B&Q’s Playbook for Small Business Digital Growth

B&Q’s ecommerce sales rose 19.4% in the 13 weeks to 31 October 2025, with reported sales hitting £973m. That’s not a “nice-to-have” uplift; that’s a signal that modern retail marketing is working when it’s built around data, social and relevance.

What caught my eye isn’t just the numbers. It’s the reason B&Q’s marketing director Katherine Paterson returned after 12 years away: she says the business has “moved on tremendously” in data, social and personalisation. For UK startups and small businesses, this is exactly the point: you don’t need a big-brand budget to adopt big-brand thinking. You need the right system, the right feedback loops, and the discipline to measure what matters.

This post is part of the Startup Marketing United Kingdom series, where we translate what large, established brands are doing into steps a British small business can actually use—this quarter, not “someday”.

What Paterson’s return tells us about 2026 marketing in the UK

The core lesson is simple: marketing maturity is a choice, not a company size advantage. Paterson came back to a B&Q that’s more ambitious, more data-led, and more comfortable running marketing across multiple channels at once.

Twelve years ago, many brands still treated marketing like a campaign factory: pick one project, push it hard, move on. Paterson’s comment that “the old way… would have been quite single-minded” is a polite way of saying most teams were working with limited signals and slower feedback.

In 2026, the brands growing fastest do three things consistently:

1. They listen in real time (especially through social).
2. They segment and personalise (even if it’s “light” personalisation).
3. They blend commercial metrics with perception metrics (sales and brand impact).

For small businesses, this matters because you’re often closer to customers than the big players—you just need to turn that closeness into usable marketing inputs.

The myth worth dropping: “personalisation is only for big retailers”

Personalisation isn’t a £500k CRM implementation. Personalisation is sending the right message to the right person at the right time—consistently.

A local service business can do this with:

• a simple email platform + tags
• 3–5 audience segments
• a monthly content cadence
• a feedback habit (social DMs, reviews, quick surveys)

B&Q might do it for 5.6m active customers. You might do it for 560. The method still works.

Data-centred marketing on a small budget (without turning into a spreadsheet brand)

Paterson highlights B&Q’s increased “data-centricity” and use of personalised offers. Here’s the small business translation: collect fewer data points, but actually use them.

Most UK small businesses are either (a) data-starved because tracking is patchy, or (b) drowning in dashboards that nobody trusts. There’s a better middle ground.

Start with a “Minimum Useful Dataset”

If you want marketing that produces leads, you need to know three things:

1. Where leads come from (channel + campaign)
2. What they want (intent)
3. Whether they converted (and into what)

A practical minimum dataset for a small business:

• Source/medium (Google organic, Google Ads, Instagram, referrals, email)
• Landing page
• Offer requested (quote, brochure, call back, booking)
• Location (town/postcode area)
• Sales outcome (won/lost) and value

If you can’t see those fields inside a week, you’re guessing.

A simple segmentation model that works

You don’t need 18 personas. In fact, you’ll make worse decisions.

Use 3–5 segments based on real behaviour:

• New leads (first enquiry)
• Warm prospects (opened emails, revisited pricing, replied)
• Past customers (upsell/cross-sell)
• High intent (booking page visits, quote form started)
• Local priority areas (your most profitable postcodes)

Then tailor one thing per segment: the subject line, the offer, the landing page copy, or the follow-up timing.

Personalisation that you can maintain beats “perfect personalisation” you abandon in six weeks.

Social media as customer research (not just content distribution)

Paterson talks about using social for “instantaneous feedback” and “constant conversations.” That’s the part most small businesses miss. They treat social as a posting schedule, when it’s actually the cheapest research tool you have.

Build a monthly listening loop (steal this from bigger teams)

B&Q runs listening groups regularly. You can copy the principle without the overhead.

A small business listening loop:

1. Pick one question each month (e.g., “What nearly stopped you from buying?”)
2. Ask it via:
   • Instagram Stories poll
   • a post with a clear CTA
   • an email to recent enquirers
   • a 5-minute call to 5 customers
3. Log answers in one place (sheet/Notion/CRM notes)
4. Turn the top 3 themes into:
   • next month’s content topics
   • objection-handling copy on your landing page
   • one new offer or guarantee

This creates compounding advantage. Your competitors keep guessing. You keep learning.

