Think: clever visual, brilliant headline, no relevance.

Your audience: “I was briefly entertained, but I had no reason to stay.”

Feel without notice
Contains something genuinely relevant but nobody gets far enough to discover it.

Think: the important benefit buried halfway down the communication.

Your audience: “There may have been something useful in there, but finding it felt too much like hard work.”

Notice and feel without do
Gets your reader’s attention, they’re interested… now what?

Think: multiple CTAs, vague next steps or no obvious way to respond.

Your audience: “This feels relevant to me, but I don’t know what to do next.”

Do without notice or feel
“BOOK NOW!”

Think: Nope.

Your audience: “‘I hear someone shouting, but I don’t know who or why. And I don’t care.”

Passed all three tests? Lovely. Now you can go wild with all the fancy visuals.

04 Do one final test

Once you’ve got everything in place, take another look. If there’s something in your communication that isn’t helping your reader notice, feel or do, why is it there? And be honest with yourself. I know I’ve had to have a long, hard word with myself when I’ve been wedded to an idea and I’ve shoehorned it in just because I like it.

For every headline, paragraph, logo, icon, image, statistic, box, button, colour, graphic or piece of information ask:

Is it helping your reader notice?
Is it helping them feel something useful?
Is it helping them act?

If the answer to all three is a big fat no, get rid!

One cheeky disclaimer before designers everywhere start shouting at me: this rule doesn’t apply in every case. Branding, accessibility and necessary information still have jobs to do. But you get the gist.

Simple isn’t always the simplest thing to do.

It’s often the result of a whole boatload of thinking, not less.

You can still be bold, clever, playful and unexpected. Just make sure every creative decision is helping your idea do its job, creating a clear path that allows your reader to notice it, connect with it and know exactly what to do next.

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Is AI changing the way we work?

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:28:41 +0000

Six rules for using AI at work responsibly.

There is no shortage of opinions about AI. It’s going to transform everything. It’s going to take everyone’s jobs. It will make us more productive, but it will also stop us thinking and make us lazy. It’s an extraordinary creative tool, and also the death of creativity.

The pros and cons of AI have been discussed earnestly and endlessly. Rather than add to that noise, we decided to do something different, knowing that even within our small team, there are differences in the way we feel about AI and how we use it. So, we sat down together, recorded the conversation and talked freely to see whether we could come up with ‘our rules for working with AI’. From our different perspectives, as creatives, writers and marketers. What we like about it, what makes us uncomfortable and where we think the human bit still matters.

We were hoping for a bit of disagreement. Chantal, Head of Brand and Creative Strategy, was, in her own words, quite keen on “fisticuffs”. No chairs were thrown.

A sceptic, an enthusiast and a frazzled project-manager walked into a bar…

We did not all adopt AI with the same energy. Chris, Campaign and Client Manager, described himself as “a dinosaur” when it comes to new technology and admitted that, when ChatGPT was first shown to him in a pub, he largely dismissed it. “I thought the human brain was far more capable and far stronger than anything machines could produce.”

That changed once he started using it properly.

Not because AI suddenly became cleverer than him (he questions that), but because he found a different role for it. “It feels like a critical friend.” For Chris, AI is a sounding board. Put in an idea, some half-formed thoughts or a different perspective you want to test and it gives you something back to challenge.

Katherine, Head of Communications, sees it more like extra storage. “It gives my brain more capacity. Like plugging in an external hard drive.” Complex projects create a lot of stuff. Meetings. Conversations. Decisions. Background information. Previous thinking. Retaining every moving part in your head is impossible. AI doesn’t just help hold it. It organises it and sees connections that could easily be missed or forgotten.

And for Chantal? “AI helps structure the hell out of me.” Perhaps the least technical explanation of AI-assisted cognitive processing, but an important one. Because one of AI’s most useful jobs is not necessarily doing the thinking. It’s the ability it has to take the thinking spilling out of a human brain, and help make it usable.

That “tidying up” is incredibly satisfying. But what if the mess is the point?

What if something valuable was hiding in the mess? Katherine talked about the remarkably clear meeting summaries AI can create in seconds. Chantal immediately saw the catch. “Sometimes the waffle is the creative moment.”

Human thinking is not particularly efficient. Conversations wander. Somebody makes an irrelevant observation. Someone else connects it to something apparently unrelated. You go off on a tangent, come back again and suddenly there is an idea sitting on the table that nobody could have put on the agenda beforehand. Bingo bongo, creativity!

AI is very good at deciding what appears to be relevant. But creativity is often ignited when humans wander off topic.

That gave us our first useful rule:

01 | Use AI to organise the mess. Don’t let it decide what matters.

More capacity. More time?

