Health Care

Croda Enhances Customer Experiences with Hootsuite

The main word in Croda’s marketing dictionary is “customer.” This is who matters most and whose behaviours affect the company the most. “We have a huge focus on enhancing our customer experiences through digital channels,” says Ashley Sidi, Global Digital Marketing Lead. “So, whenever Hootsuite and I are doing a SMA [social maturity assessment] or looking at what we need to do for the year, it's always about the customer being at the heart of everything we do and giving them the best experience.” 

Putting the customer in the middle of Croda’s digital transformation meant empowering employees to become more proficient in using various social media channels to build relationships and create engagement. Before Hootsuite Enterprise and Amplify, Millard-Paton and Sidi tried to encourage employees to get comfortable with social media, especially with LinkedIn where most of the company’s audience is. But employees remained unsure about what to say online while others said that they didn’t use social media or didn’t like it.  

“But Amplify really made everybody an active participant in social media, and the feedback has always been that it’s very easy to use, which has been great at getting people to actually get on the platform,” says Sidi. “I had a colleague tell me: ‘I've never made a social media post in my life. Now I'm on Amplify all the time, my customers are liking my content, and they’re happy that they can interact with me there.’ So, it's been a huge win.” 

Amplify has been the biggest source of internal success in terms of changing the mindset of many people about social media, including key stakeholders that are now actively promoting stories about the company. “We had execs involved, and Sandra Breene, our President of Regional Delivery, was a huge advocate for the program, which got everyone excited to use it,” says Sidi.  

Croda credits the Hootsuite team with having pushed Amplify beyond Marketing, to Sales, HR, R&D, ‘right across the board.’ 

“We have 150 to 200 active Amplify users on the platform and some key people with influence, particularly within their sectors, that are now actively promoting stories about what we're doing within the business,” says Millard-Paton.  

And while the messaging from those users reaches Croda’s audiences and the industries it serves, everything is kept centralized.  

“Hootsuite Enterprise has consolidated everything for us, so it keeps Croda in one consistent place— this is our social media factory that keeps us moving forward,” says Sidi. “And Hootsuite’s made my life easier. I don’t have to ask people to send me separate reports and what content they're posting. I can see everything in one place.”  

Hootsuite Enterprise doesn’t only consolidate all the existing social channels and provide an overview. It also ensures reliable reporting and sets up the teams so that they can easily execute all social goals. The content is broken down by topics including innovation, culture, recruitment, and—obviously—sustainability, but anyone can share any messaging while brand ambassadors can provide feedback and request specific topics, tailoring the content to speak to the needs of their networks. 

What would normally be handled in silos and, potentially, by marketing agencies, is now done by Croda itself, ensuring consistency and preventing additional costs. But there is also the benefit of saving time and effort.  

“We started with limited and inconsistent social activity across some of the marketing sectors,” says Millard-Paton. We have now significantly expanded this and also added the Amplify program. It’s difficult to put a number on the latter, but we've gone from a baseline of almost nothing to reaching millions of connections on LinkedIn.”

Croda and Hootsuite created a meaningful partnership that is much more than a regular provider-customer relationship. “We lean on Hootsuite quite a bit for best practices, insight, trends, and to help us drive decisions and validate that what we're doing is the right way to go,” says Sidi. “We've evolved so much as a partnership. Our Hootsuite customer reps are an extension of our team. They really got to know our business and we established a closeness where any new idea can be discussed together, and it has been incredibly helpful in shaping our strategy.” 

While Croda keeps learning and growing its social media presence—with departments now using social media as part of its strategy—regular SMAs help it stay on course and keep an eye on its progress. The company is gaining further insight thanks to the recent connection of Google Analytics to Hootsuite Advanced Analytics. For Croda, having its Google Analytics goals tracked through the Hootsuite platform has enhanced Advanced Analytics’ value considerably. 

“Now people are using it more to really analyse their content and see what drives sample requests or website registrations,” says Sidi. 

In one quarter, the company has seen a 50% increase in website conversions from social content and, as a B2B business, it’s vital for Croda to know where they come from and what content is most successful in creating leads.  

The company is now absolutely smashing its global reach and social presence. However, such online expansion comes with risks, so Croda decided to rely on ZeroFox - a social media security company partnered with Hootsuite - to identify, manage and tackle social media threats and fraudulent activities from within the Hootsuite dashboard. The decision has proved to be a prudent one, several times.  

“We started seeing our products popping up on marketplaces that they shouldn't have been on,” says Sidi. “There were more than I thought there would be, but it's so easy to flag it and a week or two later it's taken down. Sometimes we find things we would never have known were floating on eBay or Alibaba if ZeroFox wasn't enabled.” 

The company was also impressed with the turnaround time from flagging to removing when the ZeroFox integration found impersonations of one of its brands. Unsurprisingly, the Croda brand in question wanted to know who to go to and how to take the impersonating accounts down.  

“We said to them: ‘We've got ZeroFox, there's no need to panic, we've got this,’” comments Millard-Paton. “In a way, this was a good news story internally and it’s a big message for the whole company. We’re growing the confidence within the business to use social media, but we also have that protection there just in case something does go wrong.” 

Croda’s roadmap continues to evolve - it is firmly focused on being a fully digitally enabled company and enhancing its customers’ experience through digital. Improved tracking of sales achieved through social media is on the agenda and it’s discussing how Hootsuite can help with sales enablement and finding ways to nurture clients.  

The company is keen to keep its sales team involved in the platform in such a way that it can actively liaise with customers through Hootsuite Inbox - viewing, responding to, and engaging with Instagram direct messages, LinkedIn emails, and similar communications. Enabling employees to reach out and build and maintain relationships with customers is the perfect solution to truly putting customers at the ‘heart of operations.’ 

The company is also getting into storytelling by organizing workshops and focusing on best practices around copywriting and content development.  

According to DSMN8—a social employee influencer company—since 2021, Croda has crept to the number one spot as the UK's Most Active Chemical Professionals on social media. “Our target audience is formulators and we've seen our content being shared by so many different people in the industry,” says Sidi. “A big contributor to this has been the Hootsuite partnership with our Amplify program.” 

“The first phase was getting everyone on board,” says Sidi. “Now, it’s part of everyone's routine, so the next phase is to get people to be a little bit more strategic in why they're posting something and what they’re trying to get out of that post.” 

It’s clear that Croda finds a lot of value in its relationship with Hootsuite and has plans to explore new opportunities and avenues provided by the platform itself and the customer support it receives.  

“Hootsuite gives us a voice,” says Millard-Paton. “With them, we have experts helping us set a best-practice strategy that has been validated by other companies using the platform. And since we are a relatively small team within Croda, it helps give weight to what we're recommending to the business. It also gives us stability, because we like to grow and work with partners on a long-term basis. And I think it's a testament to how well we view Hootsuite as a partner that we've stayed with them for so long.”