Use “celebration content” to reduce your production workload

B&Q “celebrates content from users already on the platform”—that’s a polite phrase for well-managed user-generated content (UGC).

For small businesses, UGC isn’t only for ecommerce. Examples:

• trades: customer before/after photos + a short testimonial
• professional services: client success story (with permission) + one specific outcome
• hospitality: guest photos + staff picks
• fitness/wellness: member milestones

The key is governance:

• Ask permission in writing
• Create a simple submission/consent process
• Save assets in a shared folder
• Credit customers (they’ll often share it too)

Content that teaches: why “how-to” wins in 2026

Paterson notes that home improvement skills are being passed down less often, so consumers want more “how-to content and extra support.” That insight applies across sectors.

In the UK right now, trust is expensive and attention is fragmented. Practical content does two jobs at once:

• It proves competence (you know what you’re doing)
• It pre-sells the service (the reader sees the complexity and chooses help)

A content format that reliably generates leads

If you’re a small business trying to generate inbound leads, publish:

• 6–10 “how much does it cost” pages (price ranges + what affects cost)
• 6 “mistakes to avoid” guides
• 6 “how to choose a supplier” pages (your category)
• 12 short social videos that answer FAQs

Then link those pieces into:

• a lead magnet (checklist, quote planner)
• a quote/booking page
• a follow-up email sequence

This is the small-business version of big-brand momentum: helpfulness at scale.

Measuring what matters: combine sales metrics with perception metrics

Paterson describes tracking footfall, transactions, traffic, share of voice, and perception—plus control testing on social investment and Google PPC.

Small businesses often do the opposite: they measure clicks and impressions, then wonder why revenue doesn’t move.

The “small business metrics stack” (simple, decisive)

Use two layers: performance and perception.

Performance (weekly):

• leads by channel
• cost per lead (paid)
• lead-to-sale conversion rate
• average order value / initial contract value

Perception (monthly):

• review velocity (new reviews per month)
• brand search trend (Google Search Console impressions for your brand name)
• social saves/shares (signals of usefulness)
• “why us” response (ask new leads: what made you choose us?)

If you only track performance, you’ll under-invest in trust-building. If you only track perception, you’ll drift.

Control testing without enterprise tooling

You can run “control tests” with basic discipline:

• For one month, hold spend steady but change one variable (offer, landing page, creative)
• Compare against the previous month and the same month last year if seasonal
• Don’t change three things at once and call it optimisation

This is where many startups and small firms waste money: constant tinkering without a baseline.

What small businesses should copy from B&Q (and what to ignore)

Here’s my stance: small businesses should copy the principles and ignore the pageantry.

Copy these principles

• Be closer to customers than your competitors are. Use social and short surveys to hear objections in plain English.
• Treat data as a decision tool, not a reporting tool. If it doesn’t change your next action, it’s noise.
• Make content do real work. How-to, pricing guidance, and comparisons generate leads because they match intent.
• Keep in-person experiences in the mix when it fits. Paterson is right: real-world activation still matters. For small businesses, that could mean local partnerships, workshops, or open days.

Ignore these temptations

• Trying to be everywhere at once. Pick 2–3 channels, run them properly.
• Over-building segmentation. A few clear segments beat a fragile CRM maze.
• Chasing vanity TikTok views if your funnel can’t capture demand.

A practical 30-day plan to apply this in your business

If you want a starting point you can actually execute, do this over the next month:

1. Week 1: Tracking basics

   • Fix attribution (UTMs, form fields, CRM source)
   • Define your 3–5 segments

2. Week 2: One conversion asset

   • Build or improve one landing page for your main offer
   • Add 3 objections + answers based on real customer language

3. Week 3: Social listening loop

   • Ask one buying-barrier question
   • Turn answers into 4 posts + 1 email

4. Week 4: Light personalisation

   • Create one email follow-up per segment
   • Add one tailored offer or next step per segment

At the end of 30 days, you should see clearer lead quality signals and a more consistent flow of enquiries.

Paterson returned to B&Q because the brand has more ambition and more momentum than it did 12 years ago. That same choice sits in front of every UK small business in 2026: keep marketing as a set of ad-hoc tasks, or build a system that learns.

If you had to pick just one area to improve this quarter—tracking, social feedback, or personalisation—which one would create the biggest difference in your lead quality?