Speaking at yesterday’s live recording of The kbbreview Podcast, retailers agreed that digital marketing has become less effective in 2025, and say they are pivoting back to traditional marketing methods as a result.
Discussing the state of the digital marketplace, Luke Wedgbury, founder of Coalville Kitchens, said that the digital market is “saturated” and “drenched” with competition.
Speaking on the panel, he said: “We’ve always prided ourselves that whatever our competitors are doing, we try and do something different. If you go back 8 or 9 years, we were market leading digitally – no one was doing what we were doing, no one was spending on Meta. We were pioneering that, and getting lots of leads because of it. Now everyone is doing that. The market digitally is so diluted, it’s such a difficult space.”
As a result, he said his business had prioritised more traditional forms of in-person and local marketing, saying: “We’ve had some success with direct mail, leaflets and with going back into local press. Many moons ago we had success with radio and we’ve just started doing that again.
“I think you’ve got to be different, you’ve got to do something that maybe the people within your area are not doing – as long as you’re different, people will remember that.”
Elizabeth Pantling-Jones, managing director of Lima Kitchens, agreed, recalling how her business “had the monopoly in the area” over social media marketing, but said she “just can’t get business in the same way” any more.
She explained: “I get increasingly frustrated going back to the algorithm and social media with people who come in and try to tell me how to do my job – I can’t take that anymore, I’ve done it for too long. So I’ve taken the steps to try to reach clients and educate them.”
Discussing the launch of her new venture, the Home Improvement Podcast, she said: “I’m hoping to do is one get more business for myself, but also strengthen the market for everyone. My hope is that I will be able to grow a network of people across the country who will work together and get involved share some of the information.”
Trevor Scott, CEO at RFK, said his business had recently decided to cut ties with the online marketing agency it had used for the past 14 years. Explaining that he saw “more or less instant change” afterwards, Scott said RFK had since become “a lot more connected with the right customers”.
He continued: “We’ve been online and we’ve been on Meta and social media since the noughties, but we needed to re-address that and give it a proper kick up the backside. We’re now targeting very specific postcodes –not we’re not just targeting an area or a town or an age demographic – we’re pretty much down to individual streets because we know that small zone within a town is ripe for new kitchens.”
Agreeing with Luke Wedgebury, Scott said: “We’re getting into leaflet dropping again, which we haven’t done for the best part of 20 years. Local radio has worked very well for us. Unfortunately we lost our local radio station, but that’s something I’d like to revisit it.”
Tina Riley, owner of Modern Homes, said that her business did very little advertising, and instead prioritised relationship-building with other small businesses.
“I agree it’s all about relationships,” she said, continuing: “The industrial estate I’m on has 70 businesses, and if everybody recommends everybody else and everybody works with everybody else it it helps everybody in the end.
“We don’t do a lot of advertising. Maybe some of the print media in small villages where we’ve done work but we try and develop relationships. We’re doing some work to get back to networking. Networking can take a long time, but what you’re doing is selling the whole business, not just selling a kitchen. So yeah, I think it’s about developing relationships now.”
You can listen to the full episode of The kbbreview Podcast below:
