Thankyou Payroll

The Thankyou Payroll team

In a nutshell:

GoodSense worked with ethical payroll innovator Thankyou Payroll to create a new focus and understanding of their target audiences. This now becomes the strong foundation for future marketing and messaging work.  Thankyou Payroll provide free and affordable payroll services to charities and SMEs all over Aotearoa New Zealand.

The business supports the Thankyou Charitable Trust, which distributes grants to community groups and organisations.

What was needed:

2017 saw Thankyou Payroll at a critical stage of growth. A change in Government policy towards subsidies for payroll services coincided with the announcement of more onerous payroll reporting requirements for businesses. A more strategic focus on marketing was highlighted as a priority and, through an introduction via the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency (WREDA), GoodSense got to work.

How GoodSense helped:

In planning a sales growth strategy at GoodSense, we often first look at how a client can most easily find more customers like the ones they already have.  Thankyou Payroll was quick to identify their easy online sign up had limited the information gathered about current customers.

GoodSense spent a day working with core Thankyou Payroll team members to plan out the WHO of their target market, their brand and messaging strategy for the next stage of growth.

The first step in this work was a planning exercise we led to pool and deepen the knowledge held in-house at Thankyou Payroll about current customers.  This kind of intuitive and experience-based knowledge is often overlooked but can be an effective foundation for planning, especially if formal research or data analysis isn’t practical. Respecting and unleashing the knowledge of the combined client team is a key part of the GoodSense kaupapa.

We structured the planning process, facilitated the session and contributed our GoodSense experience as well as drawing on the in-house insights.  To make the planning process more robust we arranged for representatives from the different parts of the business to be involved, especially contact centre staff who talk to customers every day and have a close knowledge of their wants, needs and preferences.

We used a sort card methodology to identify industry segments.  The workshop participants all collaborated to sort and then prioritise types of organisations.  We then led the group through work to empathise with the differing needs of the individual decision makers in the different types of organisations, looking at emotional and attitudinal factors as well as rational ones.  This became the foundation for the benefit messages development work that followed.

The session was enlivened, as most Thankyou Payroll meetings are, by the presence of several team members’ dogs.

What this has meant for Thankyou Payroll:

The focus on audience planning and the sort card exercise were identified as highlights from the process by several of the Thankyou Payroll team. The process was seen as fun and interesting and and was felt to have delivered extremely valuable outputs.

The team felt a stronger focus on target audiences would not only shape their messaging work but also marketing communications for the year ahead.

“GoodSense planned and facilitated an effective and tailored workshop, helping us to pinpoint and create the important messages we want to convey, and the right audiences to convey them to.”  – Christina Bellis CEO, Thankyou Payroll

Find out more about how we can help you understand your audience, call Kath Dewar on 09 973 0960 or email us today, we would love to help.