ISSBA Blog

As summer winds down and the leaves start to turn, it’s the perfect time for Ipswich business owners to start planning their autumn marketing strategy. The final quarter of the year can be a pivotal period for growth, customer engagement, and hitting those annual goals—so now is the time to think strategically about how to finish 2025 strong.

Start with Your Goals

Before diving into content and campaigns, take a moment to define what success looks like for your business over the next few months. Are you looking to boost sales, increase leads, or strengthen customer loyalty? Setting clear, measurable goals gives your marketing direction and ensures every campaign has a purpose. Consider breaking down your objectives month by month, so you can monitor progress and adjust quickly if needed.

Embrace Season-Relevant Content

Autumn brings a unique opportunity to connect with your audience through timely and relevant content. Think about seasonal promotions, product launches, or services that align with the end-of-year mindset. From autumn-themed social media posts to special offers around Halloween, Bonfire Night, or preparing for the festive period, content that resonates with the season can significantly boost engagement and visibility. Remember, authenticity is key—tailor your messaging to reflect your brand’s personality while staying relevant to your Ipswich community.

Three Key Suggestions to Boost Your Autumn Marketing

1. Plan Your Content Calendar: Map out posts, blogs, emails, and campaigns for the next three months. A clear schedule reduces last-minute stress and ensures consistent engagement.

2. Leverage Local Connections: Collaborate with other Ipswich businesses or community events. Co-promotions can expand your reach and reinforce local relationships.

3. Track and Adapt: Use insights from previous campaigns to guide your strategy. If something worked well last year around this time, consider adapting it for 2025—but don’t be afraid to innovate.

Autumn is a crucial time to make sure your business doesn’t just coast into the end of the year—it’s the season to plan, execute, and thrive.

If you’re feeling unsure about where to start or want fresh ideas to make your autumn marketing truly effective, ISSBA members are welcome to book a free, no-obligation brainstorming session. Together, we can map out a strategy that will set your business on the path to a successful end to 2025.

Book your FREE 15 Minute Catch-up with Oliver (Zoom Meeting) here...

Meet our new members for July 2025. Thank you to them all for joining and we look forward to finding out more about them.

Grieve Then Achieve

Balance & Beyond Accounting

Framlingham Technology Centre Ltd

As a business owner, you know that having the right marketing strategy in place is key to achieving long-term success. But what if you could get the expertise of a seasoned marketing director without the cost of a full-time hire? That's where I come in.

I’m Oliver Brock, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), and I specialise in providing Fractional Marketing Director services to businesses in Suffolk. Whether you're looking to reach long-term growth goals or need support with a specific project, product launch, or company launch, I’m here to help you navigate the journey and achieve real, measurable results.

What is a Fractional Marketing Director?

A Fractional Marketing Director provides the strategic guidance of a marketing director, but on a flexible, part-time basis. Instead of committing to a full-time hire, you get the expertise you need when you need it. This allows you to focus on what matters most for your business while benefiting from high-level marketing insights.

As a CIM Fellow, I bring years of experience and a proven track record of helping businesses grow strategically. From long-term planning to specific campaigns or product launches, I offer tailored solutions to fit your unique needs.

Why Choose Fractional Marketing?

The great thing about Fractional Marketing is the flexibility. You can hire me for as little as one hour per month or engage me for more intensive projects, such as:

• Long-term strategy development
• One-off projects or product launches
• Company launches or rebrands
• Specific marketing challenges

Whether you're looking for ongoing support or need a marketing expert for a specific initiative, I adapt to your business's needs, providing the right expertise at the right time.

Achieving Long-Term Success or Tackling a Specific Project

Every business has unique goals and challenges. With Fractional Marketing, you get the flexibility to work towards long-term growth or focus on immediate needs. If you're planning for the future and want a strategic roadmap, I’ll help you develop a sustainable marketing strategy that drives results. If you need a marketing professional to lead a product launch or a special campaign, I can step in for that specific project with the expertise and creativity to make it a success.

Focus on Results and ROI

My approach is always focused on delivering measurable results. From increasing brand visibility to driving customer acquisition, I make sure that every marketing effort is aligned with your business objectives and provides a clear return on investment.

Flexible, Scalable Support

The best part? Fractional Marketing Director services are fully flexible. You only pay for the time you need, and I’m here to work with you on whatever makes the most sense for your business. Whether it’s an hour of strategic advice or ongoing, hands-on support for an entire project, you get the freedom to choose the level of involvement that works for you.

Let’s Talk About Your Business Goals

If you’re ready to explore how a Fractional Marketing Director can help you achieve your long-term goals or support your next big project, let’s have a conversation! Book a Zoom discovery call with me here: Find Out if Fractional Marketing is Right for You

Let’s work together to make your marketing efforts a success—on your terms.

With the ever-evolving digital landscape, it is important to stay up to date with new metrics that could potentially impact your SEO.

Here, we investigate Google’s Core Web Vitals update due to take place in March 2024 and explain what it is, if the changes could influence SEO, and how you can navigate the year ahead with effective technical SEO strategies.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

In May 2020, as part of Google’s ongoing initiative to improve user experience, they introduced a set of standardised, user-centric metrics known as the ‘Core Web Vitals’ which were designed to transform how website performances are measured. These focus on three main user-centric performance metrics to provide a holistic view of a website’s user experience;

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint, also known as “LCP” measures loading speed, so how long it takes for the biggest content element on a page to load which in order to deliver a good user experience should be less than 2.5 seconds.

Source: Largest Contentful Paint by Google

First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures interactivity, how long it takes for the browser to respond to the user’s first page interaction such as a tap or a click. This response should be less than 100 milliseconds to deliver a good user experience.

Source: First Input Delay

Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS)

CLS measures visual stability which is how much the page’s layout shifts as it loads and for a good user experience this should be less than 0.1.

Source: Cumulative Layout Shift

By analysing these metrics, website owners are able to easily identify areas that require improvements and can take practical steps to enhance the performance of their site to create a better user experience.

 Why Are Core Web Vitals Important?

Core Web Vitals are a crucial part of optimising a website’s performance and improving them can go a long way to attracting more traffic and increasing conversions. Here are just some of the many reasons why Core Web Vitals are so important;

Optimising Core Web Vitals helps to provide smoother interactions, faster loading times and more visually stable browsing for an enhanced user experience that directly contributes to improved user satisfaction and engagement.

Because Core Web Vitals are incorporated by Google as a ranking factor, websites with better scores are more likely to have higher visibility in Google search and therefore attract more organic traffic.

Websites with optimised Core Web Vitals generate more pageviews and are able to better convince visitors to advance their user journey. This means that optimised sites have increased opportunities to monetise effectively, whether it’s an ‘add to cart’ or newsletter subscription.

Websites that are optimised for Core Web Vitals can result in a significant boost in both conversions and revenue. This is achieved by positively impacting their user’s behaviour through quicker loading times and a seamless user experience. These optimised sites are more likely to have lower bounce rates, higher rates of engagement and increased conversions which improve their business outcomes.

Core Web Vital optimisation can greatly improve user retention by helping to remove performance barriers and create a seamless conversion process. Websites with a positive loading experience can benefit from increased time spent on site as users are more likely to explore more content and stay on longer as well as return in the future.

Source: Google Search Console

How Do Google’s Core Web Vitals Impact SEO?

Whilst high-quality content is still deemed as the most important ranking factor, there is no doubt that having good Core Web Vitals can also contribute to this, as well as helping to improve the user experience when they visit the site.

In addition to the tactical impacts on SEO, integrating Core Web Vitals into the Google ranking algorithm has resulted in a substantial shift in SEO strategies. This means that more than ever, content creators, developers and site owners are prioritising user experience, visual stability and loading speeds alongside keyword optimisation and quality content, to ensure that their sites rank well.

To put it simply, having good Core Web Vitals is about more than SEO. It’s about making sure that not only will Google love your website, but that your visitors will too.

Source: Backlinko.com

What is the Core Web Vitals March 2024 Update?

Core Web Vitals are constantly changing and evolving but on 12th March 2024, there is an update that site owners, businesses, and developers need to be aware of so that they can prepare and adapt their optimisation strategy accordingly.

This update will see First Input Delay (FID) being replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (INP). The reason for this is that FID only focuses on the first user interaction delay, meaning that it doesn’t provide a sufficient or comprehensive understanding of the visitor’s whole website experience. INP however is able to consider the website’s overall interactivity, factoring in subsequent actions the user has beyond any initial delay. This means that it can better support the holistic evaluation of a website’s performance throughout the user’s entire visit.

Source: Google Search Central

The INP metric will assess the overall responsiveness of a page to the interactions of the users and give it a score, counting interactions such as;

• Mouse clicks
• Tapping on a device with a touchscreen
• Physically pressing a key on a screen or keyboard

Scrolling and hovering will not factor into INP.

With interaction metrics such as INP, it is difficult to define what would be classified as a good or bad score, but anything up to 200 milliseconds means that the page shows good responsiveness.

How Can I Prepare for the Core Web Vitals Update?

A good place to start is to get an idea of how your website is performing in terms of its current Core Web Vitals. You can place your site URL here, PageSpeed Insights and it will provide you with a score of passed, needs improvement, or failed as well as an overall performance rating out of 100 and diagnostic details to help identify where any issues lie.

