We’re excited to announce a new feature for our website and social channels! As a digital marketing agency, we have the pleasure of working with some very interesting clients and people. So with that in mind, we’ve launched our Client Spotlight series.
Over the coming months we’ll be interviewing some of our key clients – finding out a bit about the people behind the brand, how they got into their position, their day to day routines, and their thoughts on working with DMT.
The first episode features one of our longest-standing clients – Eatlean. We sat down with Social Media Brand Executive and keen Eatleaner, Helen. Below you can watch the vid in full or read on for the full video transcript if words are more your thing.
With subjects from aerospace engineering right through to the etiquette on (not) sharing your Eatlean cheese bake, our Head of Content, Aimee, gets an insightful look at the day to day of working in a thriving eCommerce business.
Client Spotlight Transcript
Aimee (DMT): Alright, so could you just tell us a little bit about Eatlean and the back story behind you guys?
Helen (Eatlean): Yeah, sure. So Eatlean is actually part of a bigger company called Joseph Heler. It’s a sub-brand to Joseph Heler. It’s founded by George Heler, who is the grandson of Joseph Heler. George basically wanted to create a low fat cheese – he’s kind of played around with the low fat cheese is in the past, but he wanted to create a brand who makes, manufactures and sells low fat cheese. So that’s kind of where Eatlean came from, really.
Originally, we were selling just as a low fat cheese on Myprotein, and we obviously saw the success of that and what it could be, and turned it into its own brand. And that’s where Eatlean came from really. And since then we’ve kind of gone from strength to strength with selling in retail and eCommerce.
Aimee: Yeah, amazing!
What’s your role within the company, like what does a normal day look like for Helen?
Helen: A normal day? I don’t have a normal day. I mean, I look after the social media and like the influencers and everything. And I guess my – I see my main role as obviously the brand awareness, kind of getting the brand out there to as many people as possible to find out about Eatlean and yeah, engaging all the time on social media. I think you grow a better brand audience when you do engage with them all the time.
There’s nothing worse than you know, being on social media and speaking to a brand, and they just never get back to you and engage. It’s really good when you do get a brand that engages or tries to do that all the time.
And, yeah, lots of different stuff really – working with our photographer and videographer to create the recipes, you know, and find out what people are looking for. Get kind of lower calorie alternatives on for recipes and working with affiliates to help them promote our you know, their code for our brand.
So yeah, lots of different things really putting on the spot it’s hard to kind of *gestures*. That’s kind of what my daily routine is I mean, to go back to your point like that.
Aimee: There’s always been something about Eatlean that you guys do particularly well, and it’s just about creating that community space online. As you said, it’s just so important for a brand nowadays. If you don’t talk to people on social, then your audience is just going to leave. They want brands to be people.
Helen: Yeah, they do, yeah, we call (our fans) Eatleaners. So the people that that follow us, they’re Eatleaners and it’s kind of a little um, you know, it’s a saying that we we say all the time, kind of make them feel part of the family and part of the brand as well, and we try and involve them as much as possible.
So, yeah, I think it’s important, definitely that they see there’s a human side to the brand as well not just, you know, us selling cheese. We actually kind of want to make a difference to the likes of obesity, in the world of obesity and, you know, produce healthier alternatives that people can have that are actually natural, you know, most of our cheese is natural.
Um, so yeah. Yeah.
Aimee: Amazing. So how did you get into that industry? What’s your story there?
Helen: It’s very strange actually!
So I the job that I had before this was actually in an aerospace industry. So absolutely nothing to do with cheese, or farming or food or anything. Um, and basically I was really into my nutrition and the health side of things and obviously, who doesn’t love food and cheese?
And I just basically saw saw the job and thought, you know what? I just took a leap of faith. My previous company was actually my only job, really, that had since I left school, for 14 years. So I just thought, take a leap of faith and go for it. And George luckily enough, you know, saw the passion.
I actually ate Eatlean myself at home before I even went for the job. So I kinda knew about the brand and the product and everything already, and I was just really passionate about trying to help it grow and get that awareness out there, that there is an alternative, you know, a healthier alternative, and things like dieting and sports performance, they can be made easier by finding these types of foods. So I really wanted to help push that message out.
And, yeah, George just decided to hire me from that, really! So I had no experience, but I think my passion came through for it. And luckily enough it helped me.
Aimee: Aerospace to cheese. What a big difference!
Helen: Because the previous job and aerospace was obviously more corporate as well. Whereas this is very much, you know, family, third generation company – totally different.
And if I’m honest, I do prefer this type of, uh, you know, company – working for an entrepreneur.
You’re listened to more. You know, you have more, more say and and, you know, they really do value your opinion. You feel like you have more of an influence on how things go.
Aimee: Yeah. Brilliant. Amazing. Um, so in terms of digital marketing, how do you feel? Like how that’s helped Eatlean.
Helen: It’s helped massively. So when I first started – I started in October 2018 and I think you guys actually started doing our digital marketing in 2018 as well. I think it was a month after.