This led us to the biggest question: If AI saves us time, why aren’t we all spending Thursday afternoons with our feet up because Gemini, Claude or ChatGPT finished the work early. Katherine summed it up perfectly: “We’re still on the hamster wheel. We’re just going twice as fast.”

There is an enormous amount of debate about AI and productivity. Tasks that once took an hour can now take ten minutes. Research can be accelerated. First drafts can appear in seconds. Information can be processed at extraordinary speed. Yet we’re not sitting back and relaxing. We’re doing more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Faster medical research, quicker problem solving and the ability to remove hours of administration can have huge benefits. But productivity is not the same as value. The real benefit of saving four hours depends on what you choose to do with that time instead.

More thinking? More conversations? Better creative work? More time understanding the problem before rushing towards the solution? Or just another four hours of output?

02 | Let AI create capacity. You decide where to spend it.

The right answer or the most trodden path?

Then Katherine mentioned using Gemini to plan a holiday. A perfectly sensible use of AI. Tell it where you are going, what you enjoy and how much time you have and it can do hours of research in seconds. Chantal, was quick to question the value. “Isn’t it just showing you the most trodden, most predictable path?” And suddenly we were no longer talking about holidays.

Ask AI for campaign ideas, headlines, positioning, imagery or content topics and it has an extraordinary body of existing material to draw upon. Which is both its strength and its weakness. You ask for ideas, but what you actually get is statistical probability. What people commonly do. What things normally look like. Familiar language. Conventional structure. In other words, a balanced, polished, perfectly competent, perfectly sensible and perfectly familiar answer. Sometimes following the crowd and taking the sensible route is what you need. Sometimes you need differentiation. Standing out doesn’t mean following the crowds. It means taking the turning three miles earlier that everybody else ignored.

03 | Don’t assume that convention is always the right answer. Ask whether the solution works for your organisation, your audience and this moment.

When making things becomes easy, choosing becomes harder.

The discussion became particularly lively when we got onto creative work. If AI can create competent copy and imagery in seconds, what happens to the people who have spent years learning how to create those things?

This sent a little bristle of professional pride around the table ; ) Tools can give people access to production. They do not automatically give people judgement.

Chantal observed that new designers sometimes use every tool in the box just because you can. Every Photoshop trick, every effect, every element. Experience teaches the opposite. “The skill is in taking stuff away.” That feels increasingly important in an AI-enabled world. When generating another ten ideas costs almost nothing, the valuable skill is not necessarily generating idea number eleven. It’s knowing that idea four has something. It’s confidence to bin off idea eight. Or combining two to make one new brilliant idea. AI makes creation abundant. That makes selection, restraint and judgement more valuable.

04 | Generate freely. Edit ruthlessly.

Does it really matter if AI made it?

This was the hottest debate. If somebody uses AI to create a perfectly functional piece of communication, should we care? Chantal’s position was fairly pragmatic. “It’s just another tool. It’s about how you use that tool.” “A badly designed communication is badly designed whether somebody spent six hours lovingly crafting it or generated it in six seconds”. On the flip side, if an organisation with very little budget can suddenly create something clear, useful and effective, then why deny the opportunity?

There is another consideration. People notice. And if something feels generic, artificial or careless, that can influence what they think about the organisation behind it.

So perhaps asking “Was AI used?” is the wrong question. Better questions might be:

Does it do the job?
Does it feel like us?
Is it true?
Is it distinctive enough?
Has somebody with the right judgement taken responsibility for it?

Maybe the tool matters less than the thinking surrounding it.

05 | Judge the work, not the tool. Own the outcome.

Advice is not the same as handing over the keys.

There was one point where our comfort levels changed quite noticeably. We’re all pretty happy allowing AI to offer ideas, organise information, challenge our thinking and suggest what might happen next. Handing over the keys is different.

Chris described using an automated service where the lack of human intervention meant that, once the process went wrong, you reached a dead end with no friendly face to provide reassurance. Asking AI “What do you think?” still leaves you with the decision. Asking an AI agent to make the decision, purchase the thing, book the trip or complete an entire process loses you something valuable – control.

Chris has clear boundaries. He likes AI for work but an Alexa in an Airbnb was physically unplugged. “I can bring it out when I need it, but I’d rather it didn’t become a part of my life that I hadn’t invited in.” Chantal, meanwhile, would be first in line to purchase a fully functioning household robot if the price was right.

06 | Hand over tasks, not accountability. And always leave a way back to a human.

Maybe disagreeing was the point.

So, no, we did not always agree. No chairs were thrown. Probably a good thing, on both counts. But isn’t that the joy of being human? We are not robots, developed by taking masses of data and forming it into a generic human form, based on statistical probability. Individually, we have applied our enthusiasm, scepticism, curiosity and professional pride and found a way to use AI. We remain excited about what AI could make possible and have a touch of discomfort about where it might go – we will always be polite towards ChatGPT, just in case.

