18 months on: Hidden Valley Bushcraft
We recently caught up with the Louise and Nick Goldsmith, founders of Hidden Valley Bushcraft, an outdoor education company that provides outdoor experiences and activities - including bespoke adventure and survival courses, corporate team building days, woodland cookery courses, wild camping overnight, educational workshops and forest school sessions for children - to hear how they’re getting on since we designed their map graphic.
1. How has your brand had to adapt to standing out in a changing marketplace?
We've embraced adaptability as a key factor in shaping our company's image. This journey has led us to refine our marketing, outreach, and communication strategies, recognising the importance of bolstering our public presence to enhance brand recognition and perception. Leveraging platforms such as social media (at the time of writing, Hidden Valley Bushcraft has almost 8000 followers on Instagram, and almost 5000 followers on Facebook!) YouTube (their page has almost 80,000 subscribers), and harnessing the power of word-of-mouth, we've amplified our advertising efforts.
Through our in-depth marketing deliberations, one fundamental revelation emerged—the significance of content creation in shaping our identity and underscoring the inherent worth of our offerings within the market.
2. How important has brand value been in resonating with your customer base?
Hugely, it’s very important for us to distinguish ourselves and be memorable to stay high in our customer’s minds so we have invested hugely in our social media marketing so that we’re present in the conversations around nature-based therapeutic activities and its utility for the veteran community!
3. Do you see the business launching new products or services based on the success or market changes
We’re always developing new products and services for people attending our venue, our workshops and nature retreats are really popular so we’re concentrating on making them even better whilst raising our little boy.
4. What types of marketing are you using to resonate with your customers?
Social media content, particularly YouTube has been our main source of new enquiries, so we’re developing loads of high-quality video content now with a videographer Haus of Hiatus put us in touch with (YouTube: @NickGoldsmith776). Furthermore, we’re also exploring the concept of creating a ‘curiosity gap’ in our videos, to make them really resonate, more interesting, and therefore more valuable to our audience.
5. Has the changing business landscape pushed your company to experiment with new approaches to attract customers and highlight your brand’s value?
We’ve been continuously investing in our brand perception through social media, and it’s got the point where Nick is now seen as an expert in this field, often appearing on media and on stage, most recently at Bear Grylls ‘Gone Wild’ Festival and as the author of ‘ReWild Your Mind’.
6. What are you forecasting to be future challenges in growing your business profile over the coming years?
Staying up to date with the new thinking in outdoor education as the sector is always evolving, as is keeping our courses and videos tailored to exactly what our customers want. It’s a fine line when working on the content, however we’re passionate about the subject and some days it doesn’t really feel like work!