The update from FID to INP will likely require most websites to adapt some of their optimisation strategies, including things like;

• Reducing delay by focusing on interactivity as a whole. This might mean streamlining rendering processes, optimising server response times, or minimising JavaScript execution.
• Improve client-side performance and INP by optimising JavaScript code, compressing images, and leveraging browser caching.
• Evaluate third-party services that may be affecting interactivity and consider removing those that hinder responsiveness and cause delays.

Looking into cache storage, lazing loading, and service workers to leverage browser features and APIs can help to improve overall performance and INP.

On 3 December 2021 new guidance on hybrid working that had been commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) was published on behalf of the government's Flexible Working Taskforce.  This guidance is supplemental to the guidance that has already been provided by ACAS on hybrid working.

The guidance encourages employers to consider hybrid working as a possible way forward.  The guidance states that hybrid working may be a solution to attracting and retaining talented employees. It offers practical suggestions for employers as well.  For example, ensuring that relevant hybrid working policies and practices are in place and also reviewing HR processes and training of relevant managers/employees and also examples of practical steps that the guidance recommends employers should follow.  The pandemic has demonstrated the need for employers to think flexibly and although forced upon the labour market, that flexible/home working are possible and can be advantageous to employees and businesses alike. However, it does acknowledge that this is not always possible or indeed not every employee finds hybrid working of benefit to them either.  Therefore, the wellbeing of all employees must be taken into consideration.

Health and Wellbeing has perhaps never been more at the forefront since the pandemic. The guidance further highlights the responsibilities that employers have towards their employees.  It suggests that for the health and wellbeing of their employees that it may be advantageous for employers to offer hybrid working.  The report concludes that hybrid working is evolving and as such businesses that adopt hybrid working policy must evolve with it.   

https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/hybrid-working-practical-guidance-2021_tcm18-103709.pdf
https://www.acas.org.uk/hybrid-working

If you are in of need employment advice or support please contact Annalie King, Employment Consultant Solicitor at Kerseys Solicitors, I am a click away or call away. You can contact Annalie on Ipswich 01473 213311 or Colchester 01206 584584, email info@kerseys.co.uk or visit our website and click “Call Me Back”.  Annalie will be happy to contact you at a time that is convenient.

The case of Gwynedd Council v S Barratt and I Hughes [2021] serves as reminder to employers that they should follow best practice even if the employer considers that the outcome would not differ from the original decision.

In the above case Gwynedd Council (the Council) decided that it would restructure schools in a particular area.  It would close a number of schools and open a new school instead.  The Council notified teachers at the affected schools that the schools were going to close and they would have a chance to apply for roles at the new school.  Those teachers that were unsuccessful in obtaining new roles at the school would be made redundant. 

The claimants in this case had applied for roles that were largely similar to the roles that they had been doing in their previous schools but were unsuccessful in their applications and were notified by the Council that they would be made redundant.  The Council failed to notify the claimants of their right to appeal.

The claimants wrote to their current schools Governing Body raising the issue that they had not been offered the right to appeal. The Governing Body apologising for the failure to notify the claimants of their right to appeal, but that any appeal by them would have been fruitless. 

The claimants then wrote to the Council notifying them of their right to appeal the decision, but the Council responded similarly to that of the Governing Body that any appeal would be fruitless. Therefore, the claimants were not offered the right to appeal the decision to make their positions redundant. 

The claimants proceeded with claims in the Employment Tribunals for unfair dismissal.  The success of their claims included the failure to follow a fair procedure in the lack of proper consultation and also declining their right for them to appeal the decision.

The Council then appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal where it was again unsuccessful in defending the claim.  It then went on further to appeal to the Court of Appeal. 

The Council argued a number of points before the Court of Appeal. 

The Court of Appeal did not uphold the Council’s appeal.  However, the Court of Appeal did state that the failure to offer a right of appeal in a redundancy situation does not automatically render a dismissal unfair.  It can, however, contribute to a finding of unfairness. 

It is risky for employers to take the stance of not offering an appeal where it believes that any such appeal would be fruitless.  It should be borne in mind before making such a decision that should the matter go before an Employment Tribunal the Employment Tribunal may find differently resulting in a judgment of unfairness. 

For all of your Employment Lawand HRneeds Annalie King, Employment Consultant Solicitor at Kerseys Solicitors is a click away or call away. You can contact Annalie on Ipswich 01473 213311 or Colchester 01206 584584, email info@kerseys.co.uk or visit our website and click “Call Me Back”.  We will be happy to contact you at a time that is convenient.