Marketing

Marketing at B&Q is all about our customers: understanding what they want and making it easy for them to find and buy it. 

• We spend a lot of time talking to customers – or, more accurately, listening to them. Our Customer Insights team co-ordinates an ongoing programme of focus groups and accompanied shops. These help to give us a really fresh perspective into what matters for customers and what we can do to keep improving our offer.
• It’s also important to keep track of what’s going on in the wider market. Our Proposition Team is constantly monitoring what our customers are seeing and hearing from other retailers, what their options are and what’s likely to influence them in future. We want to be constantly leading the market: a great example is our work on alternative energy, where we were the first major retailer to make solar panels and wind turbines available in a practical and affordable form.
• Our Range, Brand & Style Team is responsible for monitoring style trends throughout Europe & the World – and working with the Commercial Category teams to translate these into products that our customers can bring to life in their own homes. It’s also responsible for evolving B&Q’s own brands – helping to shape customer perceptions of what we can offer.
• The Category Marketing team works closely with the Commercial Category teams, ensuring that all this customer feedback and market analysis is translated into products and services that will really hit the spot – and then planning the advertising and promotion timetable to highlight the right offers at the right time.
• The Brand Marketing team looks after:-

• National Advertising: B&Q is one of the UK’s biggest advertisers, using a mixture of TV, Press, Radio, Inserts and Leaflets to get customers excited about what they’ll find in our stores and on our website.
• Direct Marketing: targeting offers at a store-by-store level, through brochures, flyers and local media.
• In-store Communication and POS: making it easier to shop our stores.

• The Communications Team is responsible for protecting and enhancing B&Q’s reputation. It does this through proactive media and PR campaigns, a 24/7 press office, and B&Q’s sponsorship programme, including a partnership with the British Olympic Association. It also manages our community programmes, such as the Better Neighbour Grants and the You Can Do It Awards.
• The Social Responsibility Team helps turn B&Q’s commitment to ‘improve the quality of life of all the people our business touches’ into reality. This can affect every aspect of the business, particularly areas like product sourcing and supply.
• The Multi Channel Team looks after DIY.com, our online store, and our Home Delivery service. Although stores are the prime focus of our business now, it’s important for us to offer our customers a choice of ways to buy – and the inspiration and confidence to plan projects from the convenience of their own home.