Cornerstone Design & Marketing Agency
Cornerstone has been a trusted and reputable leisure marketing agency for many years, with an excellent track record in providing strategic transformational marketing expertise.
Leisure is a sector we truly value for the significant role it plays in our communities and thus society as a whole. We know it is more than just about tangible assets; first and foremost, it’s about people.
It was that experience, and the reputation it has earned us, that prompted Bolton Arena to first approach us as it embarked on a journey to raise the brand profile, grow online presence and improve member retention and cross-selling opportunities within the existing customer base, as well as attracting new business.
As a full-service marketing agency, we provide an array of integrated services including marketing research and strategy, re-branding, public relations, web development, digital marketing, social media marketing, videography, large format printing and signage.
As our relationship with the Arena has blossomed over a two-year period, we have called on all those services to support its aim of becoming to Bolton’s go-to health, fitness, and wellbeing provider; the one that to stands out from the crowd due to its outstanding quality of staff, facilities, and services.
A rich heritage resulting from the Commonwealth Games of 2002
Bolton Arena was originally built to accommodate badminton for the Manchester Commonwealth Games of 2002, while at the same time creating a new hub for elite British tennis at a regional level.
Since then, it has transformed itself into an inclusive community hub catering for everyone from elite tennis players to walking footballers. Its facilities and activities include floodlit football pitches, sports hall, indoor tennis for all ages and abilities, gymnastics, athletics track, superbly equipped gym, steam room and sauna.
In addition, it features office space for local businesses, a medium-sized events venue and a café.
It has community health and wellbeing at its heart, providing a base for several community sports clubs and hosting community events.
It is set on a mission to inspire people of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, disabilities, and health conditions to pursue a passion for sport, and active and healthy lifestyles through the provision of excellent exercise facilities, health and wellbeing programmes and activities accessible to everyone – all delivered by highly professional, friendly, helpful staff in an open and welcoming environment.
It applies those same values to its events, hospitality and office spaces to ensure the facilities offer cost-effective solutions tailored to clients’ needs.
Analysing every aspect of every sphere of activity
The first contact between Bolton Arena and Cornerstone came in the shape of a consultancy to analyse every aspect of the Arena’s aims, operations, facilities, services and above all marketing activities in support of everything it did.
We were asked to put forward recommendations and suggestions for a marketing audit of the existing structure, processes and delivery techniques for marketing across the organisation, with a view to suggesting recommendations and outcomes that would help enrich and therefore enhance the marketing activity taking place within the organisation.
We worked closely with the marketing, sales and membership teams, and Arena fitness instructors and coaches, to get the granular detail necessary for a full strategic review.
We conducted internal marketing workshops and called on experts from our full-service teams to carry out audits into digital and social media activity and marketing, PR, existing marketing, and systems, among others.
We also conducted a ‘voice of the customer’ survey, hearing directly from the members what they thought about the Arena, its facilities and services.
The result was a 106-page report containing a full SWOT analysis on the Arena (and its competitors) that has become the foundation of our work for the Arena.
A new name and a colourful new brand
One of the Arena’s chief objectives was to showcase its strong partnerships in the community and continue to build on those, and to communicate its charitable and social enterprise status, which means it exists not for profit, but for the community, while not forgetting its strong roots in tennis, and how it has helped develop some of the UK’s most promising talent.
With ambitions for growing the sites, facilities and membership base across the organisation, we were tasked with reviewing brand alignment, positioning and structure, to ensure that branding is seamless, cohesive and capable of supporting business growth aspirations.
It’s evident not only from our research with Bolton Arena, but also the wider leisure sector, that users typically engage with, and reference the facility they visit or join, often over the brand name. This facility-first approach therefore always needs careful consideration within the branding and repositioning of any business or organisation.
Engagement with ‘Bolton Arena’ was already strong for existing members, but confusing for those new to the organisation, often misinterpreting it for an events venue. With this in mind, one of the most obvious manifestations of our work was a new name – Bolton Arena Sports Village.
And a new name meant a new-look brand and lots of new signage.
Signposting the way to a brighter future
We operate a highly specialised production studio and signage division. Our signage division isn’t an ‘add-on’, it’s an ‘ad-vantage’ – for our clients and for us as creatives. It enables us both to work together to perfect a concept from start to finish.
So, with our design team working its magic on a vibrant brand makeover, our signage team got to work on a site survey.
Signage design is about understanding your customers’ behaviour in order to create a beautiful, yet functional area. It’s not just about looking pretty – although it will definitely add a wow factor – it’s about seeing the potential in the space and surfaces around you and transforming them into golden branding opportunities.
Our signage team spent about 70 hours removing existing signs and then printing and installing new ones.
They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so here’s a look at the brand and the some of the signage we installed.
Our design influence can be seen in most places at the Arena these days, in the form of bike shed vinyls, totem panels of the kind pictured above, and other signage and vinyls throughout the venue.
A design that couldn’t ‘b’ better!
As you can see, our design team took the b of Bolton Arena and simplified it to create a bold, striking device that can host imagery, design elements or be used simply on its own. It creates another layer to the background and layout of our branding.
It appears within literature, stationery, promotional material and signage as a link to the primary brand mark and has the potential to act as a standalone element, creating a strong brand impact.
And it provides a striking welcome at the Arena entrance!
Here are some more examples of how we have utilised the Bolton b to excellent effect.
Bolstering the Bolton Arena Sports Village digital presence
Our design and the bright colour scheme to accompany it are evident on the Arena’s new-look website, created by our web team.
The old website performed well from a page speed perspective but lacked in a number of key areas such as user experience (UX) vital for keeping visitors on a website, search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve the chances of it being found and accessibility / DDA compliance issues, which have addressed and fixed as part of our work on the website.
We carried out extensive keyword research to determine which queries, words, and phrases users were searching for most. This helped to inform the creation of highly optimised content that helps to rank Bolton Arena on page one of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for relevant queries.
Wordsmiths from our PR and copywriting department were drafted in to create new content for the site, making it easy to read and follow whilst still being SEO-friendly.
The site also benefits from stronger imagery, another string to our bow thanks to the keen eyes of the photographic experts in our creative department.
All of this is supported with a robust social media and pay-per-click (PPC) digital advertising strategy that bolsters Bolton Arena’s digital presence to help drive traffic to the new-look website.
You’re in safe hands with our account managers
Forging strong working relationships with our clients is what we are all about here at Cornerstone.
Our work with Bolton Arena Sports Village has resulted in it becoming one of our much valued retainer clients, complete with its own account manager (AM), who understands the Arena’s commercial and marketing objectives, which in turn helps to provide even more focus and strategic planning.
Our experienced AM team provide planning, briefing, strategy and open channels of communication with all of our retainer clients, all supported through monthly retainer meetings and reports, supplemented by a monthly digital report from our digital team.
Such a focused and proactive approach means we are already working on the next phase of our marketing strategy for Bolton Arena Sports Village.
Get in touch, keep in touch
If you think your business or organisation could benefit from a full-service, strategic marketing workout, get in touch here: clients@cornerstonedm.co.uk
Or you can keep up to date with our latest client work and industry insights by connecting with Cornerstone Design & Marketing on LinkedIn.