I know that a third of our revenue – more than a third of our revenue actually comes from what you guys do, and in terms of brand awareness it’s so important.
You can do things organically, but the minute you put money towards it, it just helps boost that brand awareness and being able to target certain people. I think for the type thing that you guys do, you do need to have some sort of skillsets. You know, it’s okay giving it a try if you’re not really skilled in it. But to make sure it’s efficient and it all runs efficiently, it’s definitely worth getting the experts. And you guys have done that for us, you know, grown grown our business a lot, basically.
And, you know, even helped us over – the thing that stands out for me is over Covid.
So when when Covid first started, we were quite worried about/spending money and would people be buying online? We didn’t know. And you guys guided us and said, no, it will, you know, it will work out. People are gonna be going to online businesses more.
And that was the case. And luckily we did. And we actually increased our budgets as well. And it worked. It helps.
So we benefited from that and not not just in terms of revenue, but with brand awareness too.
Aimee: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s been a wild ride over the past couple of years. At this point, like, you know, you’re one of our legacy clients.
We’ve always loved working for you.
And I think when Covid happened, we obviously went straight into gear and we need to we need to get something to change what’s happening, I think.
Like you said, eCom just went wild. Uh, and that obviously really helped in our favour.
So would you recommend working with a digital marketing agency to another brand?
Aimee: Yeah, like I said before. If you’ve not got the skillset – and I think there’s different parts, you’ve got your paid social, your PPC, you know, your creative. There’s lots of different skillsets – to find that one person that actually has all those skills, that would be/quite hard.
So I think that’s where it’s important that you do reach out to a marketing agency.
Because you want people to specialise in specific areas to make sure that they’re they’re efficient in what they’re doing in the performance.
So yeah, I definitely recommend – and I do actually recommend – to anybody that asks on social media. I do mention you guys. I definitely 100% recommend it.
Aimee: Amazing. We appreciate that. It’s my final question, and like I said, it’s the one I’m most excited about..
What’s your favourite Eatlean product?
Helen: I can’t believe you don’t know that already!
The cheese bake is absolutely amazing. Definitely the number one is that is the cheese bake.
It just feels like you are indulgent like using it that way, but you feel like you are satisfying your taste buds and your your need to eat properly, but then it’s only 250 calories for the whole thing, and we do talk about sharing it – it’s a sharing product.
But I don’t share my cheese bake! And I think the majority of our Eatleaners don’t share their cheese bake, either.
Because yeah, just for 250 calories, they’re just, you know.
I think Marks & Spencers brought one out last year, and it’s basically very similar to our cheese bake. Theirs was double that – 500 calories for the whole thing.
So yeah, but it just tastes so nice and just really cheesy. With hints of cider, and it’s got a bit of mustard and yeah, it’s so nice. It’s just that that question of what do you dip into it – do you go really healthy and well, you could you could dip in another cheese stick! You could do a cheese bite, or like carrots or cucumber. Or do you go full on and just dip bread in?
Either way it’s great.
Aimee: We dip bread.
Helen: Like a cob, a warm cob.
Aimee: That’s exactly what we did when we got one in the office. I mean, it was gone in minutes! Yeah, we got a lot of crusty bread for it. It was just so good./It is amazing.
Helen: But also like the one that I always think about, secondly is the spreadable – it’s so good, and there’s so many different things that you can do with it as well.
But when people ask me what it tastes like, I always compare it to Dairylea.
Aimee: Really?
Helen: Because it’s got a bit of a Dairylea taste. And it’s just really cheesy and just excellent for Slimming World members and Weight Watchers members like it, especially because they can have a hell of a lot more of that type of cheese than the standard cream cheese. So and you can use it for, you know, pasta cream cheese, even brownies, cheesecakes. You know it goes to the dessert side of things.
So yeah, Spreadable Is good, it gets a shout out.
Aimee: I love some of the recipes that you put online. Do you have a favourite one that people have posted?
Helen: Ones that people have been posting lately – we’re seeing a lot of pizza crumpets or pizza/bagels, I think that’s been going on for a while. But there just seems to be a bit of an uplift lately, and every time I see it, I really want to make it for myself.
You know what? It’s so hard to run a food account on Instagram and Facebook because you’re just hungry all the time! And you see all these amazing ideas that people come up with.
Yeah, I’m trying to think if I’ve got a favourite – I just love seeing all the pizzas and the burgers and those that kind – that ‘fakeaway’ type style recipes are the ones that people look at them and think that’s really calorific. But actually using our cheese it lowers the fat and the calories down a lot.
So yeah, anything, really anything melty cheese, I love to see it!
Aimee: You’re in the right job! I love it.
Thanks Helen! We’ll be back very soon with the next edition of our Client Spotlight. To keep up to date with the latest DMT insights, follow us on LinkedIn. You can also request a digital marketing proposal to be our next eCommerce success story.
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