Perhaps you’re the enthusiast saying: what if we could? Or the sceptic saying: should we? Or the pragmatist, asking: is it actually any good? Somewhere between those three personalities lies a fairly sensible way to use AI. Avoiding it isn’t the answer. Nor is trying to put this particular genie back in the bottle. The best advice seems to be: don’t hand over every task simply because a machine can now perform it.

We started with some questions about AI. We finished, well over an hour later, talking about creativity, trust, loneliness, productivity, independence, science fiction, horses, cars, robots with googly eyes and whether being nice to ChatGPT might eventually save us when our new overlords arrive. Which, thinking about it, rather proves the point about not editing out the waffle.

AI has made producing things easier. It hasn’t made knowing what is worth producing easier.

P.S we call our ChatGPT Champagne SuperNova, Nova for short, and her pronouns are she/her/overlord. She helped structure this blog, and gosh, aren’t we thankful she organised our spaghetti brains. Which feels appropriate really. Although possibly that’s exactly what she wants us to think…

The post Is AI changing the way we work? appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Are you overpacking your marketing? 5 questions to bring greater focus

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:52:56 +0000

When marketing isn’t delivering the result you hoped for, the instinct can be to add more. More channels, more campaigns and more messages.

But more activity does not necessarily mean better results.

Think about the last time you packed for a holiday. You’re excited. You can’t wait. But there’s one job still hanging over you: packing.

For some reason we can feel the need to prepare for every eventuality. Before long, the suitcase is bulging at the seams, the zip is struggling and you’re sitting on top of it just to get it closed.

Then you arrive home and realise half of its contents never left the suitcase.

Marketing can work in much the same way. Sometimes you think you have to reach every audience with the same message. But adding more can increase the workload without actually solving the problem or achieving the outcomes you really want.

When the problem is unclear, the best place to start isn’t by doing more. It’s by asking the right questions and getting to the nub of what you really need.

Here’s a checklist to bring greater focus to your marketing:

What problem are we actually trying to solve?
Establish the real commercial, organisational or communication challenge.
Who needs to think, feel or do something differently?
Stand in the shoes of your audience. What matters to them Focus on what they need, rather than what you want them to like.
What is stopping them?
Identify the barriers. These might include awareness, trust, understanding, relevance or ease.
What is already working? What isn’t working? What could work better?
Assess your strengths, weaknesses and options, using real insight. Just because something looks and feels more exciting doesn’t necessarily mean it will be more effective.
What do we want our audience to do next?
Make sure your activity leads somewhere. Decide what action you want people to take and how you will keep them engaged afterwards.

Imagine how good it feels to head off on holiday with a lighter suitcase, only containing a few carefully chosen items.

Now apply the same discipline to your marketing: leave behind what adds little value and make more room for what could genuinely deliver results.

The post Are you overpacking your marketing? 5 questions to bring greater focus appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Arcade UK Ltd

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:23:00 +0000

Turning CRM into a strategic growth tool

Client: Arcade UK Ltd

Commercial, Digital, Engagement, Strategy

The challenge

Building on 50 years of mechanical and engineering expertise, Arcade UK Ltd was ready for its next phase of growth, with ambitions to expand both its in-house capabilities and its reach across multiple sectors.

Despite boasting strong client relationships, specialist technical expertise and an impressive track record of successful projects, they still needed a more connected way to manage contact data, conversations, engagement and future business development in a way they hadn’t previously.

In initial marketing scoping conversations, we recognised that without a system bringing these activities together, Arcade’s growth ambitions would have been difficult to achieve. We identified the need for a strategic CRM approach that could support how the business works now, and a method to track targeted long-term relationship-led growth.

Our approach

We worked with Arcade to review their CRM requirements against the needs of the business, including ease of use, scalability, integration with existing systems, marketing automation, sales tracking and long-term value. Our aim was to help Arcade make a confident decision around choosing a platform that could support both immediate adoption and future growth.

We produced a shortlist of suitable CRM systems matching their needs and worked closely with them to evaluate the options before making a final recommendation. As both HubSpot and GoHighLevel CRM partners, we were able to provide independent strategic advice and guide them to the best fit solution before supporting the implementation.

Once a commitment to CRM was made, we helped Arcade shape the next phase of its development through a focused scoping workshop. Here we explored how their chosen CRM could better support governance, segment and manage their audiences and track communications activity, while being strategically aligned to their growth plan. We then handled full implementation of their chosen system; with weekly check ins to prepare the new system for population, whilst also working to ensure the CRM could sync with Arcade’s third-party project management system.

Impact

Arcade now has a CRM system that has been developed as a practical growth tool, ensuring consistent data collection, a stronger, recorded and more connected view of relationship management with communication history, and planning and sales visibility across the customer base. With a clear home for all contacts, Arcade has now moved to sending intentional communication campaigns to defined, segmented and targeted audiences, with the view to creating future relationships and work opportunities.

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Back to school, Keystone style

Chantal Palmer — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:29:44 +0000

The summer holidays may be in full swing but this August, Keystone is going back to school. We’re not sharpening our pencils or choosing a new pencil case, however. Instead, we’re going to be at the front of the room, handing out the worksheets and preparing to be teachers for a day. Our students will be young adults aged between 16 and 20, participating in a summer programme delivered by Cambridgeshire County Council.

We’re delighted to be working with The Library Presents team once again, supporting the free, three-week Become an Events Producer Summer Course, which gives young adults interested in the arts an opportunity to learn how to plan, promote and produce live events with guidance from industry professionals.

For us, this programme brings together several things we care deeply about: creative confidence, practical communications, community-focused arts activity and helping people turn good ideas into reality.

Participants will gain practical experience by producing a real ticketed event, helping them strengthen their CV, portfolio or UCAS application.

Taking place at Cambridge Central Library, the course will introduce young adults to the different skills involved in event production, from programming and working with artists to planning, budgeting, health and safety, fundraising and evaluation. Our role will focus on event promotion, with a dedicated session covering marketing, branding, audiences and communications.

Over the course of the day, we will cover how to:

Reach, engage and welcome the right audiences
Choose the appropriate marketing channels
Create strong and clear messages
Ensure communications feel inclusive and accessible

By the end of the session, each person will have developed a practical mini marketing plan they can use as the foundation for promoting an event.

Designing the session also reinforced something we’ve long believed. The same principles that help a young producer market their first event are just as valuable for charities, community organisations and commercial businesses planning campaigns of their own. That’s why we’re exploring how these practical tools could become a series of bite-sized marketing lessons for a much wider audience.

Keystone has worked with The Library Presents team for over three years, supporting communications across seasonal arts programming, promotional campaigns and audience-focused content.

Hayley Williams, Managing Director at Keystone, said: “One of the things we value most at Keystone is building long-term relationships with organisations that share our passion for creating opportunities and making a positive difference. The Library Presents is a brilliant example of that, so it’s a real privilege to be supporting this programme and helping young people gain practical skills, professional insight and creative opportunities.

“Marketing is often seen as the bit that happens at the end, once an event has already been planned. But good communication starts much earlier. It helps shape who an event is for, what people need to know, what might encourage them to come and how to make them feel welcome when they do.”

If you know someone aged 16 to 20 who loves the arts, enjoys organising things or simply wants to discover all that happens behind the scenes of a live event, we’d encourage you to share the course with them. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Become an Events Producer Summer Course is free to attend and will run at Cambridge Central Library from Tuesday 11 August to Wednesday 26 August.

The post Back to school, Keystone style appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Applied InsurTech

Chantal Palmer — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:47:54 +0000

Turning complex insurance technology into a usable brand

Client: Applied InsurTech

Brand, Commercial, Digital, Engagement, Strategy

The challenge

Applied InsurTech needed a brand identity and messaging framework that could clearly communicate a complex commercial insurance technology offer.

The business provides technology that helps insurers and MGAs bring products to market more quickly, reduce costs and streamline the distribution of commercial insurance. The challenge was turning that specialist proposition into a brand that felt credible, modern and easy to understand for a commercial insurance audience.

They needed more than a logo. They needed the thinking behind it: a clear proposition, audience understanding, messaging, visual identity and practical brand tools that could support the business as it launched into the market.

Our approach

We began with a brand and messaging workshop, helping the Applied InsurTech team draw out what the business does, who it needs to reach, what makes the offer different and how the brand should be perceived.

The workshop looked at the business proposition, audience needs, USPs, competitor context, objections, tone of voice, brand personality and practical use cases for the identity. This gave the creative work a clear strategic foundation before any visual routes were developed.

From there, we created a messaging framework that included the vision, mission, strapline, short and long descriptive messaging, USPs and FAQs. This helped turn a technical offer into clearer language that could be used consistently across the website, sales materials and wider communications.

We then developed logo concepts and visual identity routes, exploring how the brand could express speed, integration, technology, confidence and accessibility. The final identity work included logo development, colour palette, typography and brand guidance, giving Applied InsurTech a more professional and usable brand system.

Impact

The project gave Applied InsurTech a clearer, more confident way to present its business to the commercial insurance market.

By combining strategic workshop insight, messaging development and visual identity design, we helped turn a complex proposition into a brand that was easier to understand and use, and better aligned with the business’s ambitions.

The work created a stronger foundation for Applied InsurTech’s market presence. It supported a clearer website proposition, more consistent communications and a visual identity that could help the business demonstrate greater credibility.